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In Somerville, hoping to reverse the restaurant curse

E-mail|Link|Comments () February 4, 2010 07:00 AM

Globe staff photos/Joanne Rathe

Joe Cassinelli, who will open Pizzeria Posto near Davis Square next month, believes he can succeed where others have failed at 187 Elm St.

By Peter DeMarco, Globe Correspondent

SOMERVILLE -- Locals call it the Location of Doom. The Bermuda Triangle of restaurants. The place where restaurants go to die.

Four have closed at 187 Elm St. near trendy Davis Square in the past five years, after peddling everything from burritos to buttered croissants. All of them started out with such high hopes -- and sunk before they knew what hit them.

“The Nightmare on Elm Street,” remembered John Pepper, who opened one of his popular Boloco burrito joints at the location in 2007. “To date, that’s the only restaurant we’ve ever closed in 13 years being in business.”

Next month, a new restaurant, an upscale trattoria/wine bar called Pizzeria Posto, will enter the space, hoping to break the bizarre spell. It will feature an exposed, wood-fired oven, dough imported straight from Naples, and an ultra-modern wine “preservation” machine.

Unlike the restaurants that have come before, Posto will have a full liquor license and will cater to a slow-food dinner audience, as opposed to Red Line commuters in search of sandwiches and coffee.

“I’ve created something completely different,” said head chef and owner Joe Cassinelli, 32, who gushes about the locally raised, oven-roasted whole chickens and rosemary-lemon-infused cocktails he plans to serve. “I’ve created a dining destination, the only wood-fired pizzeria around. It’s the only wine bar around. It’s the only chef-owned restaurant in that area.”

PHOTO GALLERY

Cursed? Past restaurants at 187 Elm St.

Oh -- and one more thing.

“I don’t believe in curses,” Cassinelli said.

New restaurants frequently fail, of course. One popular adage has it that 90 percent don’t survive a year. But studies suggest that perception is way off. H.G. Parsa, a University of Central Florida professor who’s an expert on restaurant failures, says 40 percent fail within their first two years. Based on Parsa’s findings, the odds of so many restaurants failing so quickly at 187 Elm are very slim. (For a gallery of previous eateries, click here.)

Is the location, once home to the original Steve’s Ice Cream, really cursed, as Davis Square bloggers and residents whisper?

The previous tenants of 187 Elm, who would know best, don’t think so. They blame such mundane reasons as increased competition, poor marketing, high rent, weak foot traffic, and lack of alcohol for their respective restaurants’ demises.

Failure is vexing, but there’s no hex, said John Ryan, whose whose Italian-American deli, Green Tomato II, lasted 11 months before closing in June 2009.

“It’s a great building. It had plenty of space. It had parking, which people didn’t even know we had,” he said. “For us, it was just bad timing.”

Carberry’s Bakery & Coffee House, which opened in 1996, was the first to inhabit 187 Elm. (The Steve's building was torn down to make way for it.) The building was owner Matthew Carberry’s dreamiest creation: a 2,500-square-foot space with high ceilings, tons of windows, and an enormous basement for baking and food preparation. Less than a 10-minute walk from both the Porter and Davis square MBTA stops, the bakery was bustling when Carberry sold it in 2002.

The new owner kept the name, but patrons didn’t take to the change. The emergence of Starbucks in Davis Square cut into sales. (Carberry’s current management did not return calls.) The bakery closed in December 2004, and the “Carberry’s Curse” was born.

O’Naturals, a health-food chain founded by the creators of Stonyfield Yogurt, moved in next. Mac McCabe, the company’s CEO, was ecstatic about the location, believing that Cambridge and West Somerville’s highly educated, health-conscious masses would flock to the restaurant.

But O’Naturals couldn’t shake the locale’s reputation as being strictly a breakfast-lunch place. Dinner sales, already hurt without liquor, were abysmal. Foot traffic from Porter and Davis was weaker than expected, too.

“The place is as right in the middle of the two squares as you can get,'' McCabe said. "It’s sort of a wasteland.”

Boloco faced a different challenge: Anna’s Taqueria, which has locations in both Porter and Davis squares. Try as he might, Pepper couldn’t break Anna’s burrito stronghold. “Our biggest problem was that we weren’t good at saying, ‘Here’s why Boloco is different,' " he said. When the Tex-Mex chain Chipotle also opened in Davis, Boloco was finished.

Ryan took over 187 Elm in August 2008 with the goal of re-locating his catering operation from his flagship Reading restaurant. His best customers, after all, were pharmaceutical sales reps who bought lavish lunches for Boston and Cambridge doctors’ offices. But just as Green Tomato II was opening, the Massachusetts Legislature voted to restrict pharmaceutical sales gifts. Ryan’s business vanished, and he closed within a year.

Cassinelli obtained his liquor license in December and is the midst of remodeling, with plans to open the first week in March. Given everything Cassinelli has going for him -- including his cooking skills (he’ll be in the kitchen nightly) and restaurant know-how (he previously opened Teatro and Stealth) -- the consensus says he’ll succeed. There’s just one wrinkle.

Flatbread Company, a wildly successful wood-fired pizzeria, is coming to Davis Square this spring. Its concept -- bowling and family-style dining -- is different from Cassinelli’s “modern twist on an old-fashioned trattoria.” But if it boils down to wood-fired pizza vs. wood-fired pizza, Cassinelli could be in for a fight.

At this point, he says, there’s no looking back.

“People shouldn’t be afraid to take a chance on a space because of its history,” Cassinelli said. “If you’ve got the plan and the will to do it, you’ll succeed.”