A travel brochure arrived the other day with a headline that was an attention-getter. It was a story on dining in San Francisco, which continues to be one of the world’s great dining destinations. The headline announced that a new restaurant opens in San Francisco every week.
This seemed at first glance to be an impressive statistic. A foodie in the City by the Bay would have to be quite sharp-eyed to keep up with such a dynamic scene, not to mention ready to dine out at a moment’s notice.
But upon doing some quick math, I began thinking. A new restaurant a week over a year would be 52 restaurants. Allowing for holidays and other vagaries – let’s face it, these places are not opening exactly a week apart, the critical mass that would be available to work with would be approximately 50 restaurants over the course of a 12-month period.
But what defines a “new” restaurant? To many diners, the boundaries of newness are quite indefinite. A restaurant to some is considered new for five years.
Anecdotally, most will agree that a year or at least the calendar year in which the restaurant opened will serve as its “honeymoon” period.
Of course, here in Rhode Island we do things a bit differently and so it is with this exercise. What about a restaurant that closed or changed its concept and either moved or returned to its original iteration? A classic example would be XO Café in Providence that retooled into a French/Asian concept and then switched back to a modern version of its popular, intimate getaway style.
More recently and making our list this year is the Post Office Café, fondly remembered by East Greenwich foodies through several menu and motif changes and eventually giving way to an ill-fated experiment as a rock music venue. One of the original chefs bought the place this year and brought it back as it was but with some up-to-date touches.
Some new places are easy to list. Red Fin Crudo came in with two celebrity chefs as owners and spouses and took its place as a must-visit in the downtown Providence restaurant row. And Pasquale’s brought authentic Neapolitan pizza with a certificate from VPN – the certification bureau from Napoli – to South Kingstown.
For Rhode Island, where there are about 3,000 restaurants, to keep pace with national figures, approximately 200 new spots would have to open annually. We are not there yet, although the number is respectable. And it is a case of quality over quantity. Nationally, as of September 2012, most of the increase in restaurant openings were in the quick-serve restaurant segment. In Rhode Island in 2015, the overwhelming majority of new restaurants that opened were fine-dining or conventional table-service eateries.
Which brings up another point. What about additional locations of existing restaurants? The feeling for this story is that they should be counted. Such places bring new guests and new jobs, adding to the state’s economy.
Based on a quite informal survey combined with research of industry trade groups, some licensing information, contacts in the local food-service community, media accounts and public relations efforts on the part of some new restaurants, a total new-restaurant figure for the past 12 months came to approximately 30 restaurants opening their doors in the state.
Using the San Francisco standard of measurement, this works out to a restaurant opening about every 10 days over the past year in Rhode Island. All things considered, it is a respectable number. •
Bruce Newbury’s Dining Out talk radio show is heard on 920 WHJJ-AM, 1540 WADK-AM and on mobile applications. He can be reached by email at bruce@brucenewbury.com.
