N.Y. Chefs Grapple With a Change in the Menu

Economic Slump Forces Elite Eateries to Drop the Hauteur and Cater to Diners' Preferences

By Christine Haughney, Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, July 13, 2003; Page A03

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NEW YORK -- In more prosperous times, it mattered less whether diners disliked Rick Moonen's creative culinary efforts, such as lobster salad with roasted beets or carpaccio summer flounder. He was a New York celebrity chef, and critics showered his menus with stars.

But since he opened his Upper East Side restaurant, named rm, last fall, those stars haven't brought Moonen the business he had sought. When a New Yorker hands his waiter a business card with a printed list of food allergies, preferences and suggestions for his meal preparation, Moonen shrugs off the somewhat insulting orders and tries even harder to turn customers' preferences into tasteful fare.

"Sometimes it can have up to 12 or 15 things they can't have," he said minutes before diners started crowding into his fish restaurant for the $58 fixed-price menu. "People abuse the word allergy, you know, for creative requests."

A flush economy once let New York's celebrated restaurants and their often egomaniacal chefs determine what and when the city's hungry residents ate. Tycoons with assistants devoted days to securing reservations at spots such as Nobu and Gramercy Tavern. Restaurant hostesses often handed out tables and dinner reservation times based on customer profiles deduced from their phone numbers.

Diners unfamiliar with the New York restaurant game often were relegated to tables near bathrooms or the undesirable 10 p.m. dinner reservation -- if they didn't get a sharply stated "we're booked."

But a whimpering economy has made it a diner's market. Many restaurants still are down to three-quarters of their pre-Sept. 11, 2001, business. Some restaurants have shut their doors for good: The city lost 104 of its Zagat-reviewed restaurants after the terrorist attacks, compared with 80 the year before.

When the four-star institution Lespinasse closed in April, it sent a message to the city's most elite restaurateurs to consider shifting their business model away from free-spending bankers and tractable tourists.

"All the greats have gone casual," said Clark Wolf, a restaurant consultant who has watched some of the city's most well-regarded chefs leave their four-star restaurant perches for cozy bistros. "That's one of the things that happens is the fancy nine-course tasting menu becomes a three-course fixed-price."

The terrorist attacks quickly forced restaurants to change their attitudes, especially toward tourists. In the four months following the attacks, 100,000 fewer business travelers came to New York City and international visitor volume dropped by a half, according to the tourist board NYC & Company.

The city still hasn't recovered its international traveler base. It expects 5.4 million international travelers this year, compared with 6.8 million in 2000. The money visitors spend has shrunk from $17 million in 2000 to an estimated $15.5 million this year.

And from August 2001 through May 2003, the city shed 127,200 jobs, or 4 percent of its overall workforce, according to Jim Brown, a labor market analyst for the New York State Department of Labor. A quarter of those job cuts hit securities firms, whose big-spending executives often had kept such restaurants in business.

This year, restaurants have found that war and a soggy spring have hurt them more. Business at restaurants across the city has dropped 5 percent to 25 percent from pre-Sept. 11 levels, said E. Charles Hunt, city chapter head of the New York State Restaurant Association.

"The restaurant business is very fragile to start with," he said.

Moonen has stopped his unsuccessful luncheon fixed-price menu and set his dinner fixed-price menu at $10 below his competitors' menus. He included in his menu Atkins diet-approved entrees. He balked, however, at what he considers the tasteless gesture of placing asterisks next to the menu's healthful food items.

"I know that I was entering an economy that wasn't ideal," he said. "Business, the best way to describe it, is inconsistent."

It has been especially puzzling for high-end restaurants such as March, where just three years ago customers couldn't spend enough on caviar and white truffles. In 2000, the restaurant wrapped up a $2 million renovation with 35 new seats and an upgraded kitchen and bathroom.

The renovated restaurant reopened in the midst of the Nasdaq's plunge, said executive chef and co-owner Wayne Nish. The salaries of March's two executives fell by a third, and private investors have not received a check since the fall.

Nish recently cut out the $1,500-plus weekly budget spent on caviar and truffles for menu items such as his signature "beggars' purses." He has moved from supervising his kitchen to filling in for the three workers he lost through attrition, roasting racks of lamb himself and filling in at every food station. He added three- and four-course special dinner menus and a special $39 fixed-price lunch menu.

"No longer are we seeing the guys coming downtown with their shirt-sleeves rolled up buying $4,000 bottles," Nish said. "It has been humbling, and I've been gritting my teeth all this time because we planned this renovation for an increased market."

Some restaurant groups are relying on their lower-priced members to pay the bills. Four of the five restaurants owned by Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group have made it to Zagat's top 20 list of most popular New York City restaurants. But the fifth place, a mid-priced barbeque restaurant called Blue Smoke, has had the highest volume of business during the bad economy, according to Richard Coraine, Meyer's business partner.

Unlike some of Meyer's restaurants where customers may dine for two to three hours, Blue Smoke turns over customers in 90-minute intervals. Although Meyer's other restaurants require reservations for 95 percent of their diners, Blue Smoke derives only half its business from reservations.

"I think these types of restaurants will prosper for a while," Coraine said. "The big grand luxe restaurant probably will take a timeout."

The move toward casual dining has aided mid-priced restaurants such as Comfort Diner. Ira Freehof had to move his restaurant from the Upper East Side to Chelsea after his rent, property taxes and utility bills rose by $60,000, to $550,000 a year. He urges his chefs to embrace every convoluted breakfast request New Yorkers may offer without complaint. It's business.

"They want their eggs over medium, not too runny, the toast dark but not too dark. The butter has to be soft so they can spread it," Freehof said. "It gives them a sense of power, I think, to order their eggs a certain way."

"It gives them a sense of power, I think, to order their eggs a certain way."

How dare the customer think that s/he should have any input on their food!