Shop till you drop, then try the soup
When Jamie Monovoukas took her twin 4-year-old boys to the Natick Collection recently, she planned on cruising around as usual and popping in at Au Bon Pain for a quick bite.
Then she spied Cafe Bistro, Nordstrom's full-service restaurant located upstairs right next to the juniors department. Soon, her boys were eating french fries and strawberries and she was tucking into an herb-roasted salmon salad.
"Eating in a department store is such an old-school idea," said Monovoukas, a Weston resident. "I remember doing it with my mom when I was in parochial school. You still see it a lot in Europe, but not here. It's nice."
The department store restaurant, once as common as the gift-wrap counter, is starting to reappear around Boston.
While the Natick Nordstrom has Cafe Bistro, the new Nordstrom in Burlington is home to Blue Stove, an eatery offering small plates of French, Italian, Asian, and other world cuisines. Additional Nordstrom locations, set to open over the next two years in Braintree and Peabody, will also feature in-store restaurants.
Meanwhile, Bloomingdale's in Chestnut Hill plans to open a new in-store eatery this summer. Forty Carrots will feature organic breads, homemade soups, and healthy entrees.
Anne Keating, a spokeswoman for Bloomingdale's said the store wants to provide shoppers with a full-service retail experience. "Shoppers come to a store like Bloomingdale's to see what's new in fashion, what's new for the home - for a whole lifestyle experience - and that certainly includes food," she said.
In-store restaurants date back to the 1870s. Orlando Veras, a spokesman for Macy's, said the original Macy's on 6th Avenue and 14th Street in Manhattan opened a lunchroom in 1878 featuring, among other things, hamburgersteak with onions and cream of celery soup.
In Boston in the '40s, '50s, and '60s, Filene's, R.H. White, and Lord & Taylor had restaurants, said Mary Troy, director of the fashion merchandising and marketing program at Mount Ida College in Newton.
"Lord & Taylor had a restaurant called the Bird Cage. You sat at little tables and they brought you your meal on a tray," she said. "Filene's restaurant was on the seventh floor next to the designer clothing. It was considered an elegant place to eat." She added that Jordan Marsh and Gilchrist's had bakeries known, respectively, for their blueberry muffins and macaroon cookies.
During their heyday in the 1950s, some restaurants would host fashion shows every day with models walking past the tables, said Jan Whitaker, author of "Service and Style: How the American Department Store Fashioned the Middle Class." "Women would make a ceremony of a grand trip downtown where they'd spend a good part of the day. The lunch was part of the shopping experience."
But the idea of enticing shoppers downtown to linger in a single store for hours faded from the retail scene in the 1960s. With more women working, their leisure time dwindled. Meanwhile, more department stores were built in the suburbs attached to malls with food courts and casual eateries.
"Once women were just driving a few miles to a local mall, it didn't have the same ceremony or sense of occasion," said Whitaker.
Today, in-store restaurants are typically found in stand-alone flagship stores, such as Macy's in Herald Square in Manhattan. Neiman Marcus has 43 restaurants nationwide, although none in Massachusetts. Lord & Taylor has eight stores with places to eat nationwide, but again none in the Bay State. Locally, Louis Boston and IKEA have in-store restaurants.
John Clem, vice president of Nordstrom's restaurant division, said he hopes the store's restaurants catch on. "We know people's lives have changed," he said. "The ability to have a leisurely two-hour lunch is not in most people's capacity. But you can get in and out of most of our restaurants in 45 minutes to an hour. We want to offer a destination dining experience for our customers."
From Monovoukas's perspective, one-stop shopping and eating is a relief, especially with two kids in tow. "Nordstrom is very clever," she said as she folded the napkin in her lap. "They keep you here."
