Year of the Cow

Talking about steakhouses, you’re quickly reminded that the restaurant business is just that—a business. Where your favorite little French place with the local morels and house-made bread caters to diners’ sentimentality, steakhouses are more straightforward. The food is simpler to prepare, and not nearly as perishable as, say, sushi-grade fish. Less ambitious chains can hire cheaper broiler cooks, who talk about “product” and “protein,” instead of purveyors and ingredients. It’s not that there’s no heart in it, but yeah: It’s about the money.

Other financial factors come into play. Consider where most of the steakhouses are located: the Back Bay, Copley, the Theater District, the Financial District. Commercial rents in those neighborhoods average $100 per square foot (in other parts of the city, it’s closer to $40). Even in the South End, which has so far maintained more variety in its culinary mix, many of the restaurateurs own more than one property (think of Barbara Lynch’s multiple South End boîtes, or Andy Husbands’s Tremont 647 and Sister Sorel); this affords them more than one source of income and allows for buying materials in bulk. Smaller operators can’t compete, and so the one-off bistros and quirky cafés head out to Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Cambridge, and the suburbs. When small restaurants do launch close to downtown, it’s often in slightly left-of-center locations, like Tim Cushman’s haute Japanese spot O Ya, tucked into the Leather District. “Every restaurateur would tell you we’re nuts,” says Cushman, “going into a space that no one knows and doing a food that people aren’t familiar with. So far, so good—but we don’t take anything for granted.”

“If you’re going to open a restaurant in Boston right now, you’ve got to be a recognized name or have a killer concept,” says Charlie Perkins, owner of the Boston Restaurant Group, a real estate firm that brokers restaurant deals, including the one that brought Ruth’s Chris to town. “The barriers to entry are so high. The cost of construction is up 25 percent. Rents are steep. A liquor license can cost $250,000, and in Back Bay they can go for as high as $400,000. I get calls from young chefs wanting to open in the city and I tell them, ‘You just can’t.’”