The jacket-required dress code at fine restaurants started to seem increasingly out of date. Then Covid came, forcing many restaurants to end the formal policy.
time in its 35-year history, Manhattan’s Le Bernardin is letting male patrons order its tasting menu or a bottle of Burgundy without wearing a sportcoat. When it reopened its polished dining room on March 17 after a several month hiatus, the three-Michelin-starred restaurant discarded its longstanding “jacket required” dress code. The decision, said chef and co-owner Eric Ripert, was driven by hygiene concerns.
Add restaurant dress codes to the list of the many things scrambled by the global health crisis. Upon reopening earlier this year, Galatoire’s, a jacket-required stickler in New Orleans, also stopped giving out germ-magnet loaners. Guests who arrived sans sportcoat, said the restaurant’s general manager Billy Clark, were steered toward the bar or a separate, more laissez-faire dining room where the sight of shirt-sleeves wouldn’t ruin someone’s supper.
Even before Covid, the jacket-required dress code—once de rigueur at finer establishments nationwide—had started to seem increasingly out of date. In keeping with the creeping casualization of how we dress, many formal hold-outs like Spaggia in Chicago and the French Laundry in Yountville, Calif., had already eliminated their jacket requirements pre-pandemic.
Michael O’Keeffe, the proprietor of the fussy River Café on the waterfront in Brooklyn, is unwavering in his commitment to “jacket required.” People have “surrendered to the indignities of our society,” by dressing down to go out to eat, he said. “I’m holding the line.” The policy doesn’t seem to keep eaters away, said Mr. O’Keeffe: “We don’t have any trouble being full every night with people dressing up.” Indeed, the River Café is currently booked up for dinner weeks in advance. Mr.
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