TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/031891/0318570.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 3.6 KB | 81 lines

                                                                                FOOD, Page 79

Belt Tightening a Few Notches


In the homey '90s, caviar is out and turnips are in, as
restaurant-goers look to their wallets as well as their menus


    Food as entertainment was a fad of the ostentatious '80s,
but yesterday's foie 'gras has become today's mashed potatoes.
In a time of recession, diners are still serious about what
they eat, but they look hard at their wallets before perusing
the menu. Aware of this, restaurateurs are combining ingenuity
with unpretentious ingredients to come up with dishes that are
easy on both the palate and the pocketbook.

    As the craze for chic cuisine has calmed, there is a renewed
taste for homey -- and less expensive -- staples of the past.
Put plainly, the croissant is out and the doughnut is in, and
the same goes for restaurant fare. At some haughty spots like
New York City's four-star Le Cirque, the humble turnip is
increasingly turning up in soups and as a side dish. Addio,
radicchio.

    Some restaurants have undergone full-blown conversions. The
10-year-old Courtyard in Austin closed last year, and when
chef-owner Gert Rauch reopened it as the Courtyard Grill, he
had done away with grilled pheasant breast with shitake
mushrooms in favor of more casual food, such as grilled
marinated duck with warm cabbage salad. In Cambridge, Mass.,
Michela Larson added a glass-enclosed cafe atrium to her
restaurant, Michela's, which serves a restrained version of her
Northern Italian dishes. Cod, braised and served with a sauce
of leeks, sherry and smoked bacon, replaced grilled swordfish.
In the main dining room, it's all wild mushrooms and truffle
oil; in the cafe, the fungi are tame and the oil is olive.

    If there is one U.S. city where people live to eat out, it
is New Orleans. Businessman Tripp Friedler and chef Larkin
Selman reopened the intimate Gautreau's there just as the
economy fell like a souffle in a cold draft. Their formula:
combine more expensive main dishes with less costly garnishes,
and visa versa. An appetizer of crab cakes, for example, is
accompanied by marinated black beans. Caviar is not out of the
question, but it comes from a local fish called choupique
(pronounced shoe-pick) and is said to be as good as any  other
American kind and is a lot cheaper than the Russian variety.

    Even though the restaurant business "moans about how tough
the times are, things have never been better for customers,"
says Tim Zagat, who with his wife Nina publishes annual
restaurant surveys of 20 cities and areas. He believes there
is a greater selection than ever of high-quality, affordable
dining places. In recognition of that, the 1991 Zagat guide to
Southern California restaurants lists the "Top 100 Bangs for
the Buck," inaugurated in the New York edition a few months
ago. For the first time, formerly unfashionable cafes and
family-style restaurants are ranked for value with the same care
afforded Spago or Lutece. A wedge of ollalieberry pie at
Russell's, an inexpensive Long Beach, Calif., eatery, is deemed
"a slice of pure heaven." Not far away is the Shenandoah Cafe,
where patrons "love those apple fritters."

    "People aren't eating out less," says Ronald Paul, president
of Technomic Inc., a Chicago-based market-research firm. "They
are just seeking better value." If, as the French gourmand
Brillat-Savarin observed, you are what you eat, these days
Americans are down-home, comfortable, just plain folks -- but
not to be taken for granted.


By Emily Mitchell. Reported by Laura Claverie/New Orleans and
Janice M. Horowitz/New York.