*The Best Little Restaurant That Never Was*
You think Big Night doesn’t happen anymore? –What with all the cultivated tastes around, you’d think it wouldn’t.
But our culture is less cultured than we’d like to think. You think word of mouth is enough to do the trick? Think again. Those who could spread the word seem to not to nowadays. Perhaps everyone thinks someone else will or that if you want it you’ll see the ads.
Well, I have a sad story. I know a place that was Big Night every night.
Babette’s Feast on weekends. I won’t give names because it’s my in-laws. Maybe I will if it comes to that, though. No real reason not to, but no need to now either. It’s the principle of the thing. The lesson is probably that we’re losing it.
My mother in-law has been running her area’s finest catering service for decades. Her clientele has been a bit sketchy at times, but word of mouth basically worked here.
She’s a cook and a hostess, first and foremost. That’s why I called it a service, not a business. Money was not at all the thing. She’s been doing the catering for about 30 years. In the past few years it has grown to quite a decent size and people hire her from all around.
A fancy marketing CEO from Manhattan who was visiting his giant client’s local headquarters had one of her meals for their annual report meeting. They said it was better than anything they’d had in NYC. I suspect that’s saying something. But I could’ve told them that.
With her, they got the whole nine yards done local style. This is cultural hospitality heritage coming straight from its roots. You can’t get any more authentic than what she delivered.
A couple years ago she opened her restaurant at the front of the catering facility. They had a good sign, but no advertising billboards, no ads in papers. Super location. And her place had already been a popular hangout anyway for years. As well as a place for hire.
This restaurant was full of great big and little original art. Wonderful place settings, linens, glassware and the best convivial music possible. None of this could be matched anywhere else, I’d have to say. Although of course many places come close, in NYC, perhaps.
It was almost like a casual place that had Waterford crystal for the lunch crowd. The food and hospitality were unique in style and second to none in quality and conviviality.
I’d say she charged half of what the food and experience was worth on all fronts, both restaurant and catering. Any encounter was memorable for all involved.
And a good many of the people in the know were her customers. Loyal once they found her.
Now, this town is thriving but still a bit of a backwater. It’s not far from a fancier town though. The area is known for those who search out quality. Not far from Chicago and on a main connector to places people go.
Her catering and her restaurant would easily be considered destinations.
She could’ve maxed out the reviewers from any media within 1000 miles. Literally. If they knew what was up. They didn’t come knocking.
She has just closed both her operations.
I have mixed feelings about this.
She worked inhumanly hard at both operations. Cultured, aware staff was always hard to find or keep. Whoever did help won’t forget it. They won’t see such generosity again either despite the efforts required. It was largely a one/two/three person show.
I suspect on the one hand that her loyal following hated to see her working so hard and not getting into the clear in a normal way–even though both outfits were somewhat profitable and supported an over the top convivial lifestyle despite the load. She used to be famous simply for her parties at home. I suspect that perhaps this crowd would like to see her return to the old ways. So hard as it is to imagine, I suspect that they simply didn’t help her out. They didn’t spread the word. There was a funny vibe with them knowing personally the effort involved. Every experience was personal there.
On the other hand, I suspect that people greatly enjoyed themselves with her services and simply never realized that maybe they could mention it to enough others. Perhaps it was a certain modern laziness. Perhaps they took it for granted. Perhaps they treated it somewhat like a consumer experience instead of the intimate cultural and community experience that it was. Perhaps such experiences simply cannot be supported any longer. We don’t have as much culture anymore. It’s been replaced by shopping.
It was funny, sad, to visit and see the little line-up of retiree regulars in there, probably stealing sugars. (But no, her sugar wasn’t in packets.) I had the sense that when she closed her customers would slide over to McDonalds and not even know feel the height from which they’d just fallen. Ah, like the country bumpkins invited to dinner in “Babette’s Feast.” …But the magic of that movie was that in the course of the evening, the bumpkins woke up to life, thanks to the food-art they were unconsciously experiencing. Is real life ever like that? Basically, it was a case of pearls before swine, and there ya have it.
Oh well. Our culture had a bit of culture, once upon a time. It was there in different forms for quite awhile. Everything has its time. I’m glad I got to see it. It’s amazing how far it got, come to think of it, without a SINGLE one of the usual supports for business. Not a single listing in any directory. None of it. Not a single loan, boost or lifted-finger of System encouragement. Despite that fact that she was
reviving and renovating a formerly ‘bombed out’ corner of town. These were BRAVE people who never worried a moment about their near-empty crime-ridden neighborhood. And they never had a lick of trouble. They hired quite a few local people who approached them. But they got not a single nod from the officials of their pro-minority-business town. And there were lots of inspectors and outrageous fees to overcome, too. Yes, indeed. The city, far from helping their best restaurant ever, did all it could to ruin her. They hovered like hawks, sticking every letter of the law to her, throwing on the costs that finally ruined her. She took the “noblesse oblige” route, I suppose. She’d do what they said AND win. No stooping. They knew that no one could keep up with them if they wanted to ruin you. But she loves the impossible. She meant to defeat the Defeatist Town Hall and bring life to a town that insists on Death. She didn’t play the games that let cockroaches roam in the other (near empty) businesses. She was too busy doing good work. She took out no loans. In the meantime, many local fully-taxpayer-subsidized businesses came and went within months in the choice spots downtown… She had no time for fooling around. She didn’t realize that in a sovietized society that one needs to be more than good at what one does and all its ancillary skills (cleaning, managing, hiring, prep, construction). One needs also to be a crook and think like a crook and please the crooks. Yeah, I suppose she was arrogant. She didn’t respect the media biz either. She thought that restaurant reviewers look for good places to promote and review. She wouldn’t reach out to them as a salesperson, with press releases and mutual backscratching (ads). She thought her restaurant spoke loud enough. Marketing is obviously an essential aspect. You can’t skip things like that. She was always too busy putting on the next big spread.
