The recession menu: steaks out, burgers in

Café Aspen’s closure last week marked the fourth upscale West Side restaurant to close within seven months ­– happenstance, says its founder, but the sign of diners’ shifting appetites for something less expensive, says another industry veteran.

The restaurant, which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, began on West Seventh Street but eventually moved up to the West Side on Camp Bowie Boulevard. David Rotman founded the restaurant and oversaw its daily existence until August 2009, when he left Café Aspen to become clubhouse manager at Mira Vista Country Club.

“It’s a great opportunity,” Rotman said of his job of six months. “I really needed it for my family. I had given my life to the restaurant for 20 years and it was time for the restaurant to become an opportunity for someone else.”

When he left, Rotman handed the reins to J.D. Loy, an executive chef who owns the Chaparral Chef LLC, a Fort Worth catering business, and his wife, Suzanne Loy. The Loys took over under a five-year management contract that would allow them to purchase the restaurant or find an investor. The Loys executed a menu overhaul and ran the restaurant for several months before informing Rotman of their intention to walk away after Jan. 31.

“Monday was a real dark day for me in my personal life. People really don’t understand the sacrifice, the obligation, the high-wire act without a net – it’s a delicate dance every day,” Rotman said of the restaurant business. “Twenty years is a long time. It’s the only job I ever had.”

He is putting the restaurant back up for sale.

The Loys insist the restaurant’s closure had nothing to do with business and everything to do with equipment failures and code-compliance issues that Suzanne Loy said Rotman did not disclose when they took over Café Aspen.

“The restaurant did not fail in our hands,” she said, adding, “People were coming in right and left and paying $38 for a steak, and happy to do it.”

She said they put up at least $20,000 in repairs, without accounting for day-to-day operations. She said total repairs would have cost between $40,000 and $50,000.

“My husband and I did not have enough money to pay to fix everything he handed us,” Suzanne Loy said.

Next door to Café Aspen was Ovation, a soul food joint that opened just over three years ago with Keith Hicks at the helm of the cuisine. The place became known for live music and Hicks’ fried chicken and waffles. He took both the music and the soul food atmosphere with him when he left Ovation to open, with investors, Button’s in the Chapel Hill shopping plaza space formerly occupied by 29 Degree Tavern. One year after Hicks’ departure, Ovation closed its doors. Other investors are looking into reopening the restaurant with more casual fare.

Up the street in The Village at Camp Bowie Boulevard shopping center, Fuego closed last summer.

The restaurant began as Duce in May 2006 – a Tim Love-created tapas restaurant and lounge. The idea never really took off, and in April 2008 Love sold the concept, now billed as a modern steakhouse, to a Chicago chef. That chef, Efrain Benitez, reopened the restaurant in August of that year as Fuego, serving more Continental-Mediterranean fare. Less than a year later, however, its doors were closed.

The son of restaurant owners, Derrick Paez returned to Fort Worth from the Culinary Institute of America with plenty of ideas on how to revamp his parents’ more than 25-year-old operation, Aventino’s Ristorante, as a sophisticated, modern eatery with authentic Italian cuisine.

While the food received great reviews, tables were empty at Aventino (a new name to reflect a new direction), prompting Paez to rethink the facelift and add more Fort Worth-friendly options in late 2009 – to no avail, however, and in mid-January, Paez announced the restaurant’s immediate closure, after about a year in operation.

Rotman said it’s not diner migration, but rather dining oversaturation.

“I think you have too many restaurants out there for the amount of diners,” he said. “The key to success is endearing your customers. You’ve just got to endear and appreciate the opportunity.”

David Shaw, formerly the president of Texas Restaurant Association’s Tarrant County chapter, agrees Fort Worth has too many chairs and not enough people to fill them.

“The old adage, ‘the more the merrier,’ I have never been a believer in that in Fort Worth,” he said. “Maybe in Dallas or elsewhere, but I’d like to be the only restaurant on the only block.”

Shaw’s wife has owned Scampi’s Mediterranean Café for more than 12 years on Magnolia Avenue, on the city’s Near Southside.  They recognized diners’ shifting appetites, and are renovating Scampi’s to reopen as a “gourmet comfort food” restaurant with a liquor license, named Jack Tanner’s Patio Grill.

“It’s just time to make a change,” said Shaw, adding it’s “really tough” to be an Italian or Greek place at present.

The bottom line: people aren’t feeling upscale anymore. While higher-end restaurants have closed, recession-friendly places are opening. For example, in mid-December, Dallas-based Jakes Hamburgers opened its second Fort Worth location in The Village at Camp Bowie shopping center.

Two things are true: “People are still going to go out, and they’re still going to drink,” Shaw said.

jtronche@bizpress.net