A Wall Street Journal article today discusses economy-strapped restaurants that have realized the key to staying in the black is featuring their bar (often at the expense of the restaurants). One of the featured examples is Maxwell’s at the Club, the restaurant inside the East Bank Club.
To appeal to their bar-going clientele, Maxwell’s has added more cocktail tables and brought in a massive plasma TV, added a roster of trendy martinis (lychee, etc) to their bar menu, and will try to entice bar patrons into the dining room by occasionaly sending around complimentary tastes of the restaurant’s food. Whether it’s working is another matter — a friend of MP reports that on a recent visit, the place was “so empty it was uncomfortable.”
