Sour On Dough

Dr. Atkins Has Made Us A Nation Of Meat-Eaters Who Turn Up Our Noses At (Ugh!) Bread

June 29, 2003

By GREG MORAGO, Courant Staff Writer

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Pity the poor bread basket. The restaurant cornucopia of warm Parker House rolls, freshly baked focaccia, chewy ciabatta, French boules and breadstick batons is now the sworn enemy of many a high-protein dieter. The breadbasket - once joyously welcomed, eagerly anticipated - is fast becoming the red-headed stepson of the restaurant world, Jan instead of Marcia. Something to be avoided - shunned, even - at all cost.

The Atkins Diet phenomenon has produced other restaurant casualties: the fall of the french fry and the mashed potato, the ruination of rice and its indulgent risotto cousin, the sacking of sugary desserts. But the rejection of the breadbasket - a literal shunning of amber waves of grain - is perhaps the saddest fallout over this no-carbs craze. To the Atkins legion, bread, in any form, equals death.

As one confirmed gastronome (who has only recently come to see carbohydrates as doom) put it: "Bread is just stupid."

Restaurateurs have always scrambled to keep up with various dining trends and health concerns. But no trend in recent years matches the popularity of the high-protein/low-carbs discipline of Atkins dieters. Across the board, restaurants are seeing breadbaskets returned untouched, burgers ordered without buns, a higher consumption of steak and fish, more side salads or salad entrees and insistent substitutions so that no rice, pasta or potatoes touch the plate - all in keeping with the Atkins regimen. Although it has been around since Dr. Robert Atkins published his first book in 1972, the diet seems to have picked up considerable high-fat steam in recent years.

"It's unbelievable how many people are on Atkins," said Steve Abrams, owner of Max Downtown. "When you see a woman ordering a `Steak a la Max,' which is a strip steak smothered in Gorgonzola cheese, you know she's on the diet. Before the Atkins craze, women would never order it. Now everybody at lunch orders burgers with no bread, no fries. Add cheese, add bacon, with a side salad."

The Atkinsers make up such a sizable dining contingent at Max Downtown that the restaurant recently installed an "Atkins button" on its computer ordering system. "Burger without bread or fries? Hit the Atkins button. `Everything' salmon without mashed potatoes? Hit the Atkins button," Abrams said. "The kitchen knows to put a side of chopped salad instead."

Bread is now the forbidden fruit of the dining table, said Mark Resnisky, owner of Back Porch Bistro in West Hartford, Porch West Grill in Canton and the Diamond Pub and Grill in Glastonbury. "They're not being mean. It's more like, `Get it away from me. If I see it, I'll want it,'" Resnisky said. "We serve a lot of burgers without bread. People are ordering salads and asking to leave croutons off. We're seeing it across the board."

Resnisky said he's wasting more bread, but not ordering less of it. "We're still buying the same volume, because you can't judge who's on the diet and who's not."

Burgers without buns are commonplace now, local restaurateurs said. "That happens so much, it's almost like we could get rid of the buns altogether," said Jeff Hayes, owner of the Elbow Room in West Hartford. "I would say that people at lunch who always asked for bread are fewer now. Definitely fewer."

Does anyone remember the old days when restaurants were judged by the quality of the bread they initially set out on the table? Seems almost an antiquated practice these days.

"To this day, I can hear my father saying, `Don't eat the bread. It will spoil your appetite!'" said chef and food personality Prudence Sloane. "Now nobody's eating it anyway. Just about everybody I know might be on the Atkins or a low-carb diet."

But Sloane isn't weeping for the breadbasket. "Do I feel sorry for the breadbasket?" she said. "I feel more sorry for the bread-makers. Their business must be suffering."

There are no statistics on bread service in the U.S. restaurant industry according to the National Restaurant Association. Whether there's a growing shunning of the breadbasket in restaurants hasn't been measured.

"Anecdotally, we've heard that," said Judi Adams, president of the Wheat Foods Council. "We don't have hard data."

Adams, however, said that total wheat-flour consumption in the United States has declined every year since 1977. "We're getting hit from a variety of sides, and this is one of the many ways that bread consumption is being affected," said Adams, whose Wheat Foods Council counts the American Bakers Association as its largest member.

The unwanted breadbasket is troubling to Adams for a variety of reasons, she said. "High-protein diets are high-fat diets. That really concerns me," said Adams, a registered dietitian. "But it also concerns me because people are not getting the benefit of grains. When scientists around the world put grains at the base of their eating plans, they can't all be wrong. There's a reason they're there: We need those nutrients. I can argue until I'm blue in the face about studies. The Italians eat six times as much pasta and a lot more bread than we do, and they don't have near the problem with obesity as we do. Why? They eat less food, and they exercise."

At Grants in West Hartford, chef Billy Grant said pasta sales continue to be good (and, rightly, they should). "We haven't seen that decline, nothing dramatic," he said. "But definitely a decline on potatoes. We're seeing fuller bread baskets coming back into the kitchen. We're getting a lot of `no potatoes, substitute vegetables.' In the last year I've noticed Atkins a little bit more. Everyone used to love their steak with potatoes, and now you get, `no mashed.'"

For restaurateurs who sweat the details, especially the quality of their bread, the Atkins revolution is troubling, even hurtful. Take Chris Hussey from Pastis, a French bistro in Hartford. He gets his bread trucked in from Arthur Avenue in the Bronx.

"We put considerable effort into getting good bread into the restaurant. It took me years to find it," said chef/owner Hussey. "It does go to waste. We can only make so many croutons and bread crumbs. There's a lot of bread that just gets thrown out, and that's too bad."

Bread, especially where the French meal is concerned, is integral. "To have a French meal without a piece of baguette is sacrilege," Hussey said. The Atkins effrontery to the art of French cooking doesn't stop at just the bread, either. "They'll say extra vegetables, no potatoes. Or pasta without pasta; a cassoulet without beans!" Hussey said. "I wouldn't say it hurts my feelings, but I personally don't think it's a good idea. You need a balanced diet. I'm no dietitian, but all fats without any carbohydrates is not the way to proper nutrition."

Agree or disagree with the diet, restaurateurs are making sure customers are getting what they want. Bread, as sure as it went out, will no doubt come back triumphant, Resnisky said. "Everything goes in phases. We see cycles," he said. "A year from now, it'll be something else. I've heard a rumor that the old grapefruit diet is coming back. I'm waiting for the Ronald McDonald diet."