Prime Time for Bistros
High-End Chefs Capitalize on Wallet-Friendly Dining Trend

By Walter Nicholls
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 11, 2007

"This town is so saturated with high-end restaurants," says chef Robert Wiedmaier as he steps between a series of scaffolds and next to enormous wooden crates that hold 200-pound clocks. "There is no real brasserie here. We need more casual fare."

And when the dust clears, that's precisely the style of eatery he will open in the weeks ahead: one where folks in denim and swells in suits stand to feel equally at ease. Brasserie Beck will be nothing like elegant Marcel's, his French restaurant in the West End, where a six-course tasting menu includes Dover sole with a fondue of leeks and costs $98.

Located on the ground floor of a new office building on K Street NW in the booming area near the Washington Convention Center, Beck will feature bowls piled high with Newfoundland mussels for $17 that can be washed down with a choice of 50 Belgian beers. (For help choosing, customers can ask "beer specialist" Bill Catron; see Dish, Page F3.) The airy space with 135 seats is designed to resemble a Great War-era European train station, with white-tiled walls, oversize mirrors and those old-fashioned wall-mounted clocks.

"I want to appeal to a different crowd of people and expand my cooking to another market," Wiedmaier says.

He is one of several Washington area chefs who operate fine-dining restaurants -- where dinner is theater -- and are opening casual, more affordable spinoffs, where a couple can spend $100 or less.

In the past eight months, Cathal Armstrong of Restaurant Eve in Old Town opened Eamonn's/A Dublin Chipper a few blocks away; Michel Richard's Citronelle in Georgetown got a baby brother, Central, in Penn Quarter; and while his venerable Galileo downtown is getting a facelift, Roberto Donna has launched the unfussy Bebo Trattoria in Crystal City. By the end of the month, Armstrong plans to open the doors at another casual place, Majestic, also in Old Town.

The chic-to-casual trend, in which a notable chef with a top restaurant opens a mid-range bistro, is not original to Washington. It first flourished in Paris and New York in the early 1990s. Notable success stories of the bistro movement include Guy Savoy with La Butte Chaillot and Alain Ducasse with Aux Lyonnais, both in Paris, and Jean-Georges Vongerichten with JoJo in New York.

"It's the natural sign of a maturing restaurant community," says New York-based restaurant consultant Clark Wolf. "First, you have to have the high end in place as well as the very affordable. With that solid, now the middle range fills in. It has a lot to do with there being more reasons to visit D.C., with the new museums and programs. It has to do with the town being talked about more around the country in magazines and travel shows."

Ever-rising operating costs also have something to do with it. For chefs and restaurant managers, buying in bulk, no matter if it's steak or floor polish, saves money. Staff members can be shared between venues, which cuts down on training time.

"The classic 60-seat restaurant is no longer financially viable," Wolf says. "You can't afford to have just one restaurant."

To keep costs in line, Beck will have a standard menu that does not change. "You will always be able to get shallot and onion soup, steak tartare or steak au poivre," Wiedmaier says. "That's the philosophy of a bistro."

Marcel's menu, which changes five times a year, depends on pricier seasonal and hard-to-find ingredients. The style of cooking at such a restaurant is far more labor-intensive, with the need for reductions and complex sauces. He's paying his staff comparable salaries, but overall, the cost of ingredients at Beck will be 25 to 30 percent less than at Marcel's, Wiedmaier estimates.

Wiedmaier will direct the weekday lunches at Beck, but chef de cuisine David Ashwell will run the kitchen at night, when Wiedmaier is at his post at Marcel's.

The increase in informal dining options does not mean that the city has more eating establishments. Undoubtedly, there has been an explosion of restaurants in the past few years in Penn Quarter, in Cleveland Park and in the West End, home to many hotels. Gallery Place, with its lineup of chain eateries, is mobbed on weeknights. But the perceived growth is deceptive.

There are about 2,000 restaurants in the city, from high-end establishments to delis, and the number has been stagnant for the past several years, according to the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington. "They open, they close," says the group's president, Lynne Breaux.

The association does not track restaurants according to cost or formality. But Breaux does see the bistro trend taking hold. "There has been a big increase in high-end dining," she says. "But at the same time, people also want a casual evening out. What we're seeing is a strengthening of the middle price point. People want more fine dining in a casual atmosphere."

Chef Ris Lacoste is reluctant to give details about the laid-back bistro she plans to open by the end of the year in the West End, at 23rd and L streets NW, because she's still negotiating the lease. It will be the first restaurant Lacoste has owned. She says the new place, still unnamed, will be vastly different from the coat-and-tie-required 1789 in Georgetown, where she was executive chef for 10 years until early last year.

"You don't want to jinx something that isn't a finished deal," says Lacoste, who started her culinary career at age 12 working in a Polish deli in New Bedford, Mass. "But with all the new condos downtown, people are demanding more of their 'hood. We have lots of ultra-high-end. I want to create a classy neighborhood joint where everyone can come and have a plate of mussels and a bottle of wine before a movie."

The steaming plate of mussels, also featured at Richard's Central and soon to be served at Armstrong's Majestic, is apparently a trend unto itself. In addition to being delicious when cooked properly, mussels pound for pound are more reasonably priced than other seafood, are festive to eat and go well with both beer and wine, the chefs say.

"Mid-range, delicious food is what's in order. I want to get away from white linen tablecloths," Lacoste says. "And I'm not only responding to what the city needs, but doing volume and lowering overhead."

Andrew Evans, co-owner and chef of the chic Inn at Easton on Maryland's Eastern Shore, is also concerned with the bottom line as he develops the 45-seat Thai Ki cafe near Easton, which he hopes to open in the fall. The menu will reflect the chef's love of Thai street food such as larb gai, or minced chicken with mint leaves. But it's energy efficiency and respect for the environment that have him doing his homework.

"I'm looking at it from every angle I can," says Evans, who is installing a hot-water-on-demand system, waterless toilets in the bathrooms and walls of biodegradable building board made from agricultural straw waste. "It's great for my kids' future, and it will reduce my costs at the same time."

A big advantage for these chefs is name recognition. They have paid their dues and earned their stars, and when they open a casual bistro they have a ready audience. At the same time, customers accustomed to being pampered have high expectations.

"People expect the same quality, but they don't want to pay for it," says Armstrong, who will use the same type of wine glasses and napkins at casual Majestic as he does at high-end Eve.

He says the difference in running the two restaurants will be "more structure in the kitchen at Majestic. The cooks need more precise recipes for consistency, and then it won't require my attention as much." For Eve's nine-course, $125 tasting menu, he buys provisions from more than 15 farmers. For Majestic's $14 to $23 entrees, he will use one or two. To cut costs, he will use more "low-end ingredients, like salmon instead of Dover sole and chicken instead of pheasant."

Michel Richard has another way of illustrating the cost differences: At Central, he has 12 chefs in the kitchen to serve 500 customers a day, compared with 18 chefs serving 120 customers a day at Citronelle.

"I've been thinking about opening a bistro for 10 years. Now was just the right time," says Richard, who in the late 1980s and early '90s operated a string of five high-end restaurants stretching from Washington to Tokyo. Of the five, only Citronelle in Georgetown remains.

He chose a bistro this time because "if you have two fancy places, you compete against yourself. The bistro is easier. You're looking for a different guest, maybe a younger crowd, maybe with less money. But they come more often. They may go to Citronelle once a year. To Central they will come once a month."

For what may now be the best cheeseburger in town.