Rising to the fine-dining challenge

Nation's Restaurant News, May 11, 1992 by John Mariani

The death of fine dining in the United States has been pronounced just about as often as -- and with as much solemnity as -- the death of Broadway theater. Yet, through, wars, Prohibition, recession and depression, deluxe restaurants have survived, thrived and indeed get better all the time.

At the onset of Prohibition in 1919 a regular patron of Delmonico's mourned the passing of elegant dining with this bit of doggerel: No more the grape with fire divine/Shall light the torch of pleasure gay,/ And where the gourmand paused to dine,/ Hot dog and hot fudge shops have their day.

In 1959 the front page of The New York Times ran an article by Craig Claiborne on the theme that elegant restaurants were on the wane in the United States because of stricter immigration laws, efficiency experts cutting corners in the kitchen and the lack of a new generation of young chefs to replace the old masters.

Thirty-three years later another Times article -- this one by food writer Molly O'Niell--hit the restaurant world like a thunderclap. The writer attempted to explain why fine dining was rapidly receding into the same dustbin of history as turbo-charged BMWs, mink coats and summer rentals in the Hamptons. Those who once reveled in 10-course meals and three-figure wines were said to be deserting expensive restaurants in favor of bistros, trattorias, grills and cafes or just simply staying at home, eating Chinese.

The reasons for the retrenchment were not far to seek: The reduction of tax deductibility for entertaining dropped to 80 percent. The stock market crash of '87 put hundreds of thousands out of work. And the recession had put the kind of people who once gobbled up foie gras and smoked salmon on a diet of roast chicken and mashed potatoes. Several deluxe restaurants went under -- Washington's Le Pavillon, Chicago's Le Prince, Seattle's Other Place, Denver's Adirondacks, Boston's The Colony, New Orleans' Le Ruth's, Cincinnati's Pigalle, Dallas' San Simeon, Pittsburgh's La Normande and New York's Metro, Huberts, Toscana, Maxwell's Plum, Le Cygne, Brive, SoFi and Rakel -- all defunct despite reputations most restaurateurs would have killed to attain.

A Times editorial a few days later -- with the apocalyptic title "The Day the Eating Stopped" -- went further, quoting a lawyer who said he felt guilty going to expensive restaurants. "I'd be embarrassed if one of my friends who's been laid off saw me here," he said as he "crept into the Rainbow Room." Such people, the Times insisted, were "still eating high on the hog [while] at the same moment dying of shame."

To be sure, the American restaurant industry has been in the doldrums for three years now, and "downscaling" has become the gastronomic buzzword of the 1990s. The result has been, to the relief of consumers, a stabilizing of restaurant prices; a whole new slew of casual restaurants serving delicious Italian, French and American foods in bright, colorful surroundings; and a concomitant change of attitude on the part of those few unscrupulous restaurateurs who had become used to gouging an expense-account-rich clientele who never even bothered to check their Amex bills. In restaurants where maitre d's once strutted haughtily, there is now a welcome generosity of spirit and an affable greeting. As Chicago Tribune food writer Bill Rice wrote recently in Food and Wine magazine, "There are, it is true, some bastions of tradition left where the staff virtually ignores first-time customers and won't willingly present a woman with either the wine list or the bill, [and the] price they pay is finding themselves with an ever-older and ever-dwindling clientele."

But did any of this have to do with "guilt"? From where I sit, the answer is a resounding "no!" Perhaps American deluxe restaurants were due for a shakeout. After all, how many $75-per-person Italian restaurants can you fit on New York's Upper East Side?

Too many restaurateurs are beginning to think that no one cares any longer to eat exquisite food from Villeroy-Boch china and drink perfectly aged Burgundies from Baccarat crystal. The beauty of dining in a deluxe restaurants, where the linen is Belgian, the silverware hefty and the flowers fresh, has too quickly been traded down for bare, noisy rooms, paper mats, muglike glassware, diner-class flatware and dishes that wouldn't chip if you dropped them from the ceiling.

But the fact is fine dining is still alive and very well all over the United States. Few restaurants have escaped unscathed by the recession, but you will still find full houses most nights of the week at Le Cirque in New York, Pano & Paul's in Atlanta, the Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas, Tony's in Houston, Commander's Palace in New Orleans, The Everest Room in Chicago and Ernie's in San Francisco. None of these has dropped its standard, none has stopped serving foie gras or ordering Dom Perignon and -- most important -- none of them is coasting on a past reputation.

Each has adapted to and met the challenge by upgrading gracious service, restoring their premises and rethinking their menus and pricing policies, so that prices have barely risen from what they were five years ago, when it seemed $60 for a three-course meal was becoming standard in deluxe restaurants.