most restaurants could have employed some modest measures and stayed open at 80-90% capacity (which may be below break-even for some, but probably enough to ride out the pandemic with price hikes and/or modest gov loans), as risk is isolated between tables (no, that one hypothesized case of down-blower transmission is not proof of significant risk) and you shouldn't be sharing breathing space with people you don't trust. people who would eat at a restaurant together likely ate together in private anyway when restaurants were shuttered.
bars, on the other hand, by their very nature make it very difficult to contain transmission risk, because the whole point of a bar is to lower your guard to promote mixed socialization. distancing, talking gently, limiting respiratory ejections, and/or wearing a mask just don't go together with drinking and carousing. (private parties then likely became a primary transmission vector, but there's no way to stop private parties without truly draconian measures.)
we could have let restaurants save themselves by remaining open, and tackled the remaining, more manageable issue of closed bars with supplemental programs.