Author: Stephanie March

Does anyone remember the House of Breakfast? It was this little counter-service joint run by two Eastern European women out of a house-front in South Minneapolis. The omelets were decent, the pancakes were fine, but that’s not why you went. It was the walls. Near the counter you could read the menu, which was scrawled on paper plates, but every other inch of wall space was covered in paintings: Pitiful puppies, sad harlequin clowns, waifish girls, and pathetic kittens—all with dark saucer eyes, rendered in the style of those kings of seventies kitsch, Walter and Margaret Keane—stood watch over your every cup of coffee. It remains the only restaurant that I’ve patronized specifically for the décor.

Obviously, there are other places we go because of the buzz or to soak up a certain vibe, but often that has as much to do with the people attracted to the space as with how the space itself is put together. Would we still hang out at Chino Latino on a Saturday night if it were packed with nattering IRS auditors? The point is, décor and ambience are two distinctly different things. Case in point: The décor at Psycho Suzi’s, in Northeast Minneapolis, is a tacky tiki wonderland—but its patrons and cheeky staff give the place its edge.

There’s no question that restaurant design—along with great food, service, and people-watching—is a crucial part of the magical and all-too-elusive formula that makes a restaurant successful. But there’s no template to follow, no style guide that ensures success. Note that I’m not including the theatrics employed by themed restaurants, as mechanical dinosaurs and timed thunderstorms are more than decoration; they’re more like a three-year-old’s chicken-finger-fueled acid trip. Those spectacles aside, you can basically define one end of the spectrum with casual-dining favorites like Applebees, which plaster their walls with flea-market finds (or impeccable imitations of flea-market finds). At the other end are fine-dining temples along the lines of 20.21, which artfully decline to put anything on the walls. The issue at hand isn’t whether one approach is superior. The question is: What does this all have to do with the dining experience?

TGI Fridays, Applebees, Ruby Tuesdays, and the locally owned Famous Dave’s have become expert at the former approach. The collections of vintage photographs, battered musical instruments, wooden sleds, and all manner of other vaguely aged clutter serve to “localize” their restaurants, with the aim being to insinuate the place into the community. All that stuff on the walls is also supposed to grab our attention, make us feel at home, and incite conversation. But in some cases these heaping helpings of junk become a blur—a visual version of white noise that we’ve trained ourselves to ignore. Sensing a growing indifference, TGI Friday’s began reworking its design concept a few years ago, adding more contemporary objects like PeeWee Herman shoes, BMX bikes, and skateboards. The hope is that these things, more so than a Radio Flyer, will strike a chord of relevance with the younger consumers of mozzie-sticks.

Moving up the scale in expense and prestige, the basic rule seems to be that the better the food, the less crap on the walls. Take the year-old Fugaise, in the East Hennepin neighborhood: an austere, windowless space with grayish walls and dark abstract art by a single artist, Daren Steneman. Some find the heavy color scheme severe, but when the food arrives, it’s clear that the focus is meant to be on the vivid squash soup set before us. As many of us can (and do) passionately argue, food is a conversation-worthy art form all on its own.

Furnishing a restaurant can be a huge gamble if you’re looking to make a striking impression. Let’s not forget the ill-fated Rock Star restaurant and the first line Star Tribune restaurant critic Jeremy Iggers wrote in his 2002 review: “Loved the food. Hated the décor.” The room featured oversized black-and-white photos of pseudo-celebrities, harsh lighting and horrible acoustics, tacky carpeting that looked like it could have come from Elvis’ attic, and an unfortunate location in the Piper-Jaffray building. You couldn’t get comfortable, but neither did you quite feel glamorous (the only acceptable reason to sacrifice comfort). Not even the amazing dishes from Chef Steven Brown could overcome the drastic décor. But now that he’s at the warmer, friendlier Levain, which is tucked into a quiet neighborhood of South Minneapolis, Brown’s food is rewarded with a consistently packed restaurant.

In response to an increased emphasis on interior design: Locally, restaurant design has become big business as Twin Cities-based entrepreneurs continue to test new concepts. When they demolished Nora’s just northwest of Lake Calhoun and rebuilt it as Tryg’s, the owners hired Shea Architects, a firm that has created a plethora of local restaurant spaces, from Solera to Famous Dave’s, to come up with something beautiful yet safe. (We might call it “Café Gabberts.”) Bucking this trend, the owners behind a newer Minneapolis venture, Five Restaurant and Street Lounge, hoped to strike upon something fresh by seeking out architects who’d never designed a restaurant before. The result is unexpectedly soft while maintaining a modern edge, keeping the diner at ease while introducing new ideas. Then there’s the much-anticipated Cue, the restaurant in the new Guthrie Theater. With a menu created by Lenny Russo (of St. Paul’s Heartland) and interior design by another well-known firm, the Durrant Group—all wrapped in a building by the vaunted French architect Jean Nouvel —it will be exciting to see whose influence leaves the most lasting impression.

However, let’s not forget the middle of the restaurant-design spectrum. Call it a laid-back backlash against all the gloss and dough being shelled out for high-concept design, but there seems to be a trend toward a more organic approach to creating a dining room. The colors and artwork somehow tie in with the food (which is why some of us go to restaurants in the first place). The estate-sale finds, local artwork, and hand-carved furniture at Café Barbette in Uptown all work together to give the place its whimsical feel, and fit nicely with a menu that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Midtown’s new Town Talk Diner could have styled itself retro, but didn’t. Instead, the owners kept diner pastiche to a minimum, allowing the old, original counter to be reborn as their bar and evoke the spirit from which their snazzy menu draws. Restaurant Alma, in southeast Minneapolis, is another example. Its clean lines, modern maple tones, exposed brick, and birch branches give the dining room a fresh, natural feel, which makes sense given the menu’s focus on seasonal ingredients. Colors are easy and play well with candle light. Decoration is simple, timeless, and yet the minute we try to soak it all in, it fades to the back, allowing for the simple enjoyment of food and good company.

Last winter, over the holidays, a restaurant manager I know clocked what she wryly calls the “Best Five Minutes Ever” of her career. Just seconds after punching in, she was called to the bar to break up a couple of brawlers. While showing one-half of the drunken duo to the door, she came across a couple of baddies dealing drugs in the entryway. Upon throwing all criminals out on the street, she was headed to the phone to call the cops, only to be sidetracked by a page instructing her to check out the men’s bathroom. Standing there in the middle of the restroom she found a guy, pants around his ankles, playing his own instrument, if you know what I mean. She had to literally pull up his pants so that she could usher him out without freaking out the diners.

Now, humility is a crucial quality for people who work in the hospitality industry; the notion that the guest is always right has been deeply ingrained within them. And as guests, most of us appreciate the service we are provided, and we express that gratitude with generous tips. Usually, this arrangement works out just fine, but there are exceptions to both sides of the deal. In recent years, in fact, it seems that I’ve been privy to more and more horror stories about diners. Maybe it’s because finishing schools and etiquette manuals are largely obsolete. Perhaps it’s due to “fine dining” being touted as a form of entertainment unto itself, thus raising the expectations of both staff and guests. Regardless, the upswing in ugly behavior has many restaurant workers questioning whether the guest is always right—and also wondering what the hell has gone wrong.

More from the local restaurant-worker pipeline: An older, affluent couple frequented a top steakhouse on a weekly basis, and they never failed to find something to complain about. The steak wasn’t cooked right, the wine smelled funny, the forks were poorly polished—whatever the problem was, they voiced their feelings, very loudly, to whichever server had been stuck with them. For a while, management went out of its way to appease the couple—moving their table, switching their server, pampering them with extra attention, and on occasion, a complimentary meal. Eventually it became clear that nothing would ever make this couple happy. A manager sincerely apologized for being unable to meet their high standards and politely suggested they find another restaurant. To everyone’s surprise, the pair kept coming. But from then on, they found everything to be fantastic.

Bad service should never be tolerated. If your food is cold, send it back. If your server was rude or inattentive, seek out a manager. No restaurant worth its salt wants you to suffer through a meal. Their goal is to have you leave happy and return later, credit card in hand. But a certain set of people seem determined to publicly humiliate or otherwise punish restaurant workers for service snafus. I theorize that these types are often asserting their version of a pecking order. People who spend days cowering in a cubicle to avoid an impossibly demanding boss—or, conversely, clawing their way to the top and stepping on many others in the process—are often all too delighted to blast anyone they perceive to be below them on the socioeconomic ladder.

Worse still, their chosen scapegoats are charged with the task of trying to please them. The worst offenders, outraged at the slightest mistake (say their Caesar salad arrived without chicken), demand justice. They declare their dining experience ruined, and expect their entire meal to be paid for. How would these people respond should a similar principle be applied to them in their work? Imagine a boss finding a typo in a certain status report and demanding that the offender forfeit a day’s pay as punishment. If this became the norm, employment litigation would sprout all over the place. Yet it seems to have become socially acceptable to belittle servers and bartenders, perhaps because they are mostly younger people whose work is not considered by some to be a “real job.” Never mind that restaurants in this country are a $1.3 trillion business that employs twelve-and-a-half million people—an employment force second only to the government.

Not surprisingly, booze plays no small role in this rash of bad behavior. Servers can be held liable if a drunk goes off and hurts someone, but the law that decreed this does not acknowledge how delicate a task it is to cut off inebriated people. Drunk people do not like being refused service; rich drunk people seem to like it even less so. Another recent story from the frontlines: A clean-cut man who’d been drinking was cut off and asked to leave an Uptown restaurant. After a short while he returned, claiming his sunglasses had been stolen. The manager threatened to call the cops and asked him to leave, but before he did so, the man responded by kicking her in the gut, leaving a boot-print.

Some restaurants are taking steps to ban anyone who behaves outrageously. But some good servers are also leaving the industry, tired of suffering the abuse. If this becomes a trend, owners will have to pay higher wages to less-experienced workers, which will only drive prices up and satisfaction down. It’s a bit of a conundrum. Owners and managers must make their guests happy, attempting to turn every complaint into an opportunity to create a guest for life; at the same time, they have to provide their employees with a safe and hospitable workplace.

But there’s reason for hope. Four out of every ten people have worked in a restaurant at some point in their lives. They can appreciate good service and sympathize with a mistake here and there. If they team up with current restaurant workers, maybe those diners with rage issues will eventually find themselves eating alone, at home.