Changing rooms

Some of the hottest newbars and eateries are popping up in an unlikely spot

MANYCANADIANS are still traumatized by memories of the glorified cafeteria known as the Zellers Restaurant, or have moribund recollections of roast beef and rice pudding from the windowless full-service establishments that once haunted the top floors of larger Eaton’s stores from the 1970s to the 1990s. Those who were lucky enough to escape the ritual of department store dining, think grey gravies, watery mashed potatoes and weak fountain pop.

Surprisingly, department store cuisine has come a long way in the past couple of years. Fine dining and upscale food halls are popping up in shopping centres around the world in a trend that has spread from Great Britain to the U.S. and now Canada. Take Habitant at Toronto’s new Nordstrom store in downtown’s Eaton Centre. The tony lounge offers a respite for hungry, tired shoppers with cocktails and au courant bar fare such as polenta fries, cilantro lime chicken tacos and smoked salmon crostini.

Upstairs at Bar Verde, a full-scale restaurant, the cuisine gets even headier: filet mignon, wild salmon with white beans and kale, black pepper miso tuna salad and Kung Pao Brussels sprouts. The bistro also affords customers an expansive bird’s eye view over the hordes in the Eaton Centre mall below, complete with a distant view of artist Michael Snow’s 1979 sculptural installation of Canada geese, Flight Stop.

It all points to a gastronomic revival that hearkens back to the 1930s, when department stores were destinations and their restaurants weren’t aimed at pleasing budget-minded, ordinary palates. The Art Deco building that was once Eaton’s on College Street in Toronto used to house the retailer’s grand Round Room restaurant on its seventh floor, and has since been transformed into an event space, The Carlu. Even more famous was Eaton’s Ninth Floor Restaurant in Montreal, an Art Deco landmark that opened in 1931 and was one of the city’s finest restaurants for a time. Now a registered historical site, it was closed to the public in 1999.

“Food, beverage and hospitality are quickly becoming major ingredients in our projects,” said Finley McEwen, senior vice-president of development at mall developer Cadillac Fairview Corp., at a recent industry conference. In addition to Nordstrom’s projects, he noted, Saks Fifth Avenue in August opened the Latin-inspired Leña restaurant at the Toronto Eaton Centre’s south end and the West Coast-influenced Beaumont Kitchen at its Sherway Gardens restaurant in the city’s west end. “It’s important that we are thinking about the retail experiences we are creating.”

Department store dining is part of a broader effort by the retail industry to drive up store traffic as Internet shopping takes an ever-growing bite out of retail sales. And if liquor encourages people to gamble more, it’s likely the same rule applies to apparel buying: those $300 jeans might look even better after a couple of Campari and sodas. “It’s a simple idea — having a place to eat in the store so that people don’t have to leave it and go elsewhere in the mall to find a place to eat — I can’t believe more (retailers) haven’t done it,” says one of Habitant’s affable bartenders clad in head-to toe black, one recent weekday. Business was bustling at the bar and in the men’s section where Habitant occupies prime real estate in the centre of the floor. “If people leave the store to eat, they might not come back in to get that pair of pants that they liked. And the longer people stay, the more they buy.”

Food, beverage and hospitality are quickly becoming major ingredients