Quote:
Originally Posted by biggus diggus
I'm thinking of the kind of places most of us with offices downtown actually frequent. Sit down or counter order doesn't really matter. It's better these past few years but it still seems like the old holdouts are dragging the average quality of selection down.
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There has been a shift over the past five years away from an old downtown business model of being able to pay the rent based on serving lunch and maybe breakfast but never being open past 3 PM or at all on weekends. The Hero Factory, Focaccia Fiorentina, Duck & Decanter and the Downtown Deli -- all longstanding establishments -- were unable or unwilling to change to accommodate contemporary expectations of staying open nights and weekends, and the landlords of their spaces looked for different tenants who would cultivate a clientele beyond the office crowd.
As I remarked earlier in this thread, there are some parts of downtown where this transition is essentially complete. At Central & Monroe, everyone is open at night. In fact, Nook doesn't even serve lunch, perhaps swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction. At Central & Adams, however, half the places are still operating under the old model.
Aside from hours of service, the next frontier is downtown restaurants that people want to visit as a destination for a good meal, rather than a place that people merely settle for because it's near their office or an event venue. In some places, that has already happened, but not everywhere. The Arizona Center in particular seems to rely on a captive audience for its restaurants, and I haven't seen much sign of that changing, even with all the renovations there.
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