Extinguishing Circumstance : Restaurants Warily Debate Impact of Smoking Bans

What do Norms, your typical middlebrow coffee shop, and Abiento, the latest in trendy Italian trattorias, have in common?

You can’t smoke in either.

Norms banned smoking in all of its 16 Southern California restaurants in February, while Abiento has been smoke-free since the Pasadena restaurant opened in May. While Abiento’s bright and loud dining room remains crowded, Norm’s has experienced a larger than expected drop in business as a result of the ban.

The risks and rewards of smoke-free dining rooms are on the minds of Los Angeles restaurateurs after the City Council moved to ban smoking in the city’s 7,000 restaurants. Los Angeles would be the largest of nearly 60 cities and counties nationwide--including San Luis Obispo and, soon, Whittier--that ban smoking in restaurants.

“Our customers will go out of the city,” said Philip Cano, maitre d’ at Musso & Frank Grill, the legendary meeting place for Hollywood powerbrokers. “On Friday and Saturday night after 8 o’clock, our smoking section is busier than our nonsmoking section.”

The city of Bellflower, under heavy pressure from some restaurant owners, repealed an ordinance last year that prohibits smoking in all buildings accessible to the public.

But more restaurants have banned smoking in response to government studies about the dangers of second-hand smoke, said Jo Linda Thompson, senior director of government affairs for the California Restaurant Assn. “Increasing concern about liability both for our customers and our employees” has furthered the no-smoking trend.

In a controversial move, the restaurant group has supported state legislation that would ban smoking in all enclosed public areas--including offices and eating establishments.

But the Los Angeles anti-smoking initiative might be in danger in the wake of legislation passed Thursday by the state Assembly that would invalidate such local smoking restrictions.

Most restaurants that have gone smoke-free--either by choice or under the pressure of law--say that business tends to fall at first but eventually recovers.

After San Luis Obispo adopted an indoor smoking ban about two years ago, “a lot of folks were saying that they would not eat in San Luis,” said Bob Peak, general manager of McLintock’s. Although a few smokers have walked out of the restaurant, the financial damage has been insignificant, Peak said.

In Whittier, where smoking will be prohibited in all indoor public areas as of July 1, about a dozen restaurants have already banished smoking, said Don Lunak, the city’s health promotion coordinator.

Gary Milhouse was apprehensive at first about abolishing smoking at his Whittier seafood house, the 150-seat SeaFare Inn. “There were some customers that we did lose. But it has been negligible. A lot of our customers have really appreciated it.”

At Abiento, where the owners distribute matchbooks filled with scratch paper instead of matches, co-owner Marley Majcher said less than a dozen customers have complained about the smoking ban.

“We are thrilled that we never even started with smoking at all,” Majcher said.

Jerry O’Connell, Norms’ advertising manager, said he has received about 200 letters and cards from customers complaining about the ban and vowing never to return.

The image of coffee shops is one of “coffee and cigarettes at the counter,” said O’Connell, who doesn’t expect business to return to normal any time soon. “We were going against that.”

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