A few months after the COVID-19 pandemic first threw the restaurant industry into turmoil, many restaurants opted to open for outdoor dining in May and indoor dining in June, while others have closed their doors for good.

But some have chosen to remain closed temporarily, or continue just offering takeout and delivery, while others have tried indoor or outdoor dining but shut it down.

They cite financial constraints, lack of space, concern over the safety of staff and patrons, and dealing with difficult customers among their reasons for not opening at the level the state permits.

Namoo Korean Eatery, on Main Street in Norwich, is a restaurant that hasn't opened since being forced to close in March.

Co-owner Jason O said he thought about offering takeout but ran into issues with sourcing ingredients — he was seeing costs for meat and fresh vegetables double — and with acquiring personal protective equipment.

When restaurants were allowed to open outdoors, O found it "wouldn't have made sense for us to open with two picnic tables." When restaurants were allowed to open indoors at half capacity, O found that also didn't make sense for Namoo, which ordinarily seats only 28-30 people.

"How do I open at 50% capacity (and) pay double on expenses, but none of my other expenses are lower?" O questioned. He added, "I still have to pay my employees their full pay. I can't say, 'My costs are going up so your pay is going down.' So, it's kind of a scary."

For now, he's waiting and watching the market, and he hopes to reopen at some point. O said not a day goes by without someone reaching out to ask when he's opening.

Another restaurant that remains closed is The Social Bar + Kitchen in New London, which posted on Facebook on July 1 that it will "open when we feel it is a safe and comfortable time to do so for our team and for all of you. Needless to say, we miss you a lot."

In Old Lyme, The Public House posted on Facebook in mid-June, "Since so many of our customers enjoy sitting/standing at the bar, we have made the difficult decision to wait to open until Phase 3. We want to make sure we have the safest environment possible for our patrons and staff when we reopen. We miss you all and can't wait to see you very soon!"

Some try dine-in, revert to takeout-only after facing rude customers

Paul's Pasta in Groton, which has been around for 32 years, had been open for curbside pickup since March before opening for indoor and outdoor dining in late June.

But that only lasted for two weeks before the restaurant returned to curbside pickup only.

Owner Paul Fidrych attributed the decision to stop serving food on-premises 50% to negative customer behavior and 50% to lack of seating.

Along with "some awesome customers," he said they "had other customers who were pushing the buttons. They'd come in without masks, they'd argue with you, they'd debate you. It's not good. It was very stressful."

Paul's Pasta is a small spot, and operating at 50% capacity meant they could only put five tables inside and five on the deck, compared to the normal allowance of 13 inside and 10 outside.

Another issue was that Paul's Pasta stopped offering curbside pickup while letting people eat in, since people who came to eat there might park in front of the restaurant.

"We got a lot of people upset because we stopped doing the curbside," Fidrych said. "You couldn't win either way. But it's been a lot less stressful since we've gone back to the curbside."

In Misquamicut, the seafood restaurant Two Little Fish got a lot of attention when it wrote on July 9 that it would no longer offer on-premises dining this year, just takeout, because customers were refusing to follow the rules and being "verbally abusive to our staff."

"We do not need to be cursed at for requiring YOU to wear masks, not allowing you to switch tables without sanitizing them, the constant parade of 'I wanna buy a soda so I can use your bathroom' when we are already at state limited building capacity, then enduring your profanity directed at us," Two Little Fish wrote. "IT'S A PANDEMIC, PEOPLE. DEAL WITH IT."

In New London, Recovery Room opened up the dining room for a week but then went back to takeout and delivery, with some outdoor seating available.

"We weren't getting as much action in here as we thought," manager Troy Sainsbury said Wednesday, adding that staff also just didn't feel right having people inside during the pandemic. He said the successful delivery and takeout service is keeping them afloat.

"Whenever the next phase is, we're going to kind of reassess and kind of go over all of our options," Sainsbury said, noting they're not in a rush.

Ricky and Tai Au opted to take different approaches for the four restaurants they own in Mystic, Groton and Niantic. Pink Basil, Samurai Noodle Bar & Grill, Thai Sawasdee and Spice Club are all offering takeout and delivery, but only Samurai Noodle Bar has indoor seating, and Pink Basil and Spice Club have outdoor seating while Thai Sawasdee doesn't.

Ricky Au said part of the reason for opening Samurai Noodle Bar indoors is competition with other restaurants in downtown Mystic, and opening the other three indoors depends in part on finding enough staffing "to make sure everything is clean and ready to go." The restaurants posted recently that they're looking to hire line cooks.

At the Bee & Thistle Inn in Old Lyme, the guest rooms and restaurant remain closed. The inn is offering takeout of a three-course prix-fixe dinner for two with a bottle of wine for $90, and people are allowed to bring their own silverware and glasses to eat on the 5-acre lawn.

Head chef Kris Rowe explained of the decision not to open for dine-in, "From the start, we recognized it was going to be a very serious pandemic. We're daily monitoring new cases in the U.S. and watching new places that reopened."

He said the top priority is protecting staff and the community, saying the eventual decision to reopen is "really, in our view, based on science and what we're seeing."

e.moser@theday.com