It’s Greek to Me, a restaurant in Ridgewood, will require guests who want to dine indoors to show proof of vaccination, beginning Tuesday.
Guests who wish to dine indoors must show their vaccination card or a picture of it, an employee at the restaurant told ROI-NJ. Unvaccinated guests will be required to eat outdoors.
The restaurant, located at 21 E. Ridgewood Ave., is believed to be the first restaurant in New Jersey to make such a mandate. All of the restaurant’s employees are vaccinated.
New Jersey Advance Media was the first to report the story. Owner Paul Vagianos was not available to speak with ROI-NJ, but he told NJAM that his decision was a matter of safety.
“This Delta variant has proven to be so highly contagious, and so dangerous, that I don’t want to expose myself, my staff, my customers and, especially, the seniors, to the dangers associated with this,” he said.
Vagianos told NJAM he is not trying to make a statement.
“I’m just making the best decisions I can with the information that I’ve got,” he said.
Gov. Phil Murphy — even though he has repeatedly called COVID-19 a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” — has held off on vaccination passports of any kind, saying they may inadvertently discriminate against certain classes.
And, with the governor set to go overseas Tuesday for a 10-day vacation in Italy, it would seem unlikely that he would make any pronouncements anytime soon.
That being said, Murphy has not spoken out against individual businesses or business owners making mask or vaccination mandates on their own.
