Suffering Succotash

Uptown restaurants like B.B.’s Lawnside Barbecue (see review) may be weathering this crappy economy, but things are a little more bluesy downtown. The three-month-old City Tavern (101 West 22nd Street) has already revamped both its lunch and dinner menus (offering customers much more bang for their buck) and replaced high-profile executive chef Dennis Kaniger with Tim Doolittle, the restaurant’s brashly talented young sous chef.

Further north, in the City Market, Beth Barden, chef and owner of the fifteen-month-old Succotash (15 East 3rd Street), has grown increasingly nervous since the summer crowds that normally pile into the market stopped venturing into Urbanland. Succotash is a hip little “brunchette” with 1940s-style kitchen tables, imaginative daily specials and theatrical desserts — including an eight-layer citrus cake iced with frosting the same color as a 1957 Chevy (“Market Report,” December 20, 2001). It opened with such a big bang that Barden expanded the daylight hours (9 a.m. to 3 p.m.) to include dinner on Wednesdays and Sundays. She even got the Wednesday night diners to bring along board games so they could hang out for a little post-dessert Scrabble or Clue.

But on a recent Wednesday morning, there was only one breakfast customer in the joint: me. Barden sat down with a cup of java and a cigarette.

“I’m getting phone calls from people asking the weirdest things, like ‘Do you have heat?’ or ‘Can we eat inside?’ There’s this perception that when the weather gets cold, the City Market totally shuts down, which is ridiculous. We’re open — and heated! — year-round, and people can sit inside or outside, because there are heaters in the enclosed loggia, too.”

Barden doesn’t know what to think about the drop in business. Is it the weather? The economy? The bad publicity earlier this year when the City Market’s management kicked out a few longtime retailers?

“Weekends are fine. We have a lot of repeat customers, but our weekday business is really hurting,” she said. “There are days when we only sell six lunches. I’m not sure what to do.”

I gave her some off-the-cuff advice: newer board games, better music, cuter waiters in hot pants, perhaps a few slot machines and an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet.

Barden was distinctly unimpressed. “I think there are better ideas.”

If you have any, go in and tell her about them. I tried!