Was it good for you, too?

"We had a fantastic week. It's hard to picture that we will ever match the sales that we had last week. For us it was like adding a 13th month to the year. A slow month, like a July or an August, but still, we did that much business in four days. I know some restaurants did better than others; I have the luxury of having a good week.

"But what we did at the restaurant was secondary to what happened to the city. The coverage from all over the world was overwhelmingly positive. How about when Chris Matthews of MSNBC said that 'St. Paul is so much nicer than Minneapolis'? or Brian Williams said that 'If you don't like St. Paul, you'd have to have a screw loose'? It was like a four-day commercial for the city.

"The vast majority of our customers were media people, because the delegates all had places to go. We had Tom Brokaw, Gwen Ifill, Chris Wallace. George Stephanopoulos was in five times in four days, I feel like I should call him and see how he's doing. We had a great mix of being open to the public and holding private events. If you didn't have private events you were probably pretty slow, and I imagine that the restaurants that stayed all-public are probably pretty upset this week.

"The host committee should have been more realistic. Too much was happening in Minneapolis; they bused people in and out and never gave them the opportunity to see St. Paul. I don't think I slept more than four hours a night all week. It was so exciting to see the city so alive, in the way that St. Paul never is. I would look out the front of the restaurant and the sidewalks looked like Manhattan, there were so many people."

Russell Klein, chef/co-owner of Meritage in downtown St. Paul. The restaurant is located off Rice Park, just outside the convention's security perimeter.

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"We were not helped by the RNC coming to town. We were prepared to be busy, but we didn't bank on it, which, in hindsight, was probably wise. A lot of delegates were staying in Bloomington or Minneapolis, and they would take the bus in to the convention and then take it right back out again. The foot traffic was police, protesters and very few delegates."

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"We're usually closed on Labor Day weekend, so it came out pretty good for us. I'm very happy with it. We were busy, but we weren't crazy, the way it had been predicted. People were really nice, and it was very exciting. Henry Kissinger came for lunch. We had the Spanish ambassador, the Indian ambassador. The governor of Missouri had the tasting menu. It was cool. Anytime they want to do it again, we'll do it."

Vincent Francoual, chef/owner of Vincent in downtown Minneapolis. The restaurant is located two blocks from the Hyatt Regency Hotel, the RNC's headquarters hotel.

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"Manny's was successful beyond belief. We had the biggest nights that we've ever had in the entire history of our company, and by a huge degree. It was absurd, it was off the charts. I don't know this for sure, but my guess is that Manny's did more business, by far, than any other restaurant in the Twin Cities.

Phil Roberts, co-owner of Manny's Steakhouse in downtown Minneapolis. The restaurant relocated to a new 9th Street and Marquette Avenue location two weeks before the RNC. The company also owns Chino Latino and Figlio in Uptown Minneapolis, Salut Bar Americain in Edina and St. Paul, and Muffuletta in St. Paul.

"It wasn't very good for us. We did all right, but we were expecting a great deal more business. We're so close to the Xcel that a lot of our regular business was driven away because of security measures, parking restrictions and the anarchists, frankly. I lost maybe half my reservations on that Monday night that they were showing those images on the news. The callers would say, 'I'll come back next week, it's too crazy down there.' We got our fair share of conventioneers and delegates, but we were expecting to be overrun, based upon what we heard from friends in Denver and from the pre-convention hype. As it got closer to the event, everyone was saying that business was skewing to Minneapolis, because that's where all the hotel rooms are."

Greg Awada, front of house manager, Forepaugh's, located on Irvine Park, about four blocks from the Xcel Energy Center. The restaurant reopened under new ownership about a month before the RNC.

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"At the restaurant we didn't see much business from the convention itself. We knew that people were eating and drinking at the Xcel for free, and being treated to free parties, so if you didn't have a contract for big parties, you didn't get business. We were fortunate to have off-premise catering. If it wasn't for that, I think it would have been pretty slow, and I would have been tempted to close the restaurant for the weekend. We fed a thousand people a night every night from Sunday to Thursday. It was called the Warehouse Event.

Steve Vranian, chef/co-owner of Nick and Eddie on Loring Park in downtown Minneapolis. The Warehouse Event took place at Theatre de la Jeune Lune in downtown Minneapolis.

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"At Barrio, we saw a lot of traffic, but I think it was locals coming in to check it out. At Smalley's we had a lot of local business, I think some people were staying away from the downtowns. At La Belle Vie we did some good business, especially in the lounge, and we did a lunch for Bob Dole. And at Solera we did big events on Monday and Tuesday; events booked for Wednesday and Thursday canceled.

"If you didn't have events booked, then I don't think you saw an increase in business, the reason being that people generally went to the Xcel around 5:30 and didn't leave until 10:30, when they went to a private party, like the ones we had at Solera. The party on Monday, for the Distilled Spirits Council, was the biggest one we've ever had at the restaurant, I think 1,200 people came through.

"I got a set of credentials for Wednesday and Thursday night, to see the spectacle of the RNC. I can see why people like Dave Cossetta would be disappointed. I walked past Cossetta's, where they had put up a huge outdoor beer garden with live music. It was empty. Inside the arena, they had run out of hot dogs and hamburgers, because I think that once people got into the Xcel they stayed there, they didn't want to go out and then go through the hassle of getting back in."

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"It started out gangbusters, but kind of fizzled at the end. Overall I'd say it was positive, but we were nowhere near as busy as we had hoped to be. Being in the base hotel, we had a lot of business the week before [the convention], and that's generally a quiet week. One delegate's comment was that he couldn't wait to get home and have a meal, because as a delegate you go from reception to convention to reception and you don't ever sit down for dinner. That was our competition."

Rick Kimmes, chef of the Oceanaire Seafood Room in downtown Minneapolis. The restaurant is located in the Hyatt Regency Hotel, the RNC's headquarters hotel.

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"It was great for us, by far the best week we've ever had. It's not even close. We were fortunate because we had so many private bookings, and so many interesting bookings, due to our relationship with the National Journal. They published the newspaper for the convention every day, and they made us their headquarters. They had morning panel discussions on our stage, and they were fascinating. C-Span broadcast live one day, and taped on another. We were grateful that we had all those events booked, because we realized early in the week that there wasn't a lot of casual business walking around on the streets. There was definitely an air of excitement for us and for our staff. We met some really interesting people, we had wonderful responses to what we were doing so, yes, we were happy. We say, 'Let's do another one.'"