thank godz, nor on your jacket, hair, pores. I'm compiling an informal list of restaurants where we can eat, drink and enjoy life without having to inhale second-hand smoke.
Chicago Tribune | Smoke gets thin early in lounges: From haute cuisine to beer and burgers, some Chicago-area restaurants are voluntarily going smoke-free, and learning that diners love it. Chicago's newly enacted no-smoking ordinance exempts restaurants with lounges until July 2008. But some restaurant owners in the city and elsewhere are decreeing no smoking now, even planning to prohibit it at their sidewalk cafes come spring.Smoking has been prohibited in many venues on the East and West coasts for years. Chicago adopted an ordinance in January limiting smoking at many locations. While places remain to eat, drink and smoke, some are dispensing with the smoking.
The Capital Grille, at N. St. Claire and Ontario, went smoke-free in January.
Manager Jim Lyman said the change has not hurt business.
“It has been something very well received,” Lyman said
and contrary to what tobacco apologists predicted, banning smoking has increased business:
Keefer's Restaurant at 20 W. Kinzie St. voluntarily went smoke-free the day the ordinance passed. Managing Partner Glenn Keefer had supported the smoking ordinance strongly.“We were so involved in the ordinance and felt so strongly about it, it was almost hypocritical” to allow smoking, he said.
Keefer's nearby competitors allow smoking. He believes some of his old smoking customers are dining elsewhere now, but more non-smokers are visiting his restaurant.
“The month of January we were up 17.7 percent for sales,” Keefer said. “This is awesome and I wish I had done it sooner.”
...Dennis Murphy, for 25 years the owner of Poor Phil's at the intersection of Marion and Pleasant Streets in Oak Park, evicted cigarettes from his restaurant more than a year ago.
“My business changed,” Murphy said. “Sales are up 10 percent.”
Murphy said he isn't sure that going smoke-free is the reason his restaurant, big on fried shrimp and hamburgers, does more business than before. Smoking has never been permitted in his main dining room, although it was in his bar and in sidewalk seating during the warm season.
Smoke-free restaurants seem to be a trend growing from the top down.“Not one four-star restaurant in Chicago permits smoking anywhere,” Phil Vettel, Tribune restaurant critic, observed late last year.
...
But surprisingly, some people who smoke look forward to the day when it is banned in all restaurants and bars.Steve Murphy, a software developer and a native of Ireland, sat at a bar in Lincoln Square recently. Before him was a beer, a shot and a pack of Winstons.
He noted that smoking in pubs is banned in Ireland, and that is fine by him. “I'll be quitting soon,” Murphy said. “And the air is cleaner.”
