In my opinion, Havana Street Station restaurant made the best peach cobbler in the world. We went there for lunch often. And then, one day, the place went out of business.
Under new management, it changed its name and stopped serving “American cuisine.” In fact, it has undergone several metamorphose: from American to Mexican and, lately, Vietnamese.
Whenever I cross Mississippi on Havana, I wonder: Where did the former employees go? I lost something I enjoyed a great deal, but how about the employees’ livelihoods? Their talent?
In my first few years in Denver, I occasionally visited Pierre Wolf’s Quorum restaurant on Colfax. Many of Denver’s professionals, folks who worked in downtown hi-rises, frequented Pierre’s Quorum for its French cuisine, polite company and elegant surroundings.
Then the day came that the Quorum shut its doors, and Pierre Wolf and his wonderful employees (cooks, chefs, servers, etc.) were at that site no more. “Exigencies of economics,” someone explained. Business couldn’t be sustained; doors had to close. It was soon reborn as an Indian restaurant: different food, different culture, different owners.
Dinner in the new establishment cost a fraction of what Pierre charged. The new staff of Indians and immigrants from Latin America was paid a good deal less than the Quorum had paid its American workers.
One premier restaurant after another has shut its doors, only to later open up as a fast-food joint, an Oriental, Mexican or Indian restaurant. I became good friends with folks at the Normandy on Colfax; several staff members had been my patients. After the Quorum closed, Normandy stayed open for several years. It did a brisk business; I believed it would survive for years. We enjoyed dinners and lunches there (their duck was exquisite).
Customers are never privy to the reasons why establishments close their doors. The Normandy closed without farewell. Perhaps the neighborhood’s character was changing, or longtime patrons – middle-class Americans marching farther and farther from the heart of the metropolis – stopped coming.
When I revisited the place, it was no longer the French restaurant I once knew. I felt as if a centuries-old oak tree had been felled for firewood. The new Vietnamese establishment had a distinctly different atmosphere.
The inexorable change in the commercial landscape of our neighborhoods changes how we orient our lives, who we are. To me, old establishments are like old friends with whom we grow up, with whom we have become comfortable. As the Beatles sang: “There are places I remember all my life. Though some have changed/ Some forever, not for better.” For my part, I miss the places now gone forever.
Growing up in Africa, I learned how to use Western utensils, spoon, knife, fork. Here I have tried to learn how to use chopsticks and have learned about foods and culture from the four corners of the world. I have saved money in inexpensive Chinese restaurants.
Still, in my mind, we are losers in the struggle for America’s commercial soul. Americans are in a Wal-Mart mode, selling off the traditional and all that we deem too expensive, too elaborate. Establishments that went by the wayside paid their workers better and gave them benefits. Today’s kitchen worker in an inexpensive restaurant receives a pittance. The effect? To lower all our standards.
I remind myself that market forces are what rule our capitalist world. The marketplace is fickle and unpredictable; it takes peoples’ livelihoods away and bestows a fraction to others.
We choose Wal-Mart over mom-and-pop establishments that have stood on the same street corner for decades. My peach cobbler cook was replaced by an Asian or Mexican cook.
I pass no judgment, but merely lament the demise of some precious spots. I hope The Fort, Sam Arnold’s creation, will survive for many decades, despite his recent passing.
Pius Kamau of Aurora is a thoracic and general surgeon. He was born and raised in Kenya and immigrated to the U.S. in 1971. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.
