Janet Williams was looking for a place to have lunch.
“We had heard about this place called Twisted Spoke with great food and nice atmosphere, plus it was near our place of business, so we wanted to support them,” she remembers.
When it was time to be seated, she asked for the non-smoking section, but was told that they didn’t have one. She asked to speak to the manager and was told that they didn’t have one of those around either.
“Then I told them they were in violation of the Clean Indoor Air Act, and I would be reporting them to the health department.”
Suddenly a manager appeared.
“He told me that he did not have to comply with the Clean Air Act because his place is a tavern and he has a tavern license.”
Williams left. But because she happens to be a spokeswoman for both the American Lung Association and the Illinois Coalition Against Tobacco, she did not let the issue go. After a little checking, she found out that indeed, Twisted Spoke’s primary license is a tavern license, issued by the Chicago Department of Revenue. But regardless of licensing, it is ultimately the Chicago Department of Health’s call on whether an establishment is a restaurant or a tavern. And in the department’s regular inspection reports, Twisted Spoke is categorized as a “restaurant.”
Yet not only did the agency not cite the establishment for failing to set aside a non-smoking area or post “No smoking” signs — both of which the law clearly requires of restaurants — but inspectors falsely wrote in their November report that Twisted Spoke had a “No smoking” section and signs.
The fact is, Twisted Spoke only complied with the law this month, and only after Williams complained to the agency and the Tribune began making inquiries. (Owner Cliff Einhorn says he has decided that “it’s just not worth arguing about anymore.”)
Despite a crackdown announced by the Health Department a year ago on restaurants that violate the smoking law, the ordinance is still being blatantly violated and rarely enforced. A Tribune inspection of 50 Chicago restaurants found that nearly 40 percent of them do not have the clearly marked non-smoking sections the law calls for. And virtually all — 49 to be exact — were in violation of one or another aspect of the 7-year-old smoking code.
Meanwhile, in December and January, a two-month period in which it conducted an estimated 7,000 restaurant inspections, the Health Department issued only two citations for smoking violations — to Leona’s Pizzeria on Sheffield and Rinconcito Hispano.
Inspectors may well have issued more in other months, but when the Tribune asked for the number of smoking violations written up in all of 1999, the agency said it was unable to provide such a count because its filing system does not permit it. Its explanation: Archaic as it may sound, the agency’s restaurant inspection records are still kept exclusively on paper. In an age when 6-year-olds surf the Internet, the city’s food and dairy inspection records are not computerized.
By contrast, New York City’s Health Department is fully computerized. It issued 751 citations last year for violators of its Smoke-Free Air Act, a total that was down from 895 the previous year. New York health officials said they will soon launch a Web site making recent inspection reports available on-line to consumers.
The Chicago Health Department’s lack of a central databank is a problem that Chicago Health Commissioner Sheila Lyne says she hopes to remedy by the end of the year. But the agency’s evident lack of enthusiasm for enforcing the no-smoking code is one that may take a little more work.
When Lyne was presented with the results of the Tribune’s survey, she conceded that her inspectors were missing violations they should have picked up on. But she defended her employees, saying that smoking compliance became an official inspection point only a year ago.
“We obviously haven’t gotten them up to speed on that,” she said. “I suspect that [smoking ordinance vigilance] is not up there where food protection is, and I accept that as a deficiency.”
Dismay over the lax enforcement was expressed by Ald. Edward Burke (14th), a longtime smoking foe and original supporter of the ordinance. “I’m shocked,” Burke said. “It certainly was the intent of the City Council when this ordinance was adopted that it be enforced just like other health-related ordinances.”
Also disappointed was Ald. Eugene Schulter (47th), a key figure behind last year’s initiative to beef up compliance. “If the information you are giving me is accurate, I would say I’m amazed,” Schulter said. “There is a definite need for improvement here.”
Schulter has subsequently asked Lyne to start giving quarterly reports on the situation to his Committee on Licensing and Consumer Protection. “We were under the impression that everything was working out fine,” he said.
The Tribune’s survey found a number of restaurants where patrons were lighting up in clearly marked non-smoking sections. These included a wide range of dining emporiums, such as the Chicago Brauhaus, Happy Chef, Pho Hoa, Puebla and the Chui Quon Bakery. Other restaurants, including the trendy Smokedaddy and Snaps, lacked visible signage defining where the non-smoking sections were, if they existed at all, and thus smokers were lighting up at will all over the rooms.
Among other places that failed to post clearly visible “No smoking” and “Smoking Permitted” were Ezuli, Souk, Gaijin Hotel, Soul Kitchen, Le Bouchon, Brasserie Joe, Carmichael’s, Sushi Wabi, Nacional 27, Tomboy, P.F. Chang’s, and Barba Yianni.
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The most common infraction among the restaurants spot-checked was a failure to display signs declaring the percentage of the dining room the restaurant has allocated for non-smokers. The choices are either 30 or 50 percent. The percentage signs serve two purposes. They inform health inspectors how much non-smoking space to look for at the restaurant, and they tell patrons how much non-smoking space there should be and where to call if they do not find it.
The requirement for a prominently posted percentage sign has been part of the law since 1993, but the Health Department can produce no evidence that anyone has ever been cited for violating it, an infraction punishable by up to a $500 fine. The percentage signs, some critics feel, should be made available by the Chicago Department of Revenue when restaurateurs come in each year to renew their licenses and declare what percent of their place is set aside for non-smokers. But that is not the case. Instead, the signs are chiefly obtained from the Illinois Restaurant Association, a private restaurant advocacy group that does not believe the government should be dictating smoking policies. The association’s executive director Julia Countryman says the association makes the signs available for sale and reminds restaurateurs to use them, but this system has not produced great results. Only seven of the 50 restaurants checked by the Tribune displayed them.
Although nothing in the ordinance prohibits a restaurant from making 100 percent of its dining room no-smoking, owners are not allowed to register with the Department of Revenue as such. Williams noted that during the 1993 negotiations for the amended ordinance, pro-smoking lobbyists pushed hard to make 30 or 50 percent the only choices restaurants could choose. “I think that they wanted it that way because then there would be some who would think that they always had to leave a part of their restaurant for smokers, which they don’t,” Williams said.
Some restaurateurs whose signs were not visible during the Tribune inspections insist they have them. “The non-smoking signs are up but they are in non-conspicuous places,” says Brad Rugger, manager of P.F. Chang’s. “We’ve got them around back behind the phones and upstairs I believe they are down by the coat rack of some sort. We put a lot of effort into our design to create an atmosphere and the signs are pretty tacky.”
Others admitted that they don’t use wall signs because they limit seating flexibility.
“I do have a sign but based on the level of business sometimes we just ignore it,” said Carmichael’s manager John Memoli. “We have had some smoking in the non-smoking section on occasion. The way our dining room is designed, the smoking section changes depending if we have large parties and we need a certain amount of space. [Our sign] is magnetic and we put it on iron poles.”
Even eateries that have banned smoking in their dining rooms altogether like Caf Selmarie and Sushi Wabi often don’t use the signs.
“We don’t have the signs, we just tell people,” Sushi Wabi co-owner Franco Gianni said.
Off the record, some restaurant owners say they would welcome the kind of government-enforced restaurant smoking bans that have been enacted in Los Angeles and New York. “It would be easier if the city made the decision for non-smoking; that way everyone would just go with it and there wouldn’t be any question,” a North Side restaurateur said. “Being a small neighborhood restaurant we can’t alienate a large part of our dining customers by becoming totally non-smoking, but if everybody was we wouldn’t feel like we were losing a competitive edge by doing it.”
Still, other restaurateurs would like to see government butt out of the issue altogether. “I wouldn’t want anybody to legislate this because smokers are a big part of my business,” says Steve Palmer, owner of Palmer Place in suburban La Grange, which has a large smoking section. “To let somebody else decide gives you no chance to go either way. I could make a lot of my place non-smoking now, but who knows what the trends are going to be next month. You need to be flexible and give the customers what they want.”
Palmer’s feelings are echoed by the Illinois Restaurant Association, an organization that, perhaps not coincidentally, shares its chief lobbyist, Larry Suffredin, with cigarette manufacturer R.J. Reynolds.
Suffredin defends what some might call a conflict of interest by saying that on Indoor Clean Air Act issues he represents the restaurants’ interests, not the tobacco company’s — although the two organizations appear to be on the same side of the smoking-ban issue.”I can tell you that the IRA is opposed to a ban on smoking,” says Countryman. “It would negatively impact the economic success that restaurants are experiencing in Chicago.”
Whether or not this is true is hard to say. Studies financed by smoking advocacy groups say that smoking bans do cut into bar and restaurant revenue, while studies funded by the American Cancer Institute say they don’t.
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While advocacy groups continue to debate the economic impact of smoking bans, few argue about the harmful effects of second-hand smoke anymore. So instead of pretending the dangers don’t exist, cigarette companies are trying to find ways of minimizing second-hand smoke in public places.
One of these ways is through Phillip Morris’ Options Program, an initiative that helps restaurants develop strategies to make their dining rooms friendly to both smokers and non-smokers. The company offers free consultants to help restaurateurs develop smoke-minimizing strategies that involve customized seating plans and state-of-the-art ventilation systems that can cost between $1,200 and $12,000 depending on the size of the room. Although the tobacco companies will occasionally pay outright for the ventilation equipment, the bulk of the program involves the use of consultants and educational materials.
When Steve Palmer of Palmer Place in LaGrange was doubling the size of his restaurant, he turned to Phillip Morris’ program and says he got helpful advice.
“My HVAC guy was telling me one thing, and someone else was telling me another, but [Phillip Morris was] able to spell out for me what I really needed for my space,” he says. When it comes to helping restaurants that choose to stay smoker friendly, cigarette companies can do more than provide free ventilation consultants. Recently, they have begun sponsoring eateries in much the same way they sponsor night clubs (see Thursday’s Tempo). Local Camel ads feature kind words about sponsored restaurants that include Soju, Hudson Club, Twisted Spoke and Smokedaddy, but Camel representatives, who were willing to discuss their bar-sponsorship program, refuse to discuss restaurant sponsorships.
Through the Options Program, Palmer worked out a plan that would separate smokers and non-smokers into two dining rooms. But when Brian Margulis, of Flatlanders in Lincolnshire, was deciding how to deal with the issue, he chose to ban smoking from his 300-seat dining room altogether. (He does allow smoking in his bar area, where patrons can order from the same menu as dining-room customers.) Margulis said that even with ventilation equipment, he found trying to arbitrate between smokers and non-smokers in the same dining room too dicey.
“Where do you make the cutoff line?” he asked of the invisible lines that are supposed to separate smokers from non-smokers. “How do you stop smoke from drifting? I think it is kind of silly for someone to come into a restaurant and request non-smoking and be seated next to a table with people who are smoking. Even with the equipment that draws the smoke up, it can still move from side to side.”
One-room restaurants are especially vulnerable to these artificial borders. Restaurateurs can ameliorate the situation somewhat by letting non-smokers know when they are being seated near smoking tables, but they don’t always do that.
Two diners recently stopped in at Andersonville’s Tomboy for dinner and asked for a non-smoking table. Since the restaurant does not clearly mark its sections or tell patrons when they are sitting on the edge, the couple became aware of their location only when two men sitting inches down the banquette started smoking over their appetizers.
While some restaurateurs have just resigned themselves to these kinds of annoyances, others have decided to do something about it. One of them is Arun Sampanthavivat, who knew it was time for a change after a particularly difficult night of smoke wars in his dining rooms.
“We had a whole room filled with smoke, and people kept requesting to change tables, and we just didn’t know where to place them,” he remembers. “We really felt for them, but there was nothing we could do. They were paying the same kind of money as the other customers, and they wanted to enjoy the meal without smoke. After that night, I thought, I have to make up my mind because we don’t have that many rooms and it penetrates everywhere.”
So about six years ago Sampanthavivat banned smoking in his nationally acclaimed eatery. He said that he suffered a slight dropoff in business initially, but things bounced back to normal after a few weeks.
Charlie Trotter’s went non-smoking 10 years ago for many of the same reasons. The restaurant’s director of marketing, Mark Signorio, says they noticed no dropoff in business at all after the change.
“We really feel that smoking interferes with the whole dining experience in terms of interruptions and odors, not so much for the individuals as for the people dining around them,” Signorio explains. “
A growing number of Chicago restaurants have voluntarily banned smoking in their dining rooms over the last decade. In fact, they include nine of Tribune restaurant critic Phil Vettel’s Top 10 restaurants.
Although the issue of a restaurant smoking ban in Chicago is not currently on the table, it’s one that could reignite at any time in our increasingly smoke-sensitive society. And according to Schulter, the flouting of the current laws may only hasten the debate.
Otherwise, one might legitimately ask, if the code continues to be enforced with as little enthusiasm as it is today, is there any point in even having it on the books.
