Newsletter #74
On the Closure of a Restaurant
This week’s newsletter is a few hours behind schedule due to three days lost to sickness last week. Thanks for understanding!
It happened again: a favorite restaurant has closed. After 15 years of business in Arnold, just south of St. Louis, 54th Street Scratch Grill & Bar has closed.
My wife and I were at home when she saw the news online concerning 54th’s pending closure. Reading the online edition of The Leader confirmed what my wife and I had both come to suspect of one of our favorite restaurants: they were struggling. What’s interesting about the press release is that the president of the management company who owns the restaurant chain cited geography as the driving factor behind the decision to close. Michael Norsworthy explained that it was only eight miles from their South County location. “If there was 15 miles between Arnold and South County, we would probably keep it open. We made a mistake.”
This is odd. Most restaurants fail within the first five years of operation, and many quicker. 54th Street has been in its Arnold location for 15 years. However, only now have the powers-that-be determined, “You know, it’s too close to the other location. We need to call it quits.” Yet the restaurant seemingly thrived for years. Even the article notes their investment of between $3 million and $3.5 million in the building. Again, this seems odd if you can see the handwriting on the wall for a long period of time.
As always, read the footnotes. In this case, read the comments.
My wife tells me that as she read the article online, she found some reader comments in response to the story. Many of them pointed to the decline in the quality of service, food, and significantly hiked prices. (She and I had experienced the same in several post-COVID visits.)
My point in bringing this up isn’t to debate inflationary pressures and labor shortages in the food industry; those are well established in nearly every type of food service. But when those things are combined—especially alongside decline in food quality—these are an absolute death knell for restaurants.
I can see why the restaurant managers and ownership group wouldn’t want to include such an admission in the public release. It would be egg-in-the-face, and perhaps would deter people from checking out their South County location. Yet it wasn’t always this way.
For years, 54th had been a go-to dining destination for my wife and me, along with many others. While I’ll always prefer locally owned and operated restaurants, 54th was an exception to the rule.
It is, indeed, a chain. In some respects, it feels like a chain. It has quite a few locations, all in key markets: Dallas/Fort Worth, San Antonio, St. Louis, and Kansas City (where it’s based). The menu is quite broad, covering a range of tastes and familiar American favorites. The décor is eclectic and kitschy, wall-to-wall Americana. Actors, musicians, athletes, and the like surround most sections of the place. The Arnold location even has a small, Indy-race car suspended from the ceiling.
You don’t have to love all that mess to appreciate the great food. I often told people I took there, “I’ve never had a bad meal here,” and that was saying something! I probably ate there 50 times over a nearly twelve-year period. We took people whom we were trying to evangelize, disciple, and/or bring into church membership. We ate there with countless missionaries, denominational leaders, visiting revival preachers, and the like. We ate there with many church families, two or three in particular.
Gone. Closed.
Will I miss the gringo dip and chips? Absolutely. Will I miss the ribs, Cuban sandwich, and potato soup? You bet. Will I miss the cherry limeades? Yes! More than anything, I’ll miss having a place so close to our church where I can take anyone, confident they’ll find something they’ll enjoy eating.
I’ll also be a bit on edge going forward, wondering what favorite place is next on the chopping block. After all, I’ve had three favorite restaurants (all local, St. Louis-area places) close for good over the last seven years. Their years of service ranged from 21 years to 66 years.
Jimmy’s on the Park Closes After 21 Years (stlmag.com)
Owners plan to close Poppy’s Ristorante, Quonset Lanes | Local News | myleaderpaper.com
Cusanelli's closing amid coronavirus pandemic | ksdk.com
Yes, It’s a Spiritual Thing
Christians know as well as anyone that food and faith enjoy a deep and rich connection. Jesus described himself in many ways, including the bread of life. He even equated eating his flesh and drinking his blood to having communion with Him. In more than one way, he regularly set a table for people in his presence—both his enemies (namely, sinners and tax collectors) and his friends (namely, Peter and the apostles). People conveniently forget that one of the many accusations hurled against him was that he was a glutton. (And this was before buffets.)
Food united (and still unites) people. It has a way of creating a leveling effect between people. Why? Because we all need to eat. Despite how you divvy calories up throughout a day, you must stop, at least partially, to eat if you intend to keep going. Even that perspective tends views food merely as fuel. It’s useful insomuch that it reminds us of our limits which come to us by virtue of our createdness. But this perspective alone misses the larger spiritual reality of how we tend to eat with those whom we love, value, and wish to serve.
When I lament the closure of an area restaurant, there’s more than one angle from which I can see it. I can wonder about a favorite waiter/waitress—where will they end up? I can wonder about a unique dish prepared there—will that recipe be lost to the ether? More than anything, I think of the memories shared over so many meals. I still have them, of course. But I’ll have to form new ones elsewhere.
Obviously, some of my concerns are mitigated by the fact that 54th was (is) a chain. There are other opportunities to dine there. My concerns are also relativized by the fact that most of us can agree that the purest and most special meals are those we enjoy within our homes, prepared by our own hands. I have no problem conceding to that viewpoint either. In fact, that experience warrants another newsletter altogether!
Why else am I making a fuss over this? A few readers will know that my ThM thesis was supervised by perhaps the foremost theologian of food and faith, Norman Wirzba. I certainly have been influenced by him personally and intellectually along these lines. But I don’t think you have to be super-conscientious or intellectual over food to grapple with the loss of places for fellowship.
Not long ago, I read an article lamenting the fact that McDonald’s and Taco Bell restaurants were getting rid of places for people to sit. The author describes such places as “social necessities.” That claim seems awfully strong, but he’s right. We need a place to come together. While our homes should be and must be more central to our fellowship with others, including those new to our lives, we would be myopic if we thought that all significant social exchanges had to transpire there.
How many meaty conversations about the faith have you had over a cup of coffee and scone at Panera Bread Co. in the last six months?
How many times did you treat your kids to a Happy Meal at McDonald’s over their childhood?
Remember the time you impressed that church member by remembering their favorite dipping sauce from Chickfila?
And these are just the dining experiences at chain restaurants, with little distinct character.
Remember the dive your grandfather used to take you to for cheap pancakes on Saturday mornings?
Remember the critical church member who happened to like the same hole-in-the-wall BBQ joint as you, and you were able to have a constructive conversation over brisket?
Remember the first date (and later anniversary celebration) at the pizza joint where they still only take cash, and give free breadsticks?
Consider, are the details of these venues (in the case of both the chains and the local establishments) incidental to the experiences, or somehow integral to them? You’re tempted to say incidental, for integral seems too strong. Is there some middle way?
However we may characterize our experiences, the details of places (restaurants included) lodge in our memories such that we cannot rightly recount them without reference to their particulars. I think this is a kind of understated kindness from God to us.
What Kind of Place is a Church Building?
Without intending to open up another large horizon this far into this newsletter, I do want to point out something obvious to most honest folks. Our dining experiences with others bears some similarities to people’s experiences with the body of Christ in physical places.
We certainly want to avoid crude comparisons too commonly made between eating establishments and churches. Everyone has heard someone assert their need to change churches due to “not feeling fed.” Perhaps some of us have even heard people justify a change in the church’s worship due to the incontrovertible truth, “The customer is always right.”
In much simpler terms, I see an analogy between the richness and texture of our fellowship in communal places and how that experience works itself out in worship spaces.
Winston Churchill is credited with the assertion, “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.” I also like Matthew Lee Anderson’s formulation: “Buildings matter because bodies matter.”
When we think of the nexus of fellowship and food, community and cuisine, we think of places hospitable to such experiences. So even as I lament the closure of yet another establishment (declining though it was), I rejoice in the fact that I can say that the church I’m privileged to belong to—and frankly all those I’ve previously belonged to—have proven to be places where memories were made over meals. The spaces permitted it. The leaders encouraged it. The cooks fueled it. And the people valued it.
This may not be the first item on a church health checklist, but it’s certainly made possible by some of the boxes we hope to be able to check.
Follow Up:
Recently I wrote twice about war films. Is it just me, or is the main score to Band of Brothers the most moving thing you’ve ever heard? I get choked up every time.
Currently Reading:
Catch-up week
Quote of the Week:
“There are no shortcuts to wisdom anymore—there is only the hard, plodding work of grappling with minds who have penetrated to center of things with a clarity we do not have.”
Matthew Lee Anderson, “The Crisis of the Body.”
Also On My Mind (New Feature):
In this new feature, I’ll offer a brief claim, comment, or question that’s on my mind. It’ll be something I may pursue (or have pursued) in prior newsletters or essays, or it may just be a one-off type of thing. This feature simply allows me the chance to get something out there that may not be fully formed, but potentially may be substantial enough to provoke some reflection or conversation.
Generally, I think the three most perplexing changes or projects in any type of church situation are as follows (in no particular order): (1) reaching families with kids when you don’t have any families with kids; (2) significantly reforming the overall approach to worship without losing 25% or more of the congregation; (3) leading a non-evangelistic church to become evangelistic.