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Especially during economic downturns, restaurants feel they must be all things to all people and cast the widest of nets to fill empty seats. This is a mistake.
Although many certainly try, restaurants with small kitchens cannot properly kick out a 40-item menu--in any economic climate. And a small restaurant cannot seat an 8-top at 7:30 and blindly think there won't be repercussions... chances are someone at that table will receive something that's cold, late, or rushed. To say nothing of the next order or two behind it. Anyone who's been an aboyeur (kitchen expeditor) would concur. Few restaurateurs understand that short-term gains often translate to long-term losses.
So I appreciate when a place recognizes its limitations, reacts accordingly and remains focused, regardless of the possible effect on business. Case in point: Fruition restaurant in Denver, Co., fifty-two seats and a kitchen the size of a starlet's shoe closet. (I wisecracked to owner/chef Alex Seidel that I'd seen bigger kitchens on small boats.) Does Fruition lose customers because they have but 7 appetizers and 7 entrees? Sure. Do they lose customers because they refuse to seat a large party smack-dab in the middle of service? No doubt. Yet such limitations can and do pay off.
My antennae went up after I read Fruition's immediate and over-the-top review (PDF) from the Denver Post's no-nonsense dining critic, Tucker Shaw, back in 2007. Then came several local "Best New Restaurant" awards, Guyot's "America's Top 10 New Restaurants" award, accolades in Bon Appetit, Gourmet, and James Beard "Best Chef - Southwest" nominations for Seidel in 2008 and 2009. Fruition was--and still is--a runaway hit.
Fruition's fare has been described as "sophisticated comfort food," to which I’d say "yes" and "not really" respectively, but would add that it is approachable, reasonably priced and very well-executed.
If you make it to Fruition, look through the side window and observe the choreographed dance going on in that crackerbox kitchen...that Seidel and company are able to execute dishes so perfectly in such a limited space is as impressive as the dishes themselves.
He should be a poster boy on how to realize one's dream by doing less. -- George Mahe
