Latin-Mexican mania takes restaurateurs by storm in Bay Area

Nation's Restaurant News, Oct 28, 1991 by Alan Liddle

Latin-Mexican mania takes restaurateurs by storm in Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO - Much of the energy emanating from this highly competitive city in recent months has been generated by the owners of contemporary Mexican and Latin restaurants who have either opened new units or repositioned others to grab a bigger share of the market.

The active niche claims a wide range of concepts, from Campo Santo, an ambitious semiservice taqueria, to Garibaldi Goes South, a stylish new cafe, to such high-style full-service restaurants as Salud! and Corona Bar & Grill.

"We struggled to find a [contemporary] regional Mexican restaurant in San Francisco, and we came up emptyhanded," Faith Wheeler, director of marketing for Spectrum Foods, said, explaining why her company converted its lackluster Harry's Bar & American Grill on Van Ness Avenue into Salud! "We felt we could turn it into a destination."

To create the 220-seat Salud! - Spanish for "To Your Health!" - Spectrum borrowed heavily from its 5-year-old Guaymas Mexican seafood concept in nearby Marin County, which many believe sparked the Bay Area's interest in contemporary interpretations of regional Mexican foods. In an effort to give Salud! authentic underpinnings, San Francisco-based Spectrum placed the menu in the hands of Guaymas chef Francisco Cisneros, a native of Jalisco, Mexico.

While waterfront Guaymas features a coastal fishing-village-turned-resort design and a seafood-studded menu, the menu and decor at 6-month-old Salud! are more generalized.

Cisneros' menu recently included such foods as a layered soup of pureed black beans, sliced bread and Muenster cheese, topped with a whole cooked egg, $4.25; appetizer-sized tamales stuffed with chicken and pumpkin seed sauce or pork and guajillo chile sauce, $4.95; marinated fresh fish and shrimp on a bed of thinly sliced raw beef, $7.75; and spit-roasted meats.

Despite positive consumer feedback about the Salud! concept, which produces per-person averages of about $16 at lunch and $25 at dinner, Wheeler acknowledged that the restaurant has yet to become the destination envisioned by Spectrum.

"It [business] is still fueled by theater and opera," Wheeler said of the restaurant's dependence on nearby performing arts facilities and the dinner patrons they bring to the civic center neighborhood. She reported that government workers are stopping at Salud! for drinks and appetizers after work, but she acknowledged that "one of our biggest challenges is to broaden the [restaurant's] audience," especially at lunch.

Fattening up the customer base at lunch was one of the goals and results of a recent repositioning and price-slashing spree at Bill Kimpton's 180-seat Corona Bar & Grill off Union Square.

The 4-year-old restaurant began as a "California-Mexican" concept but was transformed two years later into a higher-end "Regional Mexican-Southwestern" concept by chef Reed Hearon. According to management, chef Thom Fox, who succeeded Hearon last November, has successfully reworked the menu to appeal to a greater number of people.

"Reed's food was ... oriented toward the Southwestern [cuisine] movement," remarked Kimpton's director of restaurant operations, Kevin Westlye. Fox's food, he added, seems "truer to regional Mexican cuisine, with a great deal of the flavor, but not a lot of the heat."

Featured on a recent Fox-orchestrated menu were a soup of duck carnitas and hominy in lime-seasoned chicken broth, $4.25; flautas of Birria-style lamb with mint-chile mayonnaise, $4.50; turkey mole enchiladas, $8.50; and roast local snapper in crisp corn tortillas with hearts of palm salad, $9.50.

In July, Corona Bar & Grill management reduced the restaurant's overall pricing structure by more than 20 percent. It did so by cutting the price of many existing items and by adding lower-priced variations of others.

"Our quality was never in question, but there had been a growing resistance to the price of our entrees. People felt they weren't getting enough for their money," explained Sara Schmitz, Kimpton's director of public relations.

The price reductions and new menu items have struck a chord with consumers, who are plowing the savings back into their dining experience by purchasing more appetizers, desserts and beverages.

Despite significantly lower prices, Westlye said, the restaurant's per-person average has remained about $14 at lunch and $22 at dinner. The difference, he pointed out, is that customers "are walking out happier because they got a better deal."

Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Management Co. officials said the Corona Bar & Grill's sales in 1991 would be flat compared with last year's volume, which reached $3 million.

Campo Santo, where foods inspired by the cooking and produce of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula are served in an unorthodox but colorful graveyardlike setting, is one of the newest players to make the Mexican-Latin scene. The 90-seat taqueria and bar opened in North Beach, the city's Italian neighborhood, in September and is owned by Jesse Acevedo, who also operates the more pedestrian Pozole in the Mission district.