After this summer, the dehors model of any public establishment-restaurant, trattoria, pizzeria, bar-that hosts its customers outside must be rethought. Fabrizio Carrera discusses.
In July and August it is no longer possible to eat outdoors. We need to review the meaning of dehors and understand when it is possible to use it. I’m talking to restaurant friends, pizza maker friends, those who run a bar or any establishment where food and beverages are administered. Let us not delude ourselves about these now slightly cooler days.
As was the case last year, a watershed season not only for agriculture hit by a biblical drought, but also for the idea of eating out as we have always done in every hot season in our memory, this summer 2025 is unforgiving. There is no more temperature range, there are no more cool evenings from north to south, especially if you are in a big city. Only towns at an altitude of at least 600-700 meters or high hills where the temperature range is not lacking even on these scorching days are saved.
I have groups of friends questioning me about places to eat with air conditioning. I don’t have many answers. Either you take refuge in a few hotels. Or you have limited choices in many southern Italian cities, including Sicily. Because there are very few places to eat with air conditioning.
Even those places by the sea that gave you a pleasant sea breeze This year they suffer. One sweats. There is eating and drinking. And one sweats. And one dreams of a cool place. Some are trying to run for cover by using nebulizers. A pizza maker in Palermo asked if he could test their effectiveness in a few places. Dealer response: never sold a nebulizer in the South. And sure. Who has ever had these problems from Florence on down? In the North, paradoxically, they are more accustomed to fighting the mugginess. The South has always benefited from the evening breeze. This is no longer the case.
Remedies? Perhaps the atomizers. Either way, something that refreshes outdoors. Or go back indoors with air conditioning, as long as it works, is powerful enough to refresh all the people sitting and the hustle and bustle and the doors opening all the time. That then the paradox is that in the very months when people are most likely to eat outdoors they find themselves sitting with a fan in their hands. July and August are now like January and February. No dehors. There is bad weather. Too much heat is also bad weather.
