How Restaurants and Breweries Differ

My Mom visited over the weekend, and as is typical, Sally and I began bookmarking a few restaurants in advance of her arrival.  High on the list was Luce, four blocks from our house, which we'd heretofore (and inexcusably) failed to check out.  Then over the weekend Bon Appétit did this to us:

We persevered and visited on Saturday anyway, finding the madhouse we expected.  There's more to that tale, but this isn't actually a post about Luce* (you might read this if you're hungering for more).  Rather, the whole experience got me thinking about the ways breweries are and are not like restaurants.  At least, not at the high end.  There, restaurants are anchored by a chef and his/her personality, and they ride waves of novelty and trends.  A chef like Luce's John Taboada has a certain vision which manifests itself in a place like Navarre, his first award-winning restaurant.  After awhile, he gets an idea for another kind of culinary expression and creates a place like Luce.

Restaurants have a limited shelf life.  Eventually, the creative vein taps out and the chef tries something new.  Cuisine is more like fashion in how trend-sensitive it is, and over the course of a decade, the type of restaurants that open will shift three or four times.  (Of course, there are always exceptions.  Greg Higgins has created a beachhead on Broadway that has been running for nearly two decades.)

Breweries, on the other hand, are anchored by brands and attempt to establish continuity.  After toiling for years to build up a loyal following, they can't very well dump their line and start from scratch.  Brewers may be mobile, but breweries don't wink in and out of existence at their whim.  I guess it's both the lead-time--it takes years to reach full capacity--and sunk costs (breweries are expensive).  But there's also something essential about beer brands that differs from restaurant menus.

While I was sitting in Luce, I wondered briefly why we don't see more brewpubs adopting the restaurant model.  Beer has superficial similarities: beer styles are many and fluid, brewpubs are eateries, with all the attendant virtues of ambiance and vibe--not to mention food--that restaurants have.  Maybe it's even possible.  But it is unorthodox, and it would be a leap from one cultural model to another.  If such a thing could work anywhere, it would be Portland--but I'm not sure it could work anywhere.

Perhaps one day we'll see someone try the experiment.

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*I'm not qualified to comment on the food because of twin layers of ignorance--food in general is beyond my ken, and Italian food in particular.  I started with a fantastic fresh-greens salad enlivened by mint and large sea-salt crystals, and followed it up by mussels in broth, the way the Belgians make them.  Because we visited the day the Oregonian reported the news that it was Bon Appetit's fourth best new American restaurant, they had nowhere near enough food on hand.  By the time we were seated, most of the pasta dishes were gone, and we could hear the haughty harumphs of neighboring foodies who clearly found this outrageous.  The staff--including owners John Taboada and Giovanna Parolari who waited on us--handled everything with enormous aplomb and grace.  We concluded with an insane desert called Luce cake--sponge cake filled with cream and pistachios.   

Why Do Restaurants Discriminate Against Beer?

Last night I was sitting in Fonda Rosa, a well-regarded, upscale Mexican restaurant along the 28th Avenue restuarant row. Comes the menus: food, specials, drinks. I look over and see four taps and a row of bottles--mostly Mexican--on the bar. I'm thinking maybe a Pacifico, but I wonder what those taps are. I look at the drinks menu and find the usual list of specialty cocktails and small wine list. Beer? Nada.

This is common. You go into a nice restaurant in Portland and despite a decent tap list (generally three or four well-selected choices), there's zero mention of the beer. Lots of talk of wine and booze, but nothing on the beer. Of course, this is Beervana, so when you look around one of these restaurants, you see that at least a third of the people are drinking beer. Sometimes almost everyone is. (Fonda Rosa attracts a beer-friendly crowd.) What the hell?

If I were a more activist type, I might try to start a project. You know, Beer Transparency in Restaurants or something. Fortunately, I leave that kind of thing to others.

Anyone have a theory why restauranteurs slight the beer they sell and leave it off their menu?

Good Food + Good Beer

There remains one great frontier for good beer: good food. Well over a decade ago, Higgins added the most expansive beer list in Portland to their menu (even hiring a beer steward), an act I assumed would precipitate full beer integration into the city's best restaurants. But no. Go to a nice place, and you'll be offered a wine list, a cocktail list, and a slightly anxious look by the waitress if you ask about the tap list. Beer remains segregated.

A tiny bit of good news, then. In today's Oregonian, Christina Melander alerts us to Micah Camden's newest venture, Fats:

...a gastropub centered on burgers, beer and brunch at Northeast 30th and Killingsworth. Fats will be his fourth restaurant. His mini-empire stretches over a couple of blocks and includes Beast (The Oregonian's Diner Restaurant of the Year 2008, co-owned with chef Naomi Pomeroy) along with foodie spot D.O.C. and design-savvy Yakuza Lounge, co-owned with Dayna McEarlean....

Camden says he wants to attract a more everyday clientele than his other restaurants. The beer list -- some 80 brews strong -- and digestible prices (with entrees around $15, burgers $9-$10, desserts $6-$8) should help draw a wider swath of Portlanders.

Admittedly, this isn't upscale food, and Camden's other restaurants haven't exactly rolled out the welcome mat to good beer. One could argue that there's a ghettoization problem here--the downscale restaurant gets the beer, Camden's chi-chi joints get the wine and liquor. Let's take the opposite view: at least good beer will now be served alongside good food, pushing the ball down the field a bit. For someone who laments the lack of good beer places to get decent food, this is a great piece of news.

When Restaurants Die

John Foyston writes about the shake-out happening in the Portland restaurant scene in today's Oregonian. I'm sure this isn't a phenomenon limited to the City of Roses, but it comes at a time when Portland is enjoying international attention for its restaurants.

We're celebrated around the country for the variety of our restaurants, the quality and imagination of our chefs and our devotion to authentic cuisine and local, seasonal ingredients. But Portland's formerly bustling scene is squeezed as never before. Soaring ingredient costs, escalating gas prices, vanishing credit lines, a looming increase in the minimum wage and consumers who closed their wallets back in October all contribute.

"I've heard some people say their business has dropped by as much as 40 percent in the last month or so," says Bill Perry of the Oregon Restaurant Association. "Things weren't too bad until October -- sales were off just 4 percent or so over the year -- but then, two or three weeks before the election, things just froze. I've never seen anything like this; if we want to avoid a big rut in January, people are going to have to begin spending again."

On its surface this may not appear to be a beer-related story, but there are ominous signs. Oregon beer has followed a singular trail to success distinct from wine, liquor, and food--the details of which are the stuff of a different post. Taken together, though, these tongue-pleasing segments do relate to one another. Portland and Oregon have enjoyed the blossoming of sophisticated restaurants that encourage experimentation. Wine and beer play a role as elements within a meal. As consumers have grown accustomed to thinking of the incredients, methods, and regional inspiration of their meal, they have also become aware of conceptually-related concepts like terroir and dry-hopping.

I worry that if the best restaurants begin to die off in Portland (we've lost 20 this year, including renowned Genoa), the creative minds who founded them will leave. The erosion of talent in the restaurant scene is just generally bad. I don't know that it will have immediate or long-lasting influence on breweries. On the other hand, I was confident that the restaurant scene here was introducing new consumers to beer, and putting beer in menus traditionally reserved only for wine.

Like everyone else, Sally and I have already slated '09 as a restaurant-lite year. Going out is one of the first expenses to jettison in a down economy. But it has its sad consequences. May this economy improve--soon.