Evelyn Tiburcio's favorite restaurant became her least favorite last week when the owner told her she could no longer smoke inside. After 10 minutes of trying to smoke outside in the misty Morrisania night, Tiburcio went back inside El Internacional and spoke the words that the owner had been dreading since the city's smoking ban took effect.
"I told her that I wasn't coming back here any more," Tiburcio said. "If I can't smoke in here, then I'll find a restaurant where I can, and if I can't find that then I'll just stay home."
A frantic Catalina Perez, the owner, told Tiburcio that she could smoke in the bathroom, but Tiburcio said she couldn't smoke there. She grabbed her coat and left, taking two other smokers with her.
Although many city restaurants will be affected by the ban, some restaurateurs in the borough contend that their business will suffer the most, because they are less well organized, their establishments attract fewer customers and they have strong competitors in Westchester, where there is no smoking ban.
Many of them are trying to figure out how to keep their smoking customers happy in a smoke-free environment.
The city's Smoke-Free Air Act, which went into effect April 10, prohibits smoking in restaurants with more than 35 seats. Smoking is allowed only at bars that are six feet from the dining area or in a space that is walled off from the rest of the restaurant.
Of the 500 members of the Restaurant and Taverns Association in the borough, 300 will be affected.
And the effects will be crippling, said Gene McKenna, president of the association.
J.P. Prio, the owner of JP's on City Island, saw his usually robust lunch crowd trickle down to two people the first day the law went into effect. Prio, who bought the restaurant two years ago, said he has spent a lot of time and money building up a steady stream of customers.
"Then came the smoking ban," he said. "Bad timing, huh?"
Ralph Napolitano, the owner of Ann & Tony's, an Italian restaurant in Belmont, said that when a longtime customer found out that he could no longer smoke there, he told Napolitano that he would never see him again.
Restaurant owners here also fear that they will bear the brunt of enforcement simply because they do not have the clout of those in Manhattan.
"I can predict that they are not going to bother Elaine's," said McKenna, referring to the Manhattan restaurant frequented by the stars. "They're going to hit the little guys in the Bronx because we're not that well organized here, and we don't have the political leverage."
But restaurant proprietors are determined to keep their customers from walking out in a huff. At Il Boschetto, which is close to the Westchester border, the owner, Pasquale Diaferia, is building a separate room for smokers.
While Tony Vega, a manager at Oceano Restaurant in Morrisania, insisted that he would enforce the law, he shrugged when a customer lighted a cigarette at the bar, which was only four feet from the dining area.
"Following this law will be very difficult," Vega said. "How are you supposed to tell someone to put out their cigarette after they spend $100 on dinner?"