Succotash opens a second, cash-only dining room at 2601 Holmes

When restaurateur Beth Barden moved her tiny breakfast-and-lunch business, Succotash, from the City Market to much larger quarters in the former Dutch Hill Bar & Grill at 2601 Holmes in 2009, she thought she had ended the problem of having hungry customers endure long waits for a table. But even in the newer, larger venue, Barden was having long wait issues.

“It’s unfair asking customers to wait 45 minutes to eat brunch,” Barden says.

Last weekend, Barden introduced her 25-seat overflow dining room – it’s only accessible from the north side of the building – created out of a space she had been using for storage and her office.

“Back in the days of the Dutch Hill Bar & Grill, this was the original kitchen,” Barden says. “I just used it for storage. But there is a bathroom back here, and it’s a nice space. This allows us to give regulars a chance to come in, sit down and eat breakfast. There are two servers on the weekends just for this room, but no hostess.”

But can the kitchen crew handle an additional 25 customers on a busy Sunday morning?

“The new dining room actually lets us stagger the seating,” Barden says. “There’s no additional wait time for patrons to get their meals.”

What the new dining room does not have, Barden says, is the machines for processing credit-card payments.

“So we decided to make this room cash-only. That’s the option now. You can wait for a table in the front dining room and pay with a credit card or you can pay cash and get a table right away in the overflow dining room.”

Barden also plans to use the new dining room – which features a bar she pulled out of a Dumpster and a discarded map that she discovered outside an elementary school – for private luncheons and special events.