there have been many threads addressing the mediocrity og US chain restaurants. mostly, it appears that the food served up by these places is either pre-prepared and frozen, or else simple foods 9steaks, chops) which can be prepared by unskilled help. i’m wondering if a real French-style bistro could survive here-a place witha very limited menue (one special dish of the day) plus a homemade soup, and a few desserts. the food would be all locally prepared and of high quality, with smaller portion sizes. Could such a place survive? or does mid-America like mediocre food in large portions?
Move to California. There are plenty of places like that. Some are even reasonably priced.
Or Phoenix, plenty of places like that. Off the top of my head Anthony’s on Central and Osbourn is exactly like that. French Bistro with McDonalds speed.
Sure, even at the ass end of the United States (Arkansas), you can find restaurants that serve fresh food that’s high in quality. Just about every city in the United States has local restuarants that are part of a chain.
Marc
You forgot to add “…at low prices.” Places like Denny’s or Carrow’s or whatever not only have fat-friendly entrees that are enormous, but they’re also priced fairly low.
So your Bistro would have to be competitively priced, and it would have to compete against selection. People who go to family restaurants go not only for the economy or value, but also for the predictability. All the traditional American mainstay items are there, and going to these types of restaurants caters to ritualistic behavior. No surprises, nothing fancy or foreign.
As long as your Bistro had a low enough overhead that it didn’t need to seat that many people to remain solvent, and if word-of-mouth was positive among the rank-&-file, then it might do OK. You’d likely have a core group of faithful fans who appreciate having something different available to them, and positive publicity might make for a good “niche” market when locals want to try somethng a little more adventurous or high-falutin’.
I think with most Americans, the “limited menu” part would be a deal-breaker. Most people, when they go to sit-down restaurants, expect a fair amount of variety to choose from, even if they plan to order either the burger or the chicken-fried steak.
Yes.
Yes. Sitka & Spruce here in Seattle fits your description, minus the “one special dish of the day.” The menu consists of seven or eight plates, offered in large and small sizes, and changes daily. Sometimes a dish lasts a few days; it’s rarely on the menu for two straight weeks. The whole menu is completely different on a month-by-month basis. Prices vary; a good vegetable plate ranges from $9 to $12, while the Vaca Frita I had when I was there a few days ago was $17.
And they have a line out the freakin’ door. If you don’t show up the instant they open every evening, be prepared to sit around. They have something like 24 seats, and that’s it.
And they’re fantastic. Easily one of the best places to eat in Seattle.
There’s a restaurant in downtown Milwaukee called The Soup House that does exactly this; they’re open for breakfast (pastries, porridge, fruit, yoghurt) and lunch (soup and bread); they have six different freshly made soups (one or two vegetarian), and you select your portion size (half pint, three quarter pint, pint, quart), and they do a roaring business, partially because they’re the only quick restaurant in walking distance of Northwestern Mutual, because it’s fast, and relatively inexpensive. It’s a brilliant business model; they close up shop at 2:00p and have their evenings and weekends off, which is about the best sort of schedule you can hope for in the food business.
If you look around any decent sized metropolis (excepting Southern California’s Inland Empire, which is a culture blight worthy of North Dakota) you can probably find something that suits your requirements, and indeed, some fast food chains (Subway, Quiznos) aren’t that far off. If you’re finding “American” food to be mediocre it’s because you’re accepting mediocrity to be the default. Admittedly, a lot of the restaurants that the general public patronizes is mediocre, strictly for the sake of convenience and consistancy; it’s easier to take the kids to McDonalds where they know what’s on the menu and can get a Happy Meal. But that’s not all there is to be found. I can name dozens of restaurants in places as diverse as Milwaukee (WI), Ann Arbor (MI), Lawrence (KS), Madison (WI), Bozeman (MT), Bend (OR), Austin (TX), Pasadena (CA), which meet your requirements. (Interestingly, most of these are cities with a substantial college presence and relatively liberal social and political conditions; it would be interesting to correlate the success of restaurant diversity with political diversity and/or social climate and see what pops out.)
Stranger
I agree that these places exist all over the U.S. Aubonpain is a big honkin’ french cafe chain as described. La Madeline is a very good french cafe chain found mostly in Southern cities. If you are stuck in a food rut in the U.S., you just aren’t;t looking very hard or you live in an unusually culinary unfriendly city. Subway was mentioned earlier which is odd because I thought about that today. They are the most numerous fast food place in terms of locations but they can make all kinds of good healthy sandwiches once you know how to tell them what you want.
The answer to both questions is yes. Although I don’t know you specified mid-America - there’s plenty of love for fast food on both coasts as well. Fast food restaurants thrive because most people like them. But I’ve never seen any area in this country where it isn’t possible to find a local restaurant that cooks its good meals on site.
There are actually people who prefer to eat good food in good restaurants. Not everyone is a fan of mounds of lard-fried greasballs in fat sauce.
Sure, yep, here in Chapel Hill, NC, it would do fine. There’s a good Slow Food movement here, with plenty of sustainable ag farmers to supply the restaurants.
Even in a much smaller market, Oxford, MS: the restaurant I used to be the baker for did a great business with a rather small, but fine menu. It was waaayyyy out yond in the county, but folks would wait a good hour to get in, because the food (especially the bread 
was that good) Helps to have a waiting area conducive to, um, Relaxed Spontaneity, though.
Silly question. Of COURSE such a retsaurant COULD survive. Thousands of small independent restaurants making quality food do survive.
But could such a restaurant ever become a thriving national chain? Nope.
And could such restaurants ever rise up to become a threat to existing chains? Nope.
I’ll echo astorian and say that it’s a silly question. The OP presumes that just because chain restaurants are popular that everyone in America wants to eat there. The poster fails to understand the basic concept of niche markets. Sure, a large number of consumers may flock to chain restaurants, but there is a smaller number of consumers who want other kind of food. Restaurant owners are perfectly capable of surviving based on these smaller number of customers.
To be a good businessman does not mean you need to cater to the desires of the majority of people. It means you must find a product that some people want and give it to them at a price they want to pay. You can actively target niche markets and make great money.
I think astorian has it right. Limited menu, daily specials, locally selected and prepared foods are reasonable strategies for a local restaurant, but not for a chain.
The “benefit” for a chain is that all of the locations are very very similar. Having a diverse, locally derived, menu just makes your chain into a group of restaurants owned by the same guy.
I know that the Friday’s in West Orange will have pretty much the same items as the Fridays in Tarrytown, where I used to live, and the one in Ramsey where I used to work. I can say I’ve eaten there before, and found the food OK, so if I run into one at a mall or wherever, I know I’ll probably find the food OK there as well. Make it local, and I won’t have a clue whether or not the food is any good at this new location, or if I’ll find a dish I’m going to like.
The places people are describing here have a lot more choices than the OP’s one special dish of the day, one soup, and a few desserts.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding ralph, but it seems people are talking about two different things. There are lots of good, thriving local restaurants offering six or eight entrees, a few homemade soups, etc.; that question hardly needs asking.
I don’t know where the OP lives, but I think he should move somewhere with better restaurants. Even when I was in exile in the midwest, I found plenty of non-chain places to eat. Unless – maybe what he’s asking is if such could become a popular chain, rather than one of thousands of excellent independent restaurants?
Well, if we need to get specific, I can cite the excellent bakery by my old house in Oakland that featured excellent pizza. They would only make one kind of pizza each day, a couple of soups, and a small array of baked goods. Lines were out the door for the pizza. Places that feature one and only one entree are going to be rare because most restauranteers recognize that a group dining together will have different tastes and eating restrictions. Hence plenty of places offering a small array of changing selections.
As for why arn’t there chains like this? Chains thrive on consitancy. They are able to seat huge amounts of people in reasonable times because they have the details down to a science. And to a large degree, Americans like consistancy. I am adventurous, but my Grandmother and my little cousin like to know exactly what they are getting into.
Why? My theory is a part of it is that as a culture we coddle children with special “kids food” and give in when they are picky eaters instead of treating it as a mildly bad trait ideally to be overcome. YMMV.
If the local restaurant reviews are to be believed, there’s no shortage of such places in Pittsburgh, either. I can think of one, in particular with reasonable prices, homemade soup and other food and unreasonable puns, to boot. Anyone for “Cheeses of Nazareth” or “The Porkshank Redemption”? They even fit the short list of desserts category, but their desserts are also good, although I prefer Ebony and Ivory (brownies, ice cream, and chocolate sauce) to The Wrongest Dessert Ever (a deep-fried Twinkie).
Don’t think the liking for “mediocre food in large portions” or standardize menus nationwide is strictly an American phenomenon. When my family moved to the US from England, one of the things my father liked best about America was being able to go anywhere in the country, walk into a chain restaurant and know what he was getting. My father has no interest in gourmet food or the trend of the moment, is a rather picky eater, and doesn’t like to think about what he’s having for dinner. While chain restaurants may not satisified the average gourmet, for him they work quite nicely.
Not sure why you limited your comment to mid America. Unless those types of restauraunts do not thrive outside of the Central Time Zone.
In my little metroplis in the mid-west we have several Bistro type restaurants that seem to do ok. I am sure that Outback and Cheesecake Factory are not shaking in their boots at the thought of these places running them out of business.