A growing trend in the restaurant biz is to create two dining spaces, each with their own ambience and price point, with a common kitchen, as a way to provide diners with a way to match their appetites to their mood, as a recent NY Times article sent to me by John (thanks!) explains:
Faced with a choice of giving diners a formal or casual experience, the restaurateurs behind these projects have elected both, creating multilevel, multifaceted enterprises.And they have expanded the city's population of multiple personality restaurants, which have a cunning, a chemistry and a set of confusions all their own.
These restaurants reflect chefs' big ambitions, restaurateurs' hedged bets and diners' divergent appetites. And sometimes they represent riddles, their components inviting different responses.
Does this make sense to you? As a diner that's generally more food than fashion conscious myself, I like the idea of great food in an informal setting, but it dilutes the identity and the branding of the concept somewhat.
The MGM Grand in Las Vegas used to have "Mark Millers","Coyote Cafe" and "The Grill Room". I thought it was fantastic. You could have a casual lunch at the Cafe. You could then comeback later that night and have a fancy dinner at the Grill Room. The Grill Room was one of my ultimate food experieces. I could not get enough of Millers food.