DOWNTOWN LUNCH BREAKS Timpano’s Chop House, at the corner of Main and Texas, shut down last week — meeting the same fate as its predecessor, Bossa. Where will expense-account lunchers go now? “In the shadow of Timpano’s sudden closure skulks a disheartening Houston restaurant trend: the precipitous decline of the downtown business lunch. This spring, such expense-account stalwarts as Voice (in the Hotel Icon) and 17 (in the Alden-Houston Hotel) have eliminated lunch service entirely. On April 1, Spencer’s for Steaks and Chops in the Hilton of the Americas–the premium restaurant in Houston’s largest convention hotel–gave up on lunch service and moved its official opening time to 2 p.m.” [Cook’s Tour]
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Another Main Street success story. Good thing the politicians put so much of our money into the area so that Orlando-based chain restaurants could become serial failures just like the clubs.
On the other hand, Azuma across the street seems to do ok. Maybe the problem was that not enough people knew about Timpano’s bone-in filet?
I think a lot of company’s right now have simply stopped letting employees have lavish expense account lunches. This time last year noone would have batted an eye at long extravagant lunches but when you’re trying to balance cash flow the simplest things to cut are going to go first.