When a well-known Phoenix restaurant announced earlier this month that it would be closing, Arizona chef Adam Allison took to social media.
His Facebook post about the closing of The Larder & The Delta read in part, “If this isn’t a sign of the times, Phoenix is the 5th largest city in the United States. This was one of the best meals and experiences I had all year. This shouldn’t be the case. Make it make sense. If this doesn’t wake you up to support your local chef driven restaurants, I don’t know what will.”
Allison has been in the restaurant business for more than two decades, has won the Food Network show "Chopped" and is a private chef. Allison joined The Show to discuss what he thought about the state of the Valley’s restaurant scene and how he sees it right now.
Full conversation
ADAM ALLISON: That's a good question, because you could start in so many places, and it's such a complex question. I think where you kind of see it now is kind of where you've seen it in the past five years. It was on a trajectory to where it's going now, but I think COVID kind of really sped that up. Which is people were kind of forced to be inside and they kind of lost the luxury of eating in restaurants. And so that kind of has stuck where a lot of people now are just really kind of eating and spending their money on convenience, whereas before it was more of the experience.
MARK BRODIE: So it's less of getting dressed up and going to a nice restaurant, and more what can we take out or what can we have delivered to our house?
ALLISON: Yeah. I think the frequency of it has definitely changed. I still think people do go out dressed up and have nice dinners. But they don't do it once a week like they used to. Like happy hour on Fridays and nice dinner on Saturdays, and maybe a dinner on Tuesdays, somewhere in between. Now it's like once a birthday, you know?
BRODIE: It's almost kind of like for restaurants, what we've seen a lot with movie theaters, right? Like people just want to stream stuff on their couches. They don't necessarily want to go to a theater anymore.
ALLISON: Yeah, that's an example I use a lot. Like the music industry as well. … You know, people are getting their music online. You don't really see that many bands happening because people could do it in their home and movie theaters. … Why go out and spend a bunch of money when you could sit on your couch in your own home and use your own bathroom and eat your own food? And instead, what the difference is, what? Just a bigger screen?
So, yeah, with the restaurants, comparing that to that, people aren't really caring as much about what it's going to look like when I sit down. Do I really want to spend two hours going out to dinner where I can just sit in my house and order up something online and have it delivered to my house in 20 minutes? So, people are choosing that over the latter.
BRODIE: What does that mean for the city?
ALLISON: You know, the thing about Arizona has always been an anomaly, because it's so wide and spread out. Like you see a lot more chains here because they can put them in wherever they want. Like, if you look in New York, you don't really see that many. It's a lot of mom and pop shops, because everything is so condensed that you have your business right in your neighborhood. Where here, you need people to travel.
So, because of that, you can now order whatever you want and not have to go get it, and have it brought to you. Or, you know, a lot of things are getting replaced with fast-casual. And so I think, if anything, it is moving towards that fast-casual concept and less, you know, sitting — that two hour dinner. It’s kind of been a thing of the past.
BRODIE: I would imagine as a chef, that's probably not your favorite trend that you've ever seen.
ALLISON: No. Obviously as a chef, when you want to get creative, you want to cook the food, you want to cook, and you don't want to cook the food that is required to survive. And that's what a lot of chefs are doing, is they're changing the way they do things just to survive and not what they want to be cooking.
BRODIE: How so?
ALLISON: So, I'm in the process of opening a restaurant now, and, we are looking at the menu and stuff, and we're looking at things that can be done, as in the fast-casual. Things that can be done quickly. Slow food minus fast food. And it’s — you're trying to figure out how to make that food that was considered slow food — that takes a while — to make it now fast, and without losing any sort of quality in it. And that's a very hard thing to do.
BRODIE: Are people — are chefs — still opening fine dining restaurants? Like, is there still any market for that here, do you think?
ALLISON: There are a couple. A couple of good friends of mine, Stephen Jones, whose restaurant Larder and Delta, was fine dining — of course, fine dining — recently closed. … And, you know, Cory Oppold has Course in Scottsdale, and that's been open a couple of years.
I think there's room for it, but there's not room for a lot of them. There's still people that want to go out and do it and have the budget to do it. But I think a lot of people nowadays, they look at their money, it’s not as good as it used to be. And so going out and spending $400 on a dinner may not be as easy as it was in the past.
So, they're kind of picking and choosing. Therefore, you can't have a plethora of restaurants open. You need the two good ones that survive will be the ones that get that business.
BRODIE: Which is interesting because in the recent past, for example, like sort of after the worst of the Great Recession, the thinking was people maybe couldn't go on vacation or people couldn't buy a new car or something, but they could have a nice meal. So, nice restaurants, the kind that you're describing, seem to be doing somewhat OK, relatively. But now it sounds like what you're saying is even that is maybe too much for some people.
ALLISON: Yeah. I think there's just people looking at different ways to kind of spend their money on what's important to them.
BRODIE: So what kind of food do you find that people want? You've talked a lot about fast-casual, but I would imagine people don't want not good food, right? They still want good food, just maybe cheaper and in a different environment?
ALLISON: Yeah. And it's funny you say the word good because I think what people want is not great food. They want consistent good food. And I think that —
BRODIE: They want to know what they're getting.
ALLISON: They want to know what they're getting. That's why you see people in lines at Cane's.Like, it's chicken tenders. But you know exactly what you're going to get every time. It's always the same thing. Like, people don't want to risk going into a restaurant they never had and dropping 200 bucks and it being terrible and being like that was a waste of money. But I could have just gone — and you always hear that online — like, I could have just gone down the street and gotten this for 50 — you know what I mean? So, yeah. I just think that's kind of what people are thinking.
BRODIE: Do you see this as a permanent trend?
ALLISON: Yeah, I do. I mean, unless the internet goes out. I think that it's definitely — you know, I think we saw something kind of switch in the ‘90s where everything was kind of like that proper restaurant, white tablecloths and wine glasses. Everything was proper.
Then, we're kind of like, no. We can have wood tables and that American bistro kind of aspect: Have the food be quick or do burgers and not have to be steaks all night. And I think that kind of is where we are now, where we're looking at that kind of concept as you may not even need a restaurant anymore.
Like I get into the catering and private chefing because I don't have to support four walls. I just have to support myself. And I think you'll see a lot more smaller restaurants with a bigger scale of the food being more accessible to people, and being able to do all the delivery services and stuff like that because you have to. Because if you don't, and you see the restaurants that don't do any of those, like they're losing out. You know, 30% revenue just because of that.
BRODIE: Which, as you have talked about before, fine dining restaurants, it's not going to taste great if it's sitting in somebody's car being driven to your house. Or even if it's in your car being taken to your house. Like that's the kind of food you kind of have to eat in the restaurant. It's got to be like fresh out of the kitchen.
ALLISON: Right. Yeah. And it's plated a certain way, so you can't really plate some of these beautiful dishes in a, you know, in a —
Brodie: In clamshell. [LAUGHS]
ALLISON: In a styrofoam clamshell, yeah. And, you know, it just doesn't work. That's why those types of restaurants, like you have to be in the right — it has to be like a perfect storm for you to be super successful.
BRODIE: So you don't see a time at some point down the road where maybe people will decide, you know, “I've got a — we've got a couple hours tonight. We've got maybe some disposable income. Let's go have a really nice meal like let's, you know, maybe do it like we did a few decades ago.” And so, it doesn't sound like you see that potentially coming back?
ALLISON: No, I see that — I don't ever see it really going away. I still think that people will go out to restaurants. There will still be successful restaurants.I think it'll just be harder for restaurants. And I think there won't be as many successful restaurants.
BRODIE: OK. So still some like fine dining places, but maybe not as many. And really, only the good ones make it.
ALLISON: Yeah, and like I said, there's a perfect storm that has to exist for you to be successful. And, like, that's why those fine dining restaurants in Vegas, as long as they have the tourism, will be there because people go there to spend money, and that's just part of the trip.
Maybe a mom and dad in Queen Creek isn't necessarily going to want to drop 500 bucks to go out to dinner, because they could just go down to the Queen Creek Olive Mill and get something for 20 bucks, you know? It's just kind of like depending on a lot of other things.
But I do think even in Arizona, I think there's definitely room for those types of restaurants here. It's just that there's not, I don't think, room for a lot of them.
BRODIE: That is Adam Allison, a chef and business owner here in the Valley. Adam, thanks for coming in. I appreciate it.
ALLISON: Of course. Thank you for having me.
