On the chopping block
As eateries gear up for Arizona Restaurant Week, some of them have more on the line than ever
By all outward appearances, the restaurant business is booming. ¶ Not a month passes in the Valley without fresh openings, many backed by big money and bigger fanfare. Those who revel in the local dining scene marvel at where it is compared with five years ago, with choices and quality that abound like never before. ¶ And yet, as more than 120 restaurants put their best foot forward during the spring Arizona Restaurant Week, which begins today, many do so with more on the line than ever before.
“The traditional restaurant is broken,” says Kevin Binkley, four-time James Beard Award finalist, and the chef and owner of Binkley’s in Phoenix. “It doesn’t work, and we’re trying to rethink it.”
Binkley sings a refrain that’s rapidly becoming a plaintive chorus.
“There’s no question this is the most challenging time I’ve ever seen,” says Bob Lynn, a four-decade veteran of the restaurant industry whose company, LGO Hospitality, operates Arcadia favorites La Grande Orange Pizzeria, Chelsea’s Kitchen, Ingo’s Tasty Food and Buck & Rider.
Though customers are excited by the growth in the Valley’s dining scene, many chefs and restaurateurs paint a picture of a troubled industry, constrained not by the skill and ingenuity of its talent, but by a combination of economic, demographic and cultural factors that have pushed far too many restaurants to — or past — the brink of viability.
“The idea is that if a restaurant is open, they must be doing well and it’s always going to be there and you can just go whenever,” says chef Danielle Morris, whose Chandler restaurant, Earnest (previously Cork), closed last year in the face of anemic crowds. “They just don’t realize.”
Slim margins, growing slimmer