VIEWPOINTS : 1987: Looking Ahead to a Year of Big Changes : Menu Eclecticism

In 1987, you’re likely to see big changes in just about everything you buy. If you’re planning a vacation, you’ll notice differences whether you drive or travel by air. If you want to buy a home, you’ll be watching prices and mortgage rates closely. Eating out? You’ll see some unusual, new menus. The worlds of entertainment and retailing are in a state of upheaval. And, with a new tax law, investing may be more tricky than ever.

The Times polled experts in eight fields for their outlook on what 1987 will mean for businesses and consumers.

Put pizza, pasta, sushi, jambalaya and fajitas on one menu, and what do you have?

A total hodgepodge, but also the potpourri type of eclectic menu that is sweeping the country--or at least the West Coast and East Coast, each with its own interpretation.

While there will always be traditional Italian, French, Chinese restaurants and the like, the predominant shift in the restaurant industry--inspired by a host of new young American and European chefs--is toward anything that happens to grab a chef’s particular fancy.

Flexibility, experimentation and non-traditional cuisine are in and are capturing the imagination of yuppified consumers and other types of consumers. Even New York’s venerable 21 Club is being re-fashioned by owner Kenneth Aretsky and by chef Anne Rosenzweig of American cuisine trend-setter Arcadia restaurant in New York.

The food service revolution of the late 1980s is personified by the just-opened B. Smith’s restaurant in--of all places--New York’s Times Square area--where Barbara Smith and Michael Weinstein have put together an Italian-French-American-Japanese mix that defies description. Imagine Maine lobster ravioli and shellfish bisque vying with a vermicelli combination, a grilled duck breast combo and numerous other innovative combos on the same menu.

It’s also dramatized in San Francisco by restaurants such as Joyce Goldstein’s Square One with a Portuguese ragout of clams, chorizo, prosciutto, onions, tomatoes and wine vying with dishes like sauteed prawns and scallops in Yucatan sauce, served with roast oreganoed potatoes and zucchini. Or at Bill Higgins’ Fog City Diner with such offerings as grilled eggplant and onions, and grilled sesame chicken with shitake mushrooms, carrots and Chinese mustard.

Finally, the eclectic trend on the West Coast is summed up by Los Angeles’ City Restaurant with wide-ranging assortments of tandoori skirt steak, gnocchi Parmesan, roasted sweet pepper, vegetable fritters and moussaka.

In general terms, eclectic tends to be interpreted in an American-California way on the West Coast and in a European way on the East Coast, with variations of both in the rest of the country.

But some restaurant concepts are still jumping from West to East as highlighted by Wolfgang Puck’s Italian-California Spago in West Hollywood and his Chinese-French Chinois on Main in Santa Monica being translated respectively into Howard Stein’s Prima Donna and Cafe Japonais in New York.

“Grazing” all-appetizer menus--at $35 or $40 per person--such as featured at Piero Selvaggio’s Primi in West Los Angeles and Barry Wine’s casual Quilted Giraffe in New York are a trend worth watching, as is the emergence of 1940s and 1950s nostalgia with Dennis Berkowitz’s Max’s Diner in San Francisco and Ed Debevic’s diners, which are owned by Richard Melman.

The late 1980s will also emphasize continued movement toward light cuisine (by no means the smaller-portion nouvelle cuisine approach) with salad bars, chicken and seafood gaining popularity. Takeout and home delivery food service and double drive-thru fast food units will sharply proliferate in the next few years.

Supermarket gourmet and deli takeout will intensify, and 7-Eleven will achieve $1-billion food service sales in 1987 as part of the microwave age. Still, it won’t come anywhere close to dominant McDonald’s anticipated $15-billion sales.

Customer traffic will continue to rise as the food service industry moves toward a $200-billion volume in 1987. But chain mergers and bankruptcies also will proliferate due to a saturation of restaurants, numerous copycat concepts and a conglomerate mentality.

Yet the crucial entrepreneurial, pioneering spirit will remain with growing independent groupings of innovative market-oriented restaurants like Higgins’ Real Restaurants and Berkowitz’s restaurants of the San Francisco Bay area, Melman’s Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises of Chicago, Weinstein’s Ark Restaurants of New York, Lee Cohn’s Big Four Restaurants of Phoenix and Steven Poses’ Shooting Stars of Philadelphia.