EUGENE – It has come to this: Piccata á la Milanese – chicken breast sautéed in a Parmesan cheese and chive batter – or chicken pot pie.

Or choices such as these: pork tenderloin or pork shoulder; linen table cloths and napkins, or paper; bottles of fine wine or half-glasses of the house red.

And in particular, this: gastronomic delights in the $50 to $60 range, or family-friendly meals of $10 to $20.

The recent closure of landmark haute cuisine restaurant Cafe Zenon in Eugene is symptomatic of a much larger ailment in fine dining establishments around town and across the United States. As the country staggers after this fall’s economic knockdown, restaurant patrons continue to take stock of what they’ve lost and are reluctant to spend what remains.

“People won’t stop eating, and they won’t stop celebrating 50th anniversaries,” said Adam Bernstein, owner of Adam’s Place and Cafe Maroc, a pair of restaurants on Broadway in downtown Eugene.

“People will still celebrate the things worthy of celebration,” Bernstein said. “It’s the everyday diners, where we’re seeing a lot less traffic.”

As other Eugene restaurants offer loyalty discounts, replace high-end entrees with more affordable options and trim both hours and payroll, Bernstein is preparing for a more dramatic shift. Between now and the first week in January, his Adam’s Place will make the transition from a high-end, linen tablecloth restaurant to middle-range, family-style bistro that will be called the Sustainable Table.

“The plan has been in play (for several months) to do something like this,” Bernstein said. “But with the economy and the way things are going, we need to do something like this to be a good community member and to survive.”

The National Restaurant Association’s monthly index of nationwide restaurant activity hit a record low in September, the most recent month for which the index has been calculated.

The Restaurant Association – the industry’s leading business organization – found that 60 percent of U.S. restaurants endured lower sales in September, compared with the same month a year earlier.

Only 15 percent of restaurant operators reported an increase in year-over-year customer traffic for September, and just 41 percent plan to spend money for equipment, expansion or remodeling in the next six months – another all-time low in the six-year history of the association’s Restaurant Performance Index.

And 50 percent of them expect economic conditions to worsen in the next six months, said Hudson Riehle, the association’s senior vice president of Research and Information Services. Around Eugene, restaurant owners are making adjustments and hunkering down. Declines in business are almost unanimous, with the steepest drop-offs coinciding with successive low points in the worldwide economic meltdown since late September.

“It was definitely an instant (correlation),” said Sunshine Winder, who owns the Three Square Bar & Cafe in Eugene’s Southtowne Shoppes with her husband, Sean.

“I went from really not looking at the stock market to looking at it every day,” said Winder, whose customer traffic seemed to fall off every time the Dow Jones Industrial Average took another hit.

Winder looks at the Cafe Zenon closure as both a “tragedy” and a wake-up call. Other restaurants must heed the warning, and take steps to stabilize and rebuild their customer bases, she said.

“We figure if we can get through this, we can pretty much get through anything,” Winder said. “But I think you’ve got to give people a little bit of an incentive to go out right now, and they’ll support you by coming back.”

To that end, Three Square has adjusted its menu to be more “recession-friendly.”

There’s now a shepherd’s pie for $10.95. A high-end chicken dish that previously was served with two breast pieces has been reduced in price and now has one chicken breast. An ahi tuna entree has been replaced by a lower-priced sole dish.

And on Saturday and Sunday mornings and Tuesday evenings, Three Square has begun issuing “Square Dollars” – coupons that are good for future visits to the restaurant, and amount to a 10 percent rebate on every $25 spent.

The restaurant also has closed on Mondays and reduced some work shifts.

Eugene’s Chapala Mexican Restaurants – at the high end of local Mexican restaurants, even though its price point puts it in the “fast casual” rather than “fine dining” category – also has felt the pressure of a faltering economy.

Chapala has begun advertising Monday-through-Thursday, 20 percent discounts on food at its south Eugene outlet in reaction to national and local economic turmoil. Pelayo, who has been in business at that location for 14 years, said she empathizes with her customers and hopes to reassure them that there are better times ahead.

Bernstein, the Adam’s Place and Cafe Maroc owner, still isn’t betting on a quick turnaround. Fellow restaurateurs consistently are talking about their business being down by 20 percent to 30 percent, he said, and most are considering either shift reductions or layoffs.

Bernstein said he won’t be surprised if other restaurants go the way of Cafe Zenon, unless the economy rebounds.

“I think there are multiple issues going on right now, and they all contribute to hard times for fine-dining restaurants,” said Bernstein, pointing out that people with heavy stock portfolios may have lost as much as half of their investments – at least on paper – in recent months.

“I think we will see more (attrition) of local restaurants,” he said. “And a lot of us, including myself, will be spending a lot more time in the kitchen and a lot more time on the floor.”

But he said his shift to a new business model when Adam’s Place becomes the Sustainable Table should help him recapture his customer base with a “rustic Americana” menu that could include anything from chicken pot pie to braised pork with tomatillos.

All ingredients will be organic, and most will be local – produced within a 125-mile radius of Eugene, Bernstein said.

And the price of a full meal with salads, entrees and desserts will go from the $35 to $60 range at Adam’s Place to $20 to $25 at the Sustainable Table.

Maurizio Paparo, longtime owner of Eugene’s Excelsior Inn, said his business is down about 20 percent this fall. Customers still show up, but not as often. And their orders reflect a sense of restraint.

Paparo opened a second restaurant a year ago in Springfield’s Gateway area. His Ciao restaurant offers pizza and other Italian dishes at a middle-of-the-road price point – $7 to $9 for lunch, and $9 to $15 for dinner.

And Paparo said he has always operated his business conservatively, making “rainy weather” allowances that enable him to slog through the tough times.

“You cut a little bit of hours, you look at inventory and make it a little bit smaller,” he said.

“If you can go through this period, I can see things picking up,” Paparo said. “The key is, honestly, we have to create that sense of optimism.”