Recession Adjustments: Per Se
By FRANK BRUNI
Bloomberg
Penny pinching at Per Se? Not exactly.
On this blog a few weeks ago, in a post on the sudden availability of tables at Per Se, I flagged that this venerable restaurant in the Time Warner Center was considering alternatives to its multi-course, multi-hour, very expensive tasting menu. Like restaurants less gilded, Per Se has been feeling the effects of the recession, and has been feeling the need to adjust.
Throughout this past week, details about the institution of a new à la carte menu in Per Se’s lounge area have been leaking out on other blogs. Here are those details, plus some more, plus some words from Thomas Keller, the guiding spirit of both Per Se and its Napa Valley sire, the French Laundry:
Starting Wednesday, there will be a “salon menu” of about seven to nine à la carte dishes available in the front lounge area, which has about 24 seats, including the four bar stools, Mr. Keller said in a telephone conversation early this evening.
Some of the dishes will be different from those on the given night’s tasting menu; some will be the same. The “salon menu” will change as regularly as the tasting menu, meaning nightly. Its dishes, like most of the tasting menu’s, will be slightly larger than appetizers but much smaller than conventional entrees.
They’ll be priced, generally, between $24 and $46. So Per Se is by no means becoming a bargain restaurant. By no means at all. It’s becoming a restaurant, though, that will show more flexibility and allow a lower financial entry point for customers.
The salon menu, Mr. Keller said, is “something that will give people some opportunity for having some food at Per Se without committing to the price or the time of the full menu.”
For now, Mr. Keller said, the restaurant isn’t taking reservations to dine in the area that will serve the salon menu. (The restaurant in recent days has served the salon menu to some regulars on a trial basis.) The reservation policy could change quickly, though, he said. The restaurant is waiting to see how much traffic it gets for the salon menu, at what pace, etc.
The salon menu will be available at dinner, but not at lunch.
Why now? Well, the obvious reason: hard times.
“We’re all being faced with challenges we didn’t anticipate and didn’t have anything to do with causing,” Mr. Keller said of himself and others in the restaurant business.
“But we have to react,” he added. “It’s our responsibility to try to keep the opportunity open to a lot of guests who unfortunately can’t come to Per Se because of the situation.”
The opportunity to which he referred is a meal in the restaurant, and the situation is the economic crisis.
He said the crisis has hit Per Se and his restaurant Bouchon in Las Vegas much harder than it has hit the French Laundry, where he’s sticking to tasting menus only and not instituting a la carte options.
Why more pain at Per Se than the French Laundry?
The drop in private dining, he said, is a big reason. Per Se made a lot of money from events in its private room booked by finance-industry types who aren’t spending that kind of money anymore.
Per Se’s fans needn’t get too worried just yet that the salon menu is a harbinger of doom for the restaurant. Its financial relationship with the developers of the Time Warner Center, who wanted Mr. Keller there for the cachet that he brings the building, gives Per Se more of an economic cushion, or rather security blanket, than most other restaurants have.
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