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Food & Beverage Industry

Armed with capital, restaurateurs cast ballots for DC growth

Nation's Restaurant News, July 13, 1998 by Milford Prewitt

Veteran restaurant-scene watchers say they cannot remember a time when the District of Columbia and its immediate suburbs have attracted as much new restaurant growth as the current cycle of development, which, apparently, has been fruitful for the past two years.

Established national dinner-house chains like T.G.I. Friday's, Applebee's and some of Brinker International's concepts are back-filling gaps in their market coverage. Adding to the mix are a number of faster-growing chains and companies: Morton's of Chicago just opened a second unit there; Legal Sea Foods came in two years ago; seafood dinner house operator McCormick & Schmick's opened a year and half ago; and New York-based Ark Restaurants, a veteran operator here that expanded its Manhattan concept, B. Smith's to Washington's Union Station is looking for space to open Southwestern concept.

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But what speaks more tellingly about the city's restaurant expansion is the wave 01 openings by local entrepreneurs and chef-owners, a few of whom - like Gerard Pangaud and Michel Richard - are among the most recognized names in the culinary arts.

Pangaud opened Vintage, a bistro version of his upscale Gerard's, which is in downtown Washington. And Richard, after a $2 million investment, opened Citronelle, easily among the most visually dazzling restaurants in Washington or anywhere else.

Maybe less-well-known nationally but well-trained and much-admired as a chef-owner is Carol Greenwood, a favorite of D.C.'s culinary cognoscenti, who launched Greenwood's, a California-style bistro in the Cleveland Park area of Washington.

Then there's Tahoga, an American regional restaurant that opened next door to Vintage; Fado, a midscale newcomer with a menu billed as New Irish; El Catalan, a classical Spanish restaurant less than a year old; Zuki Moon, a year-old Japanese noodle shop with diehard fans; and Lespinasse, a clone of the four-star Manhattan palace, a little more than a year old.

Meanwhile, in the suburbs, two new restaurants are attracting early attention. Levante, Bethsda, Md., is a 3month old Mediterranean restaurant, and Timpano Italian Chophouse, Rockville, Md., revives an era of 1950s big-city elegant dining.

Bill Lecos, head of the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington, said foodservice sales in the region jumped to $1.4 billion last year, an 8-percent increase over last year's figure. He said trends hold for even stronger growth in the coming years.

"Washington is very hot right now," Lecos said. "We've had these spells before where a bunch of new places open, but this time it seems very sustained and ongoing.

"It's just not the same city it used to be."

The old city he made reference to was the one perpetually featured in the national media as one of the most crime-ridden and ungovernable cities in the country, whose citizens re-elected Marion Barry, a convicted crack-user, as mayor. But with its crime rate declining and much of the mayor's authority absorbed by Congress, the city is rebounding, and unemployment is a wisp.

Lecos said 35 million tourists and business travelers visited Washington last year. That's about 3 million more than the number of visitors to New York City in 1997.

The tourism is accompanying new corporate migration. Lecos said the city is attracting several telecommunications companies, while the suburbs are attracting all manner of computer-related companies and Internet service providers. Lecos said the new MCI Center - an NBA and NHL arena and concert hall - is busy more than 250 days a year and is providing new traffic to operators.

Coming at the turn of the century is a new convention and exhibition complex whose boosters, he said, make no qualms about their intention of siphoning off business from Philadelphia and New York. But for all of the upbeat growth prospects to encourage operators, many of them concede that there's an underside to running a restaurant here that makes business tougher than most places.

While the industry's snowballing labor shortage seems particularly acute in Washington, it's even worse when it comes to hiring and keeping those who want to make a career in foodservice. Much of the attrition of talent, veteran operators and newcomers to the market admit, is because Washington, though a leading world-class city, does not have a reputation as a world-class restaurant town.

Despite the presence of such acclaimed chef-owners as Bob Kinkead, Roberto Donna, Ann Cashion, Richard and Pangaud, operators rue that they regularly lose career-oriented talent to New York, San Francisco and Chicago. Fine-dining operators say it's even tougher on their end. For despite the affluence, educational attainment and the international exposure of restaurant goers in the region, operators moan that D.C. diners are averse to pricey restaurants and are not big fans of fine dining.

Check averages in even the most toniest places are about half of what a comparable meal would be in a similarly posh establishment in New York or Chicago, veteran operators complain. As a result, fine-dining owners say that they are captives of the fickleness of tourism and are worried about the loyalty of locals.

Food & Beverage Industry

Armed with capital, restaurateurs cast ballots for DC growth

Nation's Restaurant News, July 13, 1998 by Milford Prewitt

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