Bonsoiree
When Chenier and Shin Thompson opened Bonsoiree last September, it was an awkward hybrid: part casual BYO eatery, part gourmet take-out shop, part catering kitchen. But an unadvertised fourth offering, Saturday “underground dinners” like this one, quickly became its calling card–though calling them “underground” is a bit of stretch. At $55 they’re a steal, and diners have to be on the restaurant’s mailing list to get invited, but they’re hardly secret, as the menu for each meal is posted weekly on the Web site.
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Bonsoiree struggled over the winter, offering an a la carte menu during the week. By March, says Chenier, on a good day they were averaging just 15 diners at dinner, with another dozen at lunch. He and Thompson realized that they needed to make some changes. “We decided maybe if we focused on doing a couple of things really well, instead of trying to do a bunch of different things, we’d do better,” he says. “Because as it was it was a lot of work, and we weren’t getting a whole lot out of it.”
