Pasta la vista

Where would the Brady Arts District be without Spaghetti Warehouse?

Somebody forgot to turn on the neon. It used to be the only thing aglow in what’s now called the Brady Arts District, beaming red with hope and largesse. Even the words—“Spaghetti Warehouse”—screamed doggy bag. Tonight it hung there, unplugged.

It being the next-to-last Wednesday the Warehouse would be open, a disclaimer taped to the door warned of a limited menu: “We are not offering Warehouse Wednesday prices.” Still, the parking lot—a concrete sea unto itself—was packed and the waiting list 30-40 minutes.

While the kids played Centipede, I took a seat in the fabled front parlor and tried to remember the last time I’d been in the place. Around the release of Nirvana’s In Utero, maybe?

Spaghetti Warehouse could re-open tomorrow as an antique store and probably clean house. Equal parts Ollie’s Station, Olive Garden, and Interurban, it’s the original melting pot: Italianate food in a Wild West setting,
minus the can-can girls, and probably the last place on earth you can get your palm read and your love tested.

Soon enough we were seated at a table up front near the bar and handed a scraggly menu offering 25 items, which elsewhere would be plenty but not here, conceptually speaking.

We ordered a medley of classics: fried calamari, spaghetti and meatballs, chicken parmigiana, chicken Caesar. My kid had been loving him some calamari. Tonight he learned he’d been loving squid. “Oh, man …” came the lament, but it was actually delicious: crisp, brightly seasoned, and more al dente than the pasta. But were you ever here for the food?

“None of the ceiling fans are turning,” my salad-eating wife said. “Ceiling fans are kind of a thing here.”

She was right. Maybe that’s why the air was so smoky. Through the light haze, I read an ad, a replica on painted wood, for “Frank Lava, Gunsmith: Revolvers Bought • Sold • Repaired.” Shoot, Frank could open up today and make a killing.

With March Madness in the air, the TV in the bar was tuned into NCAA … wrestling. This caused more confusion than the squid revelation. 

“I don’t understand,” my other son said.

“Take them to see the trolley car,” my wife said, with the implication, “while you still can.”

The car was standing room only. It was like watching a small, test-version of the concept. Other diners ate, enviously studying the trolley diners eat.

Incorporated in 1972, Spaghetti Warehouse had a presence in some 50 cities at its zenith. Over the years, in towns and bricktowns all over, Spaghetti Warehouses have been vanishing, shuttering in neighborhoods now flourishing, thanks to places like Spaghetti Warehouse. 

“Akron, Columbus … all the same stories,” said Michael Kim, a VP for BLD, which owns Spaghetti Warehouse. BLD, for “Building Lives and Dreams.”

In Tampa’s Ybor City, it occupied “a large brick building that once was the largest cigar factory in the world and is now owned by the Church of Scientology,” said the Tampa Bay Times. It closed last September. 

In Charlotte, it had opened in the old Nebel Knitting Co. mill. “At the time,” read a post on the Charlotte Eats blog, “the South Blvd corridor was in a state of disarray. Lined with empty buildings and a fringe atmosphere, South End was a depressed area that was avoided by most.”

“Whatever Happened To … Spaghetti Warehouse?” begged the headline in the Rochester (NY) Democrat & Chronicle, in a standing column that covers places disappeared.

“The Spaghetti Warehouse was just outside the Inner Loop,” the D&C reported. “Critics praised the look and vibe of the place and the quick service. They were less enamored with the cuisine, but the masses apparently didn’t care.”

From the Austin Eater blog: “The realtors handling the lease told the [Austin American] Statesman there’s been national interest in the historic landmark building and that ‘well-known restaurants have been looking for an opportunity like this in downtown Austin for years.’ Bonus trivia: the building used to be a brothel.”

Michael Klein of the Philadelphia Inquirer said the Philly SW was known for  “doling out mass quantities at cheap prices to church groups, PGW workers, and the cops at the nearby FOP headquarters. Kids clamor to sit in the trolley car.”

“Corporate has swept in, and the plug will be pulled after dinner service on Monday.” 

That was 2013.

In Cleveland, it occupied a building in the Flats district. Reported Cleveland 19 News: “Managers at the restaurant said that for the past few months the restaurant tried to bring in business by changing the menu and lowering prices, but after Sept. 11, business declined even more.”

Our Spaghetti Warehouse, at Cameron and Detroit, moved into the old Nash Finch Grocery Wholesale building. Nash Finch is now SpartanNash, whose mantra is, “Taking food places.” 

“In the 1970s and ‘80s,” Michael Kim said, “you could build in the middle of nowhere and people would come to you. They were willing to travel 30, 40 minutes to eat at a restaurant. Now, the model is, ‘Stay there, we’ll build where you are.’ Which is suburbia.”

Jeff Castleberry, of Caz’s and Caz’s Chowhouse, was in the Brady District when it was Spaghetti Warehouse to the east, Mexicali to the west, and Caz’s in the middle and that was that, food-and-drink wise. A lot’s changed in the neighborhood since then, he said, and in the restaurant business generally.

“When I was a kid, we never went out to eat,” Castleberry said. “Then, probably in the ‘90s, we saw the saturation of the restaurant culture. And, now, we may be seeing the end of it.” 

In 2016, quick-service restaurant traffic, which represents 80 percent of total foodservice industry visits, dropped for the first time in five years, according to research conducted by The NPD Group, a market research firm. NPD’s Bonnie Riggs recently authored a report titled, “Losing Our Appetites for Restaurants.”

“The dynamics that have driven the foodservice industry for all these many decades are changing and changing quickly,” Riggs said. “There will always be a need for foodservice but there is a shift in consumer attitudes and behavior and the landscape is different.”  

Castleberry saw the future in the autumn of 2015, in the new and abounding food kiosks of Europe. Casual dining, he said, the kind where you sit down at a table, a waiter takes your order, and you pay $10 to $14 a plate, is yesteryear, over there and probably here. BLD’s Kim cites a wave toward trendy and hip dining culture “currently flowing through the U.S. So, the other way, as opposed to our direction.”

“In its day, it did very well,” he said of the Brady Spaghetti Warehouse. “But it had been losing hundreds of thousands of dollars for years. We said, ‘Let’s wait for the Kaiser Foundation, let’s wait for oil and gas.’ But the future was not looking advantageous to our brand.

“The bleeding had to stop.”

As we ate, in that hurried way orchestrated by quick-service restaurants, I realized this could be the last time I ever ate (or ate at) these dishes, in any location.* Done, like the trips to Krebs we used to make for pasta with a side of pasta. The portion sizes are shrinking, and not just on the plate. You could fit all of the Boxyard, with its 17-and-counting shops, inside the one Spaghetti Warehouse. I could feel it all winding down.

“Everybody doing OK?” asked the bartender-hostess, doubling up on jobs.

“Great!” I said.

But it wasn’t great. The food was strangely fine and the service nervous and I should have known to just phone somebody in corporate and leave it at that.

Instead, I asked our waitress, Myra Ybarra, what she was going to do without Spaghetti Warehouse—an almost inconceivable notion given her 14-year career here that started when she was 15.

“I have to think about the positive,” Myra said, one of which was going home to see her kids. She said that, since the announcement, two-hour waits had been routine. Nobody seemed to mind. Not the people in the trolley. Not the overworked but valiant staff. Not the bargain hunters of Warehouse Wednesdays.

Not even Myra.

* | What do I know. The Lounge, aka Bull in the Alley, recently started a three-course Italian spread on Sundays: antipasti featuring cured meat and house-recipe olives, baked goat cheese on challah smothered in red sauce, and chicken Parmigiana with housemade linguini. “We definitely created comforting dishes that we would also want to sit down to on Sundays,” said Casey Tarochione, sous chef at the Lounge. “We also wanted a menu that invited our service industry family in from around downtown.” It’s $35 per.

For more from Mark, read his article on Torero.