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It seems like restaurants/bars make it to a certain age where they become part of the fabric of a city/town. They turn into those places where "you just gotta g

It seems like restaurants/bars make it to a certain age where they become part of the fabric of a city/town. They turn into those places where "you just gotta go once or twice a year" and anytime someone comes in from out of town you take them or tell them to go. If I had to guess it's around 25 years. If my parents took me there when I was a kid, the restaurant makes it on that list. If my grandparents took my parents there, so much the better.

ghaff 7y ago
Such restaurants still usually end up going out of business. For example, a lot of the fried seafood warhorses in Boston are gone at this point. Still, if you talk about entire countries, there are often going to be some institutions that have at least some sort of vague claim to continuous operation/ownership.
- subpixel 7y ago
  I wonder if that correlates to the local and affordable seafood also having disappeared. There's a limit to the number of customers you can attract with calamari and other things formerly considered bait.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    Possibly. Certainly any traditional deep-fried seafood platter is no cheaper than it was. But tastes have also changed. Although I'm sure they had other things, the traditional Boston seafood restaurants tended to be built around a lot of deep-fried fish (or boiled lobster). There's also been a lot of development in the area where most of them were. Legal's is certainly still around with a generally less heavy hand in terms of prep. And, in general, there are tons of newer seafood restaurants that are mostly in a somewhat different vein than the traditional ones.
MisterBastahrd 7y ago
There's another reason for this, too: most of the restaurants that are long-lived are on land that is owned by the restaurant and has been for some time. It is incredibly expensive to operate a restaurant AND pay rent to someone, especially city prices. It's not as bad when you're just paying maintenance costs and property taxes.

ghaff 7y ago

Such restaurants still usually end up going out of business. For example, a lot of the fried seafood warhorses in Boston are gone at this point. Still, if you talk about entire countries, there are often going to be some institutions that have at least some sort of vague claim to continuous operation/ownership.

subpixel 7y ago
I wonder if that correlates to the local and affordable seafood also having disappeared. There's a limit to the number of customers you can attract with calamari and other things formerly considered bait.
- ghaff 7y ago
  Possibly. Certainly any traditional deep-fried seafood platter is no cheaper than it was. But tastes have also changed. Although I'm sure they had other things, the traditional Boston seafood restaurants tended to be built around a lot of deep-fried fish (or boiled lobster). There's also been a lot of development in the area where most of them were. Legal's is certainly still around with a generally less heavy hand in terms of prep. And, in general, there are tons of newer seafood restaurants that are mostly in a somewhat different vein than the traditional ones.

MisterBastahrd 7y ago

There's another reason for this, too: most of the restaurants that are long-lived are on land that is owned by the restaurant and has been for some time. It is incredibly expensive to operate a restaurant AND pay rent to someone, especially city prices. It's not as bad when you're just paying maintenance costs and property taxes.