The shopping menu at south Reno’s The Summit is impressive. Forty-two mostly new-to-the-area stores, topped by main anchor Dillard’s, led the opening-day parade with additional retailers falling in throughout the spring.

Early assessments, though, raised the question: Where do you eat?

The Summit officials admit the food options were lean on Day One: Starbucks.

But as the hot-weather shopping season unfolds, the menu has lengthened: Charley’s Grilled Subs, Nestle Toll House Cafe, Keva Juice for those bent on a healthy slug of nutrition, and, scheduled for this summer, Tin Star, the Texas-based chain offering fast food fare with a Southwestern flair.

The cuisine will get downright serious next spring when BJ’s Brewhouse and sit-down, upper-scale restaurants Cortina and Johnny Carino’s are set to open.

They don’t come to town easily.

After all, the dining-out business always is volatile; the clientele’s notoriously fickle and many restaurants face frustratingly short lifespans.

It’s no different in Northern Nevada, so getting restaurants to sign up for The Summit has been a challenge, says Libby Lassiter, executive vice president of retail development for the center’s owner, Bayer Properties.

Lassiter says the Reno market’s seemingly insatiable appetite for spending — witness persistently double-digit increases in Washoe County’s monthly taxable sales — was an easy sell for stores like Dillard’s and Williams-Sonoma.

Persuading places to locate eateries, though, was tougher.

“It’s difficult to get restaurants to understand the market,” Lassiter says of their focus on “tickets,” industry-speak for per-person meal revenues.

Bayer, she says, went beyond the usual in creating a marketing campaign to reflect south Reno’s high-income brackets, its proximity to Lake Tahoe and other lures.

“It was very perplexing to us,” she says. “We think they feared it’s such a casual market that it would not support higher per-person tickets.”

Not to worry — and patience, please, Lassiter asks of The Summit goers.

She props up her point by recalling that Bayer’s Summit Birmingham property in Alabama opened eight years ago with no restaurants. Now it’s home to such highly craved marquees as Cheesecake Factory and P.F. Chang’s China Bistro.

“Success with the retailers was the driver,” Lassiter says. “What we’ve done over time is show the success of retailers.”

And Bayer, she added, expects no less from The Summit in Northern Nevada.

“We’re actually further ahead here than we were with Birmingham. There’s a lot of pent-up demand. It takes a long time to commit, but they will eventually take us seriously.”