MY SOAPBOX MOMENT

 

Mine was the lead letter to the editor in Sunday’s Lexington (Kentucky) Herald- Leader.  The issue is the possible razing of the Main-Upper-Vine-Limestone block, which has become a wonderful collection of small, local, independent entertainment venues such as The Dame (music club), Mia’s Restaurant & Bar, and Buster’s Bar, to make way for a 40-storey hotel complex which will also require displacing the farmers market and pilfering space from a well-used and loved park across the street for a garage. 

One thing I forgot to mention (deride) in the letter is the name that the developers have proposed for this structure:  CentrePointe.  Isn’t that a perfectly typical example of developers’ nomenclature? 

Here’s my letter (headline theirs):

SHAMEFUL DEVELOPMENT CAN BE STOPPED

The impressive edifice unveiled in in the March 5 Herald-Leader does little to answer a basic question: Why is Lexington messing with a good thing?

The block where CentrePointe would be placed already works as an original and local conglomeration of small businesses. Chambers of commerce rack their brains to create such a district of unique dining and entertainment venues within a historic context and usually fail where this one succeeds brilliantly.

Lexington’s past vertical ambitions destroyed the street life of whole sections of downtown and made for sketchy places to walk at night.

It remains uncertain what imperative is served by this dream. The 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games will come and go in a blink. What long-term need does a 40-story hotel complex satisfy?

Do not doubt that this will largely be funded by tax abatements that generations of schoolchildren will pay for.

Local leaders have expressed an eagerness to find alternate locations for the displaced businesses. That they think these small concerns can be uprooted and replanted and still thrive shows a profound lack of appreciation for the power of neighborhoods, context and smallness.

Here’s hoping the Courthouse Area Design Review Board hears from many Lexingtonians who are tired of trading small and unique for big and predictable. May the board feel empowered by the citizens it serves to halt this looming shame.

James Spragens
Lebanon

LOVE TO LOVE YOU, BABY

To quote the great Donna Summer, I would love to love you, Natasha.

But I just can’t. 

Natasha’s Cafe– a restaurant in downtown Lexington, Kentucky– has so many virtues that make me want to like the place.  It’s downtown, it breathed life into a quiet block, and expanded our dining possibilities in the city’s core.  It engenders a great symbiosis with my beloved Kentucky Theatre.  It’s funky.  The front, with cafe tables for al fresco dining, is as attractive as that of any other restaurant in town.  It has a neat international boutique to stroll through before the drinks come (I ill-advisedly bought a beret there once when they were at the old location on Southland Drive.  My wife wears it now.  I act like it was always hers.).    They go to great pains to augment the dining experience with inventive entertainment events. 

Overall, I sense that I should like it, because it’s good for me.  Like Joyce.

And yet… and yet.

My wife and I went there to enjoy the aforementioned symbiosis before heading across the way to a movie at the Kentucky Theatre (By the by, go see The Savages.).  Nobody loves a good symbiosis like I do (especially with remoulade). 

One thing never disappoints.  The place is beautiful.  Whoever designed the place, did a masterful job.  The lighting is just right.  The decor fits the motif (They wisely skipped the going-out-of-business auction at Long John Silver.).  The fixtures and furnishings lend an Old World aura.

The bar menu is limited but carefully selected.  I had a Polish beer– ok, two– that I’d never heard of.  The dinner menu has a nice selection of international cuisine that sets Natasha’s apart.

We didn’t have a lot of time before the movie, but we ordered two courses which came in good time and were brought to us by an attentive and experienced server.  My wife started with borscht, I a salad.  She liked her borscht, but I didn’t think it had been cooked well to extract the savory flavors I know borshct can have.  I had recently had it at a great Polish restaurant in another city and it was ten times better than Natasha’s.  I think if she had the other borscht she would go back to Natasha’s, order it again, and vomit it on the floor.  I realize this is not a totally fair test.  If she liked it, she liked it. 

My salad– a house “Greek” salad– would have been better received had it been the complimentary side to my meal.  Instead it was a $6 add-on that portended more by its price than it delivered.  For $6 I expect more than a scattering of lettuce which afforded me a scant view of the bottom of the plate, with exactly one pitted olive, some cucumber, and so little feta that I couldn’t quite remember if it had been on the plate when I finished the salad.

For our second courses, she ordered a salad and I a mushroom pot pie.  I think her salad was called a “Fru Fru Salad”.  It was also $6, as I recall.  She confessed a little trepidation when she saw my paltry salad.  She was right to be afraid.  This may be our limitation, but we had never heard of a salad with diced raw butternut squash.  We had never heard of raw butternut squash at all except as something the rabbits in our garden might consider.  We both found it unappetizing and hard to eat.  Fall and winter squashes MUST be cooked to extract flavor and to get tender enough.  Otherwise, it was a basic salad with vinaigrette.  She did not finish it and we decided to kindly inform the server for the sake of constructive feedback that they might want to reconsider the raw squash.

My pot pie:  it was the tastiest thing we had and it made me wish we hadn’t been such pigs when the nice, fresh loaf of bread came at the beginning of the meal.  You see, I’m a sopper from way back.  I offered my wife as much of it as she wanted to compensate for not really getting a dinner herself.  We both enjoyed it, but agreed that the price ($14) was also misleading.  Again, I would not complain had the price not promised more.  The size was fine, but not an ounce more than absolutely necessary.  However, for $14, I expect more than three or four new potato quarters and a half dozen plain ol’ white mushrooms, covered with a square of puff pastry which is impressive if you don’t know how easy an effect it is to pull off.  The potatoes and mushrooms were stewed in a very tasty cream sauce.  But, it contributed to our overall feeling that we were simply not getting our money’s worth.  I think if they were to reconceive the dish as a menagerie of wild and unusual mushrooms– caramelized with onion, with a bit more cheese in the sauce– it would have been a successful dish I would have made a point to return for.  Instead, it’s a stingy dish that just misses.

That’s the problem:  value.  I would not tell anyone not to go to Natasha’s.  It’s an interesting place that makes an effort to be unique and succeeds on many levels.  It’s perfect for a date when you’re too nervous to eat much, but want to impress.  We left with the same feeling that I’ve had before but never verbalized, that we could have gotten much more for our money. 

We will probably return.  It would be disingenuous of me to condemn so completely an independent restaurant which does so much right based on some imperfect experiences.  My own restaurant has committed many sins and surely been written off by some patrons.  Some things happen in a business that are beyond the control of an owner who can’t be everywhere and see everything.   And I know the unjudged sins of cliche and mediocrity are on the souls of Olive Garden, TGI Friday’s, Rafferty’s, and all the other winners of the American restaurant game.  Nobody wants more to see them put out of business by the likes of Natasha’s.

I know from experience that controlling costs is absolutely vital to making a restaurant successful, but there are little tricks you can use to give the customer the feeling that she got a little more out of the deal than she paid for.  A few surprises in my pot pie and more substantial salads would have turned our experience around.

But, here’s hoping a few changes are made to improve a restaurant that I want to see succeed and build on a longevity that has often puzzled me.     

RUMINATIONS ON THE VIABILITY OF SMALL BUSINESS IN SMALL AMERICA

 

As someone daily struggling to make a small business go in a less-than-humming corner of America, I often wonder about the viability of the pursuit I’ve chosen.  My restaurant is in a very small town (about 7000 people) but one which draws from a region of about 40,000 nearby Kentuckians.  There is a decent amount of tourist traffic accountable to the many bourbon distilleries, the Civil War attractions, Bardstown, the many Catholic historic sites, and a fair amount of hikers, bikers, and anglers.  We have a healthy economy with a quality of living envied by many other Kentucky towns of comparable size. 

Still, I have to wonder how far beyond the saturation point we’ve come in my particular industry.  As have other independents, I stopped serving lunch last year.  It wasn’t because we didn’t have a decent volume of business.  But, there is too much competition from fast food joints to justify all the work and expense to draw a small-ticket, teetotaling, in-a-rush lunch trade.  I need about four hours of labor for an hour to an hour and a half of business.  When the average check is about $7, including tip, it often cost me to provide this service to the town. 

Unlike at dinner, my potential customers who are in a hurry to get back to work– and actually like fast food, truth be told– will consider McDonalds or Wendys or KFC in addition to me as a lunch option.

Even shedding the lunch albatross has not made this business any easier for me.  And, every time I hear and feel the dynamiting going on as our first bypass comes nearer to reality, I have to wonder about the added competition that will come if our economic development mandarins manage to entice a decent chain-type, sit-down restaurant to the shopping center that will surround the “super” Wal Mart now under construction.  The locally owned restaurants that remain have endured the chiselling of our business by the chains that have so much more name recognition and advertising power behind them than we could possibly counter.  We’re holding on, but sometimes it seems like just that, no more. 

Should one or two of these sit-down chains– an O’Charlies or Perkins, say– decide to invest here, I truly believe it’s curtains for us.  Not that independents haven’t managed to hold their own since chains ascended over the last forty years, but I’m talking about a tiny market.  There is no college here.  No sizeable population that sees value in what we’re doing as opposed to catering to the bottom-dollar crowd.    In this small market, and in the thousands of similar markets nationwide, it will not be the independents who will survive.

This could fairly be said to be an indulgence in self-pity and defeatism.  I am, by turns, inspired and infuriated by those who say that anything can be done with enough will and smarts.  I can’t argue with this any more than they can argue decisively that the sad endings in America were self-fulfilled.  As John Tunis said, “Losing is the great American sin.”

The truth is that at some point, an independent business person has to look at the odds against him or her and decide if it is worth the risk.  And, in this reflection, one must conclude that things are just geared most conducively for national chains to dominate.  I don’t know enough about interstate commerce law to know the exact culprit, but, I believe therein may be found the foxhole where the enemy hunkers and shares a canteen with our local and state authorities who share much of the blame with their tackleboxes of  ready tax abatements and zoning law corruptions.