Accompanying the building boom of Downtown condos has been an explosion of bars, clubs and restaurants in Milwaukee. Shuttered storefronts and surface parking lots have given way to kitchens dishing up great food of all kinds.

Joe Bartolotta, Johnny Vassallo, Marc Bianchini and others have built small dining empires in the city thanks to this growth. And the real winners have been Milwaukeeans who love to dine out.

But, Vassallo recently closed Mo's Cucina and Moceans Downtown, and last year Bartolotta closed the Ristorante Bartolotta on Downer. Holiday House is gone, and so is Barossa. After more than a decade, Gil's closed, too.

For a long time now, some have been asking how long the condo boom can last. Maybe a better question is how long can the dining scene can continue to explode? And is the restaurant scene here already oversaturated?

"Very much so," says Ristorante Bartolotta chef Juan Urbieta. "Not only in fine dining, but at any dining level. It's a very hard thing; everyone has a right to make a living. But in this particular field (the service industry), Milwaukee is not yet large enough to support so many restaurants, the arrival of the chain restaurants popping up everywhere doesn't help, either."

While the Milwaukee Health Dept. records 1,372 licensed establishments in 2005-'06, as compared to 1,308 in 2001-'02 -- not a huge difference -- there is clearly the perception that the market is awash in extra place settings.

"The Milwaukee market, in my opinion, hit saturation point a year or two ago," says Mike Eitel, the man behind Trocadero, The Nomad and other local hotspots.

Perhaps the problem isn't so much the number of restaurants as the number of diners willing and able to spend money at them.

"The pie wasn't getting any bigger for several reasons -- access for suburbanites has been difficult due to Park East and Marquette Interchange construction, city population has not been growing at the same pace as restaurant openings, post 9/11, Bush economy suppressed spending, etc. -- and all the while, that pie was getting cut up into smaller and smaller slices making it incredibly difficult for most operators to turn a profit," says Eitel.

Eitel also points to the number of chain restaurants that have opened in the suburbs recently, saying that many of those surbanites without easy access (or the perception of easy access) have taken refuge in regional malls.

"Milwaukee has been lucky to have such a huge variety of independent restaurateurs, and hopefully the rash of closings will come to an end soon," he says. "(But) the huge influx of chains in the suburbs -- at Mayfair and Bayshore in particular -- has added another 2,000 seats to the already swollen glut of restaurant seating."

Ed Lump, president and CEO of the Wisconsin Restaurant Association, has also noticed the suburban growth.

"If you look at the suburbs," he says, "you have an expansion of very nice restaurants in the suburban communities and it might be (drawing away from city restaurants)."

 Page 1 of 3 

Next >>

13 comments about this article. Post a comment / write a review.

Recent Talkbacks ...