WEEKEND COLUMNISTS Restaurant-goers are responding with commendable common sense to the current economic downturn in ways that have striking similarities to the early 1980s, when I naively opened my restaurant, the early 1990s, and the period after the dotcom boom and 9/11.
The most obvious manifestation of this can best be labelled “a flight to conservatism”. With reduced funds to spend, customers do not want to be disappointed and so they, consciously or subconsciously, make a point of returning to restaurants where they have already eaten well or been warmly looked after. This trend is not confined to restaurants, of course, but it does make life even more challenging for anyone just opening a new restaurant.
The less obvious trend is that customers are spending less on alcohol and this has a significant and immediate effect on a restaurant’s profitability. Restaurants seem to have become a by-word for the general state of the economy, but the fact that many still can be full for dinner from Wednesday to Saturday does not tell the whole story. Average spends are down; the early part of the week can be quiet; the queues at the bar waiting for a table are thinner, and if you turn up early for your table it may well be ready and waiting for you.
What is different about this downturn is the speed with which it has happened. Hospitality companies catering for corporate and social events were the first to notice in the spring, but it was not obvious in restaurants until early September. But then, once companies had sent out instructions to curb spending, the effects were marked.
What is more, this downturn may yield one significant new change. Over the past few weeks, as I have watched the most recent openings, read the latest press releases and talked to restaurateurs, I have been increasingly aware that 2008 may see the end of nothing other than the restaurant. By this, I hasten to add, I mean not the restaurant as an institution, but the name. Restaurateurs appear to be doing everything to avoid calling their new openings restaurants. Café, bar, bar and kitchen, bistro, bistrot de luxe, canteen, trattoria, osteria and lounge are now far more common names than “restaurant”, either alone or in some kind of combination associated with a place name or that of a well-known individual. Nobody today, it seems, wants to proclaim that they are opening a restaurant.
Various reasons explain this. One is that the word “restaurant” is associated with expense. Another is the inexorable march towards the “café society” we all seem so comfortable in, where our working lives dictate that we want to eat perhaps from a less challenging menu than a restaurant normally offers. No restaurateur today wants to miss out on what can be the lucrative trade for breakfast meetings (which are less costly than lunch or dinner as no alcohol is involved); here location is vital.
The challenge for restaurateurs today is broadening their appeal while holding on to the restaurant’s identity. For some time, many tried to achieve this by splitting the space into a brasserie and restaurant, or a grill and restaurant – a policy that can work if the spaces are clearly delineated. But by dividing the space into the “cheap” and “expensive” seats it can be construed as socially divisive and is not great for business if the more expensive side stays conspicuously vacant. More welcoming perhaps is one space where a single menu accommodates everything. But does this underlying move spell the end of the restaurant?
This feeling was reinforced when I saw recently that Ristorante Semplice, just off New Bond Street, had spawned Bar Trattoria Semplice a few yards away. How long could the former survive with similar, but less expensive, Italian cooking from the same team less than a stone’s throw away?
Semplice is run by three highly enthusiastic partners, restaurateur Marino Roberto, manager Giovanni Baldino and chef Marco Torri. In the evening the restaurant is quite dark, rather New York in feel, with friendly staff. Highlights of a good meal included a first course, warm salad of scallops; two risottos as main courses, one a well-executed Milanese, the other a more unusual rendition of wild mushrooms and red wine topped with a deboned grouse; and, last, their ice creams. Fortunately, the lighting was not too dim for me to notice that my bill for £95 for two had been transposed into a total of over £200 by human error, an issue that was promptly rectified with apologies.
A couple of days later, lunch for two at the much brighter trattoria involved two hearty bowls of soup, pasta with a hare ragù and a hefty plate of calves liver, two glasses of wine and one coffee, but no desserts. The bill was a third cheaper at £62.
Afterwards, I sat down with Baldino and asked him to explain why he had opened a trattoria so close to his restaurant and whether the popularity of the former could only be at the expense of the latter. “Obviously, we didn’t expect this downturn when we took over this former pub eight months ago,” he said. “But we think it’s a great location to which we can attract a lot of young people who work round here and just want to pop in for a coffee or a bowl of pasta at the bar. I don’t think that the trattoria will damage our business at the restaurant. I am hoping that after people have come here a few times they will see the restaurant as a venue for a particular celebration.”
I am not so sure. The best restaurants will always survive but in the future, I believe, they may well be under any other name.
More columns at www.ft.com/lander
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Details
Ristorante Semplice, 910 Blenheim Street, London W1S 1LJ. Tel: +44 (0)207495 1509; www.ristorantesemplice.com
Trattoria Semplice, 22 Woodstock Street, London W1C 2AP. Tel: +44 (0)207491 8638; www.bartrattoriasemplice.com
