NEW ORLEANS -- Brennan's, a gourmet restaurant best known for its breakfast, has learned the hard way that some landmarks cannot be exported.
But as long as diners from around the world plunk down $7 million a year for two-hour feasts, owners of the original French Quarter restaurant are not too concerned.
'There were problems finding the proper personnel to cook our type of Creole food,' Ted Brennan said of unsuccessful attempts to introduce the restaurant in Dallas and Atlanta.
'And it was hard trying to find the fresh seafood, the coffee, the French bread. The availability of the right kind of waiters just wasn't there.'
There is another reason for Ted Brennan's lack of concern. The failed restaurants in Dallas and Atlanta, and the single out-of-New Orleans survivor in Houston, were not his idea.
The family split bitterly over expansion eight years ago, forming two warring camps. To this day the division remains, with Ted, Owen Jr. and Jimmy running the restaurant their father built, along with a wacky French Quarter 'theme restaurant' called Anything Goes.
The other side of the family -- Ella, Adelaide, Dick and John -- is far more successful at home than at the spinoffs they sought so passionately. They run Commander's Palace in the posh Garden District and the chic Mr. B's Bistro in the Quarter.
While steering clear of specific figures involved in the Dallas and Atlanta failures, Ella Brennan said she and her partners had learned not to attempt further expansions.
'We are a restaurant family, with a bunch of young people coming up in the business,' she said. 'But we won't be doing any more restaurants called Brennan's in other cities.'
Miss Brennan insisted, however, the Houston outlet was a success after 15 years -- 'I think you could call it an institution.'
Success for the original Brennan's translates into some staggering statistics. Approximately 1,000 people pass through the canopied foyer for breakfast each day, consuming more than one million eggs each year.
Three presidents have visited the restaurant -- Eisenhower, Kennedy and Nixon -- and Vice Presidents Humphrey and Agnew. Awards cover the walls, sharing space with tributes to the liquor salesman who started it all, Owen Brennan Sr.
In early 1943, the energetic Irishman learned that one of his accounts, the Old Absinthe House, was up for sale. Lacking the money to buy the business outright, he asked his employers for a loan, promising that if he couldn't repay them in a year, the place was theirs.
In 1946, Brennan bought the old Vieux Carre restaurant and started working to make it his own. His own turned out to be a reminder of what New Orleans was like around 1850, complete with chandeliers, carpets, tuxedos and flaming desserts.
In the early 1950s, Brennan realized most New Orleans restaurants were open only for lunch and dinner -- and that something had to be done to spread operating costs over the entire day. He found inspiration in a then-popular novel, 'Dinner at Antoines.'
'My father thought the title was so catchy,' Owen Jr. said. 'He wanted something like that which would stick with his restaurant. Why not 'Breakfast at Brennan's?' he asked himself.'
Virtually the only restaurants that served breakfast at all in those days were in hotels, and the idea of a rich two-hour repaste was unheard of. It took several years for the innovation to catch on, but by the mid 1950s Breakfast at Brennan's had fought its way onto that elusive list of must-do's in New Orleans.
In 1955, Owen Brennan Sr. died in his sleep at age 45, only months before his restaurant was due to move to its current location on Royal Street. He left to his heirs a culinary tradition and a multicolored logo -- a rooster, or chanticleer, that depicted early morning vitality.
Though late arrivals to landmark status, the Brennans face the same dizzying array of personnel problems, legal red tape and economic uncertainty that all traditions face in a fast-changing business world.
They insist there will always be a market for the expensive, extraordinary pleasures of Eggs Hussarde and Grillades and Grits -- which currently attract a crowd 60 percent tourist and 40 percent local. They claim that since they can stand the heat, they have no intention of getting out of the kitchen.
There are, however, irritating intrusions into the family's 1850 time capsule, such as when Ted Brennan offered to take his daughters (aged 6 and 3) to breakfast at Brennan's for an extra-special treat.
'But Daddy,' one of them replied, 'we haven't even been to breakfast at McDonald's yet.'
