HIGH-END RESTAURANTS FACE HEADWINDS

POST-PANDEMIC

STORY BY STEVE CLARK | PHOTOS BY MICHAEL GONZALEZ

Operating a high-end restaurant successfully, much less three of them, is always a complex proposition, but it was a whole lot easier before the pandemic.

Ask chef Larry Delgado, whose McAllen-based Delgado Collective is made up of house.wine.&bistro., SALT and Salomé on Main, which he and his wife, Jessica, opened in 2008, 2013 and 2019, respectively. While COVID appears to be with us for good, quasi-normalcy has returned to many corners of daily life, but restaurants like the Delgados’ are still facing headwinds that largely weren’t a factor before the pandemic.

LARRY REMEMBERS THOSE DAYS WITH FONDNESS.

“It was great,” he says. “Business was fantastic. We were looking in Brownsville as a matter of fact. We were looking at Corpus Christi, and we kind of toyed with the notion of Austin or San Antonio. Pre-pandemic, business was pumping on all cylinders and we were looking for a way for our restaurants to expand.”

Enter the pandemic, shutdown and

“survival mode” for the Delgado Collective. The situation demanded nimble adaptability. The Delgados, like so many other restaurant owners, got into the delivery business, setting up their own system rather than paying what the third-party delivery companies were asking. The company has also leaned much more heavily into catering as delivery has tapered off, Delgado says.

Supply chain issues and skyrocketing prices for food have forced some items off the menu, he says. The tuna from Honolulu Fish Co. first became hard to get. Now if it’s available, it’s unaffordable, Delgado says.

Where we used to get free shipping, now we might have to pay a couple hundred dollars in shipping, and now I can’t offer a beautiful filet of ahi tuna or sashimi or Japanese sea bass,” he says. “I can’t do it for $35 anymore. I can’t even do it for $45. I have to sell it for $70.”

BEEF, SAME STORY.

“Beef came down to a manageable price and last week [went] right back up to $17.99 for ribeye,” Delgado says. “That’s double what it was pre-pandemic. We used to pay $9.99.”

Staffing is another headache. The Delgados are down to fewer than 90 from a peak of 145 across all three restaurants. These issues barely scratch the surface, though Delgado is loath to sound like a complainer. McAllen has been very good to his business over the years, he says, and for that he’s exceptionally grateful. At the same time, he’s hoping for a little understanding from customers who might balk at higher menu prices or extra credit card fees, none of which comes close to covering losses he’s experiencing.

On the bright side, the Delgados were coming off a terrific fourth quarter of 2022 after a “miserable year,” and Delgado had his fingers crossed for more of the same for the first quarter of this year. Chef Adam Cavazos, who opened Bodega Tavern & Kitchen in McAllen seven years ago in November, originally aspired to a Delgado Collective-caliber experience, but ended up modifying his concept. The Mercado District was Bodega’s first home, and Cavazos says he’s grateful for the experience even if it didn’t pan out.

“We had lots of things on our menu that were what I was considering sort of more pushing the Valley’s culinary scene forward,” he says. “But the pandemic really changed all of that. We had to fight for survival during the closure.”

Bodega’s pivot to a less exclusive but nonetheless chef-driven concept has worked out well, Cavazos says. But he’s grappling with higher costs along with everyone else. It’s meant changes to the menu and substituting products when something gets too expensive or hard to come by.

“There’s a couple of things I pride myself on, and one of those things is finding lower priced items that are just as good in quality and dressing them up,” Cavazos says. “It’s how you treat the product, is my philosophy.”

He’d like to maintain Bodega’s reputation for being reasonably priced if higher end, though it’s hard to know how to handle ribeye going up from $12.99 to $19.99 a pound, especially since New York Strip was already on his menu, Cavazos says.

TERES MAJOR RIDES TO THE RESCUE.

“They call it the hanging tender,” Cavazos says. “It’s a tender that comes from the shoulder clod and it’s about maybe a foot long. Basically we made little steak medallions, and that was our other steak option. We sous vided it and we served it with the leak purée and the red wine jus. In other words, for us it was all about getting creative and finding … items that had the quality but that were cheaper and that we could do them in our style, if you will.”

Rafael Lopez’s family has been riding the hospitality industry roller coaster since his grandparents ran a one-stop bar, restaurant, store, bus stop, barber shop, hotel and party venue in the center of their tiny village in northern Spain. Lopez and his brother Jose Antonio and sister Alicia opened La Pampa Argentinian Steak House in Brownsville in 2004 and Madeira, also in Brownsville, in 2011, after having success with the same concept in Toluca, Mexico.

La Pampa reopened in a new location (on Pablo Kisel Boulevard) only a few months before the pandemic arrived in the Rio Grande Valley. The family was on the verge of opening Antíca Gastrobar, a new watering hole next door to La Pampa, but then came the big shutdown. Madeira and La Pampa were eligible for forgivable loans through the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) since their employees had been receiving paychecks, but Antica hadn’t yet cut its first payroll check much less sold its first beer, and thus was ineligible.

“We had everything to open Antíca,” Lopez says. “We even had the servers, the bartenders, the bar backs, the chef — everything all ready to go, but we couldn’t open.”

La Pampa and Madeira found themselves in the takeout business, something the family was not prepared for, since the fare they’re famous for generally doesn’t travel well — especially steak. “You take it to your home and it’s going to be cold,” Lopez says. “What are you going to do with it? Put it in the oven? You are killing the food.”

Still, it was a way to keep tips flowing to their servers at a time before PPP was announced. The family was determined to hang on to their valuable employees and succeeded for the most part.

“We wanted to keep the servers and the kitchen staff,” Lopez says. “After so many years your staff, well, it’s the most important part of any business. … We did the same at Madeira. We tried to sell food to go and we changed our menus to do it simpler, less expensive. But basically we didn’t make any money.”

Business came roaring back after restaurants were allowed to reopen and people had federal COVID-assistance money burning a hole in their pockets and a profound wish to get out of the house, he says.

“When the money started coming in, the restaurants went up like crazy, like the best sales in years,” Lopez says.

Fast forward a year to early February and things are “not perfect,” he concedes. Customers are still coming in but spending a little less extravagantly, toning down the celebrations a notch or two. Some who used to come twice a week maybe are only coming once a week. The last two weeks of January were unusually slow and Lopez’s suppliers were warning of coming beef price hikes, while some products sometimes become impossible to get.

“It’s not as consistent as before, and that’s something that we have to understand,” Lopez says.

Despite the obstacles, he believes the worst of the pandemic is over and that — barring a catastrophe — the restaurants can survive pretty much anything the next two decades throw at them. If not for the financial help, however, including assistance from the city of Brownsville, it might have been a been a grimmer outcome, Lopez says, expressing gratitude for “how the government managed things.”

“Without the help from the government, we couldn’t have done it,” he says. “Probably none of it would have survived. It would have been a struggle to survive.” z

Steve Clark is a reporter for The Brownsville Herald. In his spare time, he enjoys playing banjo and guitar, canoeing with his lovely wife Laura, and eating and writing about great food.

Left image:Chef Adam presenting a dish

Top image: Dining room at La Pampa

Bottom image: Chef cooking with a pan while it is on fire.