Toronto restaurant in Little Italy is closed for business after the owner of Café Diplomatico said he received “eight different infractions.”“You need to have two sides open, fully open, or if you have a retractable roof like ours, the roof has to be open and one side has to be left open, instead of two.
You can’t do that in minus 20. And what I’ve been asking the City is that this should be the standard for temporary enclosures,” said restaurant co-owner Rocco Mastrangelo.He said his patio was never meant for winter weather but given the COVID-19 restrictions and financial toll of the pandemic, it’s been a way to pay the bills, on top of takeout and delivery.“What I actually got as a summons from the municipal licensing standards is basically remove everything that I’ve done even for 2014, which is absolutely ridiculous,” said Mastrangelo.“I’m not sure what I’ve done to them to deserve this kind of treatment.” Ontario to reopen restaurant dining at 50% capacity beginning Jan.
31, sources say He said this began early last month with a complaint about a blocked fire hydrant within his patio enclosure.
Since then, the notices to comply and notices of violation have piled up.Café Diplomatico’s patio is not the only one recently targeted for violations.“There’s 30 to 32 restaurants that have outdoor cafés and patiosthat are more akin to indoor,” said Carleton Grant, executive director of municipal licensing and standards at the City of Toronto.He said it is a small percentage of the 1,200 patios in the city — “only two per cent” — and noted this is not a blitz.