The North Berkshire Restaurant Virus

It's like the bubonic plague for eating establishments around here: word comes down today that Breda's Restaurant up on the Curran Highway is done. The bar and bowling alley continue on, but the building's owner has put the hammer down on Antoinette Breda's lease. The doors closed yesterday.

Antoinette was in tears today as she said her farewells to the members of the North Adams Rotary, whose weekly meetings she has happily hosted for some time. Today we held our final meeting there, but had to bring lunch in from, of all places, Papa Gino's. Give me a slice of irony, please, and a garden salad with bitter dressing.

Her story was pretty typical of a small restauranteuse caught in the fatal crossfire of dining and real estate: a couple of late checks, a missed phone call, and a landlord seemingly eager to declare her in default of her lease. That's all it takes. Just a few months ago we were told that she was going to start home delivery of her city's-best pizza, and now we're going to wait until she finds a new home before we can order another one of her special chicken bruschetta pies. Our hearts go out to her; it was really a great relationship while it lasted.

And now our small but feisty club needs to find another home. It has to be open on Tuesdays, provide reasonable privacy for when we have a speaker, and it would be really nice to know that they'll still be open six months from now.

What's in the water up here that kills eating establishments? And why has it been so particularly virulent over the last dozen or so months?

Think about it: Breda's, Gideon's, EGL. Gringo's. Hickory Bill's. The Sugar Llama. Christina's, the Lakeside, the Taconic, the Four Acres. Jae's leaving North Adams and taking over Le Jardin (this has been pushed back to March, so you still have a few weeks to sail on the sushi boat up there). And, disturbingly, rumors of distress are now flying about Red Sauce on Ashland Street. At this rate, by summer all that'll be left will be Chinese buffets, fast food, and the deli counter at the Price Chopper.

I realize that restaurants and marriages nowadays have similar life expectancies, but this seems even weirder than normal. People do purchase prepared food here, even in winter. Some places have been able to manage themselves really well over a span of years. So what separates the dining men from the nibbling boys?

It doesn't appear to be related to the food itself. Some of the places that have been around for a while present uninspiring efforts on the actual plates, while places like Breda's and EGL had some flashes of true greatness. Nor does it seem to be related to the holy retail trinity of parking, price point, and perception: you can't be too snooty, too expensive, or too hard to get to. Most of these now defunct establishments had plenty of space and were reasonably priced.

Not surprisingly, I have my underinformed yet impeccably spelled and punctuated opinion: to paraphrase Fitzgerald, restaurant people are not like you and me. I've heard rumors that the Lakeside and Gideon's closings had more to do with personal intriguery than customers and cash. It just seems that high-cash, low-supervision environments that depend on one person doing the books, combined with the unexplainable attraction restauranteurs have for personal drama, lead to all sorts of problematic situations down the road. It takes a special kind of person to throw the dice and navigate the perilous road of opening a publick house, especially if they don't own the land or building. Scary as it is, the risk-taker mentality necessary to get a thing off the ground is the same mentality that, if not checked, dooms a place in the end.

Well, there are still a bunch of competitors for the North Berkshire dining dollar, and this is truly sometimes just the way things go. So long, Antoinette, and good luck finding a soft place to land.

Meanwhile, does anybody want to serve a decent lunch to a stouthearted group of Rotarians?