The Agony of Defeat
Anyone in the baby boomer category will remember the amazing open to ABC’s Wide World of Sports. It featured the horrific fall off the ramp by an Olympic ski jumper and was always accompanied by the immortal line (which came after the “Thrill of Victory”): “and the Agony of Defeat.”
The thing that stays with me to this day is the terrible expression on the guy’s face: he was devastated to see years of hard work and dedication come to a stunning and unthinkable end.
I see that agony of defeat on an almost weekly basis in the restaurant industry. When a restaurant closes, particularly an owner-operated place, the defeat is painful and all-encompassing. Life savings are lost, credit cards that had been maxed out fall into the miasma of debt, angel investors (usually friends or family members) lose their investments, and the community loses as well: a gathering place for people to enjoy is now replaced by what is usually a starkly empty building often covered with demand notes from landlords and utility companies et al. It is an ugly business any way you look at it: ruined credit or possibly bankruptcy, marital squabbles, and the red-faced shame of failure, deserved or otherwise.
And that’s the problem with a lot of places that have closed in Austin. They didn’t deserve their fate. And yet, the quixotic nature of the restaurant business did them in. They might have had good food and service but just couldn’t get on the radar screen for the people that needed to find them.
In the last 5 years alone, I have seen more than 100 dreams of small Austin restaurateurs go up in smoke. Some deserved to close. They simply didn’t have a good product. But most didn’t deserve it.
So the next time you’re inclined to post some smart ass negative comment or a user generated web site, or walk out of a restaurant after a so-so experience and start telling all your friends how much it sucked remember this. Bad news in the restaurant industry travels much faster than good news. If you had a bad experience at a restaurant ask for the GM or owner. If they are worth their salt, they can fix your problem on the spot, And they will. But most diners simply leave, pay the tab, and then start dispensing the bile after the fact. The restaurant can’t know that something was wrong unless you share it with them and give them a chance to make it right. If you do that and they still can’t solve the problem, then they deserve the bad PR.
I catch an abundance of crap from bloggers because I tend to write positive reviews on places I enjoy. I do this not because my services are bought and paid for (as some suggest) but rather because I want to find restaurants that I enjoy that might be flying under the radar. I want to to tell people WHERE to go as opposed to WHERE NOT to go. That’s why I do what I do. I have seen the devastation wrought by a failed owner operated place. If you haven’t been there, you can’t imagine how much it hurts.
I’ve seen the negativity that some folks seem to think equates to “criticism.” And trust me on this, you don’t need this reviewer to tell you where not to go. Word-of-mouth kills a bad restaurant in Austin faster than you can say “al dente.” Yet unfortunately and ironically, word-of-mouth doesn’t always help a good one. Want a few fairly recent examples: Taste Select Wines, Cibo, Dona Emelia’s, Demi Epicurious, El Arbol, Chon Som, The Old School Grill, Bistro 88, Silver and Stone, Aquarelle, The Belmont, Ms. B’s, Sampaio’s, Louie’s 106, Corvina, Domingo’s, Thai Tara, Crimson, Vin Bistro…I could go on. These were all places that, in my opinion, deserved to stay open. Yes, some may have been underfunded and might have had unreasonable budgets. And they knowingly entered one of the most ferociously difficult businesses that anyone can choose to engage in.
Still, I hated to see these guys and many like them close. It’s why I’ll leave the negatives to those who seem to relish in posting them. Once you’ve seen the “agony” of a failed restaurant from my vantage point and the carnage that failure heaps on the owners, it stays with you. And those memories are indelible. So sue me if I choose to look for the positives!
