If all goes well, Chicago restaurants could soon increase capacity to 50 percent after almost three months without indoor dining.
But as vaccines ramp up, diners making their way back downtown will find that not all of the business crowd's favorites have survived, and that the survivors bear scars.
Menus have been changed, interiors revamped, furloughed staff have decamped to other locales. Tables will be more spaced out, and some business groups might be ushered into private dining areas.
A handful of decades-old steakhouses, including Lawry's the Prime Rib, Ruth's Chris Steak House and Morton's original State Street location, closed permanently.
Happy hour spots like the Beacon Tavern behind the Wrigley Building are gone. Other restaurants—particularly some in the Loop that also catered to the theater crowd, like Petterino's—shut down and have not announced reopening plans. For many restaurants that have closed temporarily, it remains unclear whether the closure will become permanent.
New sanitation protocols are expected to stick around. Some restaurants conduct temperature checks at the door or have designated employees for disinfecting surfaces. It is habit at this point, operators say, and masks are part of the uniform.
There's also a newfound flexibility at restaurants, especially when it comes to customers who are wining and dining clients, says Kim Giguere-Lapine, chief marketing officer of Smith & Wollensky Restaurant Group.
Previously, if a customer wanted to book a room at Smith & Wollensky, they would have had to put down "a sizable" nonrefundable deposit, Giguere-Lapine says. That is no longer the case.
"Quite simply, the demand is not as high, so we can be a little bit more flexible," she says. "Just like the airlines. If you need to change a flight because of a COVID issue, they let you change it."
Smith & Wollensky started offering space for professionals to conduct remote meetings last fall, before indoor dining ceased. Those offerings are still available, Giguere-Lapine says.
A few blocks away, Kinzie Chophouse is also offering its private event rooms for business meetings, says owner Nicole Flevaris. There's even a second entrance those customers can use.
"In the bigger private rooms, we can socially distance and everyone feels safe," Flevaris says.
An added perk is the privacy, she says. With fewer people allowed in the restaurant, dining rooms are quieter, and eavesdropping easier.
"If I'm having a private conversation, I don't want people to be in earshot," she says.
Still, downtown restaurant operators say few business diners have returned. People are still working from home as the vaccine rollout gains speed, and that continues to be a detriment to places that thrived off business lunches, convention traffic and corporate credit cards.
The state has given no indication of when Chicago's convention business might return. Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Feb. 24 that 1 in 7 Illinoisans had received their first vaccine dose, and the state has the capacity to administer about 60,000 doses a day. By mid-March, he expects that to increase to 100,000 doses a day.
"The corporate world's going to come back," says David Flom, managing partner at Chicago Cut. "It's just going to take a little time."
Chicago Cut closed before Christmas and doesn't plan to reopen until April. That has given the riverfront steakhouse time to tinker with menus.
Flom says they are sourcing different fish for new menu items, like fresh Florida grouper, branzino caught off the coast of Greece and lobster tail from an island between South America and Africa. Vegetables will be paired together, instead of serving just broccoli or just asparagus.
"If you leave restaurateurs at home, they get bored," he says. "We all cook every day. We all think about, 'What would this taste like? What would that taste like?' "
The wine and cocktail menus are also changing, Flom says. Executives tasted 300 wines last week as they revamp their wine-by-the glass program. Flom tried a blueberry vodka recently that he plans to pair with lemonade in a new summer cocktail offering.
The decade-old restaurant also remodeled the wood floors, kitchen and private dining rooms.
The slow winter gave chefs at Gibsons Bar & Steakhouse on Rush Street and its sister restaurant, Hugo's Frog Bar & Fish House, time to adjust their recipes, too, says John Colletti, managing partner at Gibsons Restaurant Group.
It's in the basics, like house-baked hamburger buns and made-from-scratch sauces, where the tweaks will be noticeable. The chefs corrected recipe changes that had happened over time, he says.
Other hot spots for business professionals streamlined their menus for another reason: cost-efficiency.
Restaurants have struggled to pay rent, bills and payroll for months, and limited capacity isn't enough to get many out of hot water.
In a pre-pandemic world, many restaurants would not hesitate to spend hundreds of dollars on an ingredient, says Joe Bazzi, general manager of Nonnina in River North. "Now you scrutinize every $30 you spend because that's the difference between paying rent and not paying rent."
The restaurant recently got a new chef and rolled out a new menu that Bazzi says better optimizes ingredients. The fried calamari and grilled octopus that show up on the antipasto menu could also be used in a seafood pasta. The breaded eggplant atop a salad can also go in a sandwich served at Nonnina's sub shop next door.
But business diners will also notice menus aren't quite as skimpy as they were when restaurants were slashing costs last summer, with no end to the pandemic in sight.
Back then, the Dearborn in the Loop was down about 75 percent in sales, says Clodagh Lawless, who owns the restaurant with her sister, Amy. The chef had to peel off high-cost dishes, and eventually the menu "was just a shell of its prior self," she says.
The Dearborn shut down in early November and is planning a March reopening. The new menu will still have some of its customer favorites, like fish and chips and the burger, but also feature new items, like pizza and confit rabbit poutine.
The upcoming changes, and trickling of customers back into the Loop, have her feeling hopeful.
"We can see light at the end of the tunnel," Lawless says. "It's dim, but it's there, and that's what we're going toward."
"Scene" - Google News
February 27, 2021 at 04:45AM
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What the post-pandemic dining scene will look like - Crain's Chicago Business
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