ark@rabbit.UUCP (Andrew Koenig) (05/18/84)
When I say "NY" in the following, I mean New York City. I don't know how much of this applies to the rest of the state, as I'm sure the city has its own alcohol laws on top of the state's. In NY, restaurants can have two different types of licenses. The first, for beer and wine with meals only, is less difficult to obtain than the second, which allows all kinds of booze to be sold. An establishment with the latter type of license must have a bar. One can order cocktails at one's table, and the server will then go over to the bar, have the bartender mix it up, and bring it to you. When you get your check, the bar bill is always separate. I have heard, but have not confirmed, that bars must pay retail prices for the liquor they serve. This would certainly account for the prices, but so would any of several other explanations. In any event, I had thought until recently that if a restaurant did not have a liquor license, you were free to bring your own, and conversely, if a restaurant did have a liquor license, you could NOT bring your own. It turns out that the reverse is true -- you may bring your own booze to a restaurant only if that restaurant has its own license. Of course, if they have their own license, they have every reason to insist that you NOT bring your own. Anyway, the New York Times recently printed reviews of ten good restaurants to which you could bring your own wine. The local alcoholic beverage commission took offense at this and went on record as saying that one may NOT bring wine to an unlicensed restaurant and that they would close down any place at which they found this rule was not being observed. One restauranteur caused a tremendous hubbub by saying: "You guys must be crazy to say it's illegal to bring wine into my restaurant. One of my best customers is Ed Koch [the mayor of New York City], and he does it all the time!" Ed Koch, being his usual feisty self, said something like: "Legal or not, I'm going to continue bringing my own wine to this restaurant. If you wanna put me in jail, go ahead!" Last I heard, the booze police had agreed to hold off on enforcing this law for 90 days to give the legislature time to repeal it.