Oregon eateries set a simpler table as patrons grow frugal

Published 8:35 pm Friday, November 14, 2008

EUGENE, Ore. — It has come to this: Piccata da la Milanese — chicken breast sauteed in a parmesan cheese and chive batter — or chicken pot pie.

Or choices such as these: pork tenderloin or pork shoulder; linen table cloths and napkins, or paper; bottles of fine wine or half-glasses of the house red.

And in particular, this: gastronomic delights in the $50 to $60 range, or family-friendly meals of $10 to $20.

The recent closure of landmark haute cuisine restaurant Cafe Zenon in Eugene is symptomatic of a much larger ailment in fine dining establishments around town and across the United States. As the country staggers after this fall’s economic knockdown, restaurant patrons continue to take stock of what they’ve lost and are reluctant to spend what remains.

“People won’t stop eating, and they won’t stop celebrating 50th anniversaries,” said Adam Bernstein, owner of Adam’s Place and Cafe Maroc, a pair of restaurants on Broadway in downtown Eugene.

“People will still celebrate the things worthy of celebration,” he said. “It’s the everyday diners, where we’re seeing a lot less traffic.”

As other restaurants offer loyalty discounts, replace high-end entrees with more affordable options and trim both hours and payroll, Bernstein is preparing for a more dramatic shift. Between now and the first week in January, his Adam’s Place will make the transition from a high-end, linen tablecloth restaurant to a middle-range, family-style bistro that will be called the Sustainable Table.

“The plan has been in play (for several months) to do something like this,” Bernstein said. “But with the economy and the way things are going, we need to do something like this to be a good community member and to survive.”

The National Restaurant Association’s monthly index of nationwide restaurant activity hit a record low in September, the most recent month for which the index has been calculated.

The Restaurant Association — the industry’s leading business organization — found that 60 percent of U.S. restaurants endured lower sales in September, compared with the same month a year earlier.

Only 15 percent of restaurant operators reported an increase in year-over-year customer traffic for September, and just 41 percent plan to spend money for equipment, expansion or remodeling in the next six months — another all-time low in the six-year history of the association’s Restaurant Performance Index.

And 50 percent of them expect economic conditions to worsen in the next six months, said Hudson Riehle, the association’s senior vice president of Research and Information Services. Around Eugene, restaurant owners are making adjustments and hunkering down. Declines in business are almost unanimous, with the steepest drop-offs coinciding with successive low points in the worldwide economic meltdown since late September.

“It was definitely an instant (correlation),” said Sunshine Winder, who owns the Three Square Bar &Cafe in Eugene’s Southtowne Shoppes with her husband, Sean.

“I went from really not looking at the stock market to looking at it every day,” said Winder, whose customer traffic seemed to fall off every time the Dow Jones Industrial Average took another hit.

“They’re slowly starting to come out — people are starting to realize you’ve just got to take it day-to-day,” Winder said. “But we used to have people come in three times a week who are now coming in once a week. We’re still seeing them, just not as often.”

She looks at the Cafe Zenon closure as both a “tragedy” and a wake-up call. Other restaurants must heed the warning, and take steps to stabilize and rebuild their customer bases, she said.

“We figure if we can get through this, we can pretty much get through anything,” Winder said. “But I think you’ve got to give people a little bit of an incentive to go out right now, and they’ll support you by coming back.”

To that end, Three Square has adjusted its menu to be more “recession-friendly.”

There’s now a shepherd’s pie for $10.95. A high-end chicken dish that previously was served with two breast pieces has been reduced in price and now has one chicken breast. An ahi tuna entree has been replaced by a lower-priced sole dish.

And on Saturday and Sunday mornings and Tuesday evenings, Three Square has begun issuing “Square Dollars” — coupons that are good for future visits to the restaurant, and amount to a 10 percent rebate on every $25 spent.

The restaurant also has closed on Mondays and reduced some work shifts.

“We’ve definitely gone down to a skeleton crew,” Winder said. “It’s just part of adjusting to (conditions).”