The Manhattan eatery owner whose outside dining shed has been used as a sex den says the situation makes her stomach churn — but she’s virtually helpless to stop the sleazy shenanigans.
Emmeline Zhao, proprietor of Greenwich Village’s Silver Apricot restaurant — where recent disgusting antics were caught on video revealed by The Post — blamed the city and cops Sunday for failing to help her curb the shameless conduct.
“Truly, the lack of guidance from the city is frustrating,” the 33-year-old owner said. “The problem is the precinct doesn’t care, either.”
Zhao said she was upset to see the video of a woman performing oral sex on a man lying against her shed’s plywood and has put up a temporary wire fence to try to keep future intruders out — but added that the cost of a real gate would be too expensive.
She said she’s caught between needing the shed and having to grapple with the undesirable fallout it brings.
Emmeline Zhao, the owner of Silver Apricot in Greenwich Village, blamed the city and NYPD for not helping her deal with homeless people having sex in her outdoor dining shed. Gregory P. Mango“It has been a lifeline to us,” she said of the structure — yet she also has had called the cops multiple times to report people in her shed who are “probably high and taking up the space, leaving human sh-t everywhere.”
The NYPD won’t do anything, Zhao said. The cops ask her if the vagrants are currently “a danger” to her and say that if not, their hands are tied, she said.
“Do I need to actively be catching them shooting up for [officers] to do anything about it?” she said.
The Post cover featuring the dining sheds turned “sex shanties.”
Zhao supports more regulation for outdoor dining but said her new-American-Chinese restaurant that has garnered rave reviews needs the outdoor structure to stay afloat.
Residents in the West Village have been accosting her over her shed issues, which aren’t just happening at her place.
Empty restaurant sheds around the city have become makeshift toilets and homes for the homeless.
The city’s Open Restaurant program, which allowed the dining sheds to proliferate at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to boost the struggling restaurant industry, now has 12,556 eateries involved in it.
The problem of homelessness in the city is “not something the restaurants can fix,” Zhao said. “And it’s not something the restaurants are making worse.”
Guy Gladstein, a server at Zhao’s restaurant, agreed with his boss.
“Restaurants aren’t the reason people are sh-tting on the street. They sh-t right there against that house.” Gladstein said, pointing to a pile of human feces at the front door of a building across the street that had been covered with a napkin.
Zhao said she has called the police on the homeless people, but they haven’t done anything to help her. Gregory P. MangoVillage resident David Gruber, 76, is among the dozens of New Yorkers suing to close outdoor dining sheds once and for all.
“It’s like manifest destiny of tables. They have 10 tables inside and 60 tables outside,” he said. “For people who live here, it’s a problem.”
Gruber claimed the restaurant owners “don’t care” that the outdoor sheds leave the streets filthy, rat-infested and stinky.
“We can’t have them in perpetuity like the mayor wants,” Gruber said, referencing Mayor Eric Adams’ support for the structures.
