HIGH-END RESTAURANTS FACE HEADWINDS POST-PANDEMIC
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STORY BY STEVE CLARK | PHOTOS BY MICHAEL GONZALEZ
perating 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 to scale 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.”
14 SPRING 2023
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