Thirtyissomething
Green Street Restaurant still blossoms after three decades
By Dan O'Heron 03/05/2009
“Fresh as a daisy” might be a wilted metaphor, but it does suggest a great deal in a few words about Green Street Restaurant, now celebrating it’s 30th year in Pasadena.
There’s a veteran, three-family management group that is still in its prime and rapid in its comprehension of what works and doesn’t in an ever-changing but always tough business.
There’s the youthful enthusiasm of waiters whose need to please is visible. They are very friendly but not conceitedly intrusive or familiar, like, er, you know, that other place.
There’s the consistent promise of great food (try the charbroiled fresh salmon) and beguiling wines (a serious list, moderately priced by the glass). These help to make the restaurant a congenial destination for friendship keeping, business dealing, promise observing, marriage proposing, problem fleeing and bet settling. (Here USC Trojan fans can catch up to The Notre Dame Club of Los Angeles, whose offices are across the lane.)
There’s the Dianne salad. Impudently fresh, and a slap in the face to competitors, it makes up 25 percent of the net business. It was 33 percent until serious entrees like Maytag blue cheese New York steak entered the picture. Plus, there’s that manna-from-leaven zucchini bread.
Another factor in successful aging, there’s that stimulating buzz picked up in a room occupied by interesting guests: Timely gossip that is no sooner done than said.
And one smaller, yet significant, reason for successful aging is that the management does not prolong the life of dishes that are only semi-popular. On my first visit to the restaurant 20 years ago, I relished a green chili and onion omelet. I predicted this dish, in itself, forecast a big future for the restaurant. By the time I became a serious user, Green Street partners Bob Harrison, wife Lisa, Michael and Joanne Hawkins, and Michael’s sister, Catherine, with her husband, Grant Rowe, decided to drop it from the menu while agreeing to keep pushing the Dianne salad as its star property.
Years later, I thought a tuna salad with red bell peppers would be a toss-up with Dianne for popularity. But it vegetated and died. The computer is used to keep track of every single item. The ones that lead a dull and inactive life don’t last long here. It also weighs and measures the ingredients used to bring about the tastes of every dish. In analyzing the cost of each ingredient, Green Street is able to accurately set a price that is “fair and still profitable,” said Harrison in pointing up another factor in successful aging.
But is the term “successful aging” an oxymoron? Isn’t “aging” invariably associated with decline and decrepitude? I asked the partners if they had been dropping dishes or forgetting things.
Harrison: “Well, last Sunday I broke a ramekin.”
Hawkins: “What was the question?”
Humor, said Hawkins, is essential to survival in this business. It takes the bite out of uncomfortable situations and helps them look directly at painful problems. Painful? “Yes, we’re 30 and still doing well. But since the beginning, every morning I wake up chilled by the worry that no one is going to come into the restaurant and eat.
“You can’t take anything for granted. At the original building on Green Street (now occupied by Maison Akira) our dishwasher, Fernando Gonzalez, used to put up strings all over his area for drying towels and stuff. So when we moved here, I spent a thousand dollars for special brackets for Fernando. After opening night, I went back to the kitchen and there was Fernando and his strings. They’re both still with us.”
Said partner Harrison: “The unexpected is the rule. Things happen that we could not have guessed would happen when we began. Once we became part of a divorce action. This couple had been long-time regular customers. But in the settlement, the woman told her lawyer and the judge, ‘I don’t want separate tables. I don’t want to see him. I get Green Street.’”
In today’s slumping economy — by some counts one in five new restaurants will fail in their first year — even good old places where guests come back for seconds are thinking about quitting. Any advice that might help struggling owners stick it out?
“If people are going to dine out less,” said Harrison, “You have to do more so they’ll come to your place instead of the other guy’s. At Green Street, the staff looks for adding value everyday.”
“If I were opening today,” said Hawkins, “I’d think only of a neighborhood business concept. How can I reach the majority of customers who are five or 10 minutes away and what can I serve them that they really like to eat? Each year, about 275,000 to 300,000 people come to Green Street. Just think what it would mean if I could persuade each one of them to come just one more time. The mathematics of success are simple.”
To begin the next 30 years, the partners are refreshing the place with new items like an Italian steak sandwich and an ahi tuna burger — plus, of course, a new ball of twine for Fernando Gonzalez.
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