In Hard Times, Posh Eateries Must Forage for Customers : Dining: Celebrity chefs and California cuisine aren’t enough these days. New menus, perks for frequent customers, even lower prices are being tried.

The days when “foodies” waited two weeks to reserve a seat for a warm goat cheese salad or a tamale stuffed with salmon mousse are gone. Today, the diminishing pocketbook has collided with the discerning palate, turning the tables on some of the trendiest restaurants in the South Bay.

These are tough times indeed for the folks who made cold cucumber soup part of California’s culture. The recession has sent some celebrity chefs scurrying for new ideas to get the masses back into their dining rooms.

Even the most upscale restaurants have been forced to lower prices or juggle menus to satisfy an increasingly budget-conscious crowd. Restaurateurs agree the new reality is that no matter how good the food, people are just not plunking down $50 per person for a meal as freely as they used to.

“We all have to make concessions because we’re all in the same situation,” said Steve Garcia, co-owner of the venerable St. Estephe’s in Manhattan Beach. “The recession has hit everybody and last year was the worst year we’ve ever seen.

“But it’s going to be sad if we have to go back to the days of meat loaf. We’re trying to avoid that.”

With the exception of Ed Debevic’s, the low-brow but high-profile retro diner that closed in Torrance last fall, most well-known South Bay eateries have managed to avoid shutting their doors permanently. However, nearly all of the upscale restaurateurs concede that business is down and that they have been forced to find new ways to try to keep business brisk.

Garcia said the volume at St. Estephe’s, one of the Southland’s most critically acclaimed restaurants, was down more than 30% in the last two years. The decline has forced him to redo his French-Southwestern lunch and dinner menus and consider reducing prices by as much as 15%.

At La Rive Gauche in Palos Verdes Estates, another favored South Bay haunt, last year was the toughest since the dining room opened 15 years ago, according to General Manager Al Castaneda. The restaurant was forced to drop the price of its banquets almost $10 per person to offset the decline in volume, and Castaneda began offering gift certificates and a 15% discount to preferred customers.

To ease the bite from the recession, South Bay restaurant mavens Michael Franks and Robert Bell, who operate Depot, Fino, Chez Melange, Misto and the gourmet market Chez Allez, began a Frequent Diners Club last year that gives points for each dollar spent at their establishments.

The club, styled after the frequent flier programs offered by airlines, provides steady customers with gifts in exchange for their patronage. A customer who has spent $250 is eligible for a restaurant logo T-shirt. A person who buys $10,000 worth of food wins a Santa Barbara getaway for two. And for those who can’t get enough of the items on their restaurants’ eclectic menus, 35,000 points will win a customer a chance at a round-trip ticket to Milan, Italy.

In the trendy food business, that’s considered incentive.

“The bottom line is that you have to constantly find ways to stay new,” Franks said. “Even if you were successful with your formula before, the recession is forcing the industry to be more flexible. If you were marginal before the recession, then it means you’re probably out of business.”

Although Franks said business is up at all of the partners’ restaurants, their catering business has dropped 25%. And the growing perception among the industry is that the longer the recession lasts, the more business will continue to drop off.

“I’ve never seen people so concerned about when the economy is going to turn around,” he said. “I personally have never been so interested in the fate of the Stealth bomber.”

The drop in the high-end restaurant business has given rise to the growth in moderately priced South Bay chain outlets such as Louise’s, California Pizza Kitchen and Houston’s, where generous portions of pizza, pasta and ribs rule the day.

“The general trend in the restaurant business is toward more casual places that give you a good value for your money,” said Guy Gabriele, owner of the highly regarded Cafe Pierre in Manhattan Beach. “People are turning more to restaurants that give them the upscale experience without the upscale price.”

South Bay restaurateurs agree that despite pockets of great affluence, the area has never been as hospitable to highly expensive eateries as the Westside. But they also note that there is a lot less competition, which may explain why more of them aren’t waving their white linen tablecloths in surrender.

Still, they say that the sharp decline in the aerospace industry has greatly reduced the ranks of people who frequent the more upscale restaurants.

St. Estephe’s Garcia, noting that TRW and Hughes are almost within sniffing distance of his restaurant, said the those familiar faces who once casually spent $40 for lunch are just not seen these days.

“We opened in 1980 when interest rates were at 19%, but I’ve never seen anything like last year,” he said.

Still, the occasional frenzied South Bay foodie surfaces. Franks said that when they began offering double points for frequent diners, one woman came up to him and gave him $4,000 in cash so she could get 8,000 points worth of gift certificates.

“You still see an occasional surge, but generally, the whole foodie thing about what’s the newest and hottest restaurant is over,” Franks said. “Right now you have to be aggressive and do things creatively. Those who keep waiting for something to happen are going to find themselves out of business.”