Lenox restaurant only lasts four weeks

Posted Friday, September 16, 2011 10:06 pm

LENOX -- Gone with the wind.

Asian Breeze, the restaurant that opened in early August as the 22nd downtown eatery, has closed for good after only four weeks in operation.

The business at 9 Franklin St. -- former home of Panorama, featuring Mediterranean cuisine, Pancho’s Mexican restaurant, Athena II and the Lenox Pizza House -- set a record for brevity, according to local restaurateurs who preferred not to be identified.

Owner Yu Tao Wang, who had been a chef at the original Jae’s Spice in Pittsfield five years ago, could not be reached for comment this week.

A sign on the door reads "Closed on Mondays," but "Mondays" has been crossed out and the equipment and decorations Wang brought in for his Asian-fusion dining spot have been removed.

Spiro Grigoropoulos, a co-owner of Athena’s Pizza House in Lee who manages the Lenox building for his father, Christo, told The Eagle on Thursday that Wang "didn’t have a good start and wanted to cut his losses."

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"The winters are long, it’s a beautiful little town but it’s very tough to make it through the winter," Grigoropoulos said. Eventually, he plans to lease the establishment out for another eatery.

Ironically, Asian Breeze closed just two days before a favorable review appeared in the Sept. 8 Berkshires Week section of The Eagle.

Wang, who emigrated from Qingdao, China, 11 years ago and worked at various restaurants in Manhattan before moving to Pittsfield, told The Eagle shortly after he opened in Lenox that "food service is my whole life."

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But, in a setback to launching the business, he learned that he could not serve liquor because licenses can only be held by U.S. citizens. A handwritten sign advising potential customers to "B.Y.O.B." still appears in the window.

Wang’s menu included Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Malaysian cuisine. But just a few days after opening, he told The Eagle he was having trouble spreading the word about his new business.

Other restaurant owners in town pointed to the challenge of opening a business in mid-summer, losing half the tourist trade that fuels most Lenox merchants for the rest of the year.

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"September is always a shock," said Stephane Ferioli, operator of the Lenox Restaurant Group that includes Alta and Church Street Cafe. Except for John McNinch’s Olde Heritage Tavern and Jason Macioge’s Bistro Zinc, Fin, Betty’s Pizza Shack and Frankie’s Ristorante, most downtown dining spots reduce staff, hours and days of operation after Labor Day.

"The season isn’t even eight weeks anymore," said Macioge, whose new novel, "Only the Names Have Changed," is a thinly disguised tale of life in Lenox.

"It’s very, very tough out there, you have to make sure you have money behind you," he explained. "During the honeymoon period when you first open, you should be packed every single night for the first couple of months."

"I feel bad for anyone who opens a business and has to close," he added. "They weren’t busy and there was nothing unique about ‘Asian Breeze,’ though an all-Chinese restaurant like Panda House [in north Lenox] or Koi [in Great Barrington] could have done well downtown."

For Macioge, keeping his establishments open every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas is vital. "We served 140 dinners at Zinc on the night of Irene," he pointed out, a time when more than half of the town’s restaurants were shut down.

"If I were to close for a few months, it would be beneficial to me," he said. "But I have an obligation to the people who live here year-round and to my staff."