Location, location

There’s a great little restaurant just around the corner. It’s got a pleasant dining room, plenty of passing trade, everything necessary to become the thriving 'local' we need in the neighbourhood. Sadly it’s closed at the moment. In fact, in the last three years, half a dozen shining-eyed young entrepreneurs have taken over the place and poured heart and soul into it. Each time, after a few months, the whiff of enthusiastic frenzy is superseded by the unmistakable odour of commercial death, the padlocks reappear and the bills pile up behind the door. It seems to the civilian restaurant-goer that certain locations don’t just fail once but, in some uncanny way, are doomed forever. It’s irrational but is it possible that spots like this are just cursed?

There are plenty of people keen to believe that the problems of a location pass on like the Black Spot or the Red Death. Here in the ‘New Age’ there are all kinds of ‘practitioners’ willing to help. Each of the four Feng Shui experts I spoke to confidently claimed they could solve the problems of a failing restaurant with a ‘clearing’ ritual - a sort of exorcism of ‘bad energy’. Each, though, blamed different causes, from inauspiciously slanted entrances and ‘building memory’ to malign spirits, ‘geopathic stress’ and the deleterious effects of those wireless order pads. Fortunately all but one felt able to agree on the critical importance of lavatory location. Apparently, if the bathroom is visible from the cash desk, “money will flow away down the drain”. A cynic might suggest that you could get the same effect from hiring a Feng Shui practitioner.

For a more scientifically rigorous approach I tried Siemon Scammel-Katz who runs a behavioural research consultancy. They use all sorts of scarily technical tools, from GPS tracking to head-mounted cameras in analysing how customers respond to an environment.

 “There are so many factors: the position and type of neighbouring businesses, the light, the layout of the entranceways and the proximity of tables - and we can measure the effects”. Does he see evidence of a curse? Not exactly - at least not in the same exciting supernatural way as geopathic stress, maleficent energies or spirits. Some physical features could cause persistent problems if not corrected by a new proprietor; though if things stay unchanged, says Scammel-Katz “the place might as well be haunted”.

Getting people inside the restaurant industry to talk about cursed locations is like talking about pest problems in their kitchens - the first response is total, blanket denial…”Cockroaches? Certainly not” but after few drinks the truth comes out “… they mostly get eaten by the rats”.

Restaurant managers, far too pragmatic a breed to believe in anything as spectral as a curse, do quietly acknowledge that it’s an issue for employees. Gossip spreads fast in the restaurant world so it can be hard to find staff after a high profile failure and even harder to keep them. Launching a new restaurant is a tough job at the best of times but if the crew is turning-over daily, things can rapidly become catastrophic. Dead-eyed, demotivated, waitrons, are as sure a sign to diners that a restaurant is circling-the-plughole as tumbleweed blowing across the dining room and, to make things worse, customers often have higher expectations of the new incumbent. According to one manager, customers flock in when the site reopens but their evaluation of it becomes forensic. With each failure, critical appraisal becomes more intense.

Whether the top chefs and large restaurant companies are believers, we can only guess. The official line is a firm ‘No comment’. Perhaps a high personal profile and huge financial investment provide immunity from curses. Gordon Ramsay Holdings certainly seemed confident enough to open ‘La Noisette’ on the site where both the eponymous ‘Pengelley’s’ and Jamie Oliver’s ‘Monte’s’ collapsed in the full glare of public scrutiny. Head Chef, Bjorn van der Horst hasn’t been spotted weeping at the passe or showing any other outward signs of doom - in fact, he’s looking suspiciously happy in the publicity shots.  So, if there is a curse, perhaps it holds no power over young chefs prepared to meet the Mephistophelian Ramsay (and all His Holdings) at the crossroads at midnight. For doubters, final proof may not be far away. All eyes are now turned to the vacant site in Knightsbridge where Isola and Mocoto both spectacularly melted down in a firestorm of hubris and dire reviews.

If there’s a last word it should really come from a restaurant critic. They’re tuned, like mediums, to any signs and portents, yet, surely far too professional to be influenced by old wives tales. The ferociously rational Marina O’Loughlin is characteristically direct …

“There’s no such thing as a cursed restaurant, she says, just cussed restaurateurs: a great restaurant will survive a bad site but the reverse is never true. Unless you see the shrunken head over the door, blame the boss”.
 
It's often said that restaurants have the highest failure rate of all businesses. The causes are legion. Some problems, it seems, can be inherited with the site, but these can be largely be avoided by a well-run restaurant with a tight business plan. Which leaves only one remaining issue that’s impossible to nail, one lurking malign influence that passes like blight from restaurant to restaurant; the persistent, irrational, superstitious belief amongst customers and staff in some kind of ‘Restaurant Curse’.