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All These Presidential Debates Hurt My Business, UWS Restaurant Owner Says

By Emily Frost | April 14, 2016 11:03am
 Cafe du Soleil has fallen on hard times and the owner blames the election season and all the televised debates.
Cafe du Soleil has fallen on hard times and the owner blames the election season and all the televised debates.
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Thursday's Democratic debate between candidates Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders has at least one restaurateur grumbling, and not because she's sick of politics. 

"The fact that it’s an election year, everybody’s watching the debates, nobody’s coming out," said Upper West Side restaurateur Nadine Chevreux. 

Instead of dining out, people are watching the debates on television, she said. 

Since August, there have been close to two dozen televised Republican and Democratic primary debates combined. 

Chevreux owns Cafe du Soleil, a French bistro at 2723 Broadway at West 105th Street, that has been a fixture in the neighborhood since 2005.

Business at the bistro "used to be better," she said. 

But recently, "we’re really struggling just to pay our rent," Chevreux said Wednesday at a Community Board 7 meeting. The board's Business and Consumer Issues committee agreed to renew Cafe du Soleil's sidewalk cafe permit.

Cafe du Soleil also faces the challenge of what other restaurant owners have called "the kiss of death": scaffolding outside the restaurant that impedes sight lines and the ambiance of the outdoor cafe.

In addition to scaffolding, Cafe Du Soleil lost its celebrity chef Matthew Tivy, a regular Food Network guest, this past October when he was arrested and charged by federal officials with a third-degree criminal sexual act, endangering the welfare of a child and sexual abuse of a child.

He is due back in court on April 21.