You will write a report concerning Setting the Table by Danny Meyer. It will cover chapters 1 – 13. It will be submitted through canvas. It is to be a minimum of 1250 words, 12-point font double spaced with proper citations.

1. Discuss your major takeaways from the book. How will you apply the theories and practices outlined in the book?
2. Identify at least five (5) major topics that you feel are the most important to you.
3. Identify or create two potential scenarios as a Restaurant Leader when you would be able to use the information in the book.

Rubric:

Author directly addresses the main question or issue, and adds new insight to the subject not provided in lectures, readings, or class discussions. The author has retained nearly all of the knowledge presented in class. He/She is able to synthesize this knowledge in new ways and relate to material not covered in the course.

Essay contains a minimum of 1250 words

Evidence is used from a wide range of sources, including lectures and course readings. When required, the author also consults scholarly books, websites, journal articles, etc. not explicitly discussed in class.

All evidence is properly cited in footnotes or endnotes.

Essay contains an intro, main body, and conclusion. Introduction lays out main argument and gives an outline of what the reader can expect in the essay. The conclusion brings everything together, acknowledges potential shortcomings of the paper, and gives the reader a sense of what further work might be done to advance the subject matter described in the paper.

All sentences are grammatically correct and clearly written. No words are misused or unnecessarily fancy. Technical terms, words from other languages, and words from other historical periods are always explained. All information is accurate and up-to-date. Paper has been spell-checked AND proofread (ideally by you and somebody else), and contains no errors.

S E T T I N G
T H E TA B L E
T h e Tra n s f o r m i n g P o w e r o f
H o s p i t a l i t y i n B u s i n e s s
D A N N Y M EY E R

For Audrey, Hallie, Charles,
Gretchen, and Peyton
and
For Mary Smith

conte nt s
Introduction 1
1. The First Course 5
2. In Business 31
3. The Restaurant Takes Root 55
4. Turning Over the Rocks 77
5. Who Ever Wrote the Rule. . . ? 97
6. No Turning Back 111
7. The 51 Percent Solution 139
8. Broadcasting the Message,Tuning in the Feedback 161
9. Constant, Gentle Pressure 187
10. The Road to Success Is Paved 219
with Mistakes Well Handled
11. The Virtuous Cycle of Enlightened Hospitality 237
12. Context, Context, Context 271
13. The Art of Hospitality 291
Acknowledgments 317

About the Author
Other Books by Danny Meyer
Credits
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher

i nt roduc t i on
Ove r the cour se of the past twenty-one years I’ve opened
and operated five white-tablecloth restaurants; an urban barbecue
joint; a feel-good jazz club; a neo-roadside stand selling frozen cus-
tard, burgers, and hot dogs; three modern museum cafés; and an off-
premises, restaurant-quality catering company. So far, I haven’t had
the experience of closing any of them, and I pray I never will.
My business is very much in the public eye; it’s highly scrutinized,
and it invites passionate opinions from experts and amateurs alike. A
debate between people about their favorite restaurant can take on the
heat of a political or religious discourse. And if you want to persist
and thrive, you’d better not rest on your laurels. Every time you look
up, there’s another new, eager competitor trying to attract the atten-
tion and affection of the public and the media, each hell-bent on tast-
ing and weighing in on the newest thing.
But there’s nothing I’d rather be doing. I was born to go into
business for myself—and I was destined to find a business that would
1

2 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
allow me to share with others my enthusiasm for things I fi nd plea-
surable. My craving for the adventures of travel, food, and wine is
what first compelled me to do what I do. In fact, like so many other
entrepreneurs I’ve met, I’m not even sure I had much of a choice: a
career in the restaurant business was going to tap me on the shoulder
even if I hadn’t found it fi rst.
All these years later, the delights of the table continue to stimulate
me as I pursue my career. But what really challenges me to get up and
go to work every day, and has also motivated me to write this book,
is my deep conviction about the intense human drive to provide
and receive hospitality—well beyond the world of restaurants.Within
moments of being born, most babies find themselves receiving the
first four gifts of life: eye contact, a smile, a hug, and some food. We
receive many other gifts in a lifetime, but few can ever surpass those
first four. That first time may be the purest “hospitality transaction”
we’ll ever have, and it’s not much of a surprise that we’ll crave those
gifts for the rest of our lives. I know I do.
My appreciation of the power of hospitality and my desire to
harness it have been the greatest contributors to whatever success my
restaurants and businesses have had. I’ve learned how crucially impor-
tant it is to put hospitality to work, first for the people who work for
me and subsequently for all the other people and stakeholders who
are in any way affected by our business—in descending order, our
guests, community, suppliers, and investors. I call this way of setting
priorities “enlightened hospitality.” It stands some more traditional
business approaches on their head, but it’s the foundation of every
business decision and every success we’ve had.
Since the beginning, people have told me that in going into the
restaurant business, I chose one of the hardest businesses in the world.
True, a restaurant has all kinds of moving parts that make it particu-
larly challenging. In order to succeed, you need to apply—simultane-
ously—exceptional skills in selecting real estate, negotiating, hiring,
training, motivating, purchasing, budgeting, designing, manufactur-

3 In t r o d u c t i o n
ing, cooking, tasting, pricing, selling, servicing, marketing, and host-
ing.And the purpose of all this is a product that provides pleasure and
that people trust is safe to ingest into their bodies.Also, unlike almost
any other manufacturer, you are actually present while the goods are
being consumed and experienced, so that you can gauge your cus-
tomers’ reactions in real time.That’s pretty complex, emotional stuff.
This is not a typical business book, and it’s certainly not a how-to
book. I don’t enjoy being told how—or that—I ought to do some-
thing; and I’m equally uncomfortable doling out advice without
having been asked for it. What follows is a series of life experiences
that led to a career in restaurants, which has, in turn, taught me vol-
umes about business and life. Along the way, I’ve learned powerful
lessons and language that have allowed me to lead with intention
rather than by intuition. In the process of writing the book, I’ve done
no research, gathered no evidence, and interviewed no one else. But
I hope that admission won’t stop you from enjoying it.
You may think, as I once did, that I’m primarily in the business of
serving good food. Actually, though, food is secondary to something
that matters even more. In the end, what’s most meaningful is creat-
ing positive, uplifting outcomes for human experiences and human
relationships. Business, like life, is all about how you make people feel.
It’s that simple, and it’s that hard.

c hap te r 1
Th e Fi r s t Co u r s e
I’ve learne d more of what I know about life from people than
from books, and I’ve learned much of what I know about people
from the food they eat. I’m on the road a number of days each year,
solo, or with my family, buddies, or colleagues—and when I travel,
the first thing I do in my first free moments in a town is visit its
food markets, pastry shops, butchers, and grocery stores. I read menus
posted outside restaurants. I watch the residents argue back and forth
with the merchants over the virtues of their wares. When I meet
people who look like locals, I ask them where they’d eat if they had
only one or two days in town, as I do. Cultures that care deeply about
food often care about life, history, and tradition. I’m constantly on
the lookout for local idiosyncrasies, ways of eating that exist nowhere
else. And I’m always energized by a hunt for the best version of any
local specialty.
In towns throughout Italy’s Piedmont I’ve tasted a meringue-
hazelnut cookie called brutti ma buoni (“ugly but good”). In Siena
I’ve searched for the supreme panforte, a sweet cake. In New York’s
5

6 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
Chinatown I walk into butcher shops—not necessarily to buy, but
to observe how people select their cuts of meat and and sausage. In
Maine, of course, I cherish tiny wild blueberries. In northern Wis-
consin I’m unable to resist perch, bass, pike, and Native American
fry bread. In Miami, I look for Cuban counter restaurants. In Texas,
there isn’t time enough to visit all the Mexican taquerias for breakfast.
And the barbecue—within a thirty-five-mile radius of Austin in the
Texas Hill Country lie five towns I revere, each with a distinctly dif-
ferent style of barbecue. The elements of barbecue are limited—ribs,
brisket, pulled pork, chopped pork, minced pork, sausage, chicken,
cole slaw, beans, and a handful of side dishes—but it has become an
American culinary language with thousands of dialects and accents.
I try to understand each variation. During one thirty-six-hour road
trip through North Carolina, I tasted fourteen variations on chopped
pork, each defined by subtle and dramatic differences in texture, the
degree and type of smoke used, the amount of tomato or vinegar in
the sauce, how much heat was applied to the meat, as well as how
much or how little crackling got chopped up and tossed in. And
that’s in addition to checking out the many styles of fried chicken,
Brunswick stew, and hush puppies on offer.
From as far back as I can remember, I’ve been eating with my eyes,
nose, and mouth.When I was four I fell in love with stone crab at the
Lagoon restaurant in Miami Beach. I couldn’t stop eating it (and ap-
parently I couldn’t stop talking to anyone who would listen about the
“cwacked cwab”). Over the next years I remember savoring variations
of key lime pie in Key West; eating my first roadside cheeseburger
somewhere in the hills outside Santa Barbara; trying Dungeness crab
and saline abalone at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf; and having a
lobster roll in Ogunquit, Maine. I devoured my first custardy quiche
lorraine as a seven-year-old when my parents took us to the city of
Nancy in France. I tasted bottled water (Evian and Vittel) for the fi rst
time in the town of Talloires, and I can also remember exactly how
the water of Lake Annecy tasted as I swam in it. I discovered fraises

7 T h e Fi r s t C o u r s e
des bois (wild strawberries) and crème fraîche at La Colombe d’Or in
Saint-Paul de Vence; I tasted a baguette with saucisson and pungent
moutarde in Paris’s Jardin des Tuilieries. My writing improved because
my mother insisted that I keep a diary of our trip.At the time, I hated
doing this. But the diary turned out to be one of the greatest gifts she
ever gave me. I wasn’t writing about the museums and churches we’d
seen. Instead I chose to write about food.
Back in my hometown, St. Louis, I was no less curious about
what people ate. When I brought my lunch from home to elemen-
tary school, I swapped and shared sandwiches, not because the other
kids’ lunches were better, but because this was the best way I knew
of to learn about another family. I had never heard of Miracle Whip
until I traded my braunschweiger on rye with another kid for his
baloney sandwich (one slice of Oscar Mayer and Miracle Whip on
Tastee white bread). It tasted nothing like the Hellmann’s mayonnaise
we used at home, and I began to understand something about fami-
lies, solely on the basis of their preference for Hellmann’s or Miracle
Whip. I was fascinated to discover that the household across the street
used Maull’s, the thin, tangy classic St. Louis barbecue sauce, whereas
my family was in the more mainstream Open Pit camp, using it as
a base to be doctored with other ingredients. I learned that various
brands of peanut butter tasted better with certain brands of jelly. I
observed that some families chose Heinz ketchup, while others used
Hunt’s or Brooks. I got to know and cared about the differences in
the flavors of these ketchups.
These explorations of food not only taught me about myself
and others but were central factors in how and why I chose to go
into the restaurant business, and perhaps even in why the restau-
rants have fared so well. My discoveries have also convinced me that
there’s always someone out there who has figured out how to make
something taste just a little bit better. And I am inspired by both the
search and the discovery.The restaurants and other businesses I have
opened in New York City—Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern,

Rosie Ramos

Rosie Ramos

Rosie Ramos

8 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
Eleven Madison Park,Tabla, Blue Smoke, Jazz Standard, Shake Shack,
The Modern, Cafe 2, and Terrace 5 (our cafés for visitors within
the Museum of Modern Art), plus Hudson Yards Catering—were all
conceived and are all driven by a passion to add something new and
compelling to what I call a dialogue between what already exists and
what could be. When I decided to create Tabla, our Indian-inspired
restaurant, I wrote a list of ten things that one could ordinarily expect
of an Indian restaurant in New York—they included a predictable
menu; ornate décor with background sitar music; and austere service
and hospitality.Then I asked myself what Tabla might add to these ex-
pectations—what it could perhaps add to the dialogue New Yorkers
already had with Indian restaurants. Although its earliest years were
rather rocky—perhaps because we were trying to learn and educate
at the same time—Tabla has more than exceeded my goals for it, pio-
neering “new Indian” cooking in America and building a solid foun-
dation of loyal customers. Perhaps the surest sign of its success is that
it has inspired derivative restaurants in New York and beyond.
Whether the subject is Indian spices, new American cuisine, the
neighborhood bistro, barbecue, luxe dining, a big-league jazz club, the
traditional museum cafeteria, or hamburgers and milk shakes, my pas-
sion is always to explore the object of my interest in depth, and then
to combine the best of what I’ve found with something unexpected
to create a fresh context. I then look at the result and ask myself and
my colleagues what it would take to do this even better. Creating
restaurants or even recipes is like composing music: there are only so
many notes in the scale from which all melodies and harmonies are
created. The trick is to put those notes together in a way not heard
before. For us, the ongoing challenge has been to combine the best
elements of fine dining with accessibility—in other words, with open
arms. This was once a radical concept in my business, where excel-
lent cuisine was almost always paired with stiff arm’s-length service.
Sometimes, we’ve moved in the other direction, beginning with the
casual atmosphere of a barbecue joint or a shakes-and-burgers stand,

9 T h e Fi r s t C o u r s e
and then attempting to exceed expectations by employing a caring
staff and using the fi nest ingredients. Our formula is a lot tougher to
achieve than it sounds, but it can be applied successfully to virtually
any business you can name.
Whe re doe s my hunge r for good food served with thoughtful
care and consistency come from? Why am I so energized by seek-
ing to uncover the best? The answer is my family, though its various
influences on me have often been at odds. My three most important
male role models were businessmen with profoundly different busi-
ness philosophies, personalities, and styles.
My parents, Roxanne and Morton Louis Meyer, had spent the
first two years of their youthful marriage in the early 1950s living in
the city of Nancy, capital of the French province of Lorraine, where
my dad was posted as an army intelligence officer. He was the son of
Morton Meyer, a St. Louis businessman who had been educated at
Princeton and ran a chemical company called Thompson-Hayward.
Grandpa Morton was a visionary civic leader and a die-hard Re-
publican—but one who understood the importance of working ef-
fectively with Democrats. For instance, he collaborated with Senator
Stuart Symington to raise the funds and forge the coalitions necessary
to build the St. Louis flood wall. He was a stoic member of the city’s
establishment, and rarely talked to his family about his work, though
he often talked to me about baseball and horse racing. There were
no surprises with Grandpa Morton, and I loved him for that. He was
in many ways the opposite of his flamboyant, entrepreneurial son,
my dad, who also attended Princeton, where he demonstrated a fl air
for languages, having mastered French, Italian, and Latin (and, as the
managing editor of the Daily Princetonian, English).
My mother too was the child of a privileged midwestern family.
Her father, Irving B. Harris, was a singular man whose combining of
social consciousness with business acumen was an enormous infl u-

10 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
ence on me as a human being, and ultimately as a restaurateur. He
graduated from Yale, and he made his first fortune before he was forty
years old, having cofounded the Toni Home Permanent Company
with his brother Neison. They sold it to the Gillette Safety Razor
Company in 1948 for what was then an enormous sum: $20 million.
Grandpa Irving’s piercing analytical business mind was radically
different from my father’s intuitive entrepreneurialism. Morty, as my
dad was known, always had an abundance of new, imaginative ideas
for companies that he would run—or try to run—by himself. Irving,
on the other hand, invested in or acquired other peoples’ businesses,
especially when the ideas that defined these companies were compel-
ling to him. His passion wasn’t to operate the companies, but rather
to bet on the quality of their senior leadership. Evaluating human
potential was every bit as important to him as any business idea.
I adored Grandpa Irving, and I was awed by his otherworldly
business success. Through him I became aware of my own com-
petitive zeal and began to believe in my own potential for winning.
But for many years I suppressed my love for him and also muffl ed
my own self-actualization, out of misguided deference to my father.
Irving and Morty may have once loved each other, but as the years
went by they grew to dislike each other intensely. If pressed for his
true opinion, Irving would have described Morty as an unpredict-
able, irresponsible riverboat gambler. For his part, my dad considered
his father-in-law an overbearing tyrant who couldn’t loosen his all-
controlling grip on his daughter, or for that matter on anyone else in
the family. Morty called Irving “the boss.”Their adversarial relation-
ship turned out to be detrimental to my parents’ marriage, which
would end twenty-fi ve years after it began.
In 1955, at the conclusion of my dad’s overseas military service,
my parents were still very much in love with each other and with
Europe.Their knowledge of and fondness for France in particular was
a powerful bond between them. From a very young age I was lucky
to be taken abroad on family vacations, and it was on those trips that

11 T h e Fi r s t C o u r s e
I was first immersed in the unaffected, timeless culture of gracious
hospitality represented by European restaurateurs and innkeepers. In
France we usually stayed in low-key, family-run inns where the wel-
come felt loving and the gastronomy was exceptional.Those trips left
a lasting impression. The hug that came with the food made it taste
even better! That realization would gradually evolve into my own
well-defined business strategy—the core of which is hospitality, or
being on the guests’ side.
Hospitality is the foundation of my business philosophy. Virtually nothing else is as important as how one is made
to feel in any business transaction. Hospitality exists when you
believe the other person is on your side. The converse is just as
true. Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It
is absent when something happens to you. Those two simple
prepositions—for and to—express it all.
In St. Louis my father parlayed his love of all things French into a
career as an innovative and successful travel agent. Among his prized
collections were what must have been every back issue of Gourmet,
Holiday, and later Travel and Leisure; he also built on a wide range of
friendships he and my mother had established with French innkeep-
ers. His agency, Open Road Tours, packaged customized driving trips,
often in conjunction with Relais de Campagne, a network of lovely
family-operated inns around France. (Relais de Campagne later evolved
into Relais et Châteaux, now a prestigious international network of
small luxury hotels. My dad remained active with Relais et Châteaux
for years; he was enormously proud when his own small hotel in St.
Louis, the Seven Gables Inn, became affi liated with Relais et Châ-

12 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
teaux in the late 1980s.) This was long before such excursions off the
beaten path became common in the travel industry. Dad exulted in
planning these driving tours of the countryside; he’d note exactly
where travelers would stumble upon a certain vineyard, a worthwhile
museum, or a particularly good bistro. His clients loved his attention
to detail, his business thrived and I was bursting with pride when I
told people my dad had become president of the American Society of
Travel Agents (ASTA), an important trade organization.
At home, too, he and my mom were Eurocentric: They often
hosted cocktail parties and dinner parties for friends and business col-
leagues from France, Italy, and Denmark, who either were in town on
business or had made a detour to St. Louis just to see us. For several
years our house was home to the grown children of French innkeep-
ers. By day these young people would help out in Dad’s offi ce with
translations and administrative tasks, and by night they would act as au
pairs for my sister, Nancy; my brother,Tommy; and me.They became,
for me, informal cultural ambassadors from a wondrous place called
France. French was always being spoken around the house, either by
our guests or by my parents (who used it at the dinner table espe-
cially when they wanted to discuss something not meant for our ears).
Our neurotic, inbred French poodle, Ratatouille, was named after
my dad’s favorite Provençal dish. To this day the pungent smell and
sound of garlic, olive oil, and eggplant sizzling in a skillet will evoke
powerful memories in me. There was always a bottle of Beaujolais-
Villages on the table, and when dad and I cooked a chateaubriand
on the grill and the fat-induced flames shot too high, he brought
them under control in his own idiosyncratic fashion—by dousing the
steaks with whatever bottle of red wine he happened to be drinking
at that moment.Which, of course, caused more fl ames.
My father was unquestionably my childhood hero: a hedonist, a
gastronome, and a man who cherished and passionately savored life.
He loved the excitement and risk of the racetrack and gave me a taste
for it, even when I was too young to place bets legally. Going to the

13 T h e Fi r s t C o u r s e
track was a Meyer family tradition of long standing; my dad’s parents
spent most of every August in Saratoga, New York, going to the track
six days a week for nearly a month. Dad also took risks as a business-
man. He was always coming up with exciting new ideas based on his
love of travel and food, and on his constant drive to share his fi nds
with others. At one point Open Road Tours had offices and staffs in
Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Paris. Later, it opened offi ces
all over Europe; and I’ll never forget the day he proudly showed off
an Open Road stock certificate bearing the name of Ava Gardner as
an investor. He had a publicist in New York named Ethel Aaron who
promoted his business in fascinating ways, like having my dad cast as
an imposter on To Tell the Truth. As an eight-year-old I was proud to
boast to my friends that my dad was an imposter on television.
I never fully understood how or why, but sometime in the late
1960s, when I was still a young boy, Open Road Tours went bank-
rupt. I remember abundant tears and shame, but few details. I heard
comments like, “We expanded too quickly”; and I had thoughts
like,“My hero failed.” My paternal grandparents were torn apart too:
their only two sons had been in business together—my father as
president and his younger brother, my uncle “Bo,” as vice president.
Whatever events had led to the bankruptcy had also driven a sharp
wedge between the two brothers. I was crushed when my Aunt Lois,
my Uncle Bo, and my first cousins—whom I loved dearly—moved
from St. Louis to rebuild their lives in Washington, D.C.This was an-
other confusing and painful consequence of the failed business. My
mother was anguished, and her disappointment and disapproval were
apparent. Business details were not openly discussed, but the family’s
bruises were deeply felt.
In 1970, when I was twelve, my father leaped into the hotel
business, in Italy. Despite the pleas of my mother and with Irving’s
begrudging help in the form of a $1 million loan, he committed
himself to long leases on one hotel in Rome and another in Milan. He
was certain that becoming a hotelier would be his ticket to fortune.

14 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
My mom—correctly—maintained that it promised nothing more than
protracted absences from home.There was always some reason my dad
had to go to Italy. Each time the hotel workers went on strike, he fl ew
to Rome or Milan to help make beds. Business flagged and lagged, and
although he was spending half a month at a time away from his family
to address problems, it inevitably proved impossible for him to operate
a hotel business across two continents. At an enormous fi nancial cost
and an even greater emotional cost, my father finally found a buyer for
his two leases. He then went on to his next idea.
In 1972, still irrepressibly optimistic, my father created another
new business, called Caesar Associates.This new company would sell
packaged group tours at a deep discount for a very narrow niche of
travelers known as “interliners”—airline employees and their families.
As members of the International Air Transport Association (IATA)—
an industry trade group—interliners could fly standby at unbelievably
low rates. Dad’s business model was simple but original. He aggre-
gated all the discounts to which members of IATA were entitled and
packaged trips lasting up to two weeks. In addition to low airfares, he
negotiated rock-bottom rates for hotels, ground transport, sightseeing,
shopping, and dining. The value he added was to offer highly imagi-
native itineraries and use the underlying buying power of group travel
to create an extraordinary rapport between price and quality. He hired
sparkling young tour guides at each destination, and he kept his cli-
ents informed of travel opportunities by writing an endless stream of
marketing collaterals. He was a terrific writer and editor, and his direct
mailings inspired me—years later—to create my own newsletter as a
way to reach out to and widen our base at Union Square Cafe. He was
always after me to correct every grammatical mistake I made or delete
every superfluous word I used in the USC Newsletter. (Doubtless
he’d have some editorial comments about this book as well!)
Caesar Associates actually thrived for many years, with outposts
in London, Paris, Copenhagen, Madrid, and Rome. But this success
wasn’t enough for my father. Having failed to learn some critical

15 T h e Fi r s t C o u r s e
lessons from his earlier business failures in the 1960s and 1970s, he
gambled the fortunes of his entire business on another new one, in-
volving risky and questionable real estate and hotel deals back in St.
Louis. He eventually owned two hotels in St. Louis, one of which—
the Seven Gables Inn, with its French restaurant, Chez Louis—met
with critical acclaim. But the other hotel—the Daniele Hilton, with
its mediocre London Grill—was a failure on every count. My father
had leveraged his entire company to purchase these hotels, and also to
purchase a medical building in Clayton, Missouri, which he planned
to reimagine and redevelop into something big. However, by the
time he had emptied the building of its existing rent-paying tenants,
the bottom had fallen out of the economy. His funders dropped out,
but not before suing him. Although Dad may have been an inven-
tive entrepreneur, he did not have the necessary emotional skills or
discipline, and he failed to surround himself with enough competent,
loyal, trustworthy colleagues whose skills and strengths would have
compensated for his own weaknesses. By 1990, shortly before he died
of lung cancer at the age of fifty-nine, he was once again bankrupt.
Once again, he had to inform his family—his second wife, Vivian,
and his three children and their spouses—about a failure.We all had
a painful sense of déjà vu.
Looking back, I realiz e that gambling is a metaphor for how
my father ran his businesses, and my deep fear of repeating his mis-
takes has always colored the way I run mine. Because each of his
doomed experiences was marked by overly rapid expansion, I have
always been afraid to expand my business too quickly. I’m not risk-
averse, but I have tight self-control, and I am not ordinarily a gambler.
I go to Saratoga one weekend a year, and losing even a $10 bet at the
track there bothers me enormously. Still, I’ve been willing to make a
$1 million bet on a new restaurant. I’m far more inclined to take risks
when I’m essentially betting on myself, but I can do that only because

16 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
I’ve surrounded myself with highly talented people of solid integrity.
I’m also far more confident in my ability to handicap humans than
horses. My father, on the other hand, never felt compelled to sur-
round himself with people who were better or smarter at anything
than he believed he was. He had a greater need to feel important, to
be agreed with, to be the king. It was no coincidence that he named
his company after Caesar. While I, too, love sitting in the captain’s
chair, my greatest joy comes not from going it alone, but from leading
an ensemble. Hospitality is a team sport.
There were, it must be said, many aspects of my parents’ marriage
that kept them together for a quarter of a century, including shared
interests that left a lasting impression on me and would later inform
many of my own business choices. Both of my parents loved modern
art, and each had a keen eye for collecting.Thanks to their wise selec-
tion and prescient purchases, I had the privilege of growing up amid
works by Joseph Albers, Morris Louis, Jasper Johns, Alexander Calder,
Man Ray, Henry Moore, Joel Shapiro, Cy Twombly, Helen Franken-
thaler, Pierre Alechinsky, and Gerhard Richter. In 1968 Mom, along
with a close family friend, Joan Loeb, opened Forsyth Gallery, a gal-
lery of contemporary art that, for St. Louis, was groundbreaking. My
older sister, Nancy; my younger brother,Tommy; and I were exposed
to fine art through this gallery and through museumgoing and family
conversation. Each one of us developed exceptional fluency in and
appreciation for the world of fine art—and learned to share our en-
thusiasm with others.
My mother and father also brought to our home a shared joy and
love for music. It’s difficult for me to remember sitting in our den
at any time when the hi-fi was not playing the original-cast album
for a show by, say, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Hart, Loesser, Lerner
and Loewe, Newley and Bricuse, McDermott, Kander and Ebb,
Sondheim, Bernstein, or Gershwin. And when those records weren’t
spinning, we were being treated to Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand,
Peggy Lee, the Modern Jazz Quartet, or Oscar Peterson. Each hot

17 T h e Fi r s t C o u r s e
and humid summer in St. Louis brought trips to see musicals at the
outdoor Muny Opera (the highlight for me was drinking a refresh-
ing half-pint carton of Pevely lemonade during intermission). During
the winter, my parents would take us downtown to the American
Theater for road versions of Broadway shows. A point of contention
between them was that my father—who knew all the lyrics to all
the songs—could not come close to carrying a tune. Whenever he
had had too much to drink, he would sing off-key and with increas-
ing drama and volume.This was occasionally amusing, but only for a
while, and he rarely stopped when he should have.
And then there was travel. My parents took vacations alone to-
gether at least twice each year, and with us in tow another three
times a year.The Christmas and Easter vacations were often spent in
Florida (in or around Miami, where my dad could be within striking
distance of Hialeah or Gulfstream Park so that he could bet on the
daily double). Every summer meant a family vacation of up to three
weeks. We went to California when I was six (Pea Soup Andersen’s
in Solvang and sourdough bread and abalone at Fisherman’s Wharf
made an indelible impression).We went to France when I was seven
(everything made an impression: the hot chocolate at breakfast, so
bitter that it needed two cubes of sugar; the yeasty baguettes; the sour
crème fraîche; and the salty, deep yellow butter). We went to New
England when I was eight (fried Ipswich clams, lobster rolls, drawn
butter, creamy clam chowder, and golden Indian pudding).
But as the years went on, travel increasingly meant time that my
dad was away for two or sometimes three weeks at a time. Understand-
ably, my mother was lonely and upset during his absences.Though I
rarely let on, I was sympathetic to her.We were fond of playing com-
petitive games of Scrabble, and we sat down together each and every
weeknight at five-thirty to watch Walter Cronkite deliver the CBS
Evening News. Like her, I was absorbed by the day’s events, reading the
conservative Globe-Democrat every morning and the liberal St. Louis
Post-Dispatch every afternoon.Vietnam, the antiwar movement, civil

18 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
rights, Lyndon Johnson’s beleaguered presidency, the return of Rich-
ard Nixon, and of course the St. Louis Cardinals then dominated
the news.The two of us were on the same page politically, and those
moments were a sanctuary in our relationship. But in those days I
reflexively defended my dad for anything and everything, and as my
parents’ relationship grew more and more strained, so too did mine
with my mom. I found myself, painfully, in the middle of our family’s
growing rift. But as the middle child, torn in every possible direction,
I was developing useful skills for shuttle diplomacy, negotiating, and
contending with adversity. These skills would later serve me well in
business and in life.
Partly because of my physical development, and partly because
of my insatiable hunger for new foods (and the comfort I got from
eating them), I put on some weight at about age twelve. I remember
my mother taking me to Famous-Barr to shop for clothes in what
used to be called the “husky” department. Increasingly, she expressed
concern over how much I was eating. But being asked to watch what
I ate felt like a punishment and only impelled me to eat more. Back
then, people dieted primarily by counting calories, and so Grandpa
Irving gave me a book listing the caloric value of practically every
food on earth. He offered to pay me $1 for every pound I lost and
challenged me to keep a chart with a running total of all calories I’d
consumed each day. My mom began to serve my sandwiches open-
faced, on super-thin slices of Pepperidge Farm white bread.
But on Sunday mornings, my brother Tom (often my partner in
culinary crime), and I would wake up at six o’clock and very quietly
tiptoe to the refrigerator in search of leftovers. We’d make melted
American cheese sandwiches in the broiler (frying them would have
produced a buttery aroma strong enough to awaken everybody). Or,
without breaking the seal on the butcher paper, I’d deftly open a
new package of Usinger’s Milwaukee braunschweiger, a staple in our
home; snag a slice; and then carefully reassemble the package. We
were never apprehended by my otherwise omniscient mother.

19 T h e Fi r s t C o u r s e
Despite the tension surrounding the topic of food during my
early teens, no one eventually took more pleasure in the success of
my restaurants than my mother—except, perhaps Irving, who had
initially advised me to stay out of such a “rotten business” but later
expressed enormous pride in the restaurants until the day he died, at
age ninety-four, in 2004. Ironically, by making me keenly aware of
what I ought to eat and not eat, the two of them were unwittingly
reinforcing my love and passion for food: the taste of it and what it
meant to me both as nourishment and as a symbol of love.
When I attended Camp Nebagamon in northern Wisconsin,
where I spent six magical summers, I learned to cook over an open
fire. It was an exceptional all-boys camp that my father, uncles, and
cousins from both sides of the family had attended. Camp Nebagamon
reinforced the same ethical and moral codes I learned at home. The
Sunday night campfire, known as the council fire, was a weekly ritual
in which campers were encouraged to present skits that focused on
ethics.These skits taught me to make a spiritual connection to nature
and the environment.
Friday night was cookout night, and we learned to chop our own
logs; forage for kindling wood; prep our ingredients; and grill, smoke,
and roast meats in a Dutch oven or in handmade foil pockets buried
under the coals. We learned how to bake cakes in an aluminum “re-
flector oven” that was set up adjacent to the pit, and designed to re-
flect the heat of the open fi re down onto the cake pans.
Each cabin elected a representative to vie for supremacy in the
camp’s annual Chef ’s Cap competition, Nebagamon’s top culinary
honor. I was chosen to be my cabin’s representative when I was
twelve, and I did everything but take reservations: I painted a sign,
dug the pit, raked the surrounding area, and designed the campsite
to look as neat and welcoming as an outdoor restaurant. I prepared,
cooked, and served an entire three-course meal.When it was over, I
was judged not just for the food, but by how well I cleaned the pans
and plates, put out the fi re, refilled the pit, and—most important—by

20 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
whether I would be able to “leave the campsite neater than I had
found it.” (That concept remains, for me, one of the most signifi cant
measures of success in business, and in life.) For the competition, all
the camper chefs were given identical bags filled with ingredients:
four potatoes, a whole chicken, four lemons, a stick of butter, two
ribs of celery, two carrots, one tomato, a box of cake mix, and some
salt and pepper.
We cooked all day, and I wanted to win badly. I made a juicy
lemon chicken and potatoes cooked under the coals in a Dutch oven,
served with a well-seasoned tomato salad and a vanilla layer cake
baked over the open fire; and I won. Actually, I tied for fi rst place.
My chicken was by far the best-looking and best-tasting. (The truth
should now be told—I’d rubbed the bird with a tablespoon of lemon-
pepper seasoning, surreptitiously supplied to me by one of the camp
nurses I had befriended at the infirmary, called the Waldorf-Castoria.)
But I was docked several points because at the last minute one of my
two cakes slid off its shelf in the reflector oven and fell into the fi re. I
managed to save the cake, but I was unable to brush off all the ashes
before applying the frosting. Still, each bite provided an interesting
texture and smoky fl avor!
As a young teenager back home in St. Louis, I cooked for friends.
I would take something as simple as a hot dog or a knockwurst and
slice it down the middle, stuffing it with cheese and wrapping it
with a slice of bacon before grilling it in the barbecue pit. I cre-
ated my own signature barbecue sauce by mixing Open Pit with
ketchup, crushed garlic, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, a dash of
cayenne, and loads of cracked black pepper. I learned to make pizza
from scratch. I was proud of my recipe for tacos. My friends enjoyed
what they ate when they came to our house (except for my mother’s
broiled chicken livers), and most of them seemed to get a kick out
of the fact that each visit would be spent playing basketball, football,
hockey, or Ping-Pong—and then cooking.
During my adolescence, food continued to fi gure prominently

21 T h e Fi r s t C o u r s e
in my social life. In the tenth grade I took cooking lessons in home
economics, and as one of only two guys in the class I furthered more
than just my culinary interests. That year I had transferred from the
all-boys St. Louis Country Day School, where I had been a top stu-
dent, to its coed archrival, John Burroughs School. Burroughs was
an excellent and highly demanding independent school—presenting
me for the first time with female distractions in the classrooms and
hallways. My academic performance dipped dramatically. I was now
fifteen years old, and what mattered to me most were girls; pickup
games of street hockey; football on the lawn; tennis; and going to bed
with my transistor radio tuned to KMOX and glued to my ear, as
Jack Buck called that night’s St. Louis Cardinals game or Dan Kelly
announced for the St. Louis Blues. Yet a constant theme in my life
was always food: Imo’s pizza, Ted Drewes frozen custard, and Steak
’n’ Shake. Steak ’n’ Shake seemed to be where my friends and I all
ended up every weekend night, throwing back shoestring fries, steak
burgers with cheese, and shakes.Were those necessarily the best ham-
burgers to be found anywhere? It didn’t matter, because the nights at
Steak ’n’ Shake with curbside service in our own cars were the best
hamburger experiences I had ever known. (Decades later, my memo-
ries of Ted Drewes and Steak ’n’ Shake inspired me to create Shake
Shack in New York’s Madison Square Park.)
For more upscale fare, I took dates to Giovanni’s, in the Italian
neighborhood known as “the Hill.”The toasted ravioli, cavatelli, and
veal saltimbocca were always delicious, but the food was almost sec-
ondary: the owner, Giovanni Gabriele, made me feel like a young VIP
in front of my dates, and the clincher was that I had check-signing
privileges because my dad, a regular, loved the place and had his own
house account there. Occasionally I’d accompany him to Giovanni’s.
He’d always order a bottle of Gattinara, Nozzole Chianti Classico, or
Corvo; and though I was underage, I always managed to get a lesson
in red wine, which of course required that I consume at least half a
glass when the waiter wasn’t looking. My father would take care of

22 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
the rest of the bottle. It was wonderful being with him in a place
where his self-esteem was so high, and where he was treated like the
king he wanted to be.
Now, many years later I know that I maintained an almost un-
natural loyalty to my father long after it was healthy to do so, some-
times against my own best interests. One way I managed to keep him
propped up on his pedestal as his businesses and marriage failed was
not to beat him at anything.We would play card games like casino or
cribbage, and he would almost invariably beat me. There were years
when I was good enough at tennis to play varsity singles, but still I
would not allow myself to beat him. Whatever the transaction, the
deck of the subconscious was stacked against me: I would choke and
he would win.
As my se nior year at John Burroughs School began, my under-
achieving high school performance culminated in my applying to
only three colleges. On the day acceptance letters were received, I
was in for a crushing disappointment: Princeton and Brown had both
rejected me, and I had done no better than earn a spot on the waiting
list at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Irving called with an
offer to get me into University of Chicago, where he was an active
donor. I didn’t want to do that and in fact couldn’t even contemplate
it; my father would have viewed my going to Chicago as a defection
to the other team. Furthermore, I didn’t want to start life on my own
at the beck and call of my powerful grandfather.
I knew what I had to do: I got down on my knees and wrote a
pleading, heartfelt letter to Trinity. My effort paid off and I was ac-
cepted.This spared me the disaster of being accepted nowhere. But the
message was clear: the slumbering athletic, competitive spirit within
me finally needed to wake up and come out of hibernation. Once I
graduated from John Burroughs in 1976 and left home, it did.
I got nearly straight A’s during my first term at Trinity. I felt an

23 T h e Fi r s t C o u r s e
intense need to prove to Trinity, and to myself, that it had been mis-
taken not to accept me outright. I was motivated both by personal
pride and by anger. I remember on many occasions taking inspira-
tion from my childhood baseball hero Bob Gibson on the mound for
the Cardinals, brushing back a player who’d hit a home run in his
previous at-bat.To this day, my surest form of motivation comes from
someone telling me I’m not measuring up.
Following my sophomore year I went to Rome to work as a host
at Caesar Associates and a guide for my father’s interline tours. (All
three Meyer siblings got to take this job upon reaching age twenty:
my sister Nancy, having already been a foreign exchange student
in Denmark, chose to work in Copenhagen; and my brother Tom,
having been an exchange student as a teenager in France, went to
Paris.) Our three packages in Italy varied, including visits to Naples,
Sorrento, Capri, and Pompeii, and an intensive tour of Rome. Our
premier trip was the “Gran Giro d’Italia,” a comprehensive bus tour
to Assisi, Florence, and Venice, and then back to Rome.
To me this was hospitality boot camp, a rigorous but excellent
training for satisfying the emotional needs of my dad’s customers,
who would typically arrive jet-lagged and crabby. After meeting
them at the airport following their overnight flight to Rome, we’d
board a tour bus, and I’d get on the microphone to describe the trip
ahead. Next it was on to the hotel, where I’d help them all check
in and settle into their rooms for a nap. Then after a few hours, I’d
gather the woozy bunch together for an afternoon welcome meeting
over Asti Spumante and rum cake. My first priority was to identify
the crankiest clients and win them over. Having discovered a number
of mom-and-pop Roman trattorias on my own (my favorite was La
Taverna da Giovanni, where I spent even my days off happily feasting
on spaghetti alla carbonara and roast pig), I could tell my travelers that
I knew of an amazing family-run place that very few tourists ever
found. They loved that. I improvised on my dad’s offi cial itineraries
when I could, and steered the travelers to lunch or dinner at one of

24 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
these authentic restaurants. Not only would I get to eat for free, but
the owners would typically pay me a commission (una mancia) of
1,000 lire for every guest I delivered. A thousand lire bought me a
cappuccino, a brioche, and a sugo d’albicocca (apricot nectar) for break-
fast at my favorite coffee bar. I loved earning tips, and this was an
easy and enjoyable way to earn extra cash, not just from the trattoria
owners but also from my grateful tourists, who rewarded me hand-
somely for making their visit special, and for just being nice.
My father, thanks to a specious deal he had struck with Lineas
Aereas de Nicaragua (LANICA) making him a “consultant” for the
airline (at a fee of $1 a year), now qualified himself for those incred-
ible interliner airfares. And as a child of a consultant for LANICA, I
also qualified to fly to Europe for just $44 dollars round-trip until I
was twenty-one; throughout my college years I could not afford not
to fly Pan Am to Italy for any long weekend. I would just call my dad,
and he’d handwrite a $44 ticket and mail it to me. I learned Italian by
taking classes at school and from traveling in Italy. I fell madly in love
with Rome, Florence, and Venice.
During my sophomore year at Trinity College, in 1977, my par-
ents at last separated. Another painful issue was that by this time, my
dad was increasingly expressing himself loudly in public settings, driv-
ing somewhat recklessly, and drinking more than he could handle. He
continued to make foolish choices in his business life.We were drift-
ing apart.As my family divided, I increasingly comforted myself with
food.
By the second semester of my junior year I was headed back to
Rome. This time it was to spend four months at Trinity’s campus
there, ostensibly to study international politics, the Italian language,
and art history. But my real interests were, first, being far away from
home; and second, as I would soon learn, eating. I memorized every
Roman entry in the red Michelin Guide to Italy (even though most
of Michelin’s selections were fancier than the kind of trattorias I pre-
ferred). I was living in a small room in a convent that Trinity rented

25 T h e Fi r s t C o u r s e
for its American students on the Aventine Hill. I slept under a glow-
in-the-dark crucifi x (I reckoned I was the fi rst Jew from St. Louis to
have done so), and it was a special day when the new pope, John Paul
II, chose our convent as a place to come and bless. (I’ll never forget
getting knocked off a chair by the stiff arm of a papal security guard
as I stood above the crowd and snapped photos of my classmates
being blessed by the pope. Evidently one does not stand on chairs
during a papal blessing!)
I went out for dinner almost every night, wandering every ob-
scure via, alone or with friends, reviewing the menu boxes outside
every trattoria. I was always searching for the one unique thing at any
restaurant. While I was living in and later returning often to Rome
(thanks to my IATA card), I was intrigued to discover that every trat-
toria had basically the same menu. Each had spaghetti alla carbonara, its
bucatini all’amatriciana, its melanzane alla parmigiana, and its coda alla
vaccinara. I could see that trattorias in Rome distinguished themselves
by nuances: how each chef cooked a classic dish. Furthermore, the
trattorias possessed a subtle quality that was every bit as important as
the food: a genuinely welcoming spirit that led to the formation of a
community of regulars.
It’s hard not to fall in love with a society that is confi dent about
and content with its traditions, so that it doesn’t need to eat a differ-
ent kind of food every day at lunch and every evening at dinner. I
came to love the ritual of dining each evening at the same time with
the same people and eating the same foods.This runs counter to the
compulsion in our culture to continually change channels. When it
came time for me to open my own restaurant for New Yorkers, there
was no question in my mind that I would embrace all I had learned in
Italy and that the Roman trattoria would be my richest inspiration.
But I wasn’t there yet.After graduating from Trinity in 1980, I moved
to Chicago, where, after a brief stint at the public station,WTTW-TV, in
pursuit of a possible career in journalism, I became the $214-a-week
Cook County field coordinator for John Anderson’s presidential

26 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
campaign.Anderson, the nominee of the Independent Party, was run-
ning against Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. It was a brutally in-
tense experience that fired up my passion for politics and also taught
me a thing or two about management—even though my candidate
was on the wrong end of a landslide.
Learning to manage volunteers—to whom, absent a paycheck,
ideas and ideals were the only currency—taught me to view all em-
ployees essentially as volunteers. Today, even with compensation as a
motivator, I know that anyone who works for my company chooses to
do so because of what we stand for. I believe that anyone who is quali-
fied for a job in our company is also qualified for many other jobs at
the same pay scale. It’s up to us to provide solid reasons for our employ-
ees to want to work for us, over and beyond their compensation.
I decided that my next stop had to be New York, a city I had
always loved to visit for stimulating weekends while I was at Trin-
ity. I’d drive down for a day of museumgoing or horse racing, and an
evening of restaurants, Broadway theater, or jazz. I loved the pulse of
New York and decided to try living there for a year or so.This time
I didn’t object to Grandpa Irving’s help, and he lined up a job with
Checkpoint Systems, a small but growing company that manufac-
tured and sold electronic tags and pressure-sensitive labels to stop
shoplifters. (My grandfather had been an early principal investor.)
I was hired as a special projects manager at a salary of $16,500 in
January 1981; and I spent most of my time assisting the sales force. By
the end of my first year, another position opened up and I was offered
a sales job in charge of the entire New York territory. I soon became
Checkpoint’s top salesman, covering the New York metropolitan area
and earning nearly $100,000 in commissions. I quickly got to know
every branch of every family tree of every New York retailing family
that owned drugstores, clothing stores, grocery stores, coat stores, and
shoe stores. I was making cold calls, meeting people, and getting to
know every obscure corner of New York. As I had learned during
Anderson’s campaign, I was reaching out and building a constituency.

27 T h e Fi r s t C o u r s e
This was another indispensable lesson that would serve me well as a
restaurateur.
I also became Checkpoint’s expert on training grocery store
chains in the ways and means of preventing loss.Thereafter, I was sent
out to travel and train around the United States. Naturally, I spent
every free moment checking out local restaurants, and I made some
important gastronomic discoveries. In Detroit, I visited the Golden
Mushroom and the London Chop House. In California, I tasted food
cooked by the chefs Wolfgang Puck, Alice Waters, Mark Miller, and
Jeremiah Tower, who were at the forefront of the “new American
cuisine.” At Spago, I tried Puck’s new wave pizza with duck sau-
sage and shiitake mushrooms.This was no fancy restaurant, but it was
fun—an exciting place to experience an emerging unfussy American
cuisine based on the simple, fresh Italian and French cooking that I
had grown up loving, combined with seasonal local California pro-
duce.A lot was happening out west, while New York was still primar-
ily rooted in old-school French and Italian cooking.
Still, I preferred New York to any other place. I was Checkpoint’s
top salesman for three years running and was consistently motivated
by the competitive urge to lead the pack. Earning top commissions
was the icing on the cake; and with no one to support but myself, I
was putting money in the bank. I loved art and went to the Museum
of Modern Art as often as possible taking advantage of my grandfa-
ther’s annual gift to me of a membership there. By attending opening
parties at the museum, I also learned that New York’s social life con-
sisted of more than Upper East Side bars.The joy I was experiencing
each day by setting my own personal and professional agenda made it
increasingly clear to me that I would never go to work for someone
else. Even at Checkpoint, where I officially reported to sales directors,
I worked for myself out of my own walk-up apartment on the East
Side. I had built my own little business within a business, creating my
own schedule, plotting my own tactics, and exceeding whatever goals
were set for me. My dad and both of my grandfathers had worked

28 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
for themselves, and they were all presidents of their companies. My
mother had owned her own art gallery. I had an uncontainable drive
to win that was now in high gear. What I loved most about Check-
point was that my hard work and independence provided fi nancial
rewards and opportunities for seeking my own pleasure. I was de-
vouring New York. I could take myself on little adventures all over
town, and I loved being able to eat out and learn. I’d map out an
entire day of sales calls, basing my schedule on where to eat in what-
ever borough I had to visit that day. It could be a Greek diner in As-
toria, a Jewish deli, or Popeye’s Fried Chicken in Brooklyn, or even
an Olive Garden in Peekskill (that was the best restaurant in Peekskill
at the time). By night I’d dine, following the advice of the New York
Times’s restaurant critic Mimi Sheraton, or, better still, making a sport
of discovering new places on my own. I was still taking opportunities
to travel to Europe (now flying for $149 each way on People Express)
so that I could explore food. I took one seventeen-day road trip with
two close friends—Connor Seabrook and Zander Grant—driving
from Paris to Rome and back. The itinerary had to do exclusively
with finding great places to eat.This gastronomic adventure had been
largely designed for us by my father, and it felt good to reconnect over
something he was so good at. The dollar was very strong, enabling
three ravenous young men to eat abundantly and well for modest
prices. I loved finding good value in places off the beaten path; in fact,
I was uninterested in dining at the most expensive places. I always
drank Saint Veran instead of Pouilly-Fuissé, pinot bianco instead of
pinot grigio, and Saint Aubin instead of Puligny-Montrachet.
Back in New York I was cooking like crazy out of cookbooks and
Gourmet. I lived in Yorkville, a neighborhood famous for its German
butchers and Hungarian spice stores. I took cooking classes from an
exceptional cook, a dynamic woman named Andrée Abramoff. She
was an Egyptian-born Jew who had split her childhood between
France and Egypt; and her restaurant,Andrée’s Mediterranean Cuisine,
was one of my favorites. She taught cooking out of her townhouse

29 T h e Fi r s t C o u r s e
on East Seventy-fourth Street, which also housed Andrée’s. There, I
learned to make spanakopita, bouillabaisse, and rack of lamb. I en-
rolled in a restaurant management class at the New York Restaurant
School with Connor, who was in U.S.Trust’s bank training program.
We discussed opening a restaurant together; he’d be the money guy
and I’d be the food and wine guy.That plan fell apart when Connor
dropped out of the class after just two sessions. He thought better of
going into the restaurant business and decided to get an MBA instead.
Sad for me; wise for him.
In late 1983, Checkpoint asked me to lead the launch of an offi ce
in London. I was at a crossroads.Working abroad was a tempting op-
portunity, but my dream as I was growing up had never been to catch
shoplifters, on any continent. My years at Checkpoint had been a
period of great personal growth. I had learned that it was important
to me and hugely enjoyable to compete in the business arena. I had
learned how good it felt to earn, have, and spend my own money and
not have to ask or feel obligated to anybody else for it. I had gained
a world of independence and a new self-confidence. I was in my
early twenties, making $125,000 a year, with no obligations except
to myself. Each year, I invested a good chunk of the commissions I
had earned in Checkpoint’s publicly traded stock, which during my
tenure there soared from around $2 to nearly $12 dollars per share. I
was earning money for and from the company, and that had felt great.
But it was time to move on to something different. It was time to
grow up and pursue my life’s career. I enrolled in a Stanley Kaplan
prep course for the law boards. My new plan was to practice law as
prelude to a career in politics or public service. That was my fantasy.
In reality, I was lost. The night before taking the LSAT, I had dinner
at Elio’s on Second Avenue with my aunt and uncle, Virginia and
Richard Polsky; and my grandmother Rosetta Harris. I chose not to
drink wine because the test was being given early in the morning. I
told my uncle, “I can’t believe I’m doing this LSAT thing tomorrow.
I don’t even want to be a lawyer.”

30 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
“So why are you?” Richard Polsky asked in an exasperated tone.
“You know you don’t want to be a lawyer. Why don’t you just do
what you’ve been thinking about doing your whole life?”
“What’s that?” I asked him.
“What do you mean, ‘What’s that’? Since you were a child, all
you’ve ever talked or thought about is food and restaurants. Why
don’t you just open a restaurant?”
The idea felt, at the same time, both foreign and like an absolute
bull’s-eye. The next morning, completely relaxed, I took the LSAT,
and then I never bothered to apply to a single law school. From that
moment on, I was off to the races.
It would be nearly two years before I would have a location, a
name, or a menu for my restaurant, but instinctively I knew how I
would run the business. It would reflect the confluence of interests,
passion, pleasure, and family dynamics that had shaped my life.
I would enter the restaurant business with a potent combination
of my father’s entrepreneurial spirit and my grandfathers’ legacies of
strong business leadership, social responsibility, and philanthropic ac-
tivism. And I would have a chance to give others two things I craved:
good food and warm hospitality. I had begun to understand that busi-
ness and life have a lot in common with a hug.The best way to get a
good one was fi rst to give one.
I would also have the good fortune of entering the restaurant in-
dustry during its fertile period of revolutionary change. Only in the
past two decades has being a restaurateur become viewed as a valid
entrepreneurial pursuit and also a career that fascinates people. Not
only are chefs and restaurateurs celebrated; restaurants themselves
have become celebrities in their communities. That transformation
has given me a chance to pursue and accomplish some truly exciting
things.

c hap te r 2
In Bu s i n e s s
My fir st job in the restaurant business began in the bitterly
cold, snowy January of 1984, as daytime assistant manager at Pesca,
a San Francisco-inspired–Italian seafood restaurant on East Twenty-
second Street. Among my tasks were taking reservations, typing out
the daily specials, running to the copy store to get them Xeroxed,
and stuffing them in Lucite holders to be presented at each table. I
would check in waiters, host lunch by greeting and seating mostly
regular guests, and—when I was really lucky—get to sit in on menu-
planning meetings or wine tastings in the kitchen.
The busy restaurant—which had a successful eight-year run—
was good, and ahead of its time. It offered fresh, imaginative “Cal-Ital”
seafood dishes; had a breezy style; and was in an emerging trendy
neighborhood. I adored meeting many fascinating people from the
worlds of advertising, publishing, and photography—the new deni-
zens of a neighborhood that had just been named the “Flatiron dis-
trict” by New York magazine. My paycheck—$250 a week, down a bit
from the $125,000 a year I’d earned as a commissioned salesman—did
31

32 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
take some adjusting to and getting used to. But I had to pinch myself:
at last I was in the restaurant business, and I was jazzed.
I was at Pesca for just eight months, but in that short time I worked
alongside some extraordinary people who would change my life. On
my very first day on the job I literally ran into the woman who would
become my wife, four years later, and then the remarkable mother
of our four children. I was pounding down the narrow staircase to
the basement office to pick up Pesca’s ringing reservation line when
I encountered a beautiful, perky waitress named Audrey Heffernan
making her way up. For three seconds we looked intently into each
other’s eyes, and then we moved along. Suddenly I felt very optimistic
about my new vocation. I couldn’t wait for day two on the job.
The next day, however, she was gone. A regional theater and com-
mercial actress who had performed leading roles in Babes in Toyland,
Fiddler on the Roof, and Oklahoma!, Audrey was on the road, this time
to play Sarah Brown in a production of Guys and Dolls in Indianapolis.
She had been at Pesca for two years and was so beloved by the owner,
Eugene Fracchia—who called her “Saint Audrey”—that there was
always a place for her when she came back to New York. I happened
to be manning the reservation lines one day when she called Eugene
to tell him she’d soon be home and wondered when she could get
back on the waiters’ schedule. I wasted no time delivering the message
to the general manager, Douglas Scarborough, who found a way to
put Audrey back on the schedule almost immediately. She and I fl irted
for months without acknowledging our feelings or making any kind
of move. In late April, as a ruse to get Audrey to see my apartment, I
sent out invitations to a dozen members of Pesca’s wait staff for my
annual “Meyer at the Wire” Kentucky Derby party. I was utterly dis-
mayed to learn that her brother was getting married on that very day.
I would have to wait a little longer to see her outside the restaurant.
Another person whom I met at Pesca and who had an enormous
influence on me was the restaurant’s bar manager, Gordon Dudash.
He possessed a soul of pure hospitality that was exquisite and innate;

Rocio Ramos Reyes

33 In B u s i n e s s
behind his elegant good looks and warm smile was a welcoming aura
you could sense half a block away. When I opened Union Square
Cafe, he was the man I hired to be my bar manager, and eventually he
became our general manager. I was devastated when, in 1989, Gordon
died of complications from AIDS. (AIDS eventually claimed the lives
of several of my former colleagues at Pesca, including the restaurant’s
owner, chef, general manager, and bar manager, and at least one of the
waiters.) Gordon made a profound impact on my appreciation of the
importance and power of genuine hospitality, and I have always been
grateful that he lived just long enough to see Union Square Cafe earn
its fi rst three-star review in 1989.
I also met a young chef named Michael Romano. Michael had
just returned from a six-year culinary stint in France and Switzerland
and was learning Pesca’s system as co-chef because Eugene wanted
him to become the chef at Lola, a new restaurant he soon would be
opening a couple of blocks west on Twenty-second Street. Sensing a
rare talent and knowing that Michael and I would not be together
at Pesca very much longer, I vowed to learn every possible thing I
could from him. His deft chef ’s skills were apparent. I had never seen
anyone handle a knife the way Michael did; every dish he cooked just
seemed to look and taste better than anything else I had previously
seen at Pesca.
I was determined to get into the kitchen. Though the manag-
ers weren’t ready to let me give up my lunch shift at the front door,
I finally persuaded them to let me put on kitchen whites and cook
during the dinner shift. The cooks welcomed me with bemusement,
and it was trial by unsavory work: I was responsible for such tasks as
“cleaning” boxes upon boxes of live soft-shell crabs, a euphemism for
snipping off their faces and removing their guts, during Pesca’s hugely
popular annual soft-shell crab festival. I worked my way up to a more
permanent position on the line, stirring seafood risotto and tossing
seafood pastas.After just a few weeks my suggestions for daily specials
were welcomed—even by the very serious Michael Romano—and

Rocio Ramos Reyes

Rocio Ramos Reyes

34 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
I was at last allowed to cook the staff ’s meal. One night a week I was
taking a course at L’Académie du Vin, taught by Melissa and Patrick
Serré and housed in the basement of Lavin’s restaurant, one of the
early New York restaurants to feature a deep selection of California
wines. Each week our curriculum focused on wines from a different
part of the world. I couldn’t take in the information quickly enough,
and I’d eagerly share my enthusiasm with colleagues at Pesca when-
ever I could get anyone to listen.
Soon I had demonstrated enough palate proficiency and taste
memory that I was at last trusted to weigh in on the restaurant’s wine
selections. As much as I wanted to talk to Michael about my love for
food, he wanted to talk with me about wine. Michael told me he
had accepted the interim position at Pesca with mixed feelings: what
he really dreamed of was to parlay his years of training into becom-
ing the executive chef at a classic French restaurant in midtown.We
formed a friendship based on food, wine, and mutual respect.
While attending L’Académie du Vin I had become friendly with
a lanky young journalist named Bryan Miller, who’d recently left his
job at the Hartford Courant to write about food for the New York Times.
Soon he was assigned to launch a new Friday column called “Diner’s
Journal.” His job was to uncover new restaurants, and he called on
me frequently, both as a source for ideas and as a dining companion.
(In those days before the Internet, it was part of a newspaper’s mis-
sion to be the very first to let the public in on new places.Today, we
need only go to any one of several restaurant blogs to get even more
up-to-the-minute information.)
Bryan once invited me to share a table at the opulent Russian Tea
Room with the venerable food writers Craig Claiborne and Pierre
Franey. Among such icons, I alternated between being attentively
humble and showing off. I have no idea if they thought I was interest-
ing company or just a tagalong sycophant. But I was getting a price-
less education by dining out with and hearing the thoughts of some
of America’s most knowledgeable culinary giants.With Bryan I went

35 In B u s i n e s s
to places as diverse as the intimate, chef-driven La Tulipe, the patron-
driven ristorante Primavera, and the Chinese-style Pig Heaven. One
night, following a horrible meal at a now defunct restaurant notable
for its disastrous service, we saved the evening by going to Le Cirque
with Pierre Franey, just for dessert. Sirio Maccioni, the legendary
restaurateur (and a front-of-the-house master), showered us with ten
desserts and glasses of his favorite Sicilian dessert wine, Malvasia delle
Lipari. I’m certain that I was all but invisible to Sirio, who was peer-
less at coddling his rich and powerful regulars. But I was there.
Despite the success of the Maccionis of the world, in 1984 em-
barking on a career as a restaurateur was still frowned upon, at least by
families like mine.This was considered blue-collar work not befi tting
a liberal arts background. In those early days of “new American” cui-
sine, the one legitimate path to owning a restaurant was through the
kitchen door, as a number of bold young chefs were already demon-
strating.Whenever I mentioned to people that I might become a res-
taurateur, they nodded politely and then winked, smiled, or gestured
under the table.The common perception was that restaurants were a
shady, cash-driven racket where money was always being passed illic-
itly and everybody kept two sets of books.This was not the career for
which suburban parents sent their kids to college. (They were more
than happy to dine at the establishment of a great chef. But allowing
their own children to pursue such a career was another story.)
Yet during the early 1980s many American culinary stars were
being recognized and celebrated. I began to follow the careers of
Wolfgang Puck,Alice Waters, Paul Prudhomme, Jeremiah Tower, Joyce
Goldstein, Mark Miller, Bradley Ogden, Michael McCarty, Larry For-
gione, Jonathan Waxman, Anne Rosenzweig, and Barry Wine.These
people were generating change and excitement, and they often had
impressive university degrees. Tower founded Stars in San Francisco
after earning a degree in architecture from Harvard and working at
Chez Panisse. Mark Miller had studied anthropology and Chinese art
at the University of California–Berkeley. Joyce Goldstein had gradu-

36 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
ated magna cum laude from Smith College and had earned an MFA
from Yale. The new celebrity status of chefs, enhanced by their ap-
pearances on morning television shows that had features on cooking,
was turning a few talented, charismatic chefs into household names,
long before the advent of the Food Network.
So after eight months of building my own constituency of lunch
regulars at Pesca in the new Flatiron district, I decided it was time
to walk through the kitchen door and see where it might lead me.
I made arrangements through a variety of resources, including my
Roman family at La Taverna da Giovanni; my cooking teacher in
New York,Andrée Abramoff; and my father, to study cooking in Italy
and France for the next three and half months.
These plans at last nudged Audrey and me into action.When she
heard I was leaving Pesca, she blurted, “What?” Though we hadn’t
had even one date at this point, we had been involved in a quiet but
determined courting dance. We were the only people to whom we
had not acknowledged our mutual attraction.“I think we need to go
out to dinner before I leave,” I said. On the eve of my last day at Pesca,
we went out, putting together a jam-packed all-night date that was a
harbinger of our eventual style as a married couple—never enough
hours for all we want to accomplish.We started with drinks at the Al-
gonquin Hotel, barely made the curtain for Noises Off at the Brooks
Atkinson Theatre on Broadway, took a cab down to Tribeca for dinner
at the Odeon (then perhaps the liveliest and most delicious late-night
dining spot south of Canal Street), sauntered over to Le Zinc for after-
dinner drinks, and walked all the way up to the West Village for more
drinks and conversation at another late, favorite restaurant,Texarkana.
We meandered up to Audrey’s apartment on Twenty-second Street,
which was across the street from Pesca, where we listened to tapes of
her singing Broadway tunes and talked until four in the morning. At
that point I took a cab uptown to my own place; I was due at work at
the restaurant in just a few hours. I got just enough exuberant sleep to
have the wherewithal to write a thank-you card (my mother’s lessons

37 In B u s i n e s s
were at last paying useful life dividends), which Audrey found slipped
under her door when she woke up later that morning.
Pesca had been an invaluable experience both for the things it
taught me to do and for the things it taught me not to do. Owner-
ship and top management were highly secretive about the restaurant’s
finances.We had no idea what a budget was, much less how to com-
pute a food, beverage, or labor cost.We could only assume, rightly or
wrongly, that the restaurant was profitable. Also, the owners ran the
restaurant more emotionally than professionally, with their prevail-
ing mood being the primary cues for our performance that we were
given on any given day.The owners dined and entertained frequently
in their own restaurant; and for those meals no money was exchanged,
no records were kept, and no tips were offered to the employees.
Some servers were favorites of the management; others were not. Job
interviews often began with an up-and-down physical assessment
before any dialogue took place. In fact, that’s how my own job inter-
view had begun. I’m amazed that I got the job, when I consider my
preference for wearing Wallabees and corduroys. I was a sponge with
eager eyes, and I noticed everything. It was now time to leave, and to
gain other perspectives on how to run a restaurant.
I spe nt the last 100 days of 1984 soaking up culinary life in
Italy and France, much of the time as a stagiaire, or chef ’s apprentice.
That’s a romantic way of saying I did those kitchen tasks no one else
wanted to do, and in which there was no fear that my rudimentary
kitchen skills might lead to disaster. In Rome, I worked with and
learned cherished recipes from the wonderful family at La Taverna da
Giovanni. I was twenty-six years old, and I seized every free moment
to eat my way through the Eternal City, as well as Florence, Bolo-
gna, Genoa, Piedmont, and Sardinia. It was heaven. My two bibles
were Victor Hazan’s groundbreaking book Italian Wine and the blue
pocket-size American Express Guide to the Restaurants of Italy.

38 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
I spent mornings wandering through food markets such as Flor-
ence’s overfl owing mercato centrale or Bologna’s supernal kitchen spe-
cialist Tamburini, feeling vegetables, smelling fruits, eyeing the oils
and vinegars, ogling strange creatures from the sea, marveling at un-
usual cuts of meat and hung game, sniffing wild mushrooms, and sa-
voring salami, cured meat, and cheese. My brother Tom joined me for
two of those weeks as Scrabble partner, comrade, and, as important,
extra mouth and stomach.We stayed in cheap pensioni, as I had vowed
to spend my limited budget not on my pillow but only on my belly.
Everywhere, I scrutinized menus and analyzed restaurant design. I
scribbled in my journal, chronicling and decoding every component
that defi ned the distinctive allure of a trattoria or ristorante.
Beyond describing dishes I had loved, the journal entries in-
cluded notes and sketches for lighting fixtures, menus, architecture,
flooring, and seating plans, and—tellingly—notes about how I felt
treated wherever I slept or dined. I was developing my vision of my
future restaurant by getting to know myself. Never before had I been
alone for so long, and the experience was forcing and allowing me to
think about and feel what truly mattered to me.
The next chapter of my training began inauspiciously in Milan,
where I spent three of the longest weeks of my life apprenticing with
a cooking teacher named Savina Roggero. Andrée Abramoff had put
me in touch with Savina, whom she described as the “Julia Child of
Italy.” After about two minutes with Savina, I had my doubts about
the analogy. Savina was overweight, perspiring, disheveled, and ex-
actly two hours late for our first meeting, owing to a car accident
she had been involved in that day. She asked me to forgive her and
assured me that tomorrow would be another day. But the next morn-
ing brought more of the same: I showed up at the appointed hour, but
there was no Savina. Even though she was charging me what seemed
like a huge sum of money for the privilege of learning from her—
$500 per week—she was only rarely present in the kitchen to instruct
me. I did most of my cooking with her willing, wide-eyed assistant,

Rocio Ramos Reyes

39 In B u s i n e s s
Pina, who fortunately was a gifted cook and a patient teacher. I did
end up with a handful of very good recipes. Still, although Savina
had indeed published nearly thirty cookbooks, she was no Julia Child.
Perhaps I caught her at the wrong end of her career, but in any case
la signora Savina was not delivering the goods for which I had jour-
neyed to Milan.To make matters worse, I was renting a tiny room in
a depressing, industrial neighborhood; and autumn in Milan was wet,
cold, and gray. At night, I could pick up a crackly, faraway radio sta-
tion that broadcast the presidential debates between Walter Mondale
and Ronald Reagan, and then Geraldine Ferraro and George Bush.
And I missed Audrey, to whom I was writing regularly. I longed for
the rendezvous we were planning in November, though I didn’t quite
believe it would ever occur. I couldn’t wait to leave Milan.
I was relieved to finally board an overnight train for Bordeaux.
My experience had done nothing to dampen my deep affection for
Italy, but to this day I have little interest in visiting Milan.
In planning this culinary adventure, my father had insisted ve-
hemently that I commit at least as much time to France as to Italy.
Before leaving, I hadn’t been sure if he was trying to quell my bur-
geoning passion for Italy or if, perhaps, his incantations about France
were on the mark. In the end, I had decided to trust him and assume
that he both wanted and knew what was best for me. He had allowed
that Italian cooking was brilliant in its simplicity—combining just a
few extraordinary ingredients—but he was orthodox in his insistence
that I go to France if I truly wanted to learn technique. He called
on a number of his friends from Relais et Châteaux and eventually
connected me with an acquaintance who owned La Réserve, a hotel
and restaurant in the town of Pessac; and the restaurant Dubern in
the center of Bordeaux. Luckily, it was the autumn harvest, the most
compelling season to be there; and I could soon see that my father’s
advice was sage: I was in for a powerful and unforgettable educa-
tion. Both of the restaurants were closed on Sundays, so on that day
I would drive to selected châteaux with La Réserve’s maître d’hotel

40 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
to get a lesson on the great vineyards of Bordeaux. We began at a
little-known château in Saint-Émilion, moving on to bigger players
like Château Lascombes in Margaux and Château Léoville-Barton
in Saint-Julien. My most memorable Sunday excursion was one we
took to Château Mouton-Rothschild, where we “robbed” and tasted
the first growth from barrels, and where I first learned of a new col-
laboration being formed with Robert Mondavi, to be called Opus
One. We traveled west to the coastal village of Arcachon, where I
learned to slurp down briny blue-fleshed oysters along with dried
sausage, brown bread, and butter. Each morning at dawn, I accom-
panied La Réserve’s short, bespectacled head chef, Pierrot, to Bor-
deaux’s food market to learn how he selected all the products for his
larder. I visited Château Guiraud in Sauternes and went hunting for
palombes (wild pigeon) and foraging for girolles (chanterelles) and
cèpes (porcini). Building on my experience at Pesca gutting soft-shell
crabs, I advanced to tasks like opening oysters, carving lemons, chop-
ping shallots, and plucking feathers from dead birds. Occasionally I
was invited to cook meals for the staff. Ironically, the young French
cooks loved my recipes from Savina Roggero. But their favorite dish
of mine was côtes de porc—also known as my grandmother’s version
of St. Louis spareribs.
One day, La Réserve collaborated with Château Calon-Ségur
to cater a grand luncheon in a beautiful palace in Bordeaux. I was
bursting with pride to be part of the kitchen brigade when we
received applause at the end of the meal. And for the first time, I
felt accepted by the équipe when I was allowed to join the cooks in
drinking every remaining drop of the 1979 Calon-Ségur that had
been left in the bottles.
After my stage ended in November, I took the train up to Paris for
the week I had so eagerly anticipated: Audrey was flying to Paris for
an eight-day rendezvous with me.As usual, I had turned to my father
for his advice on both my culinary and my romantic itinerary.
The night before Audrey arrived, anxious, I had eaten myself silly

41 In B u s i n e s s
dining solo on a massive copper pot of cassoulet at Lamazère. I re-
member sleeping for all of three hours that night, both because I
was stimulated with excitement and because of the three portions of
cassoulet I had consumed. (Every time the incredulous waiter had
offered more, I’d smile and say, “Oui, merci.”) The cassoulet was ex-
panding in my stomach as I rolled around perspiring in my lumpy
bed.Audrey and I continued the Parisian eating affair.We began with
foie gras and Sauternes in our shabby hotel room; and we dined at
the two-star Chez Michel, the one-star Pile ou Face, the brasseries
Vaudeville and Au Pied du Cochon, and the bistros Allard and Benoît.
From Paris, we took the overnight Orient Express to Venice, where
we feasted on razor clams and seppie at Corte Sconta, and risotto
with tiny clams at Osteria da Fiore.Then it was on to refi ned tasting
menus at La Frasca in Castrocaro Terme, not far from Bologna; and at
Enotecca Pinchiori in Florence.There were also more rustic dinners
of fi nocchiona (fennel-fl ecked salami), coniglio arrosto (rabbit), bistecca
alla fiorentina, and endless portions of fagioli drowned in deep green
olive oil and black pepper in the trattorias Acqua al Due, Del Fagioli,
and Anita. From there, we motored down to Torgiano in Umbria, and
then on to Rome, so that I could introduce and show off Audrey, my
ragazza, to my Italian family at La Taverna da Giovanni. Of course,
they approved, and began whispering to me that she should soon
become my fi danzata, or fi ancée.
Audrey flew back to New York, and exhausted, I dragged myself
by train back up to Florence for the much anticipated family celebra-
tion of my mother’s fiftieth birthday. My advice on where to shop, eat,
and sightsee was in great demand, and it was then that I realized just
how much I had learned over the past several months. My time in
Italy and France had provided a crucial introduction to the real work
of restaurants, and nothing I had seen or learned had dissuaded me
from continuing to follow my passion. I liked the kind of people I
kept meeting in the business, felt blessed being around so much good
food and wine, and was intoxicated with the idea of taking an unex-

Rocio Ramos Reyes

42 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
pected career path. In my many solitary moments during those 100
days, I’d had ample opportunity to contemplate, feel, and envision the
kind of restaurant I now knew I had to open.
One role I decided not to play myself was chef. Though I had
fantasized early on about leading the kitchen (and in fact had seen
being a chef as my only legitimate avenue into the business), it in-
creasingly dawned on me that as much as I loved to cook, I was much
more suited to becoming a restaurant generalist. My culinary educa-
tion in Europe had provided the necessary foundation with which
to communicate clearly about food with chefs in their own language.
Firing myself as chef (or at least abandoning the notion that I might
one day become a chef ) turned out to be one of the smartest busi-
ness decisions I have ever made. My flight home from Rome was a
scribble-fest. There were barely enough minutes within the eight-
and-a-half hours for all the notes I was making on my time in Europe,
and my plans for New York.
Back in the city, I was a twenty-seven-year-old guy from St.
Louis who’d worked in the restaurant business for a mere eight
months. I knew just a few people in the industry, and very few people
beyond the walls of Pesca knew of me.What I did have was an intense
desire, a burning sense of urgency, and—having sold my Checkpoint
stock—enough cash to get things going. According to my calcula-
tions, I’d need somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million to open
the kind of restaurant I had been dreaming of.The good news fi nan-
cially was that I was thinking of something rustic, not refined, in an
off-Broadway rather than a Hollywood style. I knew I would need to
raise some additional money in order to open, but I wouldn’t know
how much, or from whom, until I first found the ideal restaurant
space.
I scoured the city, sometimes with brokers, but more often just
hunting on my own for unlisted places—seeking the right place in

Rocio Ramos Reyes

Rocio Ramos Reyes

43 In B u s i n e s s
the right location. I had two nonnegotiable needs: I wanted to open
in an emerging neighborhood; and I wanted to have the right to
assign my lease to someone else if my restaurant should go out of
business. Having experienced my father’s bankruptcies, and knowing
something about how many new restaurants went belly-up, I was so-
berly aware that failure was a real possibility.
With regard to the first point, I wanted to be in an area that could
provide a strong lunch business. (I had learned from Pesca that a vi-
brant lunch service could help a restaurant to meet fixed costs, and
furthermore that the kind of business clientele attracted by lunch
could give the place an added identity.) I also wanted a neighbor-
hood where a modest rent would allow me to offer excellent value
to our guests. Part of the adventure of dining out, for many people,
is venturing to new surroundings. A dynamic neighborhood would
bestow a freshness that could rub off on the restaurant. As for the
lease, my dad, now a restaurateur himself—he had opened a French
bistro, Chez Louis, in St. Louis—had consistently pointed out that if
my restaurant were to fail, the lease itself would be my only tangible
asset. (To this day, getting an assignable lease is the first piece of advice
I give any new restaurateur.)
In my search for the ideal spot I had visited more than 100 pro-
spective restaurant sites in at least ten distinct downtown neighbor-
hoods. One place that captivated me was just off Union Square, an
old, stale-smelling vegetarian restaurant on East Sixteenth Street
called Brownies. I had been to Union Square just once or twice since
I began living in New York, so I was only vaguely aware of its green-
market—then a small twice-a-week outdoor gathering of cash-crop
farmers and a specialist in heirloom apples.This was the closest thing
in New York to the markets I had fallen in love with in Italy and
France. Though only six blocks from Pesca, Union Square felt half
a city away. At night, I knew Union Square as the stomping ground
of Andy Warhol, Max’s Kansas City, and The Underground nightclub.
By day, the neighborhood was home to the men’s garment industry,

44 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
and the side streets off Fifth Avenue were clogged with rolling racks
of slacks and coats. There was a seedy-by-day, dangerous-by-night
feel to the area. Where Zeckendorf Towers now stand there was a
faltering S. Klein department store. An equally outdated landmark
was May’s department store on Fourteenth Street; a few doors to the
east, Luchow’s restaurant was in the twilight of its life. I still wasn’t
sure the neighborhood’s future was promising, but the deteriorating
conditions made me believe that it would at least offer an opportu-
nity for an excellent lease. The farmers’ market was intriguing, and
according to Ellen Giddins, the real estate executive who fi rst urged
me to follow my instinct on Union Square, this was precisely where
the advertising and publishing industries would soon be relocating to
escape the escalating rents in midtown.
I had never even heard of Brownies, and no brokers had ever
listed it. In the front window was a middle-aged Hasidic Jew sitting
in a creaky swivel chair at the cash register, ringing up the bills after
people had eaten at the very long lunch counter or in the restau-
rant’s dark, low-ceilinged dining room in the back. Just to the west
of Brownies was a vitamin store of the same name. Drawing on my
salesman’s skill at cold-calling, I approached the cashier and asked if
the owner was there. He peered suspiciously at me and said,“No, the
owner’s not here, why you ask?” I explained that I was looking for a
restaurant space. I gave the cashier one of my old Checkpoint busi-
ness cards with the phone number of my home office. “If the owner
should ever be interested in selling, I might be an interested buyer,”
I said. There was no doubt in my mind that the word chutzpah had
crossed his mind.
The penetrating cold during that winter of 1985 was relentless.
Primarily on foot, I scoured Tribeca, the area around Lafayette Street
(I liked the idea of being near the Public Theater there), and even
considered Little Italy, the West Village, and the meatpacking district,
which was then very rough. Disillusioned with what I was and wasn’t
seeing in New York, I even contemplated going home to the Mid-

45 In B u s i n e s s
west. I checked out Chicago’s River North neighborhood—it was
being gentrifi ed—and briefly imagined what opening there would
feel like. Audrey reluctantly agreed to visit it with me, but the Chi-
cago winter—six degrees Fahrenheit, with a wind-chill factor that
made the temperature feel like minus twenty-fi ve degress—made
New York seem warm by comparison. Also, Audrey’s family lived on
the East Coast. Both factors put the kibosh on any fantasies I had
about returning to Chicago.
Despite all the uninspiring spaces I was seeing, I continued to
reject the prevailing maxim:“Location, location, location.”This is the
idea that you somehow need an upscale address to be considered a
great restaurant. But to afford an acceptably swank location, restau-
rants had to pass on their huge overhead to the guests, charging way
too much money for lunch and dinner. Back then, an excellent res-
taurant was too often confused with an expensive restaurant.
I was determined to go against the grain. I was no expert in New
York real estate, but I understood on a gut level that if I handicapped
the location correctly, and could successfully play a role in transform-
ing the neighborhood, my restaurant, with its long-term lease locked
in at a low rent, could offer excellence and value. This combination
would attract smart, adventurous, loyal customers, in turn giving other
restaurants and businesses the confi dence to move into the neighbor-
hood until a critical mass had been reached and the neighborhood
itself changed for the better. Moreover, were I to go belly-up after a
few years in such a neighborhood, I was confident that I could fi nd
someone else who would be eager to pay my below-market rent on
the remaining years of my lease. I sensed a lot of upside and felt pro-
tected against the downside.
One bone-chilling Saturday night in February—still without a
site—I decided to bundle up and trek from Union Square all the way
downtown. Maybe I’d get lucky and fall in love with a location that
gave hints of being available. If you weren’t busy on a Saturday night,
I reasoned, you were for sale. I began on West Fourteenth Street and

46 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
downed a kir at the bar of Quatorze (packed) before crossing the
street for a Dos Equis at a Mexican joint (full enough). I wandered
through the meatpacking district along the cobblestones of Gan-
sevoort Street. I thought it resembled a hauntingly beautiful stage set,
and I remember thinking that it had the potential one day to be a
great restaurant neighborhood, but not just yet.
Using the illuminated towers of the World Trade Center as my
compass, I continued on foot all the way down to Chambers Street,
stopping at a few places along the way, hoping to gather some intel-
ligence as to their desirability and availability. Soon I was in Tribeca,
where I tossed back my fourth or fifth drink of the night at El Inter-
naçional (which years later became El Teddy’s). I sat at the lively tapas
bar and took in the layout: the long bar, a square dining room toward
the back, and another rectangular dining room through a doorway
off to the side of the bar. The place felt like one big party, with all
kinds of more intimate episodes unfolding within.Then it hit me: El
Internaçional’s layout was a virtual mirror image of Brownies, if only
the wall between the vegetarian joint and its next-door vitamin shop
could be torn down and the spaces combined. Until that moment,
I had actually put Brownies out of my mind. But suddenly I began
feverishly scribbling and sketching on the tiny, translucent paper nap-
kins provided for tapas.
First thing Monday, I called Eugene Fracchia at Pesca; he had a
penetrating eye for design, and I asked him to visit Brownies with
me.We tried to be inconspicuous as we walked in. Eugene took one
look and gave the space a thumbs-up:“Why is it that you’d wait? Of
course you can tear the wall down!”
When I came back later by myself, the cashier remembered me.
“The owner’s here,” he said.“He’d be happy to see you now.”
Minutes later out came Sam Brown, a short, balding man who
looked to be in his seventies, wearing brown sandals with socks. In a
soft voice he told me he had opened Brownies, the fi rst vegetarian
restaurant in the United States, in 1936. Back then Union Square was

47 In B u s i n e s s
the locus of frequent workers’ protests, and vegetarianism was consid-
ered a left-wing political movement.A kind man suffering from what
sounded like an asthmatic cough, Mr. Brown was planning to retire
and told me he was open to discussing a deal.
We hit it off and agreed after only our second meeting that I
would purchase the last fourteen years of Brownies’ twenty-year lease.
Two meetings later we consummated a deal. To celebrate, Sam, now
the former owner of America’s oldest vegetarian restaurant, took me
to Sparks Steak House on East Forty-sixth Street. He was a neighbor
and friend of Pat Cetta, who, with his brother Mike, had founded
Sparks in 1966 on East Eighteenth Street. For a decade, I learned, Sam
had been sneaking out of his own vegetarian restaurant to splurge on
sirloin steak at Sparks.
That night at Sparks, Pat Cetta sat down with Sam and me for
three scintillating hours of steak, storytelling, red wine, and repartee.
Somehow, Pat also decided to adopt me as a mentee. He regaled us
with stories about getting screwed by restaurant critics (and how he’d
screwed them back) and stories about his favorite restaurateur, Barry
Wine of the Quilted Giraffe; and he swore he would never use any
ice cream other than Bassett’s from Philadelphia. He took pride in
the coarse, dust-free black pepper he served, in the magical way his
waiters changed their tablecloths between the entree and dessert, and
in how unbelievably much money he was making selling steak.
When I think back on it now, and when I consider all the things
that can and do go wrong when you’re starting a restaurant, it’s amaz-
ing how many things just fell into place in the process of launching
Union Square Cafe. One day, early in the spring of 1985, trying to
learn more about the neighborhood in which I would open my new
restaurant, I made a cold call on a construction space I’d passed on
Fifth Avenue at Thirteenth Street to learn if a restaurant was being
built there. I wanted to know if I’d have more competition. After the
workers told me it was to be a clothing store, I introduced myself to
the construction manager, Tom Hanratty, who was both genial and

48 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
helpful. He said his crew was actually looking for its next project. I
called him a few days later, followed up on a couple of references,
met his boss, and then hired them to build my restaurant. I now
know how critically important it is to be careful in the selection of
a construction crew; but at the time, I just wanted to get started, and
fortunately my naïveté went unpunished.
I also had no clue how to find a good architect on my own. As
I was discussing the situation with my grandfather and his second
wife, Joan Harris, she mentioned that she knew the Kander family
from her hometown, Kansas City. ( John Kander and Fred Ebb wrote
such Broadway classics as Cabaret and Chicago.) Joan mentioned that
she had heard that Warren Ashworth (husband of Susan Kander), was
a terrific architect whom I should meet. Susan’s brother, John, had
taught me tennis at Camp Nebagamon. That was that: I felt com-
fortable enough, after just one interview, to hire Warren and his boss
Larry Bogdanow to design Union Square Cafe. Larry was earthy, ce-
rebral, and intense. Warren was dry, irreverent, and sharp. Each was
brimming with imagination and enthusiasm for the project.The two
had little experience with restaurants (they spoke of only two very
small projects to date), and they reacted politely when I told them I
wanted to design a restaurant that looked as if no architect had ever
been there.
I suppose I could have picked my favorite trattoria in Rome and
instructed Warren and Larry to go there and simply reproduce it in
New York. Other restaurateurs have done that brilliantly. (Years later,
Balthazar, in Manhattan’s SoHo district, became such a perfect repro-
duction of a brasserie that I would almost rather go there than to half
a dozen authentic brasseries I know of in Paris.) That is an awesome
accomplishment, but replicating something already in existence isn’t
where my own business or design sense has ever guided me.
Instead, I had asked my architects to create a restaurant that would
be easy, comfortable, and timeless—that would look as if it had been
there forever. (On the occasion of Union Square Cafe’s twentieth

49 In B u s i n e s s
anniversary in 2005, Larry wryly observed, “Now it has been there
forever.”)
Given what I presented them to work with, my instructions may
have been easier than I knew; there was only so much an architect on
a modest budget could do with this awkward three-level space. The
kitchen is cramped, and if you’re a waiter you literally can’t make
coffee or cut bread without being bumped into by somebody carry-
ing food out of it.The coatroom is claustrophobic and the bathrooms
are minuscule.The dining rooms are low-ceilinged.The wooden stair-
case to the balcony is narrow and steep—and half of the meals eaten
at Union Square Cafe require someone to carry plates up the stairs.
To the dozens of couples who have gotten engaged at our “most ro-
mantic table,” it may come as a surprise to know that their cherished
table 61 on the balcony sits on the former site of Sam Brown’s lavatory.
The balcony itself was for nearly half a century his offi ce.
Union Square Cafe is the least sexy and most ergonomically
clumsy restaurant space that I own. But Warren and Larry came to
understand that I wanted a look that would endure, rather than some-
thing frozen in the prevailing design trends of 1985.The restaurant re-
mains today an odd amalgam of their aesthetic sense combined with
notes I scribbled in journals in Italy and France and on tapas napkins
at El Internaçional. I believe it became a wonderful restaurant because
of its imperfections, which helped build the kind of team character
necessary to overcome adversity. One of the core business lessons I
have taken from the continued success of Union Square Cafe is that
willingness to overcome difficult circumstances is a crucial character
trait in my employees, partners, and restaurants.
The combined cost of paying for the assigned lease, the design,
and the construction of this 5,000 square foot restaurant in 1985 was
just a little over $700,000—an absurdly gentle figure by today’s stan-
dards.With my $350,000 of cashed-in Checkpoint stock, I still needed
to raise an equal additional amount. Even though my family (except,
of course, for my uncle, Richard Polsky) continued to think I was

50 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
crazy to be getting into the restaurant business, there was evidently
enough loving confidence in me that I managed to raise almost all
the additional backing from the family, much of it in the form of
loans, allowing me to retain most of the equity.A couple of associates
of my grandfather Irving Harris helped me to fi gure out how to put
the deal together, and also how to explain the investment to various
members of my family. I decided not to invite my grandfather to be a
financial participant, despite his offer to help.That was, in a sense, one
final protective measure to avoid my father’s resentment. And even
though my father seemed to be back in the black, I chose not to ask
him to invest either.
I did, however, take my dad’s advice on a name for the restaurant.
During my months in Europe I had passed a lot of idle time sitting
in piazzas or on trains, dreaming up prospective (and remarkably for-
gettable) restaurant names, like Bimi (my grandmother’s nickname),
Blue Plate Cafe, Gorgonzola, and—once I had the location—Piazza
del Unione. Wincing at these ideas, my father had a straightforward
suggestion for me: “Why don’t you just call it what it is? It’s Union
Square Cafe. In San Francisco Union Square is the premier address.”
“In San Francisco, yes, it is,” I said. “But in New York, Union
Square is not an especially prized location.” I described what I knew
of the fringe neighborhood with some unsavory details.
“You can help make this square a premier address in New York,”
he persisted.“Name the restaurant Union Square Cafe!”
Construction began on Memorial Day and was completed in less
than five months. The experience was a cliff-hanger. We had settled
on October 21, 1985, as our opening date, but with one week to go,
we were still finishing the cherrywood floors and applying wainscot-
ing to the walls. It was impossible to lead any kind of meetings or
training sessions amid the noise, smells, and chaos. I conducted all
staff interviews on the sidewalk while sitting on a sawhorse next to a
Dumpster. Intuitively, I was searching for employees with the kind of
personal style I’d find compatible with my own. My brain was look-

51 In B u s i n e s s
ing for people with restaurant skills, but my heart was beseeching me
to cultivate a restaurant family.
The job application form I wrote was idiosyncratic. I typed ques-
tions like,“How has your sense of humor been useful to you in your
service career?” “What was so wrong about your last job?” “Do you
prefer Hellmann’s or Miracle Whip?” If you’re trying to provide en-
gaging hospitality and outstanding technical service, there must also
be a certain amount of fun involved, and those bizarre questions gave
me an idea of whether or not applicants had a sense of humor.They
needed one, too, as our training sessions necessarily took place in the
middle of Union Square Park. I’d buy a bushel of Jonagold apples
and we would sit on the grass, munch on apples, and play-act service
scenarios.
One day in the park, I looked over my shoulder to see Bryan
Miller and Pierre Franey taking notes on what we were doing.While
I was cooking in France, Bryan had written to tell me that he had
been named Mimi Sheraton’s replacement as chief restaurant critic
at the New York Times. I wrote back, congratulating him and telling
him of my concrete plans to open a restaurant in New York. Upon
my return in January 1985, we dined out together just once, but the
dinner proved uncomfortable for each of us.The restaurant that Bryan
had picked to review that night was La Caravelle, whose new chef
was my former colleague at Pesca, Michael Romano. I felt uneasy to
be surreptitiously complicit in the judgment of my friend’s cooking,
and I felt unscrupulous to be a future restaurateur dining with the
current restaurant critic of the New York Times. Though Bryan and I
had become good friends, we agreed that night not to speak for a
long while, and to cease dining out altogether. I was beginning to
feel the heat.
I didn’t hire the opening chef for Union Square Cafe until well
after I had signed the deal for Brownies. (Though I had already de-
cided against it, on some level I was still flirting with the fantasy of
being my own chef.) Months before, Bryan had introduced me to

52 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
a robust Frenchman named Marc Sarrazin, the top meat purveyor
to French restaurants in New York, who also served as an unoffi cial
headhunter for restaurants and adviser to the city’s top culinary talent.
Marc knew all the chefs, especially in the French houses; he visited
them in their kitchens and knew which talented young cooks were
interested in making a move. Marc also knew where the job open-
ings were. He was a rainmaker, and so I asked him to help find me a
chef.Within days, he introduced me to a young, baby-faced fi sh cook
named Ali Barker. Ali had been the saucier and chef poissonnier at La
Côte Basque, which at the time was a great training ground for a
number of promising young chefs including Todd English and Char-
lie Palmer. I was also interested in two sous-chefs: Scott Campbell, a
young cook recommended by a culinary teacher named Peter Kump
(whom I had also met through Bryan); and Marcie Smith, a cook at
Barry and Susan Wine’s four-star Quilted Giraffe.
I arranged tasting auditions in the kitchen of my apartment on
East Eighty-fourth Street. Taking a page from the outdoor cooking
contest I had competed in at camp as a twelve-year-old, I gave each
cook a chicken breast, some butter, an onion, garlic, fresh herbs, and
a tomato to see what he or she would do with them. Ali’s chicken
was juicy and seasoned just properly; impressively, he subsequently
used the chicken bones and onion to make a delicious stock. When
I hired him as executive chef, we agreed that he would give the job
two years—which was acceptable to me since it was about as far into
the future as I could see.
Staffing was a study in the blind leading the blind. I hired a chef
who had never been a chef or sous-chef—and who was even younger
than I was. Naively, I made myself the opening general manager, re-
sponsible for things I knew little or nothing about, like setting the
staff ’s schedule, overseeing repairs and maintenance, and conducting
performance reviews. I’d lured Gordon Dudash from Pesca to be my
second in command as manager, but he’d managed only an inani-
mate bar before, never a live staff. Our bookkeeper was an incredibly

53 In B u s i n e s s
nice man with no previous bookkeeping experience, and one of our
waiters surprised me during our two days of training by insisting on
opening a bottle of champagne with a corkscrew.
One day, a week or two before we opened and while the res-
taurant was still under construction, Uncle Richard brought by an
acquaintance to offer me some advice. This white-haired culinary
lion—who was in charge of the food and beverage program at New
York’s Harvard Club—looked down his aquiline nose at me and asked,
“Just what kind of restaurant is it that you are planning to open?” He
cleared his throat.
“I’m not really sure what you would call it,” I said.
“I see. Well, then, what kind of food will you be serving at your
restaurant?”
“We’re going to offer some pastas in small appetizer portions. I’ve
got this idea for fi let mignon of tuna marinated with soy, ginger, and
lemon. We’ll also have a couple of French things like confi t of duck
with garlic potatoes. And—”
“It’ll never fly,” he said with conviction.
I paused for a moment before continuing: “We’ll be serving my
grandmother’s mashed turnips with fried shallots as a side dish and
black bean soup with a shot of Australian sherry.”
“Stop! It won’t work,” he sputtered. “When people go out to eat,
they say, ‘Let’s go out for French, or Italian.’ Or maybe even Chinese.
But no one says ‘Let’s go out for eclectic.’ You’d really better rethink
your concept.”
This expert had scared the shit out of me.With days to go before
opening, I couldn’t tinker with my menu even if I wanted to. The
fact was that I didn’t know what kind of restaurant this was going to
be.What I did know was that I was champing at the bit to share my
enthusiasm for the foods and recipes that I loved—and to treat people
the way I wanted to be treated.Wasn’t that enough?
On the evening of October 20, 1985, we served our opening-
night party. It was a numbing, surreal moment, and an emotionally

54 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
loaded night for me. I broke into tears as soon as the doors fl ew open,
realizing that this moment marked the culmination of a lot of pro-
fessional research as well as a lifetime of personal development. Sev-
enty-fi ve people showed up, all of them friends or family members.
There was something bittersweet in the air as well. My dad was not
present. He apparently had gone on a business trip.Were my tears in
part about his not being there? Or were they because I now knew
that I didn’t need him to be there? In any case, this was my moment
to achieve something on my own. I had spent nearly two years doing
my best work ever as a student, and now it was up to me to show
what I had learned and what I was capable of doing on my own two
feet. However the restaurant might ultimately fare, this opening night
was a breakthrough, in my career and in my life.These were tears of
intense joy and sadness, relief and release.

c hap te r 3
Th e R e s t a u ra n t Ta k e s R o o t
In tho se fir st we e ks and months it didn’t take me long to learn
that very little makes guests madder than having to wait for their
reserved table or their food. That was happening a lot, because the
phone was ringing with increasing frequency and I was saying yes to
almost every request for a reservation.
Though the restaurateur in me was obsessed with hospitality, the
entrepreneur in me was becoming addicted to volume. I was always
trying to see how many covers—customers, in restaurant parlance—
we could serve on a given day.This was also important, since a higher
volume meant more tips for the servers. I could not afford to lose the
few good servers we had, but I would lose them if they weren’t able
to make a living wage.The restaurant had 135 seats, and each night my
goal was to set a new “personal best” for covers.We were consistently
hovering around the one-turn mark—seating each table just once per
night—and we had plateaued at around 140 for several weeks.Then, I
almost brought the kitchen and restaurant down one night when we
shattered our record and served 171 guests. Each high-water mark led
55

56 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
to another. I charted out a manual reservation system, assigning two
hours for each deuce, an additional thirty minutes for each four-top,
and three hours for a party of five or more.This was clearly maximiz-
ing covers, but I did not yet understand the art of pacing tables.The
problem was that with a kitchen as undersized as ours, seating more
than twenty or so guests every fifteen minutes would invariably clog
it up; it was like shoving too much mass down the tube part of a
funnel, stopping the flow of food altogether.
On the first night that we served actual paying guests, two parties
left because their food never arrived. In the weeks going forward, ex-
cruciating waits and walkouts were the norm more than the excep-
tion. We realized that the broad number of items on the menu was
far too ambitious for our small kitchen and our inexperienced cooks.
I hated having to edit dishes I loved from the menu, even if only
temporarily—but I did remove them. On most nights, there would
come a point when I would leave the dining room and stand sweat-
ing in the kitchen, because I couldn’t face the fuming guests anymore.
Watching Ali try to expedite his way out of a wall of “dupes”—each
one representing a table of hungry guests—was safer than subjecting
myself to the slings and arrows in the dining room.
In my obsession for big numbers, I’d created hideous log jams. But
it was oddly exciting to manufacture challenges and then surmount
them. (In fact, that was and continues to be a pattern in the way I
work.) I drew up new reservation sheets, adjusted the seating chart,
reassigned waiters’ “stations,” and sharpened my calculations of the
turn time for each table—all with the goal of maximizing volume
without compromising our ability to deliver excellence. As a puzzle,
this was both an art and a science, and each dinner service brought
new opportunities to make adjustments in pace, flow, and progress.
I was developing what I would call an “athletic” approach to
hospitality, sometimes playing offense, sometimes playing defense, but
always wanting to find a way to win. On offense, we’d fi gure out
creative ways to enhance an already good experience (extra desserts

57 T h e R e s t a u r a n t Ta k e s R o o t
with inscriptions written in chocolate for birthdays; dessert wine for
regulars). Playing defense, we got better and better at overcoming our
frequent mistakes or at defusing whatever situations the guests might
be angry about. Increasingly, their anger was over not getting a res-
ervation at a specific time. I was good at dealing with that, guided by
my instinct to let the callers know I was on their side.“I’d love to put
your name at the top of our wait list for eight o’clock,” I would say.
Or,“There are literally no tables at eight. Is there any way I could do
this for you at eight-forty-five?”—which I knew sounded a little ear-
lier than “quarter of nine.” Or,“Can you give me a range that would
work for you, so that I can root for a cancellation?”The point was to
keep the dialogue open while sending the message: I am your agent,
not the gatekeeper!
For those who had to wait too long, there was often a reward—a
generous supply of dessert wines on the house. We had resuscitated
an old refrigerator from Brownies in the back bar that we named the
“Medicine Cabinet,” the medicine being our ample collection of des-
sert wines, which we dispensed liberally by the glass as an apology to
guests. Except for the most hostile, the medicine generally worked.
Back in 1985 one rarely saw dessert wines by the glass on a menu in
New York—this was still much more of a European custom—but I
began offering an extensive list of dessert wines by the glass. It was an
important early lesson in applying defensive hospitality when things
don’t go according to plan.
While we weren’t giving away Château d’Yquem, we did offer
an assortment of world-class sweet wines like Château Raymond-
Lafon, Château Guiraud, Moscato d’Asti, Malvasia delle Lipari, and
Verduzzo di Cialla. Our most popular dessert wine was from Tuscany
Vin Santo—an amber-colored Madeira-like wine into which we’d
encourage guests to dunk almond biscotti. The Italian tradition of
biscotto bagno (“biscuit bath”) was new to most of our guests in 1985,
but it was an after-dinner delight I had enjoyed learning about while
working as a tour guide in Rome back in 1978.

58 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
Though it was nearly impossible for me to concede, some par-
ties were beyond winning over. I distinctly remember one table that
wouldn’t abondon its anger, despite five attempts at trying to over-
come our mistakes. “I really want you to know how important it is
to me that we earn back your trust,” I pleaded.“I know we made you
wait too long for your food.Your time is valuable and I feel horrible.
Is there anything I can do to earn back your patronage?”
“There’s nothing you can do,” one of the men at the table said.
“We’re never coming back.” I still remember the lump in my throat.
“OK, but when you go,” I said, making one last attempt, “just know
that I would have done anything to earn back your faith in us.”
That outcome, happily, was rare. Instead, guests began coming
back and asking for dessert wine. And they paid for it. Those early
days were filled with unexpected lessons in management. One day,
soon after opening, I went to the kitchen in search of chef Ali. Unable
to find him there, I descended our narrow stairway to the basement
prep area. No Ali. I resorted to the last option and opened the door to
the walk-in refrigerator. There was Ali—with his sous-chef, Marcie
Smith, locked in an embrace next to the oyster bushel shelf. None of
us said a word as I backed out of the walk-in. Up until that moment,
I’d had no idea that Ali and Marcie were romantically involved, and
it was a delicate situation I knew I’d have to handle quite carefully. I
called my father for advice (this being a safe topic). He said, “When-
ever you get attractive people together in the intense environment of
a restaurant, they’re either going to fight or fall in love. This is prob-
ably the better option.” I still didn’t know what to do.
One evening, some weeks after we opened, I was proudly show-
ing off Union Square Cafe to Tom Carouso, a good friend from Trinity
College who had just returned to New York after living in Africa, who
couldn’t believe I had actually followed through on my dream of opening
a restaurant. The two of us were surveying the restaurant from the bal-
cony overlooking the back dining room with its twenty-fi ve-foot ceiling
and its huge mural along the back wall.As I began to describe how the

59 T h e R e s t a u r a n t Ta k e s R o o t
artist Judy Rifka had painted it, I suddenly heard a piercing crack, and
a boom, as one end of a thirty-foot track lighting rod ripped out of the
ceiling and swung down like a pendulum.The heavy steel rod and its fi x-
tures smashed into the wall with a grotesque thud, gouging a three-inch
gash in the plaster wall, perilously close to the head of a woman who was
dining. If it had been two inches to the right it could well have killed her,
and would surely have put me out of business for good.
The woman was in shock. My heart skipped several beats. I ran
downstairs and offered to move her into the other dining room and
to buy her dinner. We were both shaking. She was far too upset to
stay, and as soon as she could catch her breath, she and her date went
home. I don’t think I even had the presence of mind to ask for her
name, address, or phone numbers so that I could follow up. Our con-
tractor had some very serious explaining to do.
I also recall the Friday after Thanksgiving, just five weeks after
opening. Business had been decent, but we hadn’t yet been reviewed,
and I had anticipated a slow holiday weekend. I gave both chef Ali
and his sous-chef and girlfriend, Marcie, the weekend off so that
they could go to Pepper Pike, Ohio, where Ali would be presented
to Marcie’s parents—his future in-laws. (My inexperienced way of
dealing with their relationship was not to deal with it at all but just
to pray for the best.)
My prediction of a slow weekend was absolutely wrong, and on
Friday night, overcome with a slew of last-minute reservations, we
were so busy that I needed to throw on kitchen whites, over my suit
and tie, and cook.The kitchen was swamped, and guests were waiting
thirty minutes for their appetizers and at least that long for their main
courses. I was overheated and perspiring and my red Brooks Brothers
tie began bleeding all over my wrinkled white button-down shirt. I
became lightheaded, not having bothered to eat all day. At one point
I walked out of the kitchen into the dining room and saw a drunken
patron stumbling around loudly ranting about not being able to order
a baked potato at this “crappy restaurant.”

60 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
My judgment was cloudy from fatigue and hunger, and I chose
to confront the man on his own terms.When I told him we wouldn’t
serve him another drop of anything, he blurted,“You can’t cut me off.”
“Yes, I can,” I replied.“Your check is on the way.”
“You can’t make me pay my check,” he countered.
“Maybe not,” I said,“but I can tell you to leave my restaurant.”
We continued our conversation—“ ’Fraid not,” “ ’Fraid so”—
while dancing chest to chest through the dining room and then up
the stairs toward the bar. As we neared the front door, he threw a
nasty punch that hit me squarely in the jaw. I punched him back as
hard as I could. I then managed to push him toward the door and
out into the vestibule. But from there he was able to grab the door
handle and next my head, which he slammed between the door and
the doorjamb.That was painful—and when he began to come at me
again, I instinctively wound up and kicked him as hard as I possibly
could in the nuts.
He managed to crouch his way outside to the sidewalk on East
Sixteenth Street, where his two dining companions, who had been
lurking around uselessly during the altercation, finally picked him up
off the sidewalk and stuffed him into a taxi.
The next week I opened the Daily News and learned for the
first time that its restaurant critic, Arthur Schwartz, had been in the
restaurant that raucous evening and had witnessed the entire fracas.
(Remarkably, he omitted any mention of the fisticuffs in his review,
but he later told me he had seen the whole thing. He hoped I was
feeling better.)
Schwartz became the first critic in New York to suggest that
Union Square Cafe had tremendous promise and that we were doing
something groundbreaking and fresh. His review was the first to put
us on the map. Meanwhile, I was looking over my shoulder for Bryan
Miller. Bryan was now the most powerful restaurant critic in America;
and since we had a tacit agreement not to be in contact, I had no idea
when, or even if, he’d ever show up in our dining room.

61 T h e R e s t a u r a n t Ta k e s R o o t
It was crucial for me that Union Square Cafe express a sense
of boldness and innovation. I wanted to blend the best of European
fine dining with the ease and comfort of American style. I imagined
Union Square Cafe as a combination of three very different kinds of
restaurants one encountered in the late 1970s: first, the earthy, sea-
sonal, local, food-loving places in Berkeley and San Francisco; second,
the refined gastronomic temples of Paris; and third, the mama-and-
papa trattorias of Rome. In California, there were passionate men
and women working together; sometimes living together; breaking
rules, boundaries, and traditions; and loving it. In Paris refi ned ex-
cellence was the only relevant criterion and everyone knew exactly
what was expected of him or her—accountability to precision, and
to hospitality. In Rome, one family ran the restaurant for the pleasure
of its extended family of regulars. I was determined to find a way to
“emulsify” those three ingredients to create an ambience of relaxed
excellence. I was convinced that I could blend the best of California,
Paris, and Rome and have it all ways: refined technical service paired
with caring, gracious hospitality, and soulful seasonal cooking.
Going against the grain of the high-fl ying 1980s, we always looked
for low-key, straightforward ways to celebrate with the guests in our
dining room. One easy way to set ourselves apart in that era, when
lofty menu tabs convolutedly conferred superior status, was to offer
exceptional value. I was willing to accept legitimate criticism for any
aspect of the restaurant, but if anyone ever accused us of overcharging
for our product, I was mortified. My views on this had been shaped by
my own early experiences at restaurants with my family, when I had
been urged to read the menu “from right to left”—that is, prices fi rst.
My dining forays in Italy and France in my early twenties had also
shaped my ideas.The dollar had been very strong then, and I was used
to downing appetizer bowls of the world’s best pasta for, say, $3 or $4.
I was appalled that in America some restaurants charged $18 for entree

62 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
portions of only passable pasta. And I saw offering value as a great op-
portunity to distinguish us from the rest of the pack. But it was in the
late 1980s, several years after Union Square Cafe had opened, that I
had my epiphany as a restaurateur.Audrey and I were in Paris, making
our first visit to the three-star Taillevent.The seamless service and ex-
quisite hospitality were superior to anything I had ever experienced,
and the polished staff members also possessed a confident sense of
humor about themselves while providing pleasure for the guest.This
was the first time I had ever dined at a Michelin three-star restaurant
that, in addition to serving ethereally good food, was actually fun!
It is no coincidence that Taillevent has maintained its three-star
rating for more than three decades. If there’s a better restaurateur in the
world than Taillevent’s Jean-Claude Vrinat (whose father created the res-
taurant), I have yet to meet him or her. Self-deprecating to a fault, Mon-
sieur Vrinat brushed off my gratitude for an evening of perfect service.
“We have fun taking service seriously,” he said. “And as for perfection,
we just hide our mistakes better than anyone else!”That was a refreshing
insight for me as I continued to hone my own version of hospitality.
After leaving Checkpoint in 1983, I had treated myself to a mem-
orable fortnight in London. I used the Gault Millau Guide to ex-
haustively research the local restaurant scene (which was still sleepy
at that point, but fascinated me nonetheless), and dined out alone
every night. The trip added a new wrinkle to my understanding of
hospitality. Half the restaurants I selected simply refused to accept
my reservation once they learned I was a party of “just one.” After
a series of rejections, I decided I was no longer going to take no for
an answer. I would call back the same restaurant and simply make a
reservation for two.Then I’d arrive, be seated, and after a while look
disbelievingly at my watch and say, “It seems my guest isn’t showing
up.”This approach worked at a series of highly rated restaurants, all of
which had initially refused to take “just me.” These experiences led
to a determination that in my restaurant solo diners would be treated
with extra courtesy and respect.

63 T h e R e s t a u r a n t Ta k e s R o o t
Although at some places the maître d’ and servers looked down
their noses at me, other waitstaffs served me warmly. I was viewed
either as an economic nuisance, occupying a table that could other-
wise have generated more revenue, or as someone paying the restau-
rant a compliment by choosing to eat there. On one occasion I was
treated so dismissively—ignored for at least twenty minutes after re-
ceiving my menu and wine list—that I decided to try an experiment.
I summoned the haughty sommelier and proceeded to order a very
expensive bottle of wine, bringing my tab to far more than what a
typical deuce would have spent. Not surprisingly, I was soon deemed
worthy of his attention. He may not have learned a lesson, but I had.
I swore always to treat the guest who orders Soave exactly as I would
the one who orders Chassagne-Montrachet.
That trip sensitized me to the idea that solo diners could be an
important part of our business and should be welcomed accordingly.
When I thought about how much time and care I put into choosing
where to take myself to dinner, and how often I recommended those
places that treated me well (and conversely, how strongly I warned
everyone off the inhospitable ones), I knew that treating solo diners
as royalty was both the right thing to do and smart business. Union
Square Cafe began serving the full menu at the bar, mostly to single
diners and couples, long before others in the city did this. I have
always felt that solo guests pay us the ultimate compliment by joining
us for a meal. Their visit has no ulterior motive (it involves no busi-
ness, romance, or socializing). These guests simply want to do some-
thing nice for themselves, chez nous.Why wouldn’t we reward that?
But the most significant and lasting way for us to set ourselves
apart was the way we defined and delivered hospitality. Union Square
Cafe opened in 1985 during the first blast of the “masters of the uni-
verse” culture.There was a combination of abundant money fl oating
around and a lingering effect of the velvet rope at Studio 54: the more
expensive or exclusive something was, the more coveted it became.
I don’t remember ever having particularly enjoyed a place just

64 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
because I’d been afraid that it wouldn’t have me, so I was appalled to
think that by charging people too much money and putting up barri-
ers to entry, some restaurants had actually created an infl ated demand
to be part of their scene. However, these candles had short wicks.The
discos of the 1970s had given way to the coked-up nightclubs of the
early 1980s, which in turn gave way to stadium-size restaurants where
the food was really nothing more than a prop in an ersatz nightclub
scene.This was happening a lot, particularly as people started to gravi-
tate downtown and take over lofty warehouse-like spaces.At the other
extreme of the dining culture were celebratory, serious French restau-
rants such as La Grenouille, Le Cirque, La Côte Basque, and Lutèce.
What you didn’t see much of was excellent dining in a setting of
down-to-earth comfort. I sensed that there was in New York a com-
munity of food lovers who would be happy to be welcomed warmly
and charged fair prices. In fact, conceiving Union Square Cafe as an
excellent version of a neighborhood restaurant was, in retrospect, not
very challenging. It turned out that there was a tremendous gap in the
dining culture that allowed us to open in a comparatively uncrowded
field. We were doing something new and unexpected, and it was at-
tracting an intelligent, self-confi dent clientele.
The 1980s were also the decade of the “service economy.” Virtu-
ally all of corporate America was being challenged to respond to a
cry for more service—from rental car companies to banks to the U.S.
Postal Service.That trend appeared in our industry as well—sometimes,
paradoxically, at the expense of hospitality. In the prevailing view of ser-
vice, guests were to be treated to more coddling, more choices—and
more interruptions. Did restaurants really need to offer a choice of four
breads, two butters, and any number of special knives at dinner? Did
the one-bite premeal morsel known as the amuse-bouche, or in some
restaurants the amuse (a gift from the chef ) really require a one-minute
description of every ingredient and cooking method? Every choice
meant another needless intrusion by the waitstaff on guests’ time and
attention.What mattered most to me was trying to provide maximum

65 T h e R e s t a u r a n t Ta k e s R o o t
value in exchange not just for the guests’ money but also for their time.
Anything that unnecessarily disrupts a guest’s time with his or her com-
panions or disrupts the enjoyment of the meal undermines hospitality.
The beautiful choreography of service is, at its best, an art form,
a ballet. I appreciate the grace with which a table can be properly
cleared. I admire the elegance with which a bottle of wine can be ap-
propriately opened, decanted, and poured. There’s aesthetic value in
doing things the right way. But I respond best when the person doing
those things realizes that the purpose of all this beauty at the table is
to create pleasure for me.To go through the motions in a perfunctory
or self-absorbed manner, no matter how expertly rendered, dimin-
ishes the beauty. It’s about soul—and service without soul, no matter
how elegant, is quickly forgotten by the guest.
Understanding the distinction between service and hospitality has been at the foundation of our success. Ser-
vice is the technical delivery of a product. Hospitality is how
the delivery of that product makes its recipient feel. Service is
a monologue—we decide how we want to do things and set our
own standards for service. Hospitality, on the other hand, is a
dialogue. To be on a guest’s side requires listening to that person
with every sense, and following up with a thoughtful, gracious,
appropriate response. It takes both great service and great
hospitality to rise to the top.
When you are seated at the precise time of your reservation at
the exact table and with the waiter you requested, that is a refl ection
of good service.When the right food is delivered to the right person
at the right table at the right temperature at the right time—that’s

66 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
service. When you see a member of the waitstaff decanting a bottle
of wine with care and grace, that’s service.When your empty plate is
cleared from the table in a graceful manner, that too is service. When,
in answer to your question, the waiter can explain the nuances of the
wines on our list, that’s service. But hospitality, which most distin-
guishes our restaurants—and ultimately any business—is the sum of
all the thoughtful, caring, gracious things our staff does to make you
feel we are on your side when you are dining with us.
Our restaurants are not selective in doling out hospitality—we
strive to treat fi rst-time visitors as well as many restaurants treat their
regulars, and we do not give priority treatment exclusively to the
privileged. This fact has been often cited to me as criticism. But far
from being a problem, our democratic approach to how we treat
guests has become a core value of our business philosophy. I still
remember a review in a column called “The Restaurant Rotator”
that appeared in a hip weekly of the mid-1980s called 7 Days, about
two years after we opened.The writer, who called herself The Rota-
tor, compared her dining experience at Union Square Cafe to being
served by the Stepford wives. I had to look up the reference; at the
time, I didn’t know what she meant.
She apparently found it objectionable and disingenuous that we
were hiring naturally friendly people and allowing their personali-
ties to shine through in the dining room. This cynical review stung
me, but it didn’t hurt the restaurant or in any way change the way I
chose to do business. If a guest refused to sit at a particular table, I’d
say, “Sure. Which table would you prefer?” Many didn’t know how
to respond to this, because they’d been conditioned to expect,“Sorry.
That’s the only table we have available.”
I had already learned that the trick to delivering superior hospi-
tality was to hire geniune, happy, optimistic people. The Ritz-Carlton
hotels are deservedly famous for their focus on service; they don’t call
it hospitality. But as a guest there, I have occasionally sensed a rote
quality in the process, when every employee responds with exactly the

67 T h e R e s t a u r a n t Ta k e s R o o t
same phrase,“My pleasure,” to anything guests ask or say. Hearing “My
pleasure” over and over again can get rather creepy after a while. It’s
like hearing a flight attendant chirp “Bye now!” and “Bye-bye!” 200
times as passengers disembark from an airplane. Hospitality cannot fl ow
from a monologue. I instruct my staff members to figure out whatever
it takes to make the guests feel and understand that we are in their
corner. I don’t tell the staff precisely what to do or say in every scenario,
though I do have some pet peeves that I don’t ever want to hear in our
dining rooms. I cringe when a waiter asks,“How is everything?”That’s
an empty question that will get an empty response. Also, I can’t stand
the use of we to mean you, as in, “How are we doing so far?” I abhor
the question,“Are you still working on the lamb?” If the guest has been
working on the lamb, it probably wasn’t very tender or very good in the
first place. And if a guest says “Thank you” for something, the waiter
should not answer, “No problem.” Since when is it necessary to deny
that delivering excellent service is a “problem”? A genuine “You’re
welcome” is always the appropriate response.
In the fir st thre e months we were open, I left Union Square
Cafe just one night—to celebrate Audrey’s birthday with a dinner
uptown at the four-star Lutèce. It was our first grown-up restaurant
date in months. As I watched Lutèce’s peerless chef André Soltner
make his rounds welcoming guests in the dining room, I was hoping
wistfully that he would greet us the way he did his best regulars. He
didn’t know me, but our mutual friend Marc Sarrazin had arranged
for our reservation—which otherwise would have been impossible
to get—and had told chef Soltner that I was a budding downtown
restaurateur. Table by table, Soltner said hello to every one of his
guests. And then he arrived at our side. Turning to Audrey with a
broad smile, he said, “Happy birthday to you.” To me, with a mock
stern look, and in a pronounced Alsatian accent, he said, “What the
hell are you doing in my restaurant tonight when you should be

68 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
working in your restaurant?” Sheepishly, I smiled, looking down at
my bowl of écrevisses in tomato cream. It was clear that I had a very
long way to go.
I didn’t go out for a long time after that. I was fairly certain that
Bryan Miller was going to come in to review us one night, and I
absolutely wanted to be there when that happened. We were begin-
ning to build a nice business, already serving more guests than I had
ever imagined, learning to do it a little better every day. But I was so
stressed over the impending review by the New York Times that I de-
veloped a case of Bell’s palsy. I was just two months into the restaurant
business, and the left half of my face had become paralyzed and the
left half of my tongue had lost its ability to taste. I couldn’t fl are my
left nostril or close my left eyelid.The best I could muster was a half
smile. And even that was only half sincere: Bell’s palsy is scary, and it
hurts. My doctor told me that 80 percent of all cases go away within
two weeks, but 20 percent don’t. So for half a month I had no idea
in which group I’d end up.That made me really worry, and worrying
added more stress and made everything worse. During the fi rst New
Year’s eve at Union Square Cafe, in 1985, I could barely smile when
the noisemakers rang out and confetti whirled at midnight. I couldn’t
even manage to cry.When my face began to regain its full movement
after the fi rst two weeks of 1986 I did cry, with relief.
Over the next month, Bryan, at last, came in five times (for two
lunches and three dinners). I was there every time. One night I knew
I should expect him because although he had made the reservation
under a new alias, he had used the same callback number as on a pre-
vious visit. I remembered from the wine class we took together that
he hated overchilled white wines. I tried to guess what he’d select
in advance, because our bar refrigerator was malfunctioning, nearly
freezing the bottles of wine. Knowing his tastes, I predicted that he’d
choose to begin with an Italian white. I even remembered which
Italian white wines were his favorites.
Five minutes before Bryan’s expected arrival, I pulled fi ve bottles

69 T h e R e s t a u r a n t Ta k e s R o o t
from the refrigerator so that they would be less cold by the time he
ordered. He did come, and just as I’d expected, he turned to the sec-
tion of Italian whites on the wine list. But when the waiter sent in his
order I was terrified to see that Bryan hadn’t picked any one of the
fi ve wines I had preselected. He had ordered one that was still in the
freezing refrigerator, a Tocai Friulano from Ronco del Gnemiz, and
the bottle was frosty.
Cursing under my breath, I went over to the bar, well out of sight
of his table, and stuck the icy bottle of Tocai between my thighs to
warm it up. Five minutes later Bryan’s waiter approached me ner-
vously.“Where’s the Tocai? He’s asking where it is!”
Feeling the bottle, I said,“I think it’s ready right now,” and handed
it over. My pants were wet and very cold. A minute later the waiter
returned to the bar with a defeated look, grasping the bottle: “Mr.
Miller wants another bottle of Tocai. This one is too warm.”
For Bryan’s fifth and final visit, he and his wife, Anne, brought
as their co-tasters the actress Mariel Hemingway and her new hus-
band, Steven Crisman, a restaurateur.They had just opened a hopping
spot called Sam’s Café. This was after her appearance as the buxom
centerfold in Star 80, and it was impossible for me not to notice that
she had had her breasts augmented. Bryan was going all-out and began
his meal by ordering oysters and champagne. After I poured Mariel
a glass of Billecart-Salmon, I slowly slid the glass closer to where it
should be—while irresistably gazing down at her cleavage. Had I not
been ogling her, I might have noticed that the tablecloth was poorly
pressed and was stiffly creased where it had been folded. As I slid the
glass, the foot of the top-heavy champagne flute caught on the crease
and tipped over, pouring cold champagne all over Mariel’s dress and
lap. I now had two strikes, both involving wine.
On the night of January 23, 1986, Ali Barker and I camped out at
the New York Times building on West Forty-third Street. At precisely

70 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
11:04, stacks of the next day’s early edition papers were tossed from
a truck and then unbundled in the lobby. We noticed a few other
people waiting for the paper—some who wanted the first crack at
the classified want ads, and others whose plays were being reviewed.
Plunking down 35 cents, we tore through the paper to the back of
the Friday weekend section to find the review of Union Square Cafe.
Bryan had given us two stars: “very good.” We were beyond ecstatic.
Two stars really did mean “very good” in those days, and it read like
a money review. He praised the food and the décor, calling them
“genuine and eclectic”; and he said that the seafood risotto was “rous-
ing,” the spaghetti alla puttanesca “generous” and “boldly seasoned,”
and so on.
Two of Bryan’s observations really hit home. The first was that
we were “fast becoming a lunch haunt for the downtown publish-
ing crowd.” To this day, I always want any new restaurant I open to
become a “lunch haunt” for some core group of loyal customers. To
the degree that a restaurant can serve as an unofficial club for any
constituency, it takes on an additional mystique that leads to more and
more business. Second, Bryan wrote that the sensitive design made
Union Square Cafe feel like “part of the neighborhood, not some-
thing imposed on it.” Reading his words helped me understand that
what I was doing intuitively was actually working. I have made that an
intentional strategy for every single restaurant I’ve opened since.
That first review in the New York Times had more revenue impact
on Union Square Cafe than any subsequent review has ever had on
any of our restaurants. Business spiked 60 percent overnight. In later
years Bryan confided that because of our friendship, he had actually
been tougher on us than he might otherwise have been, to avoid any
appearance of a conflict of interest. He had also had conversations
with his boss at the New York Times about how to proceed with the
review. He could avoid reviewing us altogether, but that wouldn’t
be fair to his readers or to the restaurant. In the end, he and his boss
agreed that if he hated the restaurant he’d probably omit the review.

71 T h e R e s t a u r a n t Ta k e s R o o t
If he liked it, he’d err on the side of understating his enthusiasm. He
wanted to give the restaurant a chance to exceed expectations. That
was a gift.
In tho se early days, I benefited hugely from an unexpected
mentor who helped me clarify and execute my vision. The larger-
than-life co-owner of Sparks Steakhouse, Pat Cetta (the same man
who helped celebrate my deal with Sam Brown), would often simply
appear at the doorstep of Union Square Cafe, out of the blue. He
never showed up at a convenient time, but, strangely, it was always
the right time. I was struggling with my inexperience as a boss and
a manager, and with learning how to operate a busy restaurant. Pat
had a sixth sense for knowing precisely when I needed to be dressed
down, or to be helped. He was equal parts genius and ruffi an; charm-
ing and vulgar; teddy bear huggable and frighteningly cantankerous.
I don’t think I ever saw Pat without a red wine stain on his tie or a
button missing from his shirt. His unusually wide-set eyes had per-
manent crow’s-feet, the kind that come from a combination of loving
and laughing at life while chewing people out at the same time.
One day Pat arrived for one of his impromptu visits, and I
promptly showed off a new dish I thought was a clever idea: fried
oyster Caesar salad. We sat down together at table 61, and I confi –
dently had the kitchen send one out to sample. No one else was serv-
ing fried oyster Caesar salad, and this was long before every casual
restaurant in America started offering even chicken Caesar salad.
“This dish,” Pat said, scowling,“is nothing more than mental mas-
turbation.You’re clearly doing it just to get noticed by Florence Fab-
ricant”—in the New York Times. “And the bad news,” he went on, “is
that she won’t even like it. I guarantee you that shit is coming off your
menu within two months—and if I were you, I’d take it off in two
minutes.You know better than that bullshit, luvah!” He was right and
I quickly retired the dish.

72 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
Though we were cut from completely different cloth, Pat’s vision
of hospitality, service, and excellence was quite similar to mine. It was
amazing to watch him work his own dining room, which was always
full. He did this (and is probably still doing it, wherever he went after
he died) every weekday night. Pat wanted people to have a great time
in his restaurant, and he focused all his energy and passion on making
certain that his staff missed no detail.We did differ profoundly, though,
in our philosophies on honoring dinner reservations. To Pat, a reser-
vation merely meant, We are expecting you. But when you were seated
was quite another matter. Guests at Sparks might typically wait any-
where between fifteen and ninety minutes for their reserved table. If
Union Square Cafe is as much as thirty minutes late on a reservation,
people are ready to write me a letter of complaint and send a copy
to every restaurant critic in town. But Pat, who died in 2000, always
got away with it because people loved eating at Sparks and because
he somehow made the wait part of the expected experience. (In later
years, that gave me the confidence not to fret too much over the long
lines at Shake Shack.They’re part of the experience.)
Another priceless mentor I gained in those early days is the bril-
liant wine importer Robert Chadderdon. Bob was among the ex-
traordinary people I first met while I worked at Pesca in 1984. Even
then, he already had a nearly mythic reputation for being diffi cult and
iconoclastic, because he was supposedly selective about which whole-
salers, restaurants, and wine stores he would and would not choose to
do business with. In his clients, he required a high standard of excel-
lence and integrity along with humility and faith in him—criteria
that ruled out all but a very few. Beyond the fact that he had worked
for the legendary Frank Schoonmaker, I didn’t know much about
him before we met. But I had always loved (and had never been let
down by) any bottle of wine bearing his label: Robert Chadderdon
Selections. Before I knew much about wine, I looked for his label
at wine stores and at the few restaurants that displayed their bottles;
it was a virtual guarantee of quality. One day when general manager

73 T h e R e s t a u r a n t Ta k e s R o o t
Douglas Scarborough announced Robert’s arrival at Pesca, it was as
if visiting royalty had stopped in for lunch. Douglas would not allow
me to taste Robert’s wines with them, but I did get to look Robert
in the eye for a brief moment at the bar. (Douglas did save me a taste
of some of the wines, and I’ll never forget my first sips of Mercu-
rey Blanc and St. Joseph Blanc, two obscure, high-value, delicious
wines.) This first encounter with Robert Chadderdon impressed me
so much that a year later, when I was putting together the opening
wine list for Union Square Cafe, I gathered the courage to pick up
the phone and call him. After giving me the third degree over the
phone, to determine if I seemed worthy of selling his wines (“You’re
opening what? Where? Who’s the chef ? What’s your background?”),
he agreed to meet me for dinner.We met in Greenwich Village at the
bistro La Gauloise on Sixth Avenue. As he looked me squarely in the
eye, his opening question was,“How old are you anyway?”
“Twenty-seven,” I said, taken aback.“Why? How old are you?”
“Thirty-seven,” he replied, without missing a beat, “and I’ve for-
gotten more about wine—and life—in the last ten years than you
may learn in the next twenty.” Then and there, I decided that this
was a man from whom I could learn, from whom I wanted to learn,
and with whom I could enjoy the learning process. He immedi-
ately became an important adviser and ally, something between a
father and a brother; and we eventually worked closely together, even
making several trips to France and Italy, where I was privileged to get
intensive training and an advanced degree in wine and food. Robert
is now twenty years wiser, and he hasn’t stopped teaching, pushing,
and loving me since that fi rst night.
Robert Chadderdon is, to be sure, a man who steadfastly walks
down one path in life: his own. He’s not interested in submitting his
wines to be reviewed, even by publications as influential as the Wine
Spectator or Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, because he doesn’t need or
want publicity. He has an extraordinary stable of winemakers and vine-
yards and has developed lifelong relationships with leading producers,

74 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
who have been growing their grapes in prized vineyards for generations.
He gets into their blood, taking an interest in their families and their
lives. He advises them on every step as they make their wines. Nothing
is more important to him than quality, integrity, and trust. A Robert
Chadderdon wine is not a commodity one sees listed at discount in a
newspaper advertisement. Each bottle is a living extension of a living
human relationship. Thanks in part to Bob, I first discovered the plea-
sures of some of the world’s most phenomenal wines—Château Rayas,
Vouvray’s Domaine Huet, Burgundy’s Marc Colin and Robert Arnoux,
Château Simone in Provence,Tuscany’s Querciabella and Grattamacco,
Piedmont’s Bricco Manzoni, and the Veneto’s incomparable Giuseppe
Quintarelli. And then there are Billecart-Salmon in Champagne, Châ-
teau Clos Floridene in Graves, and Sancerre from George Roblin and
Roger Neveu. Those wines and many others have helped our restau-
rants earn high praise for their wine lists.
But to view Robert Chadderdon as just an expert on wines
would be missing the real story. The man is indeed blessed with a
pitch-perfect palate, an uncanny taste memory, and an exquisite sense
of inherent quality; but he also possesses a rich store of life knowledge,
wisdom, and judgment to draw from. There is no one in all these
years from whom I have learned more about excellence, food, wine,
or life than Robert Chadderdon.
Our third full year, 1988, brought important transitions. For
the first time, we broke into the Zagat Survey’s list of New York’s top-
forty favorite restaurants—we were number twenty-one—and Union
Square Cafe was described as a “triumph of imaginative American
cookery. ” In August 1988, after having been together for four years,
Audrey and I got married. And by early fall, I made a long-considered
change in the kitchen.
Ali Barker, having promised me two years at his first job as chef,
had now given me three. He had achieved everything he could for

75 T h e R e s t a u r a n t Ta k e s R o o t
himself (including finding a wonderful woman to be his wife) and
had contributed every ounce of raw culinary ability and effort he
could muster, despite having no previous experience as a chef.We had
an honest and open conversation about the future. I told him, “You
have too much potential not to go and learn some more.And Union
Square Cafe has too much potential not to benefit from having an
even more experienced leader in the kitchen.” I urged him to spend
some time cooking in France.The discussion was painful and tearful
for both of us. We had become good friends and together had in-
jected heart and soul into the place. Though Ali understood exactly
what I was saying, it wasn’t easy for him to welcome my conclusion.
But I knew this was the right decision; today, many years later, we
remain friendly, and he has built a successful restaurant career and
meaningful life with his family in the town of St. Joseph, Michigan,
on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan.
In early October, I hired my old colleague Michael Romano, who
had been turning heads at La Caravelle with his solid yet light ap-
proach to the French classics. It had taken me a long time to persuade
Michael that he should consider making a move downtown, and even
longer to get him to say yes. Ultimately, what sold him was the allure
of cooking in a restaurant that would let him return to his Italian
roots, even if it meant moving away from the refinement he had so
diligently achieved as he built his career. During his first month at
the restaurant, I prohibited Michael from changing our menu. “Get
to know the staff, the guests, the facility, and the restaurant’s rhythms.
Work on making our existing menu items look better than ever. Use
the daily specials as an opportunity to try out new dishes.We’ll know
which ones work, and we can add them one by one to the menu
later on.”
And that’s precisely what we did. In May 1989, Bryan Miller re-
turned to review the restaurant once again, this time awarding it three
stars and calling Union Square Cafe “a paragon of a new breed of
restaurants that might be called international bistros.” Mentioning

76 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
Michael’s passion for northern Italian cooking, Bryan described our
menu as “the best roster of dishes I’ve encountered here,” and “rea-
sonably priced” as well. Our wine list, he wrote, was one of the city’s
best (“many uncommon treasures”); our tables were “spaced well to
allow easy conversation”; and the dining room, down a few steps off
the bar area felt “inviting and countrified.” In October, Zagat pro-
moted us from number twenty-one to number thirteen on the list
of New York’s favorite restaurants. Crushingly, 1989 was also the year
that our beloved general manager, Gordon Dudash, succumbed to
complications from AIDS. He had hung on long enough to see the
fruits of his labor: a restaurant that was increasingly adored as much
for its welcome as for its cooking.
I was just four years into the restaurant business, and the fi re
inside me was only beginning to burn. My vision for Union Square
Cafe was being realized, from its cozy décor and ambience to the
outstanding value we offered.To this day, Union Square Cafe remains
the purest expression of me and most clearly represents the mission
of all my restaurants: to express excellence in the most inclusive, ac-
cessible, genuine, and hospitable way possible.

c hap te r 4
Tu r n i n g Ov e r t h e R o c k s
I have be e n f ly-fishing only once in my life. It was in Woody
Creek, Colorado, outside Aspen, and I went with a young guide
who had come highly recommended by the original chef at Eleven
Madison Park, Kerry Heffernan (no relation to my wife, Audrey), an
expert fl y-fisherman. My guide, displaying wisdom that belied his age,
called me over as he waded into a clear, rushing stream, and picked
up a small rock. He turned it over and smiled. From a distance, I no-
ticed nothing unusual on its slick underside. I had no idea what he
was looking for, or at.
“Here, come look,” he said. He pointed out dozens of tiny aquatic
insects hatching on the rock.This told him precisely which fly to tie
because, as he explained, the trout would only bite on an artifi cial fl y
that resembled what was actually hatching. The guide then put the
stone back exactly where he had found it. I was intrigued.There was
a world of information under that rock, if only one knew or cared
enough to look for it.
I took a valuable business lesson back home to New York.There’s
77

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78 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
always a story behind a story if you look for it; and you can aug-
ment your success at “hooking” customers by taking the care, time,
and interest to look. On my rounds in our dining rooms, I’m con-
stantly turning over rocks, hunting for those details—a guest’s impa-
tient look or a glance at a watch, an untouched dish, a curious gaze at
our artwork. These details could indicate that someone is bored, im-
patient, in need of affection, puzzled, interested, or just daydreaming.
But each gesture is a potential opportunity for me to visit the table
and provide some hospitality.
It’s human nature for people to take precisely as much interest in
you as they believe you’re taking in them. There is no stronger way
to build relationships than taking a genuine interest in other human
beings and allowing them to share their stories. When we take an
active interest in the guests at our restaurants, we create a sense of
community and a feeling of “shared ownership.”
Shared ownership develops when guests talk about a restaurant as if it’s theirs. They can’t wait to share it with
friends, and what they’re really sharing, beyond the culinary
experience, is the experience of feeling important and loved.
That sense of affiliation builds trust and a sense of being
accepted and appreciated, invariably leading to repeat business, a
necessity for any company’s long-term survival.
And it all starts by turning over the rocks.
I’m constantly reminding our staff members to initiate a relation-
ship with our guests whenever it’s appropriate. For example, it’s amaz-
ing how powerful it can be simply to ask guests where they are from.
Often, that leads to making a connection because we know someone

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79 Tu r n i n g O v e r t h e R o c k s
in common, or we’ve enjoyed the same restaurant, or we can share a
sports story.The old game of “Do you know So-and-so?” is a classic
example of turning over rocks to further human connection. And it
works.When you are considering several restaurants for dinner, other
things being equal, you’ll choose the one whose maître d’ went to
the same school as you, or roots for your sports team, or has the
same birthday as you, or knows your second cousin.You’ll also tend
to choose a restaurant whose chef came out to greet you on your
last visit, or who saved you the last soft-shell crab special, knowing it
was a favorite of yours. The information is always there if it matters
enough to look for it.
Making my rounds in the dining rooms involves, more than any-
thing else, my ability to see, hear, and sense what’s going on so that I
can connect intelligently with our staff and guests and make things
happen. I don’t have a standard approach for every table, but I often
start with a gut sense that a patron is ready for a visit. That’s what
springs me into action. I might just walk over to a table and say,
“Thanks for being here.”That puts the ball in the other court.The en-
counter either does or doesn’t advance from there. But once the rock
is turned over and a dialogue begins, I start to learn something, and
I always act on what I learn. (And sometimes I learn that the person
just wants to be left alone to eat dinner.)
One night in April 2002, soon after opening our barbecue res-
taurant Blue Smoke, I noticed a couple in the back room gazing out
at the trees in the courtyard. I could sense that they were debating
whether they liked their ribs, so I went over to greet them. “Where
are you from?” I asked.
“We’re from Kansas City,” the man said.
“We’re going to have a tough time living up to the barbecue stan-
dards of your hometown,” I replied.
As we chatted, I also learned that they had recently moved to
New York and that they were very happy to have discovered a real pit
barbecue place in their neighborhood.“I only wish we didn’t have to

80 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
make reservations for barbecue four weeks in advance,” the man said.
I told him that we had just decided to leave half the tables open for
walk-ins as a way of encouraging spontaneous visits to the restaurant.
That news pleased them.Then the man added,“You know, in Kansas
City they give you more than one kind of sauce. Would you ever
consider serving a sweeter and spicier sauce than this?”
My hunch was right: something had been on their minds. Now I
knew what it was, and also how to make a connection. “It’s interest-
ing to hear you say that, because we’re actually working on a Kansas
City–style sauce right now in the kitchen.Would you like to be the
fi rst guests to try it?”
I went to the kitchen for a pitcher of that sauce and brought it
back out to the table. The man poured some on his brisket (some-
thing a Texan would never do). “This,” he said beaming, “takes me
home!” I asked for his business card, and later wrote him a note when
Blue Smoke began offering Kansas City–style barbecue sauce.
I’m certain that this couple felt a sense of ownership in the res-
taurant after our encounter.As far as they were concerned, they were
in part responsible for our putting the new sauce on the table.That’s
the kind of dialogue we want to have. Hospitality can exist only
when there is human dialogue. This particular dialogue provided
great customer feedback and helped us forge a bond with two cus-
tomers—not a bad investment of six minutes of my time!
I try to be in the restaurants as often as possible. For nearly twenty
years, until the opening of The Modern on West Fifty-third Street, all
my restaurants were within a ten-minute walk of one another and
my apartment—and I made it my business to visit every one of them
during lunch. I’m not there just to greet and shake hands. I’m build-
ing daily communities within the restaurant’s larger community.
The best way to do this is to first gather as much information as
I can about our guests. I call this collecting dots. In fact, I urge our
managers to ABCD —always be collecting dots.

81 Tu r n i n g O v e r t h e R o c k s
Dots are information. The more information you collect, the more frequently you can make meaningful connections
that can make other people feel good and give you an edge in
business. Using whatever information I’ve collected to gather
guests together in a spirit of shared experience is what I call
connecting the dots. If I don’t turn over the rocks, I won’t see
the dots. If I don’t collect the dots, I can’t connect the dots. If
I don’t know that someone works, say, for a magazine whose
managing editor I happen to know, I’ve lost a chance to make a
meaningful connection that could enhance our relationship with
the guest and the guest’s relationship with us. The information is
there.You just have to choose to look.
I always try to sense opportunities to glean information, and it’s
not limited to information about our guests. I will often just stand on
the periphery of the dining room and watch. I gauge the temperature
of the room, the smell, and the noise. Most important, I watch my
staff members. Are they enjoying one another’s company? And are
they focused on their work? If the answer to both questions is yes, I
feel confi dent that we’re at the top of our game.
Think about every time you’ve walked into a restaurant or an
office, or even looked into the dugout at a baseball game.When the
team is having fun and is focused, the chances are very good that the
team will win.
I study the faces of our guests. If I see that the direction of their
eyes intersects at the center of the table, I know that they are actively
engaged with one another and I’m confident that everything is fi ne.
This is an inopportune time to visit. Guests dine out primarily to be
with one another, and their eyes tell me they are doing precisely what
they came to do.

82 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
Whenever I see that the direction of someone’s eyes is not bisect-
ing the center of the table, then a visit may be warranted. I am not
certain that something is wrong, but I am certain that there is an op-
portunity to make a connection without feeling like an intruder. It
could be that a guest has been waiting too long for his or her food
and is looking for a waiter. It could be that someone is simply cu-
rious about the architecture, a work of art on the wall, or, for that
matter, an attractive guest across the dining room. Or a guest could
be momentarily bored, or just taking a pause, or having a fi ght with
a companion.
I also look for solo diners. From my own experiences dining
alone, I know that solo diners have a straightforward agenda: to treat
themselves to a gift of quality, contemplative time, and to do so at
our restaurant. I consider that the ultimate compliment, and I’m also
hoping that today’s solo diner will host tomorrow’s party of four.
A little perception goes a long way. Hospitality can, in the right
instance, involve little more than standing nearby and allowing my
body language to smile at the guests. If I catch, say, a woman’s eye, she
may beckon me to the table and let me know that she needs water, a
waiter, or the check. If I thank her for coming to the restaurant, she
might say, “You’re very welcome. This place is so much better than
your other restaurants!” Or, “We were wondering when you opened
this restaurant.” Or,“It’s nice to be back. It’s gotten much better. Last
time, the service was so slow.” Or, “We hadn’t been back since you
opened. It was so loud then! How did you fi x that?”
In these exchanges I’m collecting information not just about
who our guests are, but about how they feel about our product. One
advantage a restaurant has over many other businesses is that we can
get instant feedback while our consumers are consuming our product.
People have an emotional attachment to food and to their money, and
they come to our restaurants with high expectations. To the degree
that they believe we are on their side, we usually don’t have to work
very hard to get candid reactions.

83 Tu r n i n g O v e r t h e R o c k s
If our customers love what they’ve ordered, I can tell by looking
at their faces (and their plates). If they aren’t happy, they’re going to
let me or my staff know—as long as we’ve built the right relationship
with them. One night in Blue Smoke, I noticed that some diners had
finished eating but had left most of their onion rings untouched on
the plate.They could simply have been full, but I went over to say hi
and to have a closer look. Sure, enough, the rings didn’t look crispy.
“You didn’t love them,” I said, gesturing to the rings.
“You know, you’re right,” the man answered.“They were the only
thing I thought could have been better. I wish they’d been crispier
and spicier.”
“Well, then,” I said,“you’re not paying for them.” A moment later,
as they got up to leave, the man handed me a $100 bill. “This is for
the waiter,” he said. Good as this waiter was, I knew that the generous
gratuity was in part a reflection of the fact that the guests appreciated
our taking a special interest in them and caring for them. In the end,
we decided to take the onion rings off the menu, because we couldn’t
get them consistently right without incurring a very high labor cost
to produce them. That, of course, led to a spate of new complaints:
“Bring back the onion rings!”
It had occurre d to me in Woody Creek that until my fi shing
guide turned over that rock, I’d have been content to stand at the
edge of the running stream enjoying the dreamy valley and moun-
tains. But in business, turning over the rocks and reading the water, as
a fl y-fisherman might do, gives you crucial information so that you
can take an even deeper interest in your customers, and encourages
them to do the same with you.
Since I opened Union Square Cafe in 1985, guests who have
dined with us there and in our other restaurants are presented with
both a check and a comment card, an idea I had first seen while I
was at Pesca. (There, guests were asked for their name and address,

84 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
but feedback and comments were not solicited.) If guests write their
name and address on the front of the card, we place them on the
mailing list for our newsletter.That way, as promised on the comment
card, we can “keep them informed of upcoming events,” such as our
“morning market meetings,” “wine and food dinners,” and cooking
classes. On the back of the card there’s room for guests to share their
opinions about the food, wine, ambience, service, and anything else
on their minds—an ideal opportunity for us to collect dots. Early on,
I responded personally to every comment card, but today that is the
job of our chefs and managers, who read up to 100 cards a week. It’s
an excellent way to build trust, encourage and enrich dialogue, and
give our guests the confidence that, at our restaurants, their sugges-
tions are taken seriously.
It may seem obvious now, but in the 1980s using a comment
card to compile a mailing list for a fine restaurant’s newsletter was
an innovation of sorts.You would rarely if ever see comment cards
distributed in fine restaurants—that was more the domain of places
like Denny’s. But within two or three years I began to notice that
the wording I chose for our first comment card—“We want you to
return to Union Square Cafe and eagerly seek your comments or
suggestions”—was being adopted almost word for word in all kinds
of restaurants. Today, we have collected well over 150,000 names on
our mailing lists. The lists have proved to be an extremely effective
way to build a community and stay connected with our guests and
friends all over the country—and even worldwide. Today, of course,
the entire marketing profession is out to collect e-mail addresses to
stay in touch with existing and prospective customers. We do that
too, but in my judgment nothing can or will replace the meaningful
contact that happens with a personal note or newsletter sent the old-
fashioned way.
One of the oldest sayings in business is “The customer is always
right.” I think that’s become a bit outdated. I want to go on the of-
fensive to create opportunities for our customers to feel that they are

85 Tu r n i n g O v e r t h e R o c k s
being heard even when they’re not right. To do so, I always actively
encourage them—when I’m on my rounds, in our comment cards,
and in letters or e-mail to us—to let us know if they feel something’s
not right.When they do, I thank them.
I have always viewe d excellence as a journey rather than a des-
tination.Taking that journey demands a form of athleticism. It is the
athlete’s nature to call on all resources to compete and win. I believe
it’s possible to apply to business the same athletic skills I would apply
on a tennis court or a baseball diamond. I see this as a combination of
innate ability, focused training, and a persistent zeal to win.
A friend once told me a story about an athletic display by Gov-
ernor Jeb Bush of Florida. My friend, who is a very successful
businessman—and, I should note, a Democrat—opened an offi ce
in Florida with about forty employees. On the day the company
was incorporated, out of the blue, he received a personal phone call
from Governor Bush (whom he had never met) thanking him for
doing business in Florida. “Here’s a special number,” the governor
said, “that I want you to use if you ever need any roads moved or
bridges built for your company.” My friend remains a Democrat,
but he left that transaction very impressed with Governor Bush.
Whatever your politics, that’s an inspirational business story. It’s
the kind of unexpected gesture that sends a clear message to the gov-
ernor’s constituents: I’m not taking one vote for granted. In my business,
which is so dependent on repeat customers, I never take a vote for
granted either. I’m campaigning for a core constituency of regulars. I
don’t know too many businesses that can survive without one.
If I see a new area code or zip code on our reservations list, or
if I notice that some guests come from as far away as, for instance, St.
Paul, Minnesota; Highland Park, Illinois; or Cambridge, Massachu-
setts, I will make sure that these guests get special attention.We might
ask them how they heard about us. We might ask them if they are

86 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
in town on business or a vacation. We will ask where else they’ll be
dining while they are in New York.That opens a dialogue with them,
as well as an opportunity to send them to one of our other restau-
rants—where they can expect to get another special welcome. The
hope is that when they return home, they’ll spread the word about
each of our restaurants.
How do you get customers to come back for more? That’s the
question facing every business owner, whether the business is a bowl-
ing alley, pharmacy, computer company, or tattoo parlor. There are
two processes at work—trial and repeat. And it’s critically important
to prevail in each of them. If you own a restaurant and you’re fortu-
nate enough to persuade someone to give it an initial try (no small
feat), you’d better make a great impression and win the first round. I
think that most businesses are better at coddling regulars than they
are at focusing on first-timers. But both are crucial to any business;
although it’s obviously important to keep your steady clientele happy,
life depends on auspicious beginnings! In tennis, you can’t possibly
win a tournament without first having won each of the earlier rounds.
If we can get to the third round with a guest, we’ve got a good shot at
moving him or her into the important group of patrons who become
cherished regulars.
It’s always fascinating to see which people choose to become reg-
ulars at any one of our restaurants.We don’t necessarily have the same
core of habitués at each place. In fact, only a very few patrons love
everything we do with equal enthusiasm. More typically, we’ve found
that a dyed-in-the-wool regular at one of our restaurants loves one
or two of the others, and that’s it.This is usually a matter of chemistry,
and of preferences in food and design.
Even so, our batting average is pretty good. I’d guess we succeed at
earning repeat business over 70 percent of the time. It’s signifi cant that
the older our businesses become, the more popular they become—
and not just according to the Zagat Survey.With few exceptions, our
restaurants have also enjoyed increased revenues each successive year

87 Tu r n i n g O v e r t h e R o c k s
they’ve been open. I know that popularity is not in and of itself a
measure of excellence but it is one reliable measure of how many
people you’re pleasing, and how well you’re pleasing them.
If an avid restaurant-goer in New York dines out three times a
week, that’s twelve times a month. People love discovering new ex-
periences when they dine out, so I assume that about eight of those
times they’ll decide to try a place where they’ve never been, whether
it’s an establishment that has just opened or one that has been around
for years.
That still leaves four meals per month to return to old favorites. I
don’t expect anyone to eat at any of our restaurants every day or even
every week (though we are remarkably fortunate to feed and serve a
substantial number of seriously devoted, loyal creatures of habit). I’m
deeply grateful when regulars who dine with us three or four times a
week think of our restaurant not just as another destination but also as
their club—or better still, as an extension of their family and home.
My goal is to earn regular, repeat patronage from a large number
of people—40 percent of our lunch business and 25 percent of our
dinner business—who will dine at our restaurants six to twelve times
a year. Unlike a Broadway show, which most people will see just
once no matter how much they’ve enjoyed it, a solid restaurant ex-
perience should make you want to return for more.There are always
more dishes to sample, more waiters by whom to be served, and more
tables from which to view the ever-changing scene. At its best, a res-
taurant should not let guests leave without feeling as though they’ve
been satisfyingly hugged.
If you can do that, regardless of what product you are offering,
you’ve built a solid foundation for your business. Those satisfi ed cus-
tomers become not just your regulars but also your apostles. They’ll
proceed to sell your product for you by telling the world how much
they like it. Automobile companies and watchmakers have long un-
derstood that people buy their products not just because of how the
product itself performs, but to tell a story about themselves. Almost

88 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
any watch tells time; every car can get you from point A to point B;
and every restaurant can feed you. Just as my choice of a watch to
wear and a car to drive (and be seen driving) says something about
me, so too does my choice of where I dine frequently. We want as
many of our guests as possible to be proud to identify themselves
with our restaurants. Our job is to give people a story worth telling.
For us, building a community of regulars has become more effi cient,
with computers and online reservations, than it was in our early days,
when we maintained a standard paper-and-pencil reservation book. I
receive computer-generated copies of the detailed reservation sheets
from each of our restaurants first thing every day. My assistant also re-
views the sheets in the morning, looking for tidbits of information that
can help us offer our guests more hospitality. Knowing who is dining
where—and when—helps me determine how to plan and plot out my
day. It also gives me the opportunity to get involved with seating and
greeting plans.We look for opportunities to create chance encounters
by strategically seating people with similar business interests near one
another.We also try to create privacy for those who want it. I happen
to love maps. I view our reservationists as cartographers, the reservation
sheets as a map, and the dining experience as a brief vacation for our
guests.As with any trip, there are lots of routes one can take; and it’s our
job to draw a map with the greatest possible detail.The more specifi c
information we can gather ahead of someone’s dining experience, the
greater the chance that we can create a “rave” experience. Is it a special
occasion? A first visit? Does this guest prefer a quiet table? Was there
any problem the last time this guest visited? Does any guest have an al-
lergy? This guest loves red wine! That guest is a columnist for Newsweek.
Another is going to a Knicks game.And so on.
Our telephone reservationists, who are our first line of offense in
delivering hospitality, listen carefully and then input whatever data
they receive from a caller into our Open Table reservation and “guest
notes” database. (In the old days, we’d also gather information, but it
was simply written in pencil on the reservation sheet for the day.That

89 Tu r n i n g O v e r t h e R o c k s
system made it unlikely that we’d ever be able to retrieve the infor-
mation again.) This information tells our hosts, maître d’, managers,
and servers a lot about a guest’s needs, and helps us to customize our
service and hospitality.
We also make sure to enter into “customer notes” any previous
mistakes we made (“overcooked salmon on 7/16, spilled wine on
purse 5/12”). We also indicate all “special requests” (“likes table 42;
bring hot sauce with food; loves corner table; ice on side always with
cocktails; allergic to shellfish; serve coffee after dessert”), which then
show up on our computer reservation screen. As long as we make it
clear that we’re interested in knowing through active listening, most
people are delighted to tell us exactly what they want or need.
When a reservation indicates that a guest is dining at one of our
restaurants for the first time, we’ll make sure the host knows. If we
are to stand any chance of creating a new regular, it starts here.We’ll
need to win that trial round!
It’s even possible to use the reservations sheets to begin the hospi-
tality experience before anyone sets foot in the restaurant. One day I
noticed on a reservation sheet that a couple would be coming in that
evening to Gramercy Tavern to celebrate their twentieth anniver-
sary—a big-deal night, for sure.That morning I picked up the phone
to call them and thanked them for sharing the special occasion with
us. “Bring a good appetite,” I said, “and enjoy your anniversary.”The
woman on the other end of the line was happily surprised to hear
from me, and said she was just about to confirm her reservation.“No
need to call,” I said.“It’s taken care of.”
After we hung up, I confirmed the reservation at Gramercy Tavern
and instructed the restaurant to send a complimentary midcourse to
the couple that evening. Knowing it would be something delicious
delivered by a wonderful waiter, I was confident we would create an
evening worth talking about.
That is being proactive about offering hospitality, and it’s what
our managers do when they’re performing at their best. Many busi-

90 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
nesses depend on word of mouth. People talk about where and how
they celebrate anniversaries, birthdays, and holidays (“What did you
do for your birthday? Where did he take you for Valentine’s Day?”)
and so those special occasions are especially rich opportunities to
build word-of-mouth business.
Reviewing the reservation sheets that same morning, I learned
that a regular guest was coming for dinner at Tabla, having visited
three of our other restaurants over the previous two days. These in-
cluded Jazz Standard, our music club downstairs from Blue Smoke,
where this guest had enjoyed hearing the wonderful pianist Bill
Charlap. It is absolutely critical to know such details. I called Tracy
Wilson, our general manager at Tabla, and urged her to acknowledge
how much we appreciated his loyalty.
Then I saw on another reservation sheet that a couple I knew
who were coming in for dinner that night at Blue Smoke had indi-
cated that they wanted to give their best regards to me.Why wait? I
promptly picked up the telephone, called them, and left a message on
their answering machine:“Hey, Helen and Paul, this is Danny Meyer.
I noticed that you’re coming to Blue Smoke tonight, and I just want
to let you know how much your loyalty means. I won’t be able to be
at the restaurant to greet you personally, but I hope you’re both well
and that you’ll enjoy Blue Smoke tonight.”
I realize that I don’t have to do this kind of thing, but there is
simply no point for me—or anyone on my staff—to work hard every
day for the purpose of offering guests an average experience. I want
to hear:“We love your restaurant, we adore the food, but your people
are what we treasure most about being here.”That’s the reaction that
makes me most proud and tells me we’re succeeding on all levels. I
encourage each manager to take ten minutes a day to make three ges-
tures that exceed expectations and take a special interest in our guests.
That translates into 1,000 such gestures every year, multiplied by over
100 outstanding managers throughout our restaurants. For any busi-
ness owner, that can add up to a lot of repeat business.

91 Tu r n i n g O v e r t h e R o c k s
In the late 1990s, when I first started hearing about Web-based
electronic reservations books, I was very resistant to the whole notion.
I thought that by taking online reservations, we would be losing the
advantage we had always had with our warm, human telephone staff.
We would be like every other restaurant.
Then I changed my view, for one reason: to close that window
of access to people who preferred making their reservations online
would be poor hospitality. It may be more convenient for them to re-
serve at eleven-thirty at night when they’re sitting at their computers
than during our regular business hours. It would let them check out
the availability of a table without making a single call, without the
frustration of a busy signal, without being put on hold—and without
eventually being told that there’s nothing available.
Once I finally accepted the inevitability of online reservations, I
fell in love with the process and its benefits. Every time somebody
makes a reservation on the Internet, that’s one less telephone call for
our reservationist to handle. As a result, the reservationist can more
often avoid making the annoying request, “May I put you on hold
while I take another call?”
The information we receive—whether a booking was made by
telephone or on the Internet—is instantly added to the file of guests’
preferences that we once recorded manually on reservation sheets or
occasionally on fi le cards.
Now, thanks to the vast record-keeping capacity of the computer,
I can measure the degree to which guests are regulars. I can know
what their favorite table is, or if they have a favorite (or least favorite)
server. I can know when a guest’s birthday or anniversary is. I can
know if guests are regulars at our other restaurants—in which case
I’m even more pleased to see them coming in to try another one of
our restaurants for the first time. All this adds up to a gold mine of
information, which allows us to connect all sorts of dots.
Online reservations also allow guests to make their own comments.
One guest, describing himself as a “super-Eleven Madison Park regular”

92 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
and wine enthusiast, was making, by his own count, his 149th visit. If
we see that guests qualify for VIP status for Open Table, meaning that
they’ve made a huge number of online reservations at all sorts of other
restaurants, we know that we’re welcoming people who frequently
dine out at other fine restaurants.That’s a valuable opportunity to turn
proven restaurant afi cionados into our own regulars.
Occasionally, there are angry, demanding, or even abusive callers
who do test our reservationists’ patience. We have designed a short-
hand system to give us a heads-up about a potentially diffi cult situation.
It’s another way we take a proactive, athletic approach to hospitality. If
a reservationist has had to work especially hard to calm down or ac-
commodate an irate caller, we may use the notation WFM (“welcome
from manager”), which means that the guest may need some extra
attention from a manager. When people let us know that they don’t
wish to be interrupted unnecessarily, the notation is “do not disturb”
or “drop and go”—that is, deliver the food and leave them alone.This
note is passed on to the host and waitstaff. Our job is not to impose
our own needs on our guests: it’s to be aware of their needs and to
deliver the goods accordingly. In hospitality, one size fi ts one!
When I spent my summer as a tour guide working for my dad
in Italy, I reported to his manager in Rome, Giorgio Smaldone, a
proud, chain-smoking native of Salerno who taught me a lot about
the essence of hospitality. Giorgio’s favorite expression about how to
treat tour group members, delivered in his special form of English,
was: “There is to make them feel important. Always start with the one who
most need feel important!” Many years later, a wonderful server who
had been at Union Square Cafe for more than a decade told me that
when she had previously worked for Mary Kay Cosmetics, Mary Kay
would teach the sales people that everyone goes through life with an
invisible sign hanging around his or her neck reading,“make me feel
important.” Giorgio and Mary Kay had it right.The most successful
people in any business that depends on human relationships are the
ones who know about that invisible sign and have the vision to see

93 Tu r n i n g O v e r t h e R o c k s
how brightly it is flashing. And the true champions know best how
to embrace the human being wearing the sign.
De spite high-tech e nhanceme nts, re staurants will always
remain a hands-on, high-touch, people-oriented business. Nothing will
ever replace shaking people’s hands, smiling, and looking them in the
eye as a genuine means of welcoming them. And that is why hospital-
ity—unlike widgets—is not something you can stamp out on an as-
sembly line. But its powerful impact can be taught, and teaching it with
hundreds of colleagues is the best way I’ve found to extend my reach.
One reality of our business growth is that I cannot be everywhere
at all times. I compensate for the fact that there’s only one of me
by studying the maps and responding. I’ll often run into somebody
on the street and be able to say, “I understand you were at Tabla last
night. How was your dinner?” People immediately feel good and
are surprised that I would know this. But why wouldn’t I? If I want
our guests to take an interest in us, I’d better take an equal interest in
them.
I also use this information to bring together people from similar
professions, or to connect people who I know share some common
ground—whether it’s from the art world, fi nancial services, politics,
the culinary business, book publishing, journalism, advertising, or
design. I call this planting like seeds in like gardens in order to extend
our community. I’ll purposely make certain that these people are
seated near, but not next to, one another. Or I may simply intro-
duce them, hoping that something positive, beyond a good meal, may
come out of the “chance encounter.” A publisher who sees another
publisher dining at Union Square Cafe will logically assume:“This is
where publishers come for lunch.” A food journalist who sees a well-
known chef dining two tables away may conclude: “This place must
be good if he eats here.” I call this form of dot-connecting “benevo-
lent manipulation.” Everyone wins, including us.

94 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
Through the years I’ve had plenty of help from our loyal friends
in building communities. Roger W. Straus Jr.—the brilliant book pub-
lisher and world-class bon vivant who cofounded Farrar, Straus and
Giroux and led that company for nearly six decades until his death at
age eighty-seven in May 2004—became one of our best and most de-
voted patrons soon after Union Square Cafe opened. By our estimate,
Roger ate some 3,000 lunches there—his favorite dishes were oysters
on the half shell, black bean soup, smoked steak sandwich, and vitello
tonnato —and almost all of those lunches took place at table 38, where
he held court an average of three days a week for nearly two decades.
Roger was proud of the people with whom he dined—erudite
editors, Nobel Prize winners, best-selling authors—and it was always
important to him to introduce them to his other friends. Sometimes
we’d be chatting at his table and he’d lean forward to ask me if I knew
“who the son of a bitch was over there” at table 30 or table 36. When
I’d say no, he was always kind enough to introduce me. Seeing Roger
lunching at table 38 made any other author, editor, agent, or publisher
aware that Union Square Cafe was the downtown haunt for the liter-
ary trade. It also didn’t hurt that across the room sat another legend in
the book world: Paul Gottlieb of Harry Abrams, a leading publisher
of art books and other literary works.Through the years, many other
tables in that dining room began to be filled by other publishers,
many of whom are important fi xtures at the restaurant.
Sometimes I’ll see a name and remember that it’s a guest who
once held a book party at Gramercy Tavern or Eleven Madison Park.
I can then remind the maître d’ to welcome him or her back. One
day I’ll see that novelist Richard North Patterson, a longtime friend
of our restaurants who dines with us whenever he’s in town from San
Francisco, is coming in. I recall that handgun control is the subject
of his latest novel, and when I notice that Donna Dees-Thomases, a
founder of the Million Mom March, is eating in the restaurant as well,
it’s natural that I’m going to seat them near each other, setting up a
chance for a benefi cial outcome.

95 Tu r n i n g O v e r t h e R o c k s
Google (or any online search engine, for that matter) is one of the
best dot-collecting tools ever invented. I might see a name on the res-
ervation list I think I recognize. I can then check Google to fi nd out
who the person is. It’s a remarkable tool for hospitality and for draw-
ing even more detailed maps. Google proved to be amazingly useful
during the Republican National Convention of 2004. We served a
late-night dinner party at Eleven Madison Park for about a dozen
media people who included NBC’s Tom Brokaw, the New York Times’s
R.W. (Johnny) Apple, Maureen Dowd,Todd Purdum, plus Purdum’s
wife, Dee Dee Myers, Bill Clinton’s former press secretary. Following
a marathon evening at the convention, they all finally sat down to a
five-course dinner at eleven-forty-five. Before I left at one o’clock
in the morning, I said, “If you folks stay long enough, we’ll have to
serve you scrambled eggs for dessert.” And Johnny Apple, who’s from
Akron, Ohio, said,“I can tell you’re a Midwest boy, probably attended
a bunch of coming-out parties.” I smiled. “In fact,” I said, “it was by
going to debutante parties as a nineteen-year-old in St. Louis that I
fi rst learned about eating scrambled eggs at two in the morning.”
“But I bet you’ve never had ‘eggs daffodil,’” he said. “That’s the
real thing.” He had me there.
As I was leaving for the night, I said to my team,“You guys need to
go online and figure out what ‘eggs daffodil’ are, and I want you to make
sure to put a bowl of them on the table by two o’clock in the morning.”
After all, if you believe that word of mouth makes the world go around,
here were eleven people who had fairly big, powerful mouths.
Googling “eggs daffodil” revealed just a vague description, but it
was enough to inspire Eleven Madison Park’s chef, Kerry Heffernan,
who improvised what he imagined eggs daffodil to be, creating an in-
spired recipe that included zucchini blossoms and cheese.They were
brought out at two o’clock and served in a copper pot to Johnny
Apple, right around dessert time, as the journalists were making some
toasts. (Brokaw and Apple would soon be retiring and were each cov-
ering their last political convention.)

96 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
The next day Kerry told me the eggs daffodil “blew them away.”
Kerry loved the recipe—he had cooked the eggs and cream slowly,
put them in a blender with some beurre fondue, and then gently heated
them up again, stirring in some zucchini blossoms—and said he had
decided to put it on our brunch menu.The ABCD strategy—always
be collecting dots—had once again strengthened a sense of community
and had challenged our staff to express more caring and creativity than
our guests could have expected. It also provided an opportunity to add
more value by listening, using our imagination, and executing.
We had served a wonderful dinner as it was. But when Johnny
Apple made that remark about “eggs daffodil,” it was as if he had pre-
sented us with a rock with all kinds of life growing underneath it, and
we were then able to tie the right fl y to catch the fi sh.Two years later,
I saw Tom Brokaw at a dinner party, and he told twelve other people
the story of eggs daffodil. Ask Johnny Apple or the others what they
remember most about that evening’s menu. I guarantee it’s the eggs
daffodil.

c hap te r 5
Wh o Ev e r Wro t e t h e R u l e . . . ?
It’s be e n one of my life’s greatest pleasures to conceive and
launch a new business venture. It’s exhilarating to dream, to plumb
the depths of my own experiences and piece together things that
excite me to create something that never existed before. But I will
throw myself into a new venture only when certain criteria are met:
• I am passionate about the subject matter (i.e., early American
folk antiques, modern art, jazz, barbecue).
• I know I will derive some combination of challenge, satisfac-
tion, and pleasure from the venture.
• It presents meaningful opportunities for professional growth
for my colleagues and me.
• The new business will add something to the dialogue in a
specific context, such as luxury dining (Gramercy Tavern),
museum dining (The Modern, Cafe 2, and Terrace 5 at the
Museum of Modern Art), Indian dining (Tabla), barbecue
(Blue Smoke), or burgers and frozen custard (Shake Shack).
97

98 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
• Financial projections indicate the possibility of suffi cient
profit and returns on our investment to warrant the risk we’re
undertaking.
My wife, Audrey, an experienced mother of four children, has re-
marked that watching me in the process of creating a new restaurant
reminds her of what she goes through becoming and being a mom.
Like restaurants, kids are a lot of fun to conceive and signifi cantly less
fun to gestate over the next nine months.You don’t get much sleep
for the first six months after they arrive, and you feel as if you’re never
going to get your nose above water.Then, if you’re really lucky, after
about a year they start to pay lifelong dividends. And we are willing
to do it all over again only because we have built-in memory erasers
that allow us to forget how painful the whole process was.
My ultimate mission for any new restaurant is always to begin
with a subject I love, zero in on what I enjoy most about it, and then
envision a new context for it. I take something that is already acces-
sible (such as frozen custard) and try to make it better; or I take what’s
excellent (a selection of artisanal cheeses or a wine list) and try to
present it in a more user-friendly context. I’m never out to invent a
new cuisine. Instead, I’m interested in creating a fresh “hybrid” dining
experience; and then, like a museum curator, I strive to put a comple-
mentary frame around it, find the right wall to hang it on, and aim
just the proper lighting on it. The care with which we design our
restaurants and the thoughtful way our chefs create the food on our
menus are two elements that add significantly to the artistry and the
handcrafted feel of a new restaurant.
I feel the entrepreneurial spark when some instinct tells me that a
certain dining “context” doesn’t currently exist but should exist. I then
ask myself a series of questions that force me to examine and challenge
the status quo—and then change it. Each question begins with these
five words: “Who ever wrote the rule . . . ?” Who ever wrote the rule,
for example, that you shouldn’t be able to enjoy a refi ned dining expe-

99 W h o E v e r Wr o t e t h e R u l e . . . ?
rience, with the finest ingredients, served on Limoges china, in a rustic
tavern? Or that you can’t serve slow-smoked pulled pork with a glass of
champagne or Chianti Classico, just off Park Avenue? Or that you can’t
create a classic burger-and-shakes drive-in in New York City, where no
one drives? Or that live jazz sounds good only in a late-night club and
only if everyone around you is smoking?
Each venture has taken shape differently. It could be that I know
of a chef I really want to work with and now must search for an idea
and a location (Gramercy Tavern); or I could have what I think is
a compelling idea and then look for a location and a chef (Union
Square Cafe); or I could be in love with a specific location and need
to fi nd the chef and the idea (The Modern).
Context is everything. What has guided me most as an entrepreneur is the confluence of passion and opportunity
(and sometimes serendipity) that leads to the right context for
the right idea at the right time in the right place and for the
right value. I have never relied on or been interested in market
analysis to create a new business model. I am my own test
market. I am far more intuitive than analytical. If I sense an
opportunity to reframe something I’m passionately interested in,
I give it my absolute best shot.
The commitment to add something fresh to an existing dialogue
informs every decision my colleagues and I make, from the loca-
tions we select to our staff uniforms to virtually every dish we serve.
Whether the topic is poached striped bass, tuna tartare, a BLT, or a
cup of hot chocolate, I challenge my chefs to tell me exactly what
they’re planning to do differently from or better than the next guy.

100 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
Years ago, for instance, we knew that we needed to offer steak on the
menu at Union Square Cafe—in a city that already claims some of
the world’s greatest steak houses. I also knew there was no way we
could outdo Sparks,The Palm, Peter Luger, Smith and Wollensky, or
any of the other temples of beef. So we came up with the idea of
our smoked steak—a great piece of meat, cold-smoked, grilled, and
then served with world-class mashed potatoes and topped with fried
leeks. Sirloin steak could have been a kind of “every restaurant needs
a steak” throwaway on our menu. Instead, our smoked steak became a
reason people return over and over again to Union Square Cafe. Still,
in reframing something that people are familiar with, the outcome
must be excellent and must never seem contrived.
I always ask our chefs to explain why they think this or that pre-
sentation is just right for their restaurant. When I asked Tabla’s chef,
Floyd Cardoz, to explain why heirloom tomatoes belonged on his
Indian-inspired menu, he replied, “That’s easy. I’m using them in a
salad with fresh grated ginger, lots of black Tellicherry pepper, and
balsamic vinegar.” No one could call Floyd’s heirloom tomato salad
derivative, and it belonged at Tabla. He continually seeks sensible
ways to innovate, in the Indian idiom, demonstrating that you can
experiment while remaining grounded in solid traditions, seasonal
ingredients, and traditional cooking methods. He’s done the same
with guacamole, infusing the avocado salad with toasted Indian spices
and substituting crispy lotus root chips for tortilla chips.
I do not want to see a dish like tuna tartare (which became ubiq-
uitous in New York during the 1990s) on any of our menus unless
our chefs are doing something singularly excellent with it.That chal-
lenge led us to come up with an impressive signature dish for Eleven
Madison Park: tuna tartare seared on one side. Served with sliced
avocado and a radish salad, it looks and tastes different from any other
version I’ve had in town, and—most important—it’s addictively deli-
cious.“What makes ours different and special?” is the question we ask
and try to answer every day, and not just with food. It adds interest to

101 W h o E v e r Wr o t e t h e R u l e . . . ?
your work, and it can give people a reason to do business with you,
no matter what business you’re in. Otherwise, who really needs your
product, and what value are you really adding or selling?
One reason Union Square Cafe became so eclectic was that for
nearly a decade it was the sole outlet for all my culinary ideas—ideas
that I hoped would enrich our guests’ experiences.Whenever I trav-
eled I tasted all kinds of food, and Union Square Cafe was the only
place where I could try out my new discoveries.
The restaurant was my laboratory, and I pounced on every pos-
sible opportunity to experiment with something new. For example:
• We built up an extensive international wine list (when oth-
ers were focused on wines from just one or two countries),
pioneered a new way of organizing that list (by fl avor profi le
rather than appellation), and presented guests with seasonal
wine-and-food dinners.
• I wrote a biannual newsletter that became a conversation with
our guests and helped to ensure continued patronage.
• By the late 1980s, we were open for Sunday dinner. At the
time, that was unusual among fi ne restaurants.
• In late 1990, I decided to eliminate smoking in our din-
ing room. For years I had permitted smoking in various
parts of the restaurant. But smoke drifts, and I couldn’t
stand mediating arguments night after night between the
smokers and nonsmokers. The airlines had a similar prob-
lem—there was always one nonsmoking row just ahead of
the last smoking row. In 1991, I eliminated smoking from
Union Square Cafe altogether, four years before New York
City passed a partial ban on smoking in restaurants (the
Smoke-Free Act of 1995) and a decade before the more
stringent version of 2002.

102 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
My voluntary ban on smoking at the restaurant was controver-
sial, though for me it wasn’t a matter of telling anyone else what to
do. It’s my opinion that you can do anything you want in your own
place of business. I didn’t need a law. Rather, I was sensitive about this
issue because Audrey’s mother had died of lung cancer at age sixty-
one, and then my father had died of it at age fi fty-nine. My grand-
mother, Louise Meyer, had been a lifelong smoker, so although my
dad had quit smoking himself when he was in his twenties, he had
grown up breathing secondhand smoke. Another motivation for me
was concern for my health and that of our employees. And above all,
my instinct told me to get out ahead of the pack and take a strong,
activist stand in something that affected human health. Some people
thought I was crazy, but for me, hospitality must be enlightened: we
must care for our own staff first. Interestingly, after our self-imposed
ban on cigarettes, business improved, and the restaurant grew more
popular than ever.
De spite the continue d succe ss of Union Square Cafe, for
almost nine years I was firmly against opening a second restaurant.
Owing, in large part, to my experience of my father’s tumultuous
career and his two bankruptcies, I always thought of expansion as
dancing on the edge of failure. It wasn’t until after my father died
that I began to give myself the freedom to expand my business. It was
almost as if my fear of repeating his defeats was softened by the fact
that he wouldn’t be around to see the outcome. Another factor was
that for years I had protected myself from the perils of growth by es-
tablishing three prerequisites that I knew would be almost impossible
to meet. First, any new restaurant would have to be as excellent within
its niche as Union Square Cafe. (In my mind, the success of Union
Square Cafe had been a fluke, and I was fairly certain I’d never have a
hit like that again.) Second, the opening of the new restaurant could
in no way compromise or diminish the excellence of Union Square

103 W h o E v e r Wr o t e t h e R u l e . . . ?
Cafe. (Restaurant sequels can diminish the original, perhaps because
the management’s focus and capacity may be spread too thin.) Third,
I would open another restaurant only when I was sure that I would
also achieve more time for myself and Audrey. (That seemed unlikely,
as I was already working up to fourteen hours a day.)
At this point in our lives, Audrey and I were married but still
without kids. Audrey had successfully transitioned from a career as
a stage actress to become a leading member of the publishing and
sales team at Gourmet magazine. Since we had met in the restaurant
business, neither of us had to adjust our expectations about what de-
mands my career would place on us as a couple. But with each year
of Union Square Cafe’s progress as a prominent restaurant, I found
myself working harder and longer to exceed increasingly ratcheted
expectations—the public’s and my own. We were intent on having
kids, all the more so because each of us had lost a parent. I did a lot
of soul-searching, asking myself whether taking on more business and
more stress would be wise for me or my marriage, or even for my
business.To her credit, Audrey left the decision to me.
In the early 1990s, I was doing a lot of thinking about how much I
enjoyed luxury dining. I was inspired by Michelin-starred restaurants
in France and Italy, especially the two-star restaurants, which seemed
able to combine refi nement with genuine warmth. I was also increas-
ingly impressed by the improved quality of cooking here in the United
States. I loved the food and wine served at these great restaurants, but I
was less moved by their customary pomp and circumstance.
So I was presented with a dilemma in 1992 when the restaurant
Mondrian closed. Mondrian had received a three-star rating from the
New York Times, and I knew and greatly admired its chef, Tom Colic-
chio. Now Tom asked me if I would be interested in starting a new
restaurant with him. I was not thinking about opening a new restau-
rant—but how could I say no to a collaboration with such a gifted,
passionate chef ? I knew he was the right choice; and with Audrey’s
encouragement, I began to plan a new restaurant with him.

104 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
We agreed that we wanted to combine the elements of luxury
dining that we most loved, but to present them within a new frame-
work. I had in mind the lovely restaurants I had enjoyed in the French
and Italian countryside, as well as the taverns that Audrey and I had
frequented in and around Bucks County, Pennsylvania (Audrey grew
up there), and in New England. She and I had become addicted to
the hunt for early American antiques. While we were childless, our
routine on many weekends was to travel in search of shops and auc-
tions in Maine,Vermont, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania; find a his-
toric tavern for dinner in the evening; and stay overnight at a bed-
and-breakfast. Though the food in the old taverns rarely rose above,
say, mixed salad with raspberry vinaigrette, duck with cherry sauce,
and chocolate mousse, I always found the folk-style atmosphere ap-
pealing. Exploring the idea of the “tavern” and imagining how to
apply it in a fresh way was becoming a fi xation.
So Tom and I began by asking,“Who ever wrote the rule that the
only way to enjoy luxurious fine dining is in the environment of a
stuffy restaurant with tuxedo-clad waiters and a stiff, hushed atmo-
sphere?” And,“Who ever wrote the rule that a rustic tavern couldn’t
be a setting for truly outstanding modern food?”
Union Square Cafe had become known as an excellent version
of a neighborhood restaurant, so it occurred to me that Gramercy
Tavern might succeed as a neighborhood version of an elegant res-
taurant. In one case the goal was to take some element of dining that
was already accessible and make it better; in the other, it was to take
an element of excellent dining that was rarefied and make it more
accessible. Some people expect a stuffy ambience at Gramercy Tavern,
but when they walk in they find an animated community hall—with
excellent food and drink.This setting immediately puts guests at ease
and makes it somewhat easier for the restaurant to exceed expecta-
tions.
We worked with Peter Bentel and his remarkably talented and fo-
cused family of architects (whom I had met serendipitously through

105 W h o E v e r Wr o t e t h e R u l e . . . ?
the contractor who completed Audrey’s and my apartment). The
Bentels were famous for designing churches and libraries, but this
would be their very first restaurant.We began with a fantasy that what
we were designing had always been the tavern for the Gramercy Park
community, and that we had continued to update it over the past
century. Now, as Gramercy Tavern, it would continue to play its ear-
lier role as the community’s best place to meet, eat, and drink. As we
pounded the pavement looking for a site, my one requirement was to
be as close as possible to Union Square Cafe and the greenmarket.
One day Tom Colicchio urged me to come to see a place he had
seen through a Runyonesque real estate broker named Augie Hasho.
It was on East Twentieth Street and had been a warehouse for mili-
tary uniforms.The company that owned the building (coincidentally
called “N.S. Meyer”) also manufactured and sold military medals.The
huge storefront space—6,000 square feet—housed a giant version
of the type of conveyor hanger system typically used by dry clean-
ers. The site was a short four-block walk from Union Square Cafe
and just three blocks from the greenmarket, which by now included
more farmers than before and was open four days a week. And the
Gramercy Park–Flatiron district seemed ready for this kind of restau-
rant. For some reason it had lagged behind nearby developments; it
had just a few decent eateries. The contiguous Union Square neigh-
borhood was just starting to emerge as a restaurant row.The time was
right to move.The location was perfect. And the price was right: we
negotiated an incredibly favorable rent, just $20 per square foot.
With that vast open space we could start from scratch. I hoped
that by working with the architects Bentel and Bentel, we could
create a restaurant design that would compensate for all the physi-
cal shortcomings of Union Square Cafe. If we succeeded, the coat-
room would actually have adequate space for a night’s worth of coats,
the kitchen would have enough space to cook for large numbers
of guests, and there would be a private dining room. The restrooms
would be commodious and lovely. The offices would be generously

106 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
sized and would enable the managers to work effi ciently. The chilled
wine cellar would have a capacity of 7,500 bottles. In the dining
rooms there would be no bad tables. And bartenders would actually
have enough area to work together behind the bar without bumping
into each other every time they mixed a drink.
In our earliest conversations with Bentel and Bentel, we decided
to use authentic antiques—and no reproductions.Where we did not
use antiques, we would hire crafts people to create their own artistic
interpretations of, say, original tavern sconces and chandeliers.“Inject
your own personality,” I told these artisans.“But keep it real.” In this
way we stayed true to our vision and avoided the forced, artifi cially
thematic “ye olde tavern” that we might otherwise have ended up
with.
With help from friends and experts in antiques like Peter Er-
macora, Evan Hughes, and Dorothy and Leo Rabkin, the treasure
hunt yielded some gorgeous early American fi nds—mirrors, portraits,
tavern signs, Amish quilts. We discovered hand-cut bricks from an
eighteenth-century foundry in the Carolinas. We found a pie chest
from North Carolina; a counter from a general store in Connect-
icut that we placed between the kitchen and the dining room; a
schoolteacher’s desk from Massachusetts (which became our maître
d’s stand); a primitive cabinet we’d use for storing linens; and a nine-
teenth-century granary wheel to hang in our private dining room.
Those items were hard to find and expensive to buy; in fact, the cost
to design, build, and outfit Gramercy Tavern was over $3 million—
more than four times what it had cost to open Union Square Cafe.
But each dollar spent contributed to the aura of authenticity and en-
hanced the meaning and value of the word “tavern.”
The name Gramercy Tavern was first suggested to me by the
writer and television producer Peter Kaminsky, a longtime bar lunch
regular at Union Square Cafe, who was writing an article for the
New Yorker about the process of opening our restaurant. (At the last
moment and after months of work, his story was canned by Tina

107 W h o E v e r Wr o t e t h e R u l e . . . ?
Brown, who was then the magazine’s editor. But two weeks before
our opening, Peter sold the story to New York magazine. Its editor,
Kurt Andersen, made Gramercy Tavern his cover story on our open-
ing day. This story had a powerful effect on us, both positive and
negative, but I’ll talk about that later.)
Tom and I each had something to prove at Gramercy Tavern.
Tom’s cooking at Mondrian had received wide acclaim—including
the three stars from the New York Times—and he was determined to
show the world that Mondrian’s failure to survive was caused by the
bad economy of the early 1990s, rather than by a flawed menu or
mismanagement. And I needed desperately to prove to myself that
Union Square Cafe had not been a “one-hit” fl uke.
There had been many changes in New York in the nine years
since I’d opened Union Square Cafe. President Clinton’s “new econ-
omy” had taken off, crime rates were beginning to recede, and the
category of “casual-excellent” restaurants like Union Square Cafe
was becoming saturated.
Business at Gramercy Tavern was intense from the start. In fact,
there was a lively media buzz about the restaurant, and we couldn’t
come close to meeting the demand for reservations. Nor were we
coming close to meeting the expectations our guests brought with
them—especially after the cover story in New York magazine, which
pondered whether Gramercy Tavern might be “the next great restau-
rant.” Everyone, it seemed, wanted to judge for himself or herself the
answer to the cover.The good news was that we were booked every
single night.The painful news is that we were far from being a great
restaurant, and plenty of people told us as much.
Actually, I felt like a miserable failure in 1994–1995. Union Square
Cafe appeared to be getting worse (it dropped from number two to
number three on Zagat’s list of most popular restaurants). Gramercy
Tavern seemed less excellent and less safe than Union Square Cafe,
and I was beset with complaint letters and irate phone calls from
disappointed guests—many of whom identified themselves as regu-

108 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
lars at Union Square Cafe. And I was running around like one of the
Three Stooges with less, not more, time for myself and my family,
which by now included a one-year-old daughter, Hallie.Audrey, who
loved Gramercy Tavern almost from the outset, couldn’t fully under-
stand why I was pulling my hair out. Of course, she had begun to re-
prioritize her own talents now that she was a mom, and our beauti-
ful new daughter was far more important than my bellyaching about
either the new or the old restaurant.
I knew that Audrey was right, yet I still had the sense of being close
to a dangerous outcome.Was I now treading down the same path my
father had taken—expansion to bankruptcy? Had I blown it?
I began to look all around me for ways to regain direction and
control of both restaurants. In 1995, after intense internal debate, I
went through an unpleasant professional divorce from a managing
partner.Talented as he was, we had entirely different styles, and differ-
ent approaches to running the business. I felt constrained by his em-
phasis on making profitability the top priority. I realized, too, that my
own hands-on managerial style was not particularly effective in oper-
ating two restaurants at the same time under pressure. I managed by
example, and I had yet to learn how critically important it is to lead
by teaching, setting priorities, and holding people accountable. I was
beginning to feel defeated. Gramercy Tavern was not performing like
a champion, and I was becoming painfully aware that my own lead-
ership was to blame. And then personal disaster struck. One Saturday
night in the summer of 1995, Audrey suddenly went into premature
labor with twenty-two-week-old twins. We grabbed two-year-old
Hallie from her crib; rushed uptown to Lenox Hill Hospital; and after
the taxi driver urged us to “have a nice day,” we tore up to the mater-
nity ward where, despite heroic efforts to halt the labor, Audrey gave
birth to two tiny babies—a boy and a girl—each weighing no more
than a pound.Within eight hours, both had died.
It was a crushing blow that challenged our marriage and our lives;
and if we had not resolved to use every form of therapy available—

109 W h o E v e r Wr o t e t h e R u l e . . . ?
and in my case additional intense work with a men’s group—the
loss almost certainly would have brought us down individually and
together. Facing up to the real meanings of life, death, perseverance,
survival, and love gave me and Audrey an enhanced sense of urgency
and a new perspective on how we spent our time.
At this point, I was in a fighting mood, and the object of my
focus was Gramercy Tavern. It was time to win, at any cost. It was
time for me to become even more precise in describing what kind
of managers we’d hire, and even more articulate in communicating
what was expected of them. At this moment, “enlightened hospital-
ity” was born. In a meeting of the entire staff of Gramercy Tavern,
and with full agreement and support from Tom, I began to outline
what I considered nonnegotiable about how we did business. Noth-
ing would ever matter more to me than how we expressed hospitality
to one another. (Who ever wrote the rule that the customer is always
first?) And then, in descending order, our next core values would be
to extend gracious hospitality to our guests, our community, our suppli-
ers, and fi nally our investors. I called that set of priorities enlightened
hospitality. Every decision we made from that day forward would be
evaluated according to enlightened hospitality.We would defi ne our
successes as well as our failures in terms of the degree to which we
had championed, first, one another and then our guests, community,
suppliers, and investors.
One by one, the staff lined up behind us (those for whom this
way of doing business held no interest left for other restaurants) and
grew more confident.We were profitable, and at last we were getting
good reviews. Ruth Reichl, now restaurant critic for the New York
Times, promoted us to a rating of “excellent”—three stars. “It takes a
while for a restaurant to hit its stride,” she wrote, “there is no time-
table for this; each proceeds at its own pace. It can take a year or two
or more before everything comes together in one smooth motion.
But when it finally happens, everyone knows it: one step through the
door and you can feel the energy running through the room.”

Rosie Ramos

110 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
I conducted the same meeting next at Union Square Cafe, and
my first restaurant almost immediately regained its upward course.
The staff members rallied to something they could believe in, follow,
and support. Perhaps most important, I had learned to trust my own
instincts, and to make them explicit for others.What had once been
intuition—ripples I’d leave in my wake—could now be transformed
into intentional waves. I’d written a new set of rules for my business,
and I was at last ready to read them aloud.

c hap te r 6
No Tu r n i n g Ba c k
Now I wante d to turn my attention to Michael Romano.
Michael had been somewhat dejected when I corrected all of Union
Square Cafe’s design flaws by building a new facility at Gramercy
Tavern.Though he had invested his own money in Gramercy Tavern,
he was envious when he saw that the new restaurant’s shining kitchen
had everything his didn’t have. Even though neither of us was really
sure that Michael actually wanted to play a role in launching another
restaurant, it was important at least to explore the option. For my part,
my own growth as a leader had allowed me to strengthen the foun-
dations of both Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern. It had also
helped me become more confident as I contemplated further expan-
sion. I was ready to go for it. By 1995, there were no great or afford-
able spaces left along Union Square Park, and so I decided to take
a look around Madison Square Park—a run-down plot of splotchy
green which was a stone’s throw from Union Square and Gramercy
Tavern, and which had all the potential upside in the world.
I thought we might be able to contribute something new to the
111

112 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
traditional bistro or brasserie, so I asked Michael to accompany me
on a research trip to Paris, seeking new ideas and inspiration for cre-
ating a French version of Union Square Cafe. (Union Square Cafe
itself being an Italian version of Union Square Cafe). This research
proved to be a punishing form of pleasure. On day one, we dined
at two different Michelin three-star restaurants (lunch at Robuchon,
followed by dinner at Lucas Carton), and over the next forty-eight
hours we ate at six other classic bistros and as many brasseries. Was
there anything fresh to express in this niche?
The space I had my eye on in New York was at the base of the
gorgeous old Gift Building at 225 Fifth Avenue on the northwest
corner of Madison Square Park. Since it was a fairly small storefront,
the only realistic plan for adequate seating at 225 Fifth was to extend
the ground floor outward by building an enclosed sidewalk annex or
cafe overlooking Madison Square Park and the Flatiron Building. I
knew that the park had been center stage for New York’s social elite at
the turn of the nineteenth century, and it was still one of Manhattan’s
most signifi cant confluences—Fifth and Madison avenues, Broadway,
and Twenty-third Street. I met with three officials of New York City
to seek approval for the sidewalk annex, assuring each one that if we
could make a restaurant work there, it would let us lead an effort to
revitalize the downtrodden park outside our front door.
The park itself was poorly landscaped, dirty, and unsafe—not
unlike Union Square Park circa 1985, but without even a spark of
retail activity on its perimeter.Twenty-third Street had a hodgepodge
of fast-food places, shoeshine shops, and delis; and the three-block
stretch of Madison Avenue, as well as Twenty-sixth Street and Fifth
Avenue, was practically barren. As I became more enthusiastic about
the idea of opening a third restaurant, the possibility of playing a
role in reviving Madison Square Park made it even more compelling.
This would be a chance to make a bet on an emerging neighbor-
hood while the rents were still affordable—about 50 percent lower
at that time than for comparable spaces around Union Square or

113 No Tu r n i n g B a c k
in the Flatiron district. Why wouldn’t we want to create a wonder-
ful restaurant overlooking what could once again become a majestic
park? I was indeed motivated to open a French-style restaurant with
Michael, and a voice within me urged me to be a pioneer in another
new community.
In 1995 we began negotiating a lease with the Japanese owner of
225 Fifth Avenue, but we made just a little headway on an agreement
over the next several months. Meanwhile, a real estate consultant
contacted us to say that she had been hired to find a nationally known
restaurateur for the ground-floor space at 11 Madison Avenue, the
MetLife Building. MetLife was upgrading this historic art deco build-
ing into “class A” office space and had already signed leases with such
high-end tenants as Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) and some
major advertising agencies. When my assistant told me that she had
informed the developer that we were already looking elsewhere, my
first reaction was “That’s a mistake!” It was important to take a look
at 11 Madison. Even if we were to close a deal and one day open a
restaurant at 225 Fifth, a competitor would eventually take the space
at 11 Madison, and I felt we should at least learn what kind of deal
that potential competitor would get. (ABCD!) Meeting with the de-
veloper not only would gain us information about a prospective rival
but also would be a hedge against losing the deal at 225 Fifth.
My hunch soon proved prescient, when we got some deal-breaking
news: there was an enormous Consolidated Edison transformer directly
beneath the sidewalk at 225 Fifth that would make the construction of
an enclosed outdoor café impossible. The huge grates over the trans-
former were plainly visible; but in my inexperience and ignorance, I
had never noticed them or thought to ask about them. Instead, I had
wasted six months of our time telling the city officials how much a
new restaurant there would add to the neighborhood.
Still, the time had not been spent entirely in vain; on the contrary,
whatever time and effort had been used examining Madison Square
Park and selling ourselves on its future had been very well spent. I

114 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
had become consumed with the neighborhood and had gotten to
know and become known by leading public officials in the process. I
was more determined than ever to open a restaurant directly across
from the park, and to invest in its future.
We immediately started talking seriously with the agent for the
project at 11 Madison.The primary notion of restoring the park was
to bring beauty and life to the neighborhood and provide the com-
munity with a reason to use the park. That idea reflects one of my
core business philosophies: invest in your community, and the rising tide
will lift all boats.
Invest in your community. A business that understands how powerful it is to create wealth for the community stands a
much higher chance of creating wealth for its own investors. I
have yet to see a house lose any of its value when a garden is
planted in its front yard. And each time one householder plants a
garden, chances are the neighbors will follow suit.
In mid-1996, I attended my first meeting with executives at MetLife
to negotiate a lease. There were all kinds of financial and real estate
terms to discuss, but first I made my own agenda—the big picture—
clear to our prospective landlord. “Before we discuss any details of a
lease,” I said at this meeting, “it’s important for me to know that you
will first commit to partnering with me in rebuilding and restoring
Madison Square Park—to where it was in its heyday.” He may not have
fully realized what he was getting his company into, but the MetLife
executive, Dom Prezzano, replied,“I don’t think you have any idea how
many people have tried to do this and for how long; but if you have the
energy to lead, we’ll lend our fi nancial support.”

115 No Tu r n i n g B a c k
The city’s social elite and a concentration of capital had long
ago converged on the park to bring it early iconic skyscrapers like
Madison Square Garden (1890), the Flatiron Building (1903), and the
MetLife clock tower (1906). But ever since the Great Depression of
the 1930s, Madison Square Park had been in decline. After months
of being urged by Audrey to read Caleb Carr’s best-selling historic
mystery The Alienist, I finally did so and became fascinated by his de-
scription of what the area around Madison Square Park had been like
in its days of glory. I was also captivated by what Carr wrote about
New York’s prominent turn-of-the century restaurateur, Charlie Del-
monico, who had always opened the next Delmonico’s restaurant
in whatever neighborhood he believed was going to become New
York’s most prominent. In 1876, he had opened a Delmonico’s on the
corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-sixth Street.That inspired me—a
little over a century later—to try my hand at doing the same.
Since the 1970s, it seemed, local business leaders had been disap-
pointed by broken promises from New York City to rebuild the park.
Good intentions, it seemed, had always been followed by downturns
in the city budget. By the time I started asking questions about re-
viving the park, most people I spoke to in business or government
expressed doubts at best, and cynicism at worst.
I knew that 11 Madison could be majestic, but it came with signif-
icant fi nancial and architectural obstacles, and the talks with MetLife
went on for nearly a year as we ironed out these issues. Because the
building was a designated landmark, we would need to satisfy the re-
quirements of the National Register of Historic Places, to preserve
and restore existing elements of its historic design—an enormous
and costly undertaking. We would need to restore ceiling moldings
that were chipped or missing, and repair and restore a thirty-fi ve-
foot-long art deco fluorescent light fixture even though we’d never
use it. We even had to design lighting fixtures that would surround
but not replace the space’s original hanging fixtures and sconces, to
meet historic preservation requirements. All this work would add at

116 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
least 30 percent to the normal costs of building a restaurant, and this
extra cost would delay any possible return on investment for our
shareholders, of whom there would need to be a lot more than the
usual few if we were to pull this off. And there was an even more dif-
ficult challenge: a massive wall bisected the fi rst floor of the MetLife
Building. Since the historic requirements of the building prohibited
us from taking it down, we’d have to create two different restaurants,
one on either side of the dividing wall.
People began telling me that it would be insane to create, design,
staff, and open two restaurants simultaneously in the same space. It
was becoming abundantly clear to me that I would need to take on
more investors and more managing partners, and I did. I did not
have the personal funds to build two large restaurants in the space;
nor did I have the gumption to go it alone without partners at my
side. I began to think intently about where I’d seek fi nancial assis-
tance. I recruited two new colleagues to become my managing part-
ners—David Swinghamer, from Chicago’s Lettuce Entertain You En-
terprises; and Richard Coraine, from San Francisco, who had worked
for years with Wolfgang Puck at Postrio, and had then opened his
own restaurant, Hawthorne Lane.
B R A S S E R I E
When I looked at the two adjoining spaces, it struck me that the
larger rectangular room—which had thirty-foot-high windows on
the park—offered the perfect volume for the heady bustle of a bras-
serie.This would be the result of all those conversations with Michael
Romano in Paris.There’s nothing particularly refined about brasserie
standards—oysters, escargots, pigs’ feet, soupe à l’oignon, and steak
frites—or about the breezy brasserie style of service; it’s just meant
to be fun. But then I asked myself: “Who ever wrote the rule that
just because you’re having all that fun, you can’t simultaneously have
exquisite food and an extensive list of fine French wines?”That was

117 No Tu r n i n g B a c k
followed by the question: “Who ever wrote the rule that just be-
cause it’s a brasserie you have to serve soupe à l’oignon and steak au
poivre?” How could we combine a brasserie’s winsome atmosphere
and French culinary accent with an urbane New York point of view
to create something unexpected? I wasn’t entirely sure of the answer;
but whatever it was, that would be restaurant number one.
Now, however, nearly a year after our trip to France, Michael said
that he did not want to open another restaurant—his true joy was
to focus entirely on Union Square Cafe. So together we hired a chef
for our forthcoming restaurant, Brian Goode, who had previously
been a talented sous-chef for Michael at Union Square Cafe, and
had recently opened as the executive chef at Firebird, a new Russian
restaurant in the theater district.We sent Brian to France for a month,
with a long list of all kinds of restaurants we wanted him to visit and
an ample sack of Francs for meals and lodging.
I described the new restaurant to my friend Robert Chadderdon.
Although he himself is a Francophile, he told me: “Don’t use French
in the name. Americans are tiring of French restaurants. Call it some-
thing in English.”
“How about Madison Square Cafe?” I said, recalling a conversa-
tion I’d had with my father more than a decade earlier.
“You can do better and be more original,” Robert countered.
“Madison Park Cafe?” I asked.
“No. Call it Eleven Madison Park.That’s what it is.”
Not long after Brian returned from France, and while he was
working intently on the kitchen plans and the construction of the
restaurant, it occurred to him that this place was becoming very costly.
He was concerned about whether it could be a safe financial bet for
his own future. He didn’t see how the restaurant would ever be able
to pay off its debt or its investors, and that made him nervous.When
construction delays arose, he grew increasingly impatient and ill at
ease.With just six weeks to go before opening Eleven Madison Park,
we parted ways. I immediately consulted with my business partners,

118 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
and Tom Colicchio pointed me toward Kerry Heffernan. Kerry had
been Tom’s sous-chef years earlier at Mondrian, and had built a solid
resumé as an executive chef since then.Tom told me that Kerry was
the best cook he had worked with, and I also knew that the two were
fl y-fishing buddies. Kerry had just moved to Tavern on the Green
from the Westbury Hotel when its restaurant, The Polo, had closed.
I liked what I knew of Kerry, and he was ready to join our team. I
hired him after just two interviews, and without even asking him to
prepare a tasting.
I N D I A N
That left restaurant number two. I still needed to come up with an
idea for the smaller space on the other side of the historic wall. One
day I was hanging out in Michael’s office, and I asked him what he
thought we should do there. He shrugged, rubbed his left sideburn,
and returned to the cookbook he was intently perusing. “Whatever
it is,” I said,“I want it to be a leader within its niche.” I began fl ipping
through the Zagat Survey for 1997, looking in the section on catego-
ries.When I got to “Indian,” I saw that the top-rated Indian restaurant
then was place called Dawat, with a food score of twenty-four out of
a possible thirty.That got my attention.“Since you’ve come to Union
Square Cafe,” I said, “the restaurant hasn’t received less than twenty-
six for food, and for several years you’ve earned a twenty-seven.”
Michael was listening. He was fascinated by many things Indian;
he had studied spices in India; was into yoga, meditation, and Indian
spirituality; and had dated Indian women. For several years now he
had been cooking with Indian spices at Union Square Cafe, combin-
ing them with French and Italian techniques and ingredients from
the greenmarket. By 1996, nearly 25 percent of the items on the
menu at Union Square Cafe were being cooked with some type of
Indian spice. “Frankly,” I told Michael, “I’d just as soon see all those
spices used in a new restaurant.They’re delicious, but they don’t even

119 No Tu r n i n g B a c k
go with most of the wines in our cellar. Let’s build on the success of
these Indian dishes you’ve been cooking at Union Square Cafe and
create a whole new restaurant for them.What about doing a new ver-
sion of an Indian restaurant?” He put down the cookbook, looked me
in the eye, and smiled broadly.
Around that time I took my daughter Hallie, now four, to a chil-
dren’s concert at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.The classical clari-
netist Richard Stoltzman began by teaching the kids how the clarinet
works and sounds by playing some well-known riffs from Peter and
the Wolf. “Now,” he said,“I want to show you how the clarinet sounds
when it’s played alongside another instrument.” Minutes later, the
curtain opened to reveal a young musician seated on the stage fl oor
surrounded by a dozen sets of hand drums. He explained that these
drums were tablas and that they are the primary percussion instru-
ment in classical Indian music. He showed the audience how each
drum had its own distinct tone and timbre. Stoltzman then came
back out, and the pair teamed up to play a fusion of jazz clarinet with
Indian drums.That’s when it hit me: what they were doing musically
was exactly what I had been envisioning culinarily for the second res-
taurant. I wanted to give American elements an Indian accent. It was
at this moment that the second new restaurant found its name:Tabla.
Michae l and I had been dreaming and talking openly about
the Indian venture, and one day Nick Oltarsh, the head tavern room
cook at Gramercy Tavern, overheard us and made an appointment to
come in and see me.“I know the perfect person to be the chef at the
restaurant you’ve been talking about. His name is Floyd Cardoz, and
we cooked together at Lespinasse,” Nick said. He knew that Michael
never intended to abandon Union Square Cafe to become Tabla’s day-
to-day chef. “All I ever heard Floyd talking about was how one day
he would show the world that Indians could be great cooks. What
you and Michael are talking about happens to be his dream.”

120 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
We learned that Floyd was a native of Bombay and had grown up
in Goa, learning all his grandmother’s recipes before studying classical
French technique in Switzerland. That sounded too good to be true,
and it got even better. Floyd Cardoz had been at Lespinasse—a four-
star restaurant—for over five years and was now executive sous-chef,
having convinced his chef, Gray Kunz, to greatly expand the number
of aromatic Indian spices in the resataurant’s pantry.We met Floyd, who
confirmed that he was eager to break away and do something on his
own. His dream was a perfect fit with our vision for Tabla; and after a
brilliant tasting in which he cooked fi fteen dishes for us that made my
palate sing (and sometimes burn) with delight, we hired Floyd to be
our executive chef. Later, we made him a partner at Tabla.
From the moment we had decided on the concept, I sharpened
my vision for Tabla. I asked myself: “Who ever wrote the rule that
if you love Indian spices and Indian breads, you should be able to
enjoy them only in the context of a purely classical Indian restaurant?”
I wanted Tabla to become a unique American dining experience,
based on Floyd’s lifelong passion for the cooking of his homeland.
With Floyd’s input, I asked our architects—Bentel and Bentel—to
design a “spice room” in the kitchen, a laboratory of sorts where
Floyd could bring a piece of fish or meat and experiment with new
combinations of tastes. Together, we came up with a harmonious
blend of American hospitality, French culinary technique, and ex-
pertly applied Indian spices. Soon after Tabla opened, in December
1998, it earned three stars from Ruth Reichl of the New York Times.
She wrote,“This is American food, viewed through a kaleidoscope of
Indian spices. The flavors are so powerful, original, and unexpected
that they evoke intense emotions.”
Next door, Eleven Madison Park had gotten off to a decent
enough start. But the public knew that in just four more weeks
we’d be launching a groundbreaking restaurant called Tabla, so many
people saw the more classic Eleven Madison Park as the warm-up act
for the main event. Eleven Madison Park would have to succeed by

121 No Tu r n i n g B a c k
virtue of its architectural beauty, hospitality, and solid kitchen. Con-
ceptually, nothing about it was breaking new ground.
In these early days, our lunch business at Eleven Madison Park
was lagging far behind our optimistic projections. But rather than ex-
plaining this sluggishness as a natural challenge of building a business
from scratch, we convinced ourselves that people didn’t have time
to leave their desks for lunch. We decided that the solution was to
deliver beautifully designed box lunches to their offi ces.We targeted
Credit Suisse First Boston in particular, since its world headquarters
were upstairs at 11 Madison. We offered a choice of three exquisite
sandwiches, homemade potato chips, a bottle of water, and a home-
made cookie.
Unfortunately, very few people bought this concept, or the box
lunches. We had made a fundamental mistake by trying to extend
an original brand without having first established the core brand. It
wasn’t so much that people were tied to their desks; it was that they
had no clear idea what Eleven Madison Park represented as a dining
experience. Was it a bistro or a grand restaurant? Was it inexpensive
or for special occasions? Was it French? Was it a place for sandwiches,
potato chips, and cookies? Until we had answered those questions for
ourselves, we couldn’t avoid confusing our potential customers.
Know Thyself: Before you go to market, know what you are selling and to whom. It’s a very rare business that can (or
should) be all things to all people. Be the best you can be within
a reasonably tight product focus. That will help you to improve
yourself and help your customers to know how and when to buy
your product.

122 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
Also, we hadn’t done our homework: CSFB already had a fi rst-
rate, company-subsidized cafeteria for its employees, run by an out-
side food service. And creating the box lunches had kept chef Kerry
Heffernan and the management team from focusing on what we
should have been doing all along: improving the restaurant itself and
doing the hard work necessary to build our lunch business one guest
at a time. We abandoned the box lunch program very quickly and
ended up with a costly inventory of 3,000 unused boxes.The experi-
ence was a vitally important illustration of inappropriate brand exten-
sion, wrongheaded priorities, and inadequate focus on a core product.
Fortunately, by working on the basics, our lunch business doubled
within six months. We had found a wonderful maître d’ who was
expert at recognizing guests. We worked on presenting a menu that
offered enough light choices to encourage frequent dining. And we
worked on speed, understanding that at lunch, time is everything.
Hybrid restaurants are challenging to imagine, and when fi rst re-
alized they can be confusing—both for the staff and for the customers.
I’ve learned to live with that. I trust our ability to build a community
of people who want to discover us and take an active interest in our
evolution—even if it takes several visits for us all to get there.
For the next two years after we had opened Tabla and Eleven
Madison Park, I was not looking for any new restaurant ventures. My
plate was full and overflowing. In fact, when my cousin James Polsky
asked if I might be interested in collaborating with him at 27 Stan-
dard and Jazz Standard—his restaurant and his forward-looking un-
derground jazz club—I had to decline. James was a jazz fanatic (with
an encyclopedic knowledge of the idiom), and opening the club had
been a life’s dream for him.The club was receiving accolades and had
built a regular clientele, but his upstairs restaurant, despite a strong
two-star review from the New York Times, was experiencing fi nancial
losses. James had considered and declined offers from high-profi le

123 No Tu r n i n g B a c k
restaurateurs to buy out the lease on his handsome two-level loft
space on East Twenty-seventh Street; he was afraid that a new owner
would immediately convert the jewel-like jazz club into a private
party space.
Notwithstanding my own capacity for more work, I knew I was
in no position to take on another restaurant. But ideas had not stopped
bubbling up in me. For one thing, I had considered launching my own
dot-com. It would be a barbecue lover’s website called cue.com (or
possibly Q.com).You would log on, and an animated map of America
would appear onscreen. Next you’d click on a destination, and a map
would generate information about traditional barbecue styles in that
region, including one or two worthy local practitioners from whom
we could procure barbecue for overnight delivery to your door. The
idea would be to “sole-source” great barbecue, promote it, and sell it
like crazy. I am reasonably confident, looking back, that cue.com would
have had as tough a time succeeding as most Internet schemes did back
then; and I’m happy not to have sunk even one dollar into it.
At the same time, I accepted an invitation from Rocco Landes-
man, a leading Broadway executive, a former St. Louisan, and a friend.
He may or may not have known about my lifelong love of barbecue,
but he had found an easy mark. “We know this really neat guy from
southern Illinois,” Rocco said, “and he is probably the greatest pit-
master I have ever met. His name is Mike Mills. What do you think
about coming over for dinner one night to taste some of his ribs?”
“You’re not talking about doing a barbecue restaurant, are you?” I
asked him.“Because I swear I’m not opening another restaurant.” My
mind shouted at me, Be careful!
“Let’s try to pick a night when the Cardinals are on TV. We’ll grab
some beers and get Mike to ship some of his barbecue in,” Rocco
replied.“I also want you to meet some people who would really like
to find a way to bring his barbecue to New York. My good friend
Tom Viertel—the theater producer—is in love with Mike. Tom and
his partner, Pat Daley, are judges on the national barbecue circuit.You

124 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
need to meet these people even if you can’t do it. Maybe you can
introduce them to another restaurateur who can!” That got my com-
petitive juices fl owing.
This invitation was tough to turn down, even though I now had
four restaurants and knew that the last thing I needed to do was open
a fifth. But these were friends; the idea involved the St. Louis Cardinals;
I was a sucker for barbecue; and it struck me as an intriguing idea.
It’s not what you know, it’s whom you’ll listen to. Sometimes—
very, very occasionally—I’m presented with an idea or invitation, and
I know there’s a 99.9 percent probability I’m not interested in it.Yet
my intuition tells me that it’s worth investigating, just to see what’s on
the other side. I’ll allow myself to be open to new ideas, particularly
when they’re presented by good people I know and trust. And when
I hear those ideas from people I know and trust, I pay even stronger
attention to my own instinct and intuition.
I wasn’t attending this rib tasting with any expectation that it
might lead somewhere. I was just going to discover some excellent
barbecue and, I hoped, watch the Cardinals win a ball game.
But the pink-edged, dry-rubbed ribs were remarkable. And so
was the moist, smoky pulled pork.The baked beans, made from four
kinds of beans, stopped me in my tracks. And this stuff had been
frozen, shipped, thawed, and reheated. How good might it be fresh?
I suddenly began to ask myself some basic questions, such as, Why
isn’t there more good barbecue in a city like New York that has so
much of everything, and in many cases has the very best? I convinced
myself that there were environmental restrictions on producing real
pit barbecue, which gives off a lot of smoke. But what if it were possi-
ble to overcome that obstacle? I knew that Virgil’s Real BBQ, which
was then the most commercially successful barbecue restaurant in
New York, had been using some kind of smoke-eating equipment for
years, just off Times Square. But I also remembered that the authentic
Pearson’s, in Queens, had been forced to relocate its pit to the back of
a noisy, crowded sports bar after neighbors complained about smoke

125 No Tu r n i n g B a c k
at the original site in Long Island City. Still, Manhattan was lacking in
authentic barbecue, and Mike Mills was clearly a barbecue artist.
After the challenging twin openings of Eleven Madison Park and
Tabla, perhaps it would be easier this time to do a “joint.” Slowly but
surely, I began to talk myself into the project. I gained confi dence by
visiting Mike in Murphysboro, Illinois; and subsequently in Las Vegas,
where he had opened two more restaurants.Through long conversa-
tions and lots of animated dialogue about business values and barbe-
cue, along with Richard and David, my partners, I took the measure
of the man. His gift for the pit was obvious (so was his gift for fasci-
nating gab), and a bond of trust was growing between us. One day it
occurred to me that this was precisely the right fit for my cousin’s res-
taurant space at 27 Standard and that Jazz Standard would be a natural
home for good ’cue. Beginning in urban Kansas City, barbecue and
jazz had long been bedfellows.Why not here in New York?
One by one, my partners gave me thumbs-up; and with their
unanimous support, we made a deal for the space with my cousin
James. He would stay on as an owner to help ensure the outstanding
music for Jazz Standard, and we would create Blue Smoke and be re-
sponsible for the restaurant and club operations.
I was amaz e d to get my first peek into the world of professional
and amateur pitmasters and barbecue fanatics.These buffs, like follow-
ers of the Super Bowl or the Indy 500, will travel hundreds of miles
for a main event. During twenty-four months of intense research,
we became groupies ourselves; members of our Blue Smoke team
collectively covered some 60,000 miles—through Missouri, Tennes-
see, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, upstate New York, Texas,
southern Illinois, the South Side of Chicago, Boston, and Oakland,
California—to research and understand barbecue’s regional distinc-
tions. Along with Mike Mills, Tom Viertel, now an investor in our
forthcoming restaurant, arranged for me to attend the 2001 Memphis

126 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
in May competition, the “Super Bowl of Swine,” as a judge in the rib
category. Mike’s charismatic passion proved infectious.When I asked
him what it would take for us to serve ribs on a par with those that
had won him his three grand championships at Memphis in May, he
said, “You’ll have to figure out how to pull them from the pit at just
the perfect moment. Just when the meat is relaxed enough—after
six or seven hours of smoking—you baste that rack with the sauce.
If you hit it perfectly—you’ll see a blue smoke rise up out of those
ribs.” A blue smoke. That was that—our new restaurant had its name.
We invited Mike to become our chief ’cue consultant (I called him
our rib rabbi), paid him in equity, and asked him to teach us and our
chef everything he had learned not only on the competitive circuit
but also in his own restaurants.
We selected Kenny Callaghan, who had been a dedicated cook and
sous-chef at Union Square Cafe for over eight years, to be the pitmas-
ter and executive chef of Blue Smoke. Kenny’s culinary background
had little to do with barbecue: before cooking at Union Square Cafe
he had worked at the Russian Tea Room. But his disciplined approach
to cooking made him the perfect choice for Blue Smoke. The most
successful barbecue pitmasters have a passion for doing the same things
over and over, each day finding nuanced ways to improve on what they
did yesterday. Barbecue is not a matter of creativity so much as a matter
of dogged perseverance and execution. Kenny’s no-nonsense personal-
ity, straightforward cooking style, and persistent pursuit of ways to do
things better made him an ideal choice.We also chose another veteran
of Union Square Cafe, Mark Maynard-Parisi, to become Blue Smoke’s
opening general manager. It had always been a priority of mine to de-
velop leaders from within, both for the sake of team morale and as an
assurance that we’d begin our new restaurants with as much of our
preexisting DNA as possible. Letting our business grow on the shoul-
ders of those who’ve gotten us there provides safety and is its own ra-
tionale for growing in the fi rst place.
Mike gave Kenny Callaghan and Michael Romano (who was

127 No Tu r n i n g B a c k
emerging as our chief culinary sage) an intensive, hands-on course in
real pit barbecue technique, teaching them in his restaurant pits, and
giving them a competitive role in the famous “Apple City” barbecue
contest in Murphysboro, Illinois.
There was a steep learning curve to get all the components right—
selecting the best meat vendors; finding good sources for hickory and
apple wood; and developing and perfecting recipes for classic barbe-
cue “sides” like corn bread, coleslaw, pit beans, collard greens, and
macaroni and cheese.There were also punishing lessons to be learned
about preparing barbecue in a densely populated vertical city—where
rising smoke might waft into someone’s bedroom or offi ce. One too
many complaints over a flawed ventilation system, and we could be
shut down irrespective of how much we’d spent to build the restau-
rant.And it was unnerving to present barbecue to a city that lacked its
own historic barbecue tradition but that was home to more opinion-
ated expats from classic barbecue destinations than anywhere else in
the world. Mike was used to cooking on his traditional “Ole Hickory”
smoker with its standard short smokestack. This was the equipment
he had taught us how to use, and it was exactly what we purchased
for the restaurant. But to win approval to install our pits, our smok-
ers would need to be connected to a fi fteen-story smokestack that
would have to run up along the rear brick wall of the offi ce building.
It took us nearly eight months of frustratingly dry and un-smoky re-
sults before we fully understood that the powerful updraft of the sky-
scraper-like smokestack was acting as a high-power blow-dryer on
our meats, rather than allowing the barbecue to be gently bathed by
hours of smoke. First, we tried a low-tech solution to keep the meat
moist, like placing a huge bowl of water in the smoker for the dura-
tion of the barbecue process.The meats turned out moister but were
still not smoky enough. At last, we performed surgery on the stack,
inserting a damper at the level where most smokestacks end.We had
effectively tricked it into becoming the real deal. Soon thereafter, for
the fi rst time, our ribs put a smile on my face.

128 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
Perhaps because it was “just a joint,” Blue Smoke was in some
ways the most challenging restaurant to design. Many beloved bar-
becue joints around the country are on the wrong side of the tracks.
And part of what people love about going to them is having to travel
to a rural outpost or a down-and-out part of town to hunt down the
ethereal smoked pork. The barbecue seems to taste better both be-
cause of what you have to do and because of where you have to go to
get it.That’s also why hot dogs taste better at the ballpark and Vernac-
cia di San Gimignano tastes better in Tuscany. Context is everything.
Manhattan’s Park Avenue in the East Twenties is not many people’s
idea of the wrong side of the tracks. Once again we turned to the
architects Bentel and Bentel to help us arrive at an authentic solution.
The questions about design were basic but crucial. For instance, how
could we blend traditional barbecue elements with what is real for a
Manhattan restaurant? It was a foregone conclusion that we wouldn’t
resort to such clichés as bowling trophies, photographs of softball
teams, or caricatures of smiling piggies.Yet such clichés are tempting
because they help guests understand exactly what a restaurant is out
to accomplish. People do want to feel transported when they go to
a restaurant.
First, we knew we’d need booths, a common feature of barbecue
restaurants.A booth can take the form of a picnic table, as is common
in the Texas hill country; or it can have a Formica tabletop with hard,
uncomfortable benches on either side, as in the barbecue joints of
North Carolina. But we needed to have barbecue booths that made
sense in New York.We chose comfortable leather cushions as uphol-
stery, and we came up with a tabletop made of a finer laminate than
cold, hard Formica.
We also made sure to have the classic black menu board with
red-and-white plastic lettering hanging above our bar. But we didn’t
attempt authenticity by deliberately using an old Coca-Cola spon-
sorship sign or misspelling pork sandwiches and rib tips on the menu.
There could not be even a hint of a theme park.We included a gen-

129 No Tu r n i n g B a c k
uine New York element: an exciting, comprehensive listing of mi-
crobrew beers, bourbons, classic cocktails, and world-class wines by
the glass—not your typical accompaniment to barbecue.Thoughtful
design and loving cooking would go a long way toward giving the
restaurant soul and authenticity. It would need to exist in harmony
with its own building, its neighborhood, and the city. Once you step
inside a theme park, you could be anywhere. We were determined
that Blue Smoke would be an actual place.
The g reat Mary France s Ke nne dy Fishe r wrote in her
memoir The Gastronomical Me, “It seems to me that our three basic
needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and
entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others.
So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about
love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the
hunger for it . . . and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of
hunger satisfi ed . . . and it is all one.”
This passage has always moved me, in part because it captures ex-
actly what another Mary taught me. Although the gastronomical in-
fluences of my family were many, no one in my young life expressed
the feeling that food is love more purely than our longtime house-
keeper, Mary Francis Smith. My attachment to Mary was the steadiest,
safest, and most dependable relationship I had while I was growing up.
Also, she made the world’s best fried chicken, macaroni and cheese,
and frosted layer cakes from scratch. Mary fried her chicken in the
afternoon, and she’d always sneak me a drumstick and thigh a couple
of hours ahead of dinnertime. I’d eat them in my bedroom and fl ush
the bones down the toilet so that my mom wouldn’t find out that
even before dinner, I had already consumed enough for dinner.
Mary had been born into a Mississippi sharecropping family, and
though she was barely literate, in matters of life and love she was
one of the wisest human beings I’ve ever met. Her husband, Charlie,

130 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
was an easygoing man who drove car pool throughout the 1960s for
house cleaners around St. Louis County. Mary and Charlie had not
been blessed with any children of their own.We were her kids.And I
was her boy.The moment I came home from the hospital after being
born, my mother handed me over to Mary, saying, “Here’s your boy.”
And Mary Smith took that to heart, all the more so since she came to
view me as the underdog in the family.
Nine years later, when Charlie was killed in a hideous car acci-
dent, Mary left us for a time, devastated. It was almost as if I had lost
all contact with my own mother.After I got my driver’s license at the
age of sixteen, I made frequent pilgrimages on Saturday afternoons
to her walk-up apartment at 4726 Lee Avenue, on the western fringe
of downtown St. Louis in a predominantly African-American neigh-
borhood. She would invite me (or rather, I would invite myself ) for a
feast of fried chicken, deviled eggs, biscuits, macaroni and cheese, col-
lard greens, and sweet potato pie—all things we serve on the menu
at Blue Smoke.
When I opened Union Square Cafe, Mary, by then in her seven-
ties, bought her own ticket to fly to New York to be there for me.
She told me she wouldn’t have missed it for the world—that “her
boy” had made her proud. She managed to fly to New York one more
time, for my wedding. (Mary was peerless in her human judgments,
and when she had given her approval, I knew Audrey was the right
choice to become my wife.) Mary died in early 2000, so she never
got to know about Blue Smoke, which was the closest I could come
to paying homage to her—and to the love I felt for her and my native
home, St. Louis.
My youth in St. Louis inspired another of my restaurants: Shake
Shack, the burger, hot dog, and frozen custard stand we created in
2004 for Madison Square Park. Anyone who grew up in the auto-
mobile culture in the 1950s or 1960s probably had the experience of

131 No Tu r n i n g B a c k
hanging out at a local stand or shack serving this type of food. Grow-
ing up, I spent a lot of time hanging out with my family and friends at
places like Schneidhorst’s, the Parkmoor,Ted Drewes Frozen Custard,
Fitz’s Root Beer Stand, and Steak ’n’ Shake. I especially loved them
for their curbside service. In fact, I can’t remember many weekend
nights during my teenage years that didn’t culminate at one of those
places. And when I had lived in Chicago for two summers during
and after graduating from college, I couldn’t resist a more than occa-
sional “Chicago dog” topped with its nine traditional accessories and
served on a poppy seed bun. I had come to miss the drive-ins, carhops,
and burger-and-shake stands of my youth, and today’s version of fast
food—both the sanitized experience and the production-line food—
was an unacceptable substitute. As always with our new ventures, the
idea was to draw on the best elements of the classic, make it authen-
tic for its present context, and then try to execute it with excellence.
There is nothing particularly innovative about any single component
of Shake Shack.The key, as always, would be how we might blend all
the components to make it feel original.
The inception of Shake Shack actually began with a humble hot
dog cart. In the summer of 2001 our fledgling organization, the Cam-
paign for a New Madison Square Park, persuaded Target Stores to
sponsor a series of group art shows for the park, curated by the Public
Art Fund and in collaboration with the New York City Department
of Cultural Affairs. A Thai sculptor, Navin Rawanchaikul, created a
colorful work for the show called I ! Taxi, which featured cartoon-
like sculptures of taxicabs on stilts.The artist also designed a working
hot dog cart to go with the project, since he believed that the world’s
two most democratic institutions were taxicabs and hot dogs. In his
view, every human being on earth has either driven or ridden in a
taxi and has either served or eaten a hot dog.
I ! Taxi was installed at the southern end of the park, not far
from Eleven Madison Park, and when asked, we volunteered to give
life to the project by actually operating the sculpture’s hot dog cart.

132 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
We began by asking ourselves whether there was anything fresh we
might bring to the world of hot dog carts.
Small as the project was (or seemed), I took this cart quite seri-
ously. I was eager to use the project as a test of enlightened hospitality.
I was asking myself, “Who ever wrote that rule that you can’t push
the envelopes of excellence and hospitality for something as ordinary
as a hot dog cart? Could a hot dog cart ever be anything more than
just a hot dog cart?”
My team and I decided to feature Chicago-style hot dogs (from a
Chicago vendor,Vienna Beef; and boiled in water spiked with garlic,
coriander, and bay leaves). We would serve the hot dogs on poppy
seed buns (shipped especially from Chicago) with the requisite top-
pings: celery salt, onions, green peppers, tomatoes, mustard, pickles,
spicy “sport peppers,” cucumbers, and “neon” relish. Our menu was
limited, but we would also serve bags of homemade beet-stained
potato chips, fresh verbena lemonade, salty chocolate truffl e cookies,
and iced tea. We staffed the cart with members of Eleven Madison
Park’s winter coatcheck crew, providing them with summer employ-
ment; and Kerry Heffernan was our supervising chef. I assigned the
project of running the cart to one of Eleven Madison Park’s manag-
ers as a low-risk way to learn how to run a small business.To go with
her addictive chocolate cookies, the pastry chef Nicole Kaplan also
contributed refi ned Rice Krispy treats.
It turned out that there was some risk—by the time I ! Taxi and
its hot dog stand closed in early September 2001, we had actually lost
nearly $5,000 operating the cart. While demand had been high and
lines were always long, we’d addressed my requirement for excellence
and hospitality by hiring too many people, working in a very inef-
fi cient system.
But there was a clamor from the neighborhood for us to return
with the cart in 2002 (even though that summer brought new sculp-
ture to the park that had nothing to do with !ing taxis or hot dogs),
and so we did. During the second summer we got a little smarter

133 No Tu r n i n g B a c k
about our operations and production systems and nearly broke even,
but it was 2003 that proved to be the tipping point for the profi tabil-
ity of the hot dog cart. Each day, beginning at eleven-thirty in the
morning as many as seventy people were lining up for a Chicago dog.
We could barely keep up. We needed three tables behind the cart so
that the staff could assemble the hot dogs and all the assorted top-
pings.Throughout the day reinforcements were wheeled through the
park from our kitchen at Eleven Madison Park, and some days we
ran out of hot dogs well before closing hour. Before long Newsweek,
Newsday, Crain’s New York Business, CNN, and each of the big three
national nightly news shows—NBC, CBS, and ABC—had done sto-
ries on our little cart. Writing for the New York Times, Alex Witchel
helped create longer lines than ever when she called our cart the hot
dog connoisseur’s “equivalent of fine dining.” The restaurant critics
William Grimes and Eric Asimov of the New York Times both wrote
reviews—and each had favorable things to say about the product.
We wanted our hospitality to be at the highest possible level.With-
out reservation lists, our staff never knew any of the guests’ names,
so the emphasis was on recognizing repeat customers by face and
remembering their usual orders. And with nine toppings, everyone
seemed to have a personal preference. We believed that a customer’s
desire to be recognized could just as easily be satisfied by a summer
intern at our hot dog cart as by the host in the dining room of a three-
star restaurant. We encouraged our young, energetic staff to create
“plus ones” or “legends of hospitality”—offering those in line free
samples and cookies; and spotting, say, a regular man on a park bench,
making him his usual order, and bringing it to him just as he started
to head for the line.Though they were spending $2.50 for a hot dog,
the satisfaction and loyalty of these guests was no less important to us
than that of our regulars at Gramercy Tavern or Tabla.
Our application of enlightened hospitality had proved a phenom-
enal success. Our staff loved the work; our patrons were captivated;
the park was bustling;Vienna Beef was thrilled with the unexpected

134 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
business in New York; and by the season’s end we presented a check
for $7,500 to the newly formed Madison Square Park Conservancy.
Around that time, the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation
had solicited proposals to create and operate a permanent kiosk in
Madison Square Park.We were game, and we decided to expand on
the hot dog cart and make our dream of a drive-in come alive for
good—and for the good of the park. We submitted our proposal as
operators in collaboration with the Madison Square Park Conser-
vancy with the understanding that the kiosk itself would be built
with funds raised through a philanthropic campaign (allowing us to
own the business, and the conservancy and city to be our landlords)
and that we would pay rent as a percentage of our sales to both the
Madison Square Park Conservancy and the New York Department
of Parks and Recreation.
As we imagined our new kiosk, we thought about a lot more
than food. We understood that people don’t go out just to eat; they
also select restaurants in order to be part of a community experience.
Starbucks took the notion of drinking good coffee (and standing in
line to buy it) and figured out how to make the experience of drink-
ing coffee with a community of other like-minded people become
the real star of the show. The company also learned to superimpose
its blueprint onto thousands of locations north, south, east, and west,
while also conveying the sense that each Starbucks belonged to its
particular community. It was brilliant entrepreneurship to grasp that
selling excellent coffee is secondary to creating a sense of community.
Coffee sells (and is habit-forming), but performing a daily ritual with
a self-selected group of like-minded human beings also sells. A busi-
ness that doesn’t understand its raison d’être as fostering community
will inevitably underperform.
My thinking about what we might add to the mission of the
Madison Square Park Conservancy had been shaped largely by my
experience as an active member of the board of the Union Square
Partnership, responsible for the safety, development, programming, and

135 No Tu r n i n g B a c k
overall welfare of Union Square. I understood that it’s not enough to
just restore a park: you must sustain its beauty and safety by providing
good citizens with lots of reason to visit it. Otherwise, you’ve merely
given the park a temporary face-lift. Union Square Park always relied
on the greenmarket as its most powerful magnet in attracting people.
Other attractions were the park’s playgrounds; its dog run; and Luna
Park, its summertime restaurant.
We won the city’s competitive bidding process because of the
strength of our overall proposal for Shake Shack, including our culi-
nary idea; because the city had confidence in us as operators; and cer-
tainly because of the design and financing plan for the kiosk itself. It
was challenging to create a model whereby the city would share the
precentage rent revenue stream with the conservancy; but we made a
strong case for that, and eventually the idea was embraced.
The design of Shake Shack unquestionably contributed mightily
to its success.We made a fortunate choice in selecting the renowned
architect James Wines of SITE Architecture (renowned for his envi-
ronmentally sensitive “green” architecture) to design the twenty-by-
twenty kiosk to blend in with the park’s paths and foliage. It is itself,
in my view, a work of art; ivy-covered, the kiosk appears to have
sprouted up from the ground. Many of its design elements came from
nearby landmarks; for instance, its sloping triangular roof is a nod to
the nearby Flatiron Building. We certainly can’t claim any credit for
the design of the traditional roadside shack. But by using familiar
elements of that genre and designing our kiosk for a specifi c envi-
ronment, we allowed the Shack to become part of its neighborhood,
rather than something imposed on it. (Bryan Miller had observed that
my first restaurant, Union Square Cafe, had avoided feeling imposed.
That comment of his once again helped me to act intentionally in an
area that had previously been instinctive.)
As soon as we’d won the bid, Richard Coraine (my most enthusi-
astic researcher of road food) and I set off to study burger-and-shake
stands all across the country.We started out, of course, at Ted Drewes

136 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
and Steak ’n’ Shake in St. Louis; continued on to Kansas City (Sheri-
dan’s); and individually made stops in Michigan (Culver’s), Los Ange-
les (In-n-Out Burger), Napa (Taylor’s Automatic Refresher), Chicago
(Gold Coast Dogs, plus eight other establishments), and Connecti-
cut (Super Duper Weenie, Clamps, Sycamore Drive-In)—always in
search of the best of breed. Steak ’n’ Shake’s cooking method was
my favorite for burgers. I’d always loved watching the cooks take a
raw beef patty that looked like a red-and-white-flecked hockey puck,
place it on the hot griddle, and then smash it down rhythmically with
two heavy spatulas until it got crispy on one side.Then they’d fl ip it
over. I trusted their motto,“In sight, it must be right.”
Using the kitchen of Eleven Madison Park’s private dining room
as our laboratory for Shake Shack, we worked hard to come up with
just the right mixture of freshly ground beef, tasting many varia-
tions until we landed upon what we thought was the perfect ratio
of ground sirloin steak to brisket. The fat-to-meat blend yielded a
juicy, intensely beefy result. We debated what the precise size of the
burgers should be, to the half ounce. We argued over the choice of
buns (soft, potato), tomatoes (plum), lettuce (Bibb), and sauce (our
secret).We chose every one of our ingredients with extreme care and
with an eye toward authenticity. For the Chicago dogs we decided
on Plochman’s mustard over French’s. We opted not to serve Dijon
mustard, taking the position that no “gourmet” condiments belonged
at Shake Shack. We chose crinkle-cut fries ( just like the ones I had
grown up loving at Fitz’s Root Beer Stand in St. Louis) because they
deliver more crunch per bite than shoestring fries, and because they
make good cheese fries. In a blind tasting, we selected Abita, a richly
flavored root beer from Louisiana.
Frozen custard, as I wrote on our opening menu, is “what happens
when premium ice cream shacks up with soft-serve ice cream,” but
with a stickier texture and an eggier taste. We worked with Nicole
Kaplan, our talented pastry chef at Eleven Madison Park, to zero in

137 No Tu r n i n g B a c k
on our own recipe, tasting several top custards from around the coun-
try (shipped overnight by FedEx) as the benchmarks.
Shake Shack was an instant success when it opened in July 2004.
But as is often the case, the unanticipated degree of success brought
new challenges. From the outset, the line was long (up to ninety
people at a time). Because everyone was a first-time customer, just
explaining our menu and learning to make change for each cash
transaction took too much time. Because our previous experience
had been serving only hot dogs, we had allocated too much space
for preparing the dogs and had badly underestimated what would be
needed for the overwhelmingly popular burgers and custard.We had
to redo the layout of the tiny kitchen, ripping out and reconfi guring
several of its stainless steel counters.That first summer saw our team
struggling to assemble and serve more than 500 different items per
hour at the pickup window in a nine-hour day. That’s a lot of dogs,
fries, floats, cups, cones, lemonade, sundaes, concretes, burgers, iced
tea, soda, beer, and wine.Yes, beer and wine—building on our Blue
Smoke experience, there was no way we were going to pass up the
opportunity to add something to the possibilities of what one might
drink with a double burger, hot dog, or bratwurst.We had passed up
Dijon mustard, but that was no reason to forgo Sancerre by the glass.
We had some good fortune a few weeks after we opened, when
the opening-night celebration of the sculptor Mark Di Suvero’s new
installations for the park was held at Shake Shack. On hand were
Mayor Michael Bloomberg; Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe;
Debbie Landau, executive director of the Madison Square Park Con-
servancy; and Commissioner Raymond Kelly of the NYPD, among
others. Photographs of the mayor sipping our vanilla shake were
posted on the Internet and ran in the newspapers the next day. Before
long New York magazine was calling Shake Shack “Burger heaven”
and wrote that our Shack burger was the city’s best burger (“a thing
of simple beauty swaddled in a wax paper jacket”).

138 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
Shake Shack became not just a huge success but also a wonderful
business model. Because a percentage of every sale becomes rent, paid
both to the conservancy and to the city, every hot dog, burger, frozen
custard, or beverage purchased and enjoyed by a guest contributes
something to the park’s ongoing vitality. Shake Shack is a useful ex-
ample of a for-profit entity whose success contributes monetarily and
programmatically to the community. It shows that you can do well by
doing good. Perhaps most important, it serves as a human-magnet, at-
tracting all kinds of people of all ages and from all walks of life to the
park. That makes them stakeholders in the park, and it increases the
odds that the park will remain beautiful, safe, and enjoyed.
I never assumed that the Shack’s success was going to be defi ned
by someone saying, “This is the best hamburger I’ve ever had.” One
thing we had learned from Blue Smoke is that it’s just about im-
possible to create the “best” version of anything when the context
is comfort food. It’s pretty tough to compete with the warmth of
deeply emotional food memories.
But I would love it if we were fortunate enough to stay in this
business long enough, and continued to execute consistently well, so
that today’s young people might one day be in a burger joint some-
where with their kids and say, “The best hamburger I ever had when
I was growing up was at Shake Shack.”

c hap te r 7
Th e 5 1 Pe rc e n t So l u t i o n
It always fe e ls wonde rful to earn a rave from guests, and not
just for the way we’ve nourished them. Over the years, the most con-
sistent compliment we’ve received and the one I am always proudest
to hear, is “I love your restaurants and the food is fantastic. But what
I really love is how great your people are.”
The only way a company can grow, stay true to its soul, and
remain consistently successful is to attract, hire, and keep great people.
It’s that simple, and it’s that hard. In many industries, and undeniably
in ours, the competition to hire the most talented people is stiff.The
stakes couldn’t be higher.The human beings who animate our restau-
rants have far more impact on whether we succeed than any of the
food ingredients we use, the décor of our dining rooms, the bottles
of wine in our cellars, or even the location of the restaurants. Because
hospitality is a dialogue, I have always placed the highest premium on
hiring the best possible staff to engage our guests.
Fortunately, a wave of highly intelligent and creative people has
swept into the hospitality business since the early 1990s. Many of
them have been attracted to our restaurants for a variety of reasons:
139

Rosie Ramos

140 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
to express a spirit of caring for others, to advance their culinary skills,
to pursue a passion for wine, or to fulfill an entrepreneurial vision.
Others join us for the purpose of making a living with a fl exible
schedule while they in fact pursue a separate career.
One reason for this surge in interest in the hospitality profession
is that newspapers, television, magazines, websites, and cookbooks
have made celebrities not just of chefs but also of restaurants them-
selves.After Eleven Madison Park was featured as a location in an epi-
sode of Sex and the City, hordes of people (even a bus tour) descended
on the restaurant just to experience a stage set for the hit television
show. Having a resumé that includes working for a celebrity restau-
rant or chef confers legitimacy within the industry and usually en-
sures at least an initial interview for a job applicant. (It also assuages
the parents of a recent college graduate who’s getting a first job at a
restaurant to know that it’s a good one.) The restaurant business has
at last arrived as a legitimate, valid career choice and entrepreneurial
pursuit. I believe that enlightened hospitality as a way of doing busi-
ness has helped make it attractive for people to pursue careers not just
in our kitchen, but also in our dining room.
In 2004, as we prepared to open one restaurant, two cafés, and a staff
cafeteria at the Museum of Modern Art, and enter the off-premise
catering business as well, we knew that the size of our organization
was about to double to over 1,000 staff members, and it was critical to
develop an even larger team of extraordinary leaders.We searched high
and low for the rare employees who love teaching, know how to set
priorities, work with a sense of urgency, and—most important—are
comfortable with holding people accountable to high standards while
letting them hold onto their own dignity.Time after time, I had noticed
that great leaders tend to have a heightened sense of how to attract and
hire other extraordinary people. So that we can achieve our business
goals of extending warm hospitality while performing at a high level
of excellence, we look intently for strong emotional and technical skills
when hiring staff people. Theoretically, if the ideal candidate were to

141 T h e 5 1 P e r c e n t S o l u t i o n
score 100 on a suitability test (something we have never administered),
his or her potential for technical excellence would count for 49 percent,
and innate emotional skills for hospitality would count for 51 percent.
I first learned this concept of “51 percent” from the dynamic res-
taurateur Rich Melman of Chicago, when I visited him in the late
1980s. Rich was an effervescent teacher and a willing mentor, and I
was eager and honored to learn from him.The concept made perfect
sense to me, and now it is a cornerstone of my business. Our staff per-
formance reviews weigh both technical job performance (49 percent)
and emotional job performance (51 percent)—how staff members
perform their duties and how they relate to others on a personal level.
In some respects this is another intentional business strategy based on
instincts I developed while I was growing up.Among my friends were
plenty of good athletes and talented students. But far more important
to me than a friend’s skills was always his or her goodness as a person.
Imagine if every business were a lightbulb and that for each lightbulb the primary goal was to attract the most moths
possible. Now what if you learned that 49 percent of the reason
moths were attracted to a bulb was for the quality of its light
(brightness being the task of the bulb) and that 51 percent of the
attraction was to the warmth projected by the bulb (heat being
connected with the feeling of the bulb). It’s remarkable to me
how many businesses shine brightly when it comes to acing the
tasks but emanate all the warmth of a cool fl uorescent light. That
explains how a flawless four-star restaurant can actually attract
far fewer loyal fans than a two- or three-star place with soul. In
business, I want to be overcome with moths. Our staff must be
like a scintillating string of one-hundred-watt lightbulbs, whose
product is the sum of 51 percent feeling and 49 percent task.

142 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
It is my firm conviction that an executive or business owner
should pack a team with 51 percenters, because training them in the
technical aspects will then come far more easily. Hiring 51 percent-
ers today will save training time and dollars tomorrow. And they are
commonly the best recruiters for others with strong emotional skills.
Nice people love the idea of working with other nice people.
Over time, we can almost always train for technical prowess. We
can teach people how to deliver bread or olives, take orders for drinks
or present menus; how to describe specials and make recommenda-
tions from the wine list; or how to explain the cheese selection. And
it’s straightforward to teach table numbers and seat positions to avoid
asking “Who gets the chicken?” (That question sounds amateurish and
makes a guest feel as if the waiter didn’t pay attention to him or her
in the first place.) A cook needs to know from his chef precisely what
the sautéed sea bass is supposed to look like when it’s sautéed properly,
how it tastes when it is seasoned perfectly, and what its texture should
be when it has been cooked gently and properly.We can and do train
for all that.Training for emotional skills is next to impossible.
We aim to hire people who possess an emotional skill that chef
Michael Romano calls the excellence reflex.
People duck as a natural reflex when something is hurled at them. Similarly, the excellence reflex is a natural reaction
to fix something that isn’t right, or to improve something that
could be better. The excellence reflex is rooted in instinct and
upbringing, and then constantly honed through awareness, caring,
and practice. The overarching concern to do the right thing well
is something we can’t train for. Either it’s there or it isn’t. So we
need to train how to hire for it.

143 T h e 5 1 P e r c e n t S o l u t i o n
We don’t believe in pursuing the so-called 110 percent employee.
That’s about as realistic as working to achieve the twenty-six-hour
day. We are hoping to develop 100 percent employees whose skills
are divided 51-49 between emotional hospitality and technical ex-
cellence. As I’ve mentioned above, we refer to these employees as 51
percenters.
To me, a 51 percenter has five core emotional skills. I’ve learned that we need to hire employees with these skills if
we’re to be champions at the team sport of hospitality. They are:
1. Optimistic warmth (genuine kindness, thoughtfulness, and a
sense that the glass is always at least half full)
2. Intelligence (not just “smarts” but rather an insatiable
curiosity to learn for the sake of learning)
3. Work ethic (a natural tendency to do something as well as it
can possibly be done)
4. Empathy (an awareness of, care for, and connection to how
others feel and how your actions make others feel)
5. Self-awareness and integrity (an understanding of what
makes you tick and a natural inclination to be accountable
for doing the right thing with honesty and superb judgment)
I want the kind of people on my team who naturally radiate
warmth, friendliness, happiness, and kindness. It feels genuinely good
to be around them.There’s an upbeat feeling, a twinkle in the eye, a
dazzling sparkle from within. I want to employ people I’d otherwise

144 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
choose to spend time with outside work. Many people spend a large
percentage of their waking hours at work. From a selfi sh standpoint
alone, if that’s your choice, it pays to surround yourself with compel-
ling human beings from whom you can learn, and with whom you
can be challenged to grow.
When we look for intelligence, we’re thinking about open-minded
people with a keen curiosity to learn. Do they ask me questions
during interviews? Do they display a broad knowledge about a lot
of subjects, or a deep knowledge about any one subject? A hallmark
of our business model is to continually be improving. I need to stock
our team with people who naturally crave learning and who want
to evolve— people who fi gure out how each new day can bring rich
opportunities to do something even better. Striving for excellence, as
we do every day, requires curious people who also take an active in-
terest in what their teammates do. I appreciate it when waiters want
to learn more about cooking. I love it when cooks want to learn
about wine. I adore it when hosts and reservationists want to learn
more about the person behind the name they are greeting on the
phone or at the front door.
A strong work ethic is an indispensable emotional skill for any
employee who is going to contribute to the excellence of our busi-
ness. We want people on our team who are highly motivated, con-
fident, and wired to do the job well. It’s not hard to teach anyone
the proper way to set a beautiful table.What is impossible to teach is
how to care deeply about setting the table beautifully.When I walk
into any one of our restaurants as its dining room is being set up
for service, one of the most lovely sights to me is a waiter lifting a
wineglass off the table, holding it up to the light, and checking for
smudges. This is not because I’m an unreformed smudge freak, but
because someone is showing care for a small detail—smaller even
than what the average guest may notice. When an employee does
not work out, the problem more often stems from an attitude of “I
won’t” rather than “I can’t.”

145 T h e 5 1 P e r c e n t S o l u t i o n
A high degree of empathy is crucial in delivering enlightened hos-
pitality. Empathy is not just an awareness of what others are experi-
encing; it’s being aware of, being sensitive to, and caring about how
one’s own behavior affects others.We want waiters, for example, who
can approach a new table of guests and intuitively sense their needs
and agenda. Have they come, for example, to celebrate or to conduct
business? Are they here to experience the cuisine, or simply to con-
nect with a colleague over a light meal? Do they want extra attention
from the restaurant, or would they prefer to be left alone?
Guests may think they’re dining out to feel nourished, but I’ve
always believed that an even more primary need of diners is to be
nurtured. The most direct and effective way to let our guests know
that we’re on their side has always been to field a team that exudes an
infectious kind of empathy. No business can truly offer hospitality if
the preponderance of its team members lack empathy. But when each
member of the team goes to bat for the others, the mutual trust and
respect engendered among them creates an infectious environment
of caring for our guests.
Self-awareness and integrity go hand in hand. It takes integrity to be
self-aware and to hold oneself accountable for doing the right thing. I
want to work with people who have a handle on what makes them-
selves tick. Self-awareness is understanding your moods (and how
they affect you and others). In a sense, it is a personal weather report.
Is the mood dry or humid? Is it raining or stormy? Is it warm and
sunny or chilly and cloudy? The staff members’ individual and collec-
tive moods influence the customers’ moods; and in the intricate, fast-
paced dance between the kitchen, dining room, and guests during
a meal—when hundreds of people are served—it’s crucial for my
staff members to be aware of and accountable for their own personal
“weather reports.”
No one can possibly be upbeat and happy all the time. But per-
sonal mastery demands that team members be aware of their moods
and keep them in check. If a staff member is having personal trouble,

146 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
and wakes up angry, nervous, depressed, or anxious, he or she needs
to recognize and deal with the mood. It does not serve anyone’s pur-
poses to project that mind-set into the work environment or onto
one’s colleagues.We call that “skunking.” A skunk may spray a preda-
tor when it feels threatened, but everyone else within two miles has
to smell the spray, and these others may assume that the skunk actu-
ally had it in for them. It’s not productive to work with a skunk, and
it’s not enjoyable to be served by one either. In a business that de-
pends on the harmony of an ensemble, a skunk’s scent is toxic.
It may seem implicit in the philosophy of enlightened hospitality
that the employee is constantly setting aside personal needs and self-
lessly taking care of others. But the real secret of its success is to hire
people to whom caring for others is, in fact, a selfish act. I call these
people hospitalitarians. A special type of personality thrives on pro-
viding hospitality, and it’s crucial to our success that we attract people
who possess it. Their source of energy is rarely depleted. In fact, the
more opportunities hospitalitarians have to care for other people, the
better they feel.
No matter how focused or purposeful we are when we hire,
we’ve still made plenty of mistakes. Most of those mistakes have
occurred when we’ve misread an employee’s emotional makeup.
Technical strengths and deficiencies are relatively easy to spot. I
can watch any cook sautéing a piece of fish for sixty seconds and
gauge whether or not he has what it takes. I can watch a server and
determine immediately if he or she has the ability to take orders
gracefully. Emotional skills are harder to assess, and it’s usually nec-
essary to spend meaningful time with people—often in the work
environment—to determine whether or not they’re a good fi t. But
it’s critical to begin by being explicit about which emotional skills
you’re seeking. Doing that—even if you do nothing else—greatly
increases your odds of success.

147 T h e 5 1 P e r c e n t S o l u t i o n
For year s, we’ve use d a system called “trailing” to test and hone
a prospect’s technical skills—the 49 percent—and to begin to assess
his or her emotional skills, the 51 percent. Trailing is a combination
of training and auditioning; it’s rigorous and sometimes awkward.We
generally keep people on probation until we’ve first observed their
behavior within the real environment of the dining room or kitchen,
and until we’ve assessed their overall fit with our team.We’re upfront
about this process, and we tell candidates that we also expect them
to audition us as prospective employers. We urge those who trail to
ask themselves, Is this really the kind of place I’m going to want to spend
one-third of my time? Is this place going to challenge me and make me feel
fulfi lled?
Our frontline managers arrange for trails in each job category.
Most prospective employees go through four, five, or six trails, during
meal periods and often trail with a different waiter or cook each
time. For each trail after the first, there is a specific and increasingly
advanced list of what needs to be learned and accomplished during
that session.Trails begin with a physical orientation to the restaurant
and culminate with “taking a station” while being closely monitored
by the trainer. Trailers are paid for their shifts, whether they’re hired
or not. In the dining room, our guests can tell who the trailers are by
the fact that they are not wearing an offi cial uniform, or by noticing
that a trainer is the one standing back, observing.
Our training is designed not as a hazing, but as a healthy way to
foster a stronger team. Staff members, by being directly involved in
the decision making, have a good deal of infl uence over who is hired
and thus a stake in the ongoing success of the outcome.Trailers don’t
advance to their second trail unless the first trainer recommends this
to the manager; they don’t move on to their third unless the second
trainer endorses it; and so on. After five or six trails we end up with
a well-trained candidate who has also been endorsed by as many as
half a dozen team members. And the candidate doesn’t move along
unless he or she agrees that the fi t seems good. By creating a built-in

148 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
support system for new hires, we greatly enrich the subsequent team-
building experience.
What is almost impossible to train for is the emotional stuff; iden-
tifying hospitalitarians is a tricky skill to teach. I know I have a knack
for looking across a table and sensing that a person is, or is not, the
right fit for us. But how do I make the subjective objective, and the
implicit explicit? One effective way to articulate my gut feelings to
others doing the hiring is to teach them how to listen to their own
gut feelings. To do that, I ask managers (whose intuition and judg-
ment we trust, or they wouldn’t be managers) to pose themselves
three fundamental hypothetical situations when they are hiring.
Situation 1: Think of someone you know well (a spouse, best
friend, parent, sibling) who has an uncanny gift for judging character.
If this person were on a jury, he or she could take one look at the de-
fendant and almost always render a correct verdict. For me that some-
one is my wife, Audrey, who is eerily adept at reading character and
integrity and who, in a flash, can almost always tell if what you see is
what you get. So the first check is to imagine that you have invited
the prospective employee to your home for dinner with your judge
of character. The three of you discuss many things over a two-hour
dinner. When the prospect leaves and the door closes behind him
or her, what will be the first thing your character judge says? “What
the hell are you thinking?” Or, “Hire that person immediately!” For
judges of character, there is no such thing as the color gray.
Situation 2: Imagine your keenest rival in business—if you’re the
Yankees, say, then it’s the Red Sox. Then imagine that the day you
make a job offer to a prospect, he or she calls you back and says,
“Thanks, but I just got a great offer from the Red Sox and I’m taking
the job with them.” Is your immediate reaction “Shit, we blew it!” Or,
“Whew, we’ve dodged a bullet!” Ask yourself.
Sometimes I’ll go too far down the road in a hiring situation
with someone who isn’t quite right for our team. I am still amazed at

149 T h e 5 1 P e r c e n t S o l u t i o n
how often I have felt enormous relief when someone we’ve actively
pursued ends up taking another job. This leaves me asking myself
how I let the interviewing process get so far in the fi rst place?
I’m aware that that one of my blind spots when hiring is my nat-
ural inclination to make other people feel comfortable.This impulse
is so powerful that I tend to have a tough time turning it off when
it’s inappropriate—for example, in a job interview. It’s not my job to
soothe prospective employees. It’s my job to assess whether they’ll
be a good fit for our team.That takes self-awareness. Unless we have
tools like gut checks, it’s very easy to get trapped into making some
dangerous mistakes.
Situation 3: Most business owners or managers have a core group
of customers or other people whose opinions carry special weight
for them. In our industry, such a person could be a restaurant critic,
who, if he or she writes for a major publication, shares those opinions
with perhaps a million readers. For me personally, the person could
be my mother or one of my siblings—after all these years, they know
how to push my buttons (and I know how to push theirs). It could
also be a frequent guest who always tells me exactly how he or she
feels about a meal—and is loyal enough to return no matter how the
last meal turned out. So, imagine that this person with an especially
weighty opinion drops in unannounced to dine, and there is only one
table left in the restaurant—a table that will be served by the person
you are considering hiring. Is your reaction “Great!”—or is it “Oh,
no!”
When all three situations leave you feeling positive about the
prospect, you’re on the right track. If any one of them doesn’t, it’s time
to fold the hand. I rarely interview a candidate until two or three
other managers have first had an interview with him or her. Since
our restaurants thrive on a team spirit, I prefer to hire by consensus. I
ask our managers to pursue a candidate’s relevant job references; I ask
them to take personal notes and then rank the strength of each one

150 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
of the candidate’s five emotional skills on a scale of zero to fi ve; and
I ask them to consider and react to the three hypothetical situations
and then listen with their guts.
Finally, I ask our managers to weigh one other critical factor as
they handicap the prospect. Do they believe the candidate has the
capacity to become one of the top three performers on our team in
his or her job category? If people cannot ever develop into one of
our top three cooks, servers, managers, or maître d’s, why would we
hire them? How will they help us improve and become champions?
It’s pretty easy to spot an overwhelmingly strong candidate or even an
underwhelmingly weak candidate. It’s the “whelming” candidate you
must avoid at all costs, because that’s the one who can and will do
your organization the most long-lasting harm. Overwhelmers earn
you raves. Underwhelmers either leave on their own or are termi-
nated. Whelmers, sadly, are like a stubborn stain you can’t get out of
the carpet.They infuse an organization and its staff with mediocrity;
they’re comfortable, and so they never leave; and, frustratingly, they
never do anything that rises to the level of getting them promoted or
sinks to the level of getting them fired. And because you either can’t
or don’t fire them, you and they conspire to send a dangerous mes-
sage to your staff and guests that “average” is acceptable.
There are a lot of jobs to fi ll in the restaurant business, and it can
be frustrating, especially in a tight labor market, to impose our own
stringent limitations on whom we can and can’t hire.When a chef has
been short a line cook for three weeks and fi nally finds a technically
outstanding cook who isn’t quite a 51 percenter, should we really pass
on the candidate? Absolutely. I’m not impressed by a candidate’s tech-
nical prowess if the meaningful emotional skills aren’t already in place.
Each of our restaurants is created with its own distinct cuisine and
its own distinct décor, but caring hospitality must be a common trait
that flows clearly through all of them. I tell new employees right off
the bat that for their salary review, 51 percent of any raise or bonus is
set by how they’re faring at the emotional skills necessary to do their

151 T h e 5 1 P e r c e n t S o l u t i o n
job well, and 49 percent is tied to technical performance. That’s the
perfect balance for us, and it’s the currency of our company.
In the early days at Union Square Cafe, long before I had codi-
fied any of this for my managers, I knew instinctively what kind
of employee I wanted. I had a simple formula: I knew I would be
spending many, many hours working in the restaurant business, so I’d
need to surround myself with employees who were fun, smart, and
interested in learning, not to mention dedicated to excellence and
eager to play on a winning team. I grew foolishly confident that I
could recognize a good hire in a roomful of applicants even without
an interview. (Back when I was dating, that may have been an OK
strategy at a bar, but it was sorely defective as a way to make mean-
ingful hires.) In building my first team for Union Square Cafe in 1985,
I also did something that now sounds insane: I decided not to hire
anyone from New York City. I applied affirmative action to anyone
who hadn’t grown up in the city, believing that any native of New
York would bring a New York attitude to the place. Of course, back
then, I viewed New York as a scary, crime-ridden city, and its popu-
lation as cynical, unfriendly, and tough. Today, I understand that my
opening strategy was remarkably ignorant and narrow-minded. But
it was motivated by my wish to hire only nice, optimistic people to
help me create a restaurant with a fresh feeling.
My biased perception of New York has long since disappeared, and
some of our greatest servers and cooks have been from the city. Yet
today whenever I ask at the monthly meeting I conduct for new hires
how many of them were born in New York, no more than 10 percent
raise their hands.We have hired a lot of people who, at the time, were
also pursuing careers in fields like writing, theater, art, comedy, jazz,
and even midwifery. But the common thread is that most 51 percenters,
regardless of their birthplace, are driven by a personal pursuit of being
the best they can be in whichever fi eld they choose.

152 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
My hiring methods began to evolve by necessity, shortly before
Gramercy Tavern opened in 1994. Following the recession of 1991–
1992, a new bull market led to a spike in restaurant openings through-
out New York City. Until then, we could run a single ad in the Village
Voice and count on attracting so many applicants that there would be a
long line outside the door for just two waiter positions. But suddenly
we were no longer just in the business of competing to serve the best
food; we were engaged in the blood sport of competing to hire the
strongest staff. The real battle among restaurants in New York was
taking place not in dining rooms but rather in the classifi ed section
of the Sunday New York Times. In restaurants, as in any other business,
you stand a much better chance of ending up with the most custom-
ers when fi rst you have the best employees.
Through the years I have thought a lot about where to place want
ads and have honed my ability to write them. I was clearly no longer
free to hire people simply because I imagined we would have been
good friends had we met while I was growing up in St. Louis. I had
gotten by to some extent by relying on that instinct, but it was becom-
ing irresponsible and self-limiting. I had to adapt to a fast-changing
industry.
However, classified ads are expensive, and one tough year, after
several had yielded no returns, I resorted to some unorthodox ap-
proaches. I asked readers of Union Square Cafe’s newsletter—among
them hundreds of guests who had written to praise our staff—to act
as recruiters for us. If they ever came across people at other restau-
rants whom they’d love to see serve them at Union Square Cafe, I
wrote, “I would really appreciate if you would refer them to us.” (I
usually offered a free meal or a bottle of wine for successful referrals.)
We were able to hire a few cooks and waiters, and even a top man-
ager with that method. But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. I did incur the
wrath of at least one restaurateur who had read the newsletter and
called to cry foul and accuse me of poaching, even though we hadn’t
hired or even met anyone from his restaurant.The classifi ed “fi shing

153 T h e 5 1 P e r c e n t S o l u t i o n
hole” was drying up, and I was just tying a different piece of bait on
my line, and casting it into a new pond.
I also ran ads in San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles (all great
restaurant towns); in Atlanta (a big restaurant city during the heady
buildup to the 1996 Olympics); and in Boston and Washington, D.C.
(easy cities from which to transfer to New York). I figured that at any
given time there were at least fi fty people in the restaurant business
in those cities considering a move to New York. If just two of those
fifty were terrific, why wouldn’t they want to come work for us if
they knew we had an opening? During this lean, competitive period,
I also learned what a powerful recruiting tool the Zagat Survey could
be. When a restaurant ranks among Zagat’s top-forty or top-fi fty
most popular places, diners aren’t the only people who notice. Res-
taurant employees looking for work immediately read through the
top-ranked places and check them off one by one while job hunting.
Zagat’s top-rated restaurants tend to be the busiest, and that’s exactly
what top job candidates want.
Our ability to remain as good as we have been has always de-
pended on our ability to attract great people. To the degree that we
can do this a “virtuous cycle” of hiring spins on. Sustaining peak
performance helps us to attract other highly talented people, who
in turn help keep our performance at a peak. Earning high rankings
from critical sources, such as the New York Times and the Zagat Survey,
not only increases business; it improves our chance of fi elding better
and better teams. These teams further perpetuate our ability to per-
form with excellence and they polish our public image.
But I always caution against complacency. I instruct our manag-
ers to recruit new staff “blood” as if we’re behind. In fact, we’ll even
create a job that wouldn’t otherwise exist when we meet someone
we just know belongs on our team.
In addition to instituting an athletic hiring strategy, it’s critical
to be a champion at retaining top staff members. A business owner
can too easily squander the winning edge that comes from fi elding a

154 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
great team by not treating its members with respect and trust, teach-
ing them new skills, and offering clear challenges. Part of what I’m
doing when I make my rounds visiting our restaurants is tuning in
to my team to feel, see, and hear what’s truly going on. I’m watching
to gauge their approach to their work, and I want to see 49 percent
technical prowess and feel 51 percent emotional mastery. The ability
to derive enjoyment from the pursuit of excellence is the best way to
measure the team’s 51-49 ratio, and it allows me to feel assured that
we’re doing our job as well as we can.
A good sense of humor—about oneself, one’s business, and life
in general—goes a long way toward fostering good feelings to ac-
company excellent performance. Somehow in our society a mind-set
took hold many years ago, whereby the only way for a restaurant (or
any business, for that matter) to be taken seriously was to act seri-
ous. But if you go to many fancy restaurants you’ll sense that some-
thing’s missing. There’s a facade of refinement—guests are leaning
forward while speaking in hushed tones; tuxedoed servers are calling
a woman madame and a man monsieur when everyone knows they’re
both American. Everything is delivered perfectly, cleared perfectly,
decanted perfectly, and yet it’s not fun. It’s not sincere.There’s no soul.
It’s a perfectly executed but imperfect experience.
I encourage my staff to express and reveal their humanness, learn
from their mistakes, lighten up, and relax.This is a contribution to the
dialogue on hospitality that we work at quite consciously. But it, too,
requires the optimal 51-49 mix.The idea is to attain a balance: hiring
people who are naturally upbeat and genuine but who are also high-
level achievers capable of delivering excellence.
We make it clear to our employees that we’re going to give them
a great troupe of positive, hopeful colleagues to work with, with
whom they can feel mutual respect and trust, and with whom they
will be asked to achieve lofty goals.
We are not a constellation of individual “star” employees: that
idea would work against my core belief that hospitality is a team sport.

155 T h e 5 1 P e r c e n t S o l u t i o n
I had a challenging experience early on in my career that served as
a cautionary tale about how individual ambition can threaten team-
building. In 1987, less than two years after Union Square Cafe had
opened, an organization called the Society for American Cuisine,
based in Louisville, sponsored a nationwide competition to promote
and celebrate the newly recognized importance of service as a com-
ponent of dining in America. Entrants were asked to write an essay in
which they defined the virtues of the perfect waiter.The grand prize
would be an all-expenses-paid trip to dine at the best “new Ameri-
can” restaurants, in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Chicago, and
several other cities. Participating in this competition struck me as an
interesting way to build pride among my servers and foster a sense
that what they did day in and day out not only was valid but dem-
onstrated their gift for caring. Back then, I had always noticed how
many servers seemed to apologize for their work, with remarks like:
“I’m actually an actor. I’m just waiting tables until I land a real job.”
I knew that instilling pride in our service staff was a monumentally
important concern if we were ever to take steps toward excellence.
That would be impossible if the people executing our service felt in
any way ashamed about being in the restaurant business.
I was still in my twenties, and this was years before I had begun to
think about enlightened hospitality as a coherent management phi-
losophy. In fact, my style of managing back then had barely evolved
since my sophomore year at Trinity College, when I was the news
director for WRTC, the campus FM radio station. I gave people the
schedules they wanted, subbed for them myself if they couldn’t make
a shift, and wrote all the news copy rather than asking anyone for
help. I had an overdeveloped desire to please, and to have everybody
like me. Now, as a young restaurateur, I would clear and reset tables,
check coats, mop up spills, pick up olive pits off the floor, and reset
tables along with everyone else. To this day, I can’t and won’t walk
past something dropped on the fl oor without picking it up. I wanted
people to know that this job was neither beneath them nor beneath

156 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
me. I also wanted to embody the same team spirit and caring for
others that I expected from the staff.
To encourage interest in the national contest, I offered $50 to
anyone who wrote an essay of at least 1,000 words—no matter how
good or poor it was. I offered $100 to the writers of the fi ve essays I
felt were our strongest. And I’d pay $250 to the writer of the essay I
thought was the best. A dozen wonderful pieces were submitted, and
I had each writer read his or her essay aloud.This process alone was
effective team-building, and it sent a powerful message that wait-
ing tables need not be something to be ashamed of. Remarkably,
the waitress who won our own contest at Union Square Cafe (and
the top cash prize) also went on to win the grand prize in the na-
tional competition. Her recipe for the perfect waitress was,“two parts
Walter Cronkite to one part Mae West, carefully blended with a cup
of Mikhail Baryshnikov and a liberal sprinkling of Mother Teresa.”
But my experiment soon began to backfire. Our winning wait-
ress began dubbing herself “waitress of the year,” and our staff snidely
began calling her “WOTY.” She had confused winning this writing
contest with being the nation’s leading waitress. She then made a
remarkable request of me. “I really think you should pay me extra
money,” she told me, “for all the publicity I’m going to generate for
Union Square Cafe when I go on the national tour.” I was stunned,
and told her that she should just enjoy her trip and needn’t conduct
any interviews or mention Union Square Cafe the entire time.
Before long, the food writer Marian Burros of the New York Times
picked up on WOTY story and wrote a “De Gustibus” column for
the paper on September 26, 1987, titled,“Aspiring Actress Finds Star-
dom Waiting on Tables.” This put the whole situation over the top.
Marian had come for lunch and, without identifying herself, asked
to be seated in WOTY’s station.The next day she called to interview
WOTY. The piece was accompanied by a staged and undignifi ed
photograph of WOTY holding a stack of eight dirty plates in each
hand.That is certainly one aspect of waiting tables, but it was not the

157 T h e 5 1 P e r c e n t S o l u t i o n
image I had intended to convey, and it did not suggest that waiting
tables was an enriching way to bestow hospitality.Waitress of the Year
looked more like Bus Girl of the Month. Understandably, the photo
and the story’s unfortunate spin left WOTY feeling embarrassed and
angry.
That fueled even more resentment, which was directed toward
me, and I began to wonder how I had somehow created this mon-
ster. I was tormented because what had initially seemed like such
an uplifting idea was backfiring. The story took on an even more
bizarre turn when the grand prize trip was delayed, then postponed
indefinitely, purportedly for scheduling reasons, but actually because
the organizers had gone bankrupt. Just when it appeared that WOTY
would never get the trip she had earned, the society found a way
to make good on its obligation. WOTY returned from her trip not
enormously impressed with what she had seen or tasted, and soon
thereafter gave her notice at Union Square Cafe. Some eight or nine
years later, when I had practically expunged the anguishing episode
from my mind, out of nowhere, I received a long, beautifully hand-
written letter from her, in which she apologized for her behavior
during what she described as an enormously trying personal episode.
Above all, she had felt guilty about her behavior’s impact on her col-
leagues. It was a brave thing for her to do, and it reaffirmed my belief
in the power of the team over that of the individual. I also learned
how critical it is to manage expectations—and to plan for success, not
just for failure. Too often, we’ve made mistakes by not anticipating
what the consequences would be if we were to win.
I have no problem if employees use the fame of our restaurants to
advance their careers. For example, celebrity chefs, who add as much
to a restaurant’s renown as it adds to theirs, are clearly here to stay, and
that’s not a bad thing for our industry. But individual victories have
to register for the whole team or they can be more disruptive than
helpful.
Indeed, many exciting career opportunities have derived from

158 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
team-building leaders. Our chefs have all been invited to perform
cooking demonstrations, appear on television, cook for charity bene-
fits, and conduct interviews in the media. Several of them have written
cookbooks. As of May 8, 2006, our team members had collectively
won sixteen awards from the James Beard Foundation, the “Oscars” of
our industry. I have a gut-wrenching concern only when any em-
ployee, no matter why or how they’ve been recognized, feels entitled
to special privileges and opportunities and forgets that we are all serv-
ers who come to work for the simple purpose of creating pleasure for
others. On occasion, we’ve hired someone who is more interested in
currying favor with a certain regular guest (sometimes to land an-
other job) than in the overall welfare of the team. Similarly, a “star”
chef who has already launched a line of brand-name food might well
turn out to be a poor fit for us. Promoting his or her own “brand”
would probably be more important than promoting ours.
The team can be weakened or divided by conflicting loyalties if
any one member feels or acts more important than everybody else. I
have found that the people most likely to thrive in our organization
are individuals who also enjoy playing team sports. And that’s true for
any organization in which people depend on others for their ability
to succeed.
Punctuality is nonnegotiable.Yet any number of people seem to
have a habit of using a broken alarm clock; they’re chronically late
for their shifts, and it’s always seemingly due to some extenuating
circumstance.They’re the ones stuck on a “late” subway or bus even
though everyone else managed to commute to work on time. The
first time someone on our staff is late, we’ll make a charitable as-
sumption that maybe there was a foul-up on the subway.The second
time we might start to wonder. The third time we’ll realize that our
colleague may just have a poor work ethic. Chronic lateness (whether
it’s showing up late for appointments or not returning phone calls or
e-mails promptly) is a form of arrogance—“I’m important enough
to make others wait for me”—and it puts other team members in a

159 T h e 5 1 P e r c e n t S o l u t i o n
bind because they have to cover for the tardy person or just wonder
what’s going on.We’re looking for the kind of people whose internal
alarm clock is always working and who always make adjustments for
occasions when subway and bus lines don’t roll on schedule.
Ever since my first experience as a boss, when I worked for John
Anderson’s presidential campaign in 1980, I have continued to view
people who work for me as volunteers. It isn’t that they’ve agreed to
work without pay. “I’m aware that you’re all here, on the most basic
level, to pay the rent,” I tell new hires.“Just as you need a job, I need
people to take orders accurately, and to cook wonderful food.”
Then I remind them that if they’re as talented at what they do as
we believe they are, they could have gotten a job at any of 200 other
very good restaurants for the same pay.“You could all be doing what
you do anywhere else,” I say. “But you chose to be with us.You have
volunteered to be on our team, and we owe it to you to provide you
with much more than just a paycheck in return.We want you to feel
certain you have made a wise choice in joining our company.” It’s
a chance to work at a company where respect and trust are mutual
between management and workers, where you can enjoy working
alongside and learning from excellent colleagues, and where you can
know that your contributions can make every day truly matter.
Meeting with all our new hires—as I continue to do once every
four weeks—often makes me think of the way champagne houses
make nonvintage, or multivintage, champagne. All the major houses
strive to produce a very good nonvintage champagne that tastes vir-
tually the same every single year. They know exactly what the taste
profile is and how to achieve it.They also know that the grapes vary
from year to year—each vintage produces grapes with varying de-
grees of acid, alcohol, or fruit—and so they keep aside wine from
previous vintages, so that in successive years wine makers can blend
together various vintages until all the elements balance perfectly and
they’ve achieved the same consistent flavor they had the year before.
That’s called house style.

160 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
Building our team is not unlike creating nonvintage champagne.
Hundreds of employees have worked at our restaurants over the course
of many years. And yet our guests, like expert wine tasters, should be
able to identify a sense of continuity in the way they feel and experi-
ence our dining rooms.This continuity is based on our own carefully
selected blend of the most caring, intelligent, and talented people in
the hospitality business.That’s our house style.

c hap te r 8
Bro a d c a s t i n g t h e Me s s a g e ,
Tu n i n g i n t h e Fe e d b a c k
The founde r of any new business has an opportunity to ini-
tiate the first expression of that business’s point of view through a
compendium of aesthetic and philosophical choices.The minute the
business hangs its shingle on the door it is not only open for business,
but open to public feedback and scrutiny. Effective businesses remain
true to their core, but also know how to hear, respond, and adjust to
constructive feedback. In my business, much of this input comes from
restaurant critics and journalists.
The press loves covering restaurants, and with each year its vora-
cious appetite continues to grow, in response, I assume, to the pub-
lic’s own insatiable interest in consuming and devouring information
about dining out. On our best days, the media can be extremely
helpful to our business.When we err, or are perceived to have fallen
short of someone’s mark, or simply fall out of favor, negative press
can set back our business. Imagine that I’m standing on the shores
161

162 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
of Manhattan and I am required to cross the Atlantic to France.The
catch is that to get there, I have only two options: I can either swim
or ride there on the back of a shark. Swimming is obviously out of
the question. I’ll tire, freeze, and soon drown. My only choice then, is
to hop on the back of the shark and ride with exceptional care and
skill, or I’m lunch.
The shark, you see, is the press, and it needs to keep swimming or
it dies. I can benefit from acting very carefully with that knowledge. If
my riding technique is expert, the shark can be my vehicle to deliver
me safely to my destination. In my experience of riding sharks, I’ve
been tossed off, nipped at, and even bitten—but not, so far, devoured.
And I’ve always managed to reach my destination. Sometimes I’ve
even enjoyed the ride.
Like most business owners and CEOs, I am responsible for articu-
lating to the public the core principles and values for which we want
our business known. I always try to use media interviews to elaborate
on those business concepts, and that’s when the ride begins. It’s a high-
risk game: play it well and you will fill seats, build the top line, and
attract new employees; make a mistake and the penalties can be stiff,
either for your business, for staff morale, or for your hard-earned rep-
utation. With the exception of late-breaking news, most journalists’
stories, even those based on fresh interviews, tend to rehash material
from previous stories, accurate or not.You hope the good messages
get repeated by other journalists and work hard to make sure the bad
ones are snuffed out quietly, or at least live a very short life.
In the summer of 2004 our business—and almost every restaura-
teur’s business—suffered during the Republican National Conven-
tion. It was just before the Labor Day weekend, and the city felt
desolate. Many families were away on vacation, and thousands of
other New Yorkers simply chose to flee the city to avoid the infl ux of
conventioneers or from fear that the convention might once again
make the city the target of a terrorist attack. Mayor Michael Bloom-
berg had optimistically touted the convention as a boon for business.

163 B r o a d c a s t i n g t h e Me s s a g e , Tu n i n g i n t h e Fe e d b a c k
Perhaps it was in the long term, but for that week, business was dead.
In an interview, Randy Garutti, who was then the general man-
ager of Union Square Cafe, candidly acknowledged to a reporter
from the New York Post that the restaurant’s business was off 25 per-
cent, which was true. (I have always encouraged our managers and
chefs to speak openly and directly to the media, and to make other
efforts to connect with the public beyond the walls of our restau-
rants by teaching classes, joining community organizations, conduct-
ing cooking demonstrations, and serving food at fund-raising events
where food and wine aficionados gather.) But the paper mistakenly
quoted Randy as saying that our business was off by 75 percent.That
“news” made other news—and the Post’s error was picked up as fact
and subsequently reported on by everyone from Fox News to David
Letterman. Union Square Cafe unwittingly became a prominent
symbol of business losses during convention week.This incident was
far from fatal, but it was nonetheless an irritating shark bite.
Fortunately, the vast majority of the actual reviews that our res-
taurants have received from critics have been quite positive. With
each review, I always have two primary concerns: how might it affect
the restaurant’s business, and how might it affect the collective morale
and individual egos of the hardworking members of our team? I’m
thankful that, thus far, not one review has put our business in peril.
On the other hand, I have felt bruised—both personally and on
behalf of our team—when a critic takes what I consider a painful
swipe, particularly after we’ve just opened a restaurant.
In New York, being first on the scene is a journalist’s rite and
right.There is a large subsection of the New York dining public, too,
who will descend on a new restaurant just after it opens simply to
fulfill a need to boast about the hottest new place:“Been there, done
that, and I got there first.” But savvy diners know that it takes a fair
amount of time for a staff, no matter how talented, to learn to work
together smoothly.A restaurant can take months to understand which
of its dishes work and which don’t; the fine-tuning of the menu can

164 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
easily take up to a year. In fact, it generally takes two to three years
for our new restaurants to even approach their ultimate potential for
excellence.And this is because it takes that long for a restaurant’s soul
to emerge. I tend to hold my nose for the first three months, and I
don’t begin to have any real fun for six months. It’s usually a full year
after one of my restaurants has been open before I begin to feel truly
proud.
By the time I feel confident, however, the critics and the people
who simply do not share our chemistry—those who never will enjoy
our restaurant, no matter how much it eventually improves—have
already moved on to the next new restaurant.
To be sure, a restaurant is fair game for a critic the moment it
starts charging patrons. Both the public and the new restaurant can
actually be shortchanged by the very early reviews, because these
snapshots rarely provide an accurate preview of what that restaurant
will eventually become.
Am I suggesting that critics or the dining public just stay away
from a new restaurant? Of course not. It’s useful to know how a res-
taurant tastes and works when it first opens, but it’s also helpful to
understand what to expect down the road. If I buy a case of a newly
released wine, I’ll usually drink a bottle right off the bat—even if I
know it’s too young—just to have a point of comparison as I follow
its development.That’s not a bad thing to do with a new restaurant, as
long as you trust that the restaurant will continue to grow and evolve.
Indeed, opening a restaurant is a little like making wine. The wine
is often clumsy or “dumb” when it’s initially bottled, but wines with
a solid pedigree almost always improve over time. I’m a hedonist. I
drink wine to enjoy it when it’s at its best, once the components have
settled into delicious harmony. Similarly, I go to a restaurant to enjoy
it at its best. (We’re fortunate in New York, and indeed across the
country, to have an abundance of evolving and evolved restaurants.
This means that I have the luxury of patiently waiting before trying a
new restaurant—I don’t have to try it before it’s at its best.)

165 B r o a d c a s t i n g t h e Me s s a g e , Tu n i n g i n t h e Fe e d b a c k
We’re constantly on the lookout for guests who appear to have
a natural affinity for our product—the food, staff, and design—even
when it is new, flawed, and rapidly evolving. On such a foundation
of trust, respect, and enjoyment, we can get their reactions and begin
to develop a meaningful dialogue, especially early on, when there
is so much—almost too much—feedback from the general public.
For instance, when Tabla opened in 1998, a frequent criticism from
some early guests was that Indian food would never succeed in a sen-
sual, fine-dining guise.We listened, but that input was not particularly
helpful. Another criticism was that, good as Tabla was, it was just too
loud. That was more constructive. In fact, we’d anticipated before
opening that noise might be a problem. I had insisted on using a
beautiful, rich wood called padauk for the fl oor.The restaurant’s ceil-
ings were untouchable because of the requirement to restore and pre-
serve their historic ornamentation, so sound-absorbent tiles were out.
Tabla was loud, and a chorus of complaints led to several subtle fi xes
that greatly lowered the noise level. We hung plush curtains, stuffed
balls of fabric underneath our tabletops to capture noise bouncing off
the floors, and upholstered the seat backs of our chairs. One lesson
we learned from the experience is that every little thing you do to
mitigate noise helps a lot.This is because when a restaurant is noisy, a
cumulative effect occurs: each guest has to speak a little more loudly
to be heard over the ever-increasing din.
When we have failed to tune in to our guests who let us know
where we have a real problem, we’ve risked hearing about it from
someone with a megaphone. This happened with our most popu-
lar dessert at Tabla—kulfi, an extremely dense, decadently rich, cone-
shaped ice cream. After observing guests early on struggling to cut
this very hard frozen dessert, I told Tabla’s general manager that we
needed to provide an easier way to eat kulfi: serve it with a serrated
grapefruit spoon.“Great idea,” he said.
Months went by and somehow my reminders were not working.
People kept ordering kulfi; it was still frozen solid; and the restau-

166 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
rant still hadn’t found the right spoons. A restaurant critic beat us to
the punch: “The kulfi’s delicious once you get it in your mouth,” he
wrote in his newspaper, “but it slid halfway across the table when I
tried to cut into it with my spoon.”
Reading that was exasperating for me, an unnecessary, public
black eye for the restaurant, and an undeserved slight for the pastry
chef.This delicious dessert need not have been panned. In fact, within
one day the manager had found serrated spoons for it. The experi-
ence taught me yet another lesson about trusting my instincts and
holding others accountable.
For the first two years at Tabla and at its less expensive downstairs
café, called Bread Bar, we had another unusual problem. Most of our
early guests had never before experienced Indian spices paired with
local, seasonal ingredients, hip cocktails, sexy music, and modern art;
and the curiosity generated by Ruth Reichl’s three-star review in the
New York Times kept Tabla packed for the entire first year. But then
in the second year business tailed off a little, and our performance in
the third year was flat (it was especially hurt by the 9/11 attacks).This
was the first time one of our restaurants had failed to post consistent,
steady, year-over-year growth.
But we hadn’t built Tabla to be a flash in the pan. So I did some-
thing different. I ran some focus groups with a few loyal guests and in-
cluded chef Floyd Cardoz, our general manager, Randy Garutti, and
our director of operations, Richard Coraine. We consistently heard
two distinct observations, seemingly at odds:“I would dine at Tabla far
more often if it were more Indian,” and “I would go to Tabla far more
often if it were a little less Indian.” So we hit on a solution.We would
emphasize the bold-fl avored Indian food downstairs in the Bread Bar
and emphasize refined, gently spiced food upstairs in Tabla’s main
dining room. We believed that this would satisfy both constituencies.
And we had the input from our guests to thank for making those
changes. Almost immediately, the food critic Eric Asimov of the New
York Times noticed the new format. He gave the newly Indianized

167 B r o a d c a s t i n g t h e Me s s a g e , Tu n i n g i n t h e Fe e d b a c k
Bread Bar a rave in his column “$25 and Under” that instantly re-
charged the restaurant and returned it to its earlier business levels.
We made a different kind of adjustment at Eleven Madison Park
not long after it opened, also thanks in part to feedback from our guests.
I arrived at the conclusion that my original concept for this restaurant
had been flawed, and that the guests were picking up on it. Eleven
Madison Park looked and felt far more like a grand, gorgeous restaurant
than the breezy brasserie we had envisioned. As a consequence, rather
than exceeding the guests’ expectations for a brasserie, we were falling
short of their expectations for a grand restaurant.The food was indeed
better than that of a typical brasserie, but not as refined as one might
expect from the restaurant’s majestic, urbane décor.This seemed to be
a two-pronged challenge. We had to find a way to muss up our hair
a little—to make the restaurant a lot more fun—and to meaningfully
improve the quality of the dining experience at the same time.
When it opened, Eleven Madison Park had received a handful
of very good (but not excellent) reviews, much to my dismay. (In
fairness, though, it did earn four stars from the Daily News, a James
Beard nomination for best new restaurant in America, and a coveted
place on Esquire magazine’s annual list of America’s best new restau-
rants. Also, the intense anticipation surrounding its sassier next-door
sibling,Tabla, which was opening a month later, didn’t help.) Part of
the problem, we fi gured out, was that people weren’t having enough
fun at Eleven Madison Park.The restaurant is a breathtaking, soaring
space in a monumental, marble-filled historic art deco building. No
matter how we accessorized the place to make it look like a brasserie,
its elegant bones were not going to change. It looked like a special-
occasion restaurant, and that was that. Richard Coraine urged me to
consider one straightforward solution: we needed to book more large
parties. On opening, we had decided to limit tables to six or eight.
That, we had believed, would give the kitchen an advantage—cook-
ing better food for fewer people. “People are constantly calling us,
wanting to use this restaurant for a big party,” Richard said.

168 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
We began pushing tables together in nearly every possible con-
figuration and started welcoming parties of eight, twelve, and even
eighteen. Next, we expanded our wine list, adding California wines
to a list that had been exclusively French—a narrow approach that
had been part of my hubris at the beginning. Now, each evening, ani-
mated mini-parties sprouted up all around the dining room, and sud-
denly Eleven Madison Park became a bustling, lively restaurant. We
hired a dynamic maître d’, Derek Watkins, who seemed to remember
every customer—Richard described him as a front door “smoochie.”
Later we added Stephen Beckta, another thoroughbred dining room
and wine manager, who lit up the room like a swank circus master.
The menu was rethought and refined; and within six months, Eleven
Madison Park made the cover of Wine Spectator as one of New York’s
best new restaurants for wine lovers. It soon earned a James Beard
Award of Excellence for its service; and it has landed a spot in Zagat’s
top twenty most popular restaurants almost every year since. In 2006
we made another bold move by bringing in an immensely talented,
young Swiss-born chef, Daniel Humm, whose very refi ned cook-
ing style would trump any last vestiges of brasserie feeling at Eleven
Madison Park.The restaurant’s design had convinced our guests, and
us, that it was meant to be a great, grand restaurant.
The opening problems at Blue Smoke weren’t so easily fi xed,
though we considered just about every shred of the tons of feedback
we were getting from the people who ate there in our early days.
To begin with, we were totally unprepared for the mobs of people
who came to sample our barbecue restaurant almost from the fi rst
night.We had never quite believed that so many suave New Yorkers
would be willing to loosen their ties and pick up bones with their
fingers. Would-be patrons could not get through on the phones to
make reservations. Tables were overbooked and double-booked be-
cause of our own inadequate preparation, frustrating and angering
the very people we most needed to have on our side. One night that
spring of 2002, during the annual meeting of the American Booksell-

169 B r o a d c a s t i n g t h e Me s s a g e , Tu n i n g i n t h e Fe e d b a c k
ers Association, we inadvertently booked two parties on the same bal-
cony, which has room for only one group.These weren’t just any par-
ties, either. One host was an important editor, publisher, and friend;
the other was also a celebrated publisher, introducing the latest book
from Steven Raichlen, the country’s top-selling barbecue author.This
incident required us to eat crow, and it still makes me shudder. Each
party insisted that they’d be happy only on the balcony, until I got in-
volved and persuaded one to switch to our more spacious rear dining
room.Then all I had to do was answer to the forty or so guests who
had made regular reservations for tables in the rear dining room. It
was embarrassing, chaotic, and costly.
Part of the explanation for this mistake and many others was that
we had deliberately hired a younger, far less seasoned staff than we
usually would have for an opening team. My initial idea was that Blue
Smoke would become our organization’s “farm system” for talent.We
would be able to hire 51 percenters whose technical skills might not
yet be refined enough for a job at Union Square Cafe,Tabla, Gramercy
Tavern, or Eleven Madison Park. I reasoned that they wouldn’t need
those more advanced restaurant skills in a barbecue joint; but if and
when they acquired enough ability to earn a promotion to one of
our other restaurants, we would be ready with a job. And we would
nurture “green” managers in precisely the same way.
This scheme proved to be a serious miscalculation. I learned that
no matter what our concept is, people expect three specific things of
our brand: culinary excellence, knowledgeable service, and gracious
hospitality. At any price point and for any kind of food—barbecue
or black truffl es—our guests expected excellence and hospitality, and
we were falling short. And my idea of Blue Smoke as “farm system”
was also offensive to high-quality employees who may have been
qualified for a job at one of our more “refined” restaurants, but who
simply preferred the relaxed, fun atmosphere of Blue Smoke.
By heeding our guests’ constructive criticisms right away, we
were able to make crucial adjustments and begin to solve some of

170 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
our most daunting problems. First, we removed one-fourth of the
seats in our dining room—a costly change, but one that we hoped
would allow us to take charge of the place. Next, we increased the
number of dining room and kitchen managers by half, transferring
some very talented managers to Blue Smoke from a couple of our
other restaurants.
To help deal with late-seated reservations and to take care of
people who made a spur-of-the moment decision to drop in for
some barbecue, Richard Coraine urged that we set aside as much as
50 percent of the business each night for walk-ins. This strategy was
effective in two ways. First, we regained control over how busy we
would be on any given evening, since once we had seated the guests
to whom we had promised tables, we still had discretionary control
over whether or not to seat the other half of the dining room. Second,
since we knew that aficionados are not used to planning—or inter-
ested in planning—four weeks in advance to go to a barbecue joint,
we were able to satisfy their desire to enjoy barbecue on the spur of
the moment.
Encouraging walk-ins also attracted a whole new population to
our business: barbecue lovers who wanted to drop in for some ribs
and a couple of pints of beer, hang out with friends, and hear some
great live music downstairs or on the jukebox upstairs. They weren’t
inveterate foodies surfing the Internet for reviews and wondering what
the food bloggers were chatting about. By eliminating the requirement
to reserve in advance, we had removed the “special-occasionness” of
Blue Smoke, and almost instantly we encouraged and attracted hun-
dreds of new patrons who packed the bar four and five deep, actually
enjoying the experience of waiting as much as an hour for a table to
free up. Of course, the most important adjustments would be those we
made as we persevered in our quest to serve top-quality barbecue.

171 B r o a d c a s t i n g t h e Me s s a g e , Tu n i n g i n t h e Fe e d b a c k
We’re constantly se e king to increase the mind share each of
our restaurants enjoys with the public. It’s crucial that our establish-
ments remain on the tip of people’s tongues, because we have hun-
dreds of seats to fill every day and night in a city that offers the public
thousands of options for dining. I am also well aware that people are
pummeled with more information each day than our ancestors re-
ceived in an entire lifetime.Therefore, our messages have to be useful
and have to be sticky if we are to stand any chance of earning a piece
of your mind share.And they must be presented in a context that sup-
ports our larger business point of view, or they will be confusing at
best and damaging at worst.
One winning idea was a wonderful segment on the Today Show
featuring chef Kerry Heffernan. In addition to being an avid fl y fi sh-
erman, Kerry is an expert on anything that breathes through gills.The
segment showed him on a boat catching a fish, cleaning it, and then
cooking it in the studio. It sent the message that the chef of Eleven
Madison Park is authentically knowledgeable about fish, cares for the
environment, and is also a nice guy. It generated not only a lot of
business for the restaurant but excellent feedback for Kerry as well.
This was a great fit, but an appearance on Donald Trump’s show
The Apprentice would not have been—no matter how colossally suc-
cessful the show was.The producers called one day and asked me to
be part of a competition. As I understood it, the plot was that two
restaurateurs would each be challenged to create, build, and open a
new restaurant, within a week.Then the Zagat Survey would send in
its troops to vote on which one was better.At the time, The Apprentice
had some of television’s loftiest ratings, but I knew it was not for us.
People told me I was crazy, that it would be great for the company
to appear on a show that everyone in America was watching. What
I saw instead was a high-profile opportunity to become distracted
from our business, and perhaps to send conflicting messages about
our seriousness as a company that exists to develop enduring restau-
rants with soul.

172 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
I’ve tried to pick our media moments carefully. Yes to Julia Child’s
visiting my home kitchen on Good Morning America in 1990. Yes to
profi les in People, Town and Country, CBS Sunday Morning, and the
New York Times. Yes to a national ad campaign for American Express
(more on that later). Yes to a segment with Martha Stewart learning
to cook barbecue from the pitmaster Kenny Callaghan in the kitchen
of Blue Smoke, or playfully apprenticing herself at Shake Shack. No
to my own national talk show on Lifetime. No to national advertising
campaigns for a fragrance and a line of menswear. No to a story in
the New York Times about why I think Union Square Cafe deserved
a Michelin star. (If I were Bibendum, the Michelin man, I’d have a
comment.) And no to The Apprentice.
The first time I chose to participate in a high-profile media op-
portunity was in 1992, when I was invited to appear in a radio cam-
paign and, later, a national television campaign for American Express.
It became one of the first examples of a national cause-related mar-
keting campaign by a global corporation. I had agreed to do the
spots, which were filmed at Union Square Cafe, on the condition
that their focus be on American Express’s efforts to help fi ght hunger.
Those ads dramatically elevated the profile and positioning of Union
Square Cafe. They were also the seeds of what would become a
multiyear, $20 million “Charge Against Hunger” program waged by
American Express and Share Our Strength, the exceptional organi-
zation founded by Billy Shore to relieve hunger and poverty. I’m
more proud of that than almost anything else I’ve accomplished in
my career, but not because it put me on television screens and in
Sunday newspaper magazines across the country.That fame was fl eet-
ing.What endured was the impact on real kids who for the fi rst time
got school breakfasts, or who were enrolled in failure-to-thrive clin-
ics, or whose parents learned how to stretch their food dollars and
to buy and cook nutritious meals. All thanks to American Express’s
funding of Share Our Strength programs, and all because of the early
positive consumer feedback generated by those ads.

173 B r o a d c a s t i n g t h e Me s s a g e , Tu n i n g i n t h e Fe e d b a c k
But there was an underbelly to this story. In the aftermath of the
very successful Amex campaign of 1992, I was in Washington, D.C.,
at Red Sage, Mark Miller’s red-hot new restaurant, to attend a meet-
ing of the board of directors of Share Our Strength. Just as we were
about to break for lunch, a host beckoned me to the restaurant’s
crowded maître d’ stand to pick up the telephone. One of my manag-
ers at Union Square Cafe was on the line, calling to tell me that our
restaurant was at that moment being marched on by a group of gay
and lesbian activists under the banner “New York Boycott Colorado.”
They had formed a picket line blocking the front door of Union
Square Cafe to protest my agreeing to travel to Colorado to host a
seminar on Italian wines at the upcoming Food and Wine Classic, the
magazine’s annual event in Aspen, which I had been attending as a
speaker since 1987. I was dumbfounded.
I could understand why the group was incensed about Colorado’s
forthcoming vote on a state constitutional amendment that would ef-
fectively abridge civil rights for gays and lesbians. But I was baffl ed by
its strategy of picking me as a linchpin for the protest.The only way
the activists even knew about my participation on the wine panel was
that Food and Wine, owned by American Express, had capitalized on
my exposure through the recent ads, and had promoted my partici-
pation as a speaker in Aspen. I had read about the proposed amend-
ment and happened to agree with the protesters’ position on it. But
I was stunned to have become a target. A picket line in front of the
Union Square Cafe? I found that incomprehensible. The boycotters’
thinking seemed to be:“If we can pressure Danny Meyer to pull out
of Aspen, that will help convince voters to support us.” But there was
no connection between my wine class and the disputed amendment.
I knew that my decision whether or not to participate would have no
impact on how any citizen of Colorado might decide to vote.
For days I felt trapped in this situation, which was growing worse
by the minute. I was being inundated with absurd, angry faxes accus-
ing me of homophobia and threatening to hurt my business. Some

174 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
of the writers maintained that if the amendment had been relevant
to a Jewish issue, I would long ago have refused to go to Aspen.The
restaurant’s offi ce floor was covered with such a mess of thermal fax
paper that it looked as if the Torah itself had scrolled from our fax
machines. Exasperated, I contacted friends at American Express and
Food and Wine, and we all agreed that despite my intention to follow
through on my commitment to speak, it would be best if I stayed
home.
I had studied and worked in politics, and I understood that activ-
ists need traction—and a good target. But this protest had become a
perversion of what was originally a positive media effort by Ameri-
can Express (and me) to relieve hunger.The experience left me pro-
foundly wary of the potential downside of media exposure.
A dozen years later, something similar happened. Toward the end
of summer 2004, the Missouri delegation to the Republican National
Convention rented Blue Smoke to throw itself a party.We had booked
the business not only because it was highly profitable for us to do so
during a week when business in New York was quite slow, but also be-
cause the “Missouri connection” was a great fit for the restaurant, given
my roots in St. Louis.Then, just days before the convention, Missouri
passed a new amendment to its state constitution, banning same-sex
marriage. When word got out that the state’s delegation had selected
Blue Smoke for its party, gay and lesbian activists arrived at the front
door of our barbecue joint ahead of time and gave a special welcome
to the “Show Me” state.The protestors pelted the delegates’ buses with
eggs and yelled at the delegates as they entered the restaurant. I missed
the action, having been inside the restaurant to greet the Republican
guests, including Senator Kit Bond. (Not wanting to broach politics at
this particular party, I steered the conversation toward things we had in
common, like barbecue and the St. Louis Cardinals.) As soon as I had
made my rounds, I left the party. As I walked out the door, the protest-
ers began chanting at me:“Shame! Shame! Shame!”
Astounded, I looked at them and asked,“Me?”

175 B r o a d c a s t i n g t h e Me s s a g e , Tu n i n g i n t h e Fe e d b a c k
“You!” someone roared back.And then they began chanting,“You,
you, you!”
A reporter bounded out of the pack and asked me to state my
position on the amendment. “I’m against it,” I said bluntly. “There’s
no story here.”
More recently, in 2005, activists advocating a ban on foie gras
began protesting and handing out gruesomely illustrated fl iers every
few nights on the sidewalk outside both Union Square Cafe and
The Modern. (Those protests didn’t dissuade more than a few people
from entering our restaurants, and to date, sales of foie gras remain
where they have been for the past few years.) Our restaurants are
among hundreds in America that serve foie gras, but once again, we
seemed to be an attractive target for activists.That’s way beyond any-
thing I’d imagined when I first got into the restaurant business. It’s
an odd aspect of success and one of the ironies and risks of having a
public profile. Still, there’s value in being the target of a protest: it cer-
tainly opens the door to learning more about a controversial subject.
To think that, back in 1985, people laughed at me when I said I’d be
parlaying a political science degree into a career as a restaurateur!
Such expe rie nce s have conditione d me to try to fl y under
the radar as much as possible when I’m opening a new restaurant.
There have been two times in the course of my career as a restaura-
teur when I found myself and one of my restaurants at the center of
a feeding frenzy by the media.The first was upon opening Gramercy
Tavern on July 21, 1994.
What set the craziness in motion was an unprecedented cover
story by Peter Kaminsky in New York magazine, which hit the news-
stands the day the restaurant opened.The cover was simple enough: a
photograph of a box of Gramercy Tavern matches, underscored with
four gold stars, and the cover line: “The Next Great Restaurant?”
We hadn’t known about the cover in advance, but to a lot of New

176 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
Yorkers it smacked of blatant self-promotion, as if we were boast-
ing about the new restaurant, presenting ourselves with four stars,
and calling ourselves the next great restaurant. Target practice com-
menced, with Gramercy Tavern in the crosshairs of practically every
restaurant critic in New York. Most business owners, especially res-
taurateurs in a media capital like New York, would kill for the kind of
buzz generated by an appearance on the cover of New York.You can’t
buy that kind of advertising. But whatever interest it generated, the
open invitation to eviscerate the new restaurant was even greater.
Just one week before the story appeared, I found myself in the
absurd position of being the first to inform the magazine’s food critic,
Gael Greene, that Gramercy Tavern was going to be the subject of a
feature story. She’d called me to find out when the restaurant was to
debut so that she could include a short blurb in “Cue,” her restau-
rant listings at the back of the magazine. I was faced with a diffi cult
choice: inform her for the first time that we were to be the subject
of a major feature (this was before I knew we’d be on the cover) and
incur her anger over not having been told, or withhold the informa-
tion and invite even more wrath for being disingenuous.When I told
her about the forthcoming feature story, she blurted, “What?” and
then uttered bitter invectives against her own editor for not having
communicated the information to her. I didn’t blame her for being
outraged, but I knew we were in for trouble. Before it had served its
first meal, Gramercy Tavern found itself in the doghouse with one of
the most influential food critics in New York.
Predictably, Gael did launch an assault on the restaurant in her
review; she was responding as much to her own magazine’s hype
as she was to her sense of the restaurant itself. That her editors had
shown disrespect for her by not telling her about the cover story cer-
tainly added to her distaste for Gramercy Tavern.
In case we wondered about its impact, the cover of New York was
referred to in subsequent reviews of Gramercy Tavern by other crit-
ics. For example, Ruth Reichl in the New York Times cited it in her

177 B r o a d c a s t i n g t h e Me s s a g e , Tu n i n g i n t h e Fe e d b a c k
reviews. If the restaurant’s aspiration is four stars, the critics seemed to
be saying, I’ll tell you what I think! Gramercy Tavern remained busy
throughout the torrent of reviews, but they were a painful distraction
from making the kind of improvements that would eventually allow
it to evolve into a great restaurant. The story ratcheted up expecta-
tions and made it almost inevitable that we would fail to meet them.
But the opening reviews of Gramercy Tavern paled in compari-
son with what was written about Blue Smoke eight years later. The
initial scorching reviews for Blue Smoke tested the limits of our cus-
tomers’ loyalty and our employees’ morale.
For the first time in my career the criticism felt personal and mean-
spirited. One Wednesday in March 2002, I was on my way to Chi-
cago for an early morning business meeting with family members. My
grandfather was in failing health, and there were important matters to
discuss concerning his philanthropic activities. Knowing that the New
York Post’s review of Blue Smoke was running that day, I picked up a
copy of the paper just before boarding the plane. Flipping to the food
page, I turned pale as I saw the headline,“Smoke Blows It.”The critic
declared,“I know barbecue and this ain’t it.”There wasn’t much in that
criticism we could use to improve our performance. I could only feel
bad, and I did.Then I picked up that same morning’s Daily News and
read an article about how the Internet was becoming a popular place
to post anonymous musings about restaurants. Blue Smoke, the article
noted, had already attracted more than sixty postings on one site, many
of them scathing. A barrage of negative, often hostile reviews followed,
creating the impression that by its very existence, Blue Smoke was
committing a capital offense—and that it would probably not survive.
The subtext of a lot of the press was: “Who the hell is Danny Meyer
to be opening a barbecue restaurant? What could he know about it?
See? Aha! Blue Smoke will be his Waterloo!” I wondered if there had
ever been a more intensely scrutinized barbecue restaurant than Blue
Smoke. In most parts of the country, when a barbecue joint opens, the
world takes scant notice.

178 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
I tried hard to see beyond every pronouncement to fi nd some-
thing constructive. I knew Blue Smoke was not performing anywhere
near its potential. In fact, the ribs were not as good as they should
have been, and not nearly as good as they would eventually be after
we figured out how to make necessary adjustments to our smoke-
stack. But the critics weren’t taking on just the ribs, pulled pork, and
brisket: they seemed to be assailing my credibility, and my justifi ca-
tion for opening a barbecue place in New York. The Post pounded
away with a vengeance. In one piece, one of their writers called our
opening night “the worst” he’d ever experienced. A week later, in its
review, the Post gave us zero stars. Its gossip column “Page Six” piled
on by noting that Al Roker of the Today Show had thrown his book
party at the “critically panned” Blue Smoke.
I was feeling raw, reading nothing but scarring reviews—yet
somehow we remained packed every night. Either the public wasn’t
reading the reviews, or people just didn’t care what the critics said. Or
perhaps people were taking a grisly interest in witnessing and even
getting a taste of a train wreck in progress.
New York magazine was up next. When our fourth child, Peyton,
was about to begin nursery school, the school asked Audrey (who
was by now the mom of three young alumni of the school—Hallie,
Gretchen, and Charles) if she would help welcome new parents of
the kids who would be in Peyton’s class. Coincidentally, one of those
new parents was Adam Platt, now New York’s lead food critic. At the
open house for new families, Adam was introduced to Audrey. I was
unable to attend, and the next day Audrey debated whether or not to
share with me what he had told her:“I don’t know if your husband is
going to like the review of Blue Smoke that’s going to run Monday”
he had said.“But I do like his other restaurants.”
I was sleepless all weekend, anxiously waiting for a damaging
review. By Monday morning, I understood why Adam had warned
Audrey. He’d found Blue Smoke’s pit barbecue so-so and noted that
while he loved the salmon we were serving, a friend he’d brought along

179 B r o a d c a s t i n g t h e Me s s a g e , Tu n i n g i n t h e Fe e d b a c k
who was a barbecue connoisseur refused to even try it.“Salmon does
not belong on a real barbecue menu,” the friend had told Adam.
Much of our early guest feedback felt like what we’d heard at
Tabla: half the people would go to Blue Smoke more often if only
our barbecue were more authentic, and the other half would go more
frequently if only it were less of a barbecue restaurant.
New York struck again, when Gael Greene, still writing for the
magazine’s listings section, suggested that the ribs were “wimpy,” and
that I had never been in front of a pit in my life. That did it. I had
to respond. I wrote Sally and Nardie Stein, the longtime owners of
Camp Nebagamon, and asked if they could unearth any photograph
showing me as a fourteen-year-old in front of the fire the night I was
declared the cowinner of the Chef ’s Cap outdoor cooking contest.
Inveterate archivists, they managed to find it, and sent a copy to Gael
Greene along with a good-natured letter about my early prowess as
an outdoor cook.
One important lesson I learned while doing research for Blue
Smoke, traveling through North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Alabama,
Illinois, Mississippi, and Missouri, is that people love to discover bar-
becue places off the beaten path—and that there’s a correlation be-
tween one’s affection for barbecue and the adventure of the road trip
itself. I began to understand that opening a barbecue place in the
middle of Manhattan denied ’cue seekers the thrill of trekking to, or
happening upon, something obscure and fabulous. If the same restau-
rant, even with all of Blue Smoke’s early flaws, had been opened by
an upstart restaurateur in a remote part of Brooklyn or the Bronx, its
arrival—no, its discovery by the press—would have been heralded all
over town:“Finally, we have great barbecue in New York!”
Blue Smoke seemed to turn everyone into an instant expert on
barbecue. Self-proclaimed connoisseurs suddenly bombarded me with
their prized techniques for smoking, their secret family recipes for
sauce, and their preferred regional styles. People sent me their ribs to
try, and I also received pints of coleslaw, barbecue sauce, cheese crack-

180 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
ers, and potato salad from well-meaning patrons who thought their
recipes could help. Everyone felt entitled to judge barbecue because
it’s an essentially American product with a common point of refer-
ence. Nobody had ever gone to Tabla and asked, “Didn’t Grandma
make a much better pulled lamb and mustard-mashed potato sand-
wich on toasted naan drizzled with fresh lime juice and chilies?”
For months, Blue Smoke remained a big, juicy target. The New
Yorker, which had rarely published negative restaurant reviews, wrote
in its column “Table for Two” that Blue Smoke belonged “in a strip
mall in Disney World.”After the New Yorker piece I called Eric Asimov
of the New York Times. One week after we opened, he had written
a long feature on Blue Smoke’s novel fifteen-story smokestack, and
his piece had helped create an inordinate amount of early interest
and hype (and subsequent antipathy). I began by asking him,“You’re
not going to be reviewing us, are you?” Eric’s weekly review “$25
and Under” never assigned stars to a restaurant—unlike the featured
weekly review written by William Grimes.
Eric said, “No. I wish I were, but Blue Smoke is high-profi le, so
Biff Grimes really wants to do it.”
“Tell me, is Blue Smoke really as bad as everything they’re writ-
ing?” I asked.
“Well, there are things you need to work on,” he said cryptically,
“but you’re on the right track.” He didn’t elaborate.
All that was left for would-be patrons who had read the reviews
was the rather perverse pleasure of finding out for themselves what
was wrong with the place.And then something odd happened. Some
of our colleagues actually rallied on our behalf. Tracy and Drew
Nieporent, of Myriad Restaurant Group (Montrachet,Tribeca Grill)
went out on a limb to defend us on the website Citysearch, writ-
ing, “Look, we are competitors with these guys but I have to tell
you—Blue Smoke is and will be a great restaurant.You don’t under-
stand what goes on there.” It was an amazing and welcome gesture of
loyalty and friendship.

181 B r o a d c a s t i n g t h e Me s s a g e , Tu n i n g i n t h e Fe e d b a c k
Not long after this, Eric Asimov called me. “I’ve got two things
that will surprise you,” he said.“I am, in fact, writing the main review
for Blue Smoke. I also want you to know that it’s running tomor-
row as the starred review, and not in ‘$25 and Under.’” He explained
that the newspaper’s regular critic,William Grimes, was unexpectedly
taking a leave of absence and that the Times had asked him to be the
interim critic. Eric had been given only one week’s lead time; and
after having just spent the week visiting a restaurant called Smith and
writing its review he had just learned that it was closing. “Somehow,
I’ve got to get a review in tomorrow,” he said,“and Blue Smoke is the
only other restaurant I have eaten in three times.”
In fact, he had been to the restaurant two times during the fi rst
days we had opened and had been in for a third visit the night before
he called me. I had seen him that night and said hi—although it
hadn’t crossed my mind that this might be it. I had urged him to try
our collard greens and for dessert, our special: a green tomato pie.
I sat there at the phone silently wringing my hands, thinking, The
restaurant has already improved so much since our first week—why can’t we
have just one more month before the Times weighs in?
Eric gave Blue Smoke one star (“good”), and his review marked a
powerful turning point for two reasons: one, it contained none of the
vitriol and anger present in so many of the earlier reviews; and two,
it was balanced, constructive, and fair. He wrote about Blue Smoke’s
trajectory, describing the opening of a barbecue restaurant in Man-
hattan as a formidable and, some might say, crazy task. He observed
that it had started off awkwardly but that improvement had been
dramatic and that this restaurant and its mission to bring real pit bar-
becue to New York deserved to be supported.The last three words of
his review were encouraging: “Go, baby, go!”
Eric also made a television appearance on the local cable news
channel New York 1 in conjunction with the review. He put things
in perspective on television,“This is the first time the New York Times
has ever given even one star to a barbecue restaurant.”

182 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
Sometimes the critics do come back for a second look, as Bryan
Miller did in first promoting Union Square Cafe to three stars back in
1989, and as Ruth Reichl did when she upgraded Gramercy Tavern
to its third star in 1996. At the end of 2002, Adam Platt became the
first critic to return to Blue Smoke for an update and to write en-
thusiastically about its vast improvement. His decisive reversal helped
make it safe for others to reexamine their early pronouncements as
well. By 2003, New York was declaring Blue Smoke’s brisket “the best
barbecue in New York.”
Previous success in any field invites high expectations and scru-
tiny the next time around. People are less forgiving when a winner
falters than they are when an up-and-comer stumbles. But a mark of
a champion is to welcome scrutiny, persevere, perform beyond ex-
pectations, and provide an exceptional product—for which forgive-
ness is not necessary.
It would be fascinating to look up all fifty-two weekly restau-
rant reviews in the New York Times over the last ten years, or compile
the Zagat Survey’s “Top Five Newcomers” each year, and count how
many establishments are still in business. My guess is that it would
be shocking to see how much ink gets wasted on places that start
out hyped and hot but eventually don’t go anywhere. Restaurant
criticism tends to be an ephemeral snapshot of an opening, providing
little to no perspective on where the restaurant might end up.
I’ve observed that, with a small group of critics, the outcome
of a review can be positively influenced by a free meal. One writer
for an important paper wrote harshly about Blue Smoke during our
opening. He was probably correct in his judgment, but a less naive
approach on our part might have persuaded him not to share that
observation with his many readers.
He had dined that evening with a well-connected publicist
whose clients included an A-list of New York restaurants.We queried

183 B r o a d c a s t i n g t h e Me s s a g e , Tu n i n g i n t h e Fe e d b a c k
the publicist after reading the pan and said,“Gee, we must have really
screwed up in a big way with you guys that night.What happened?”
The reply left no room for misunderstanding: It didn’t help
that we had charged them for their meal, especially since they were
sure they had seen other guests throughout the dining room being
“comped.”That was true. It was one of our first nights, and in lieu of
throwing an opening party, we had opted to invite a few friends to sit
down at some of our tables as our guests.They did see Tom Brokaw
and Brokaw’s wife, Meredith, longtime regulars and friends; and yes,
we were hosting them that night. James Carville, another loyal friend,
was dining with our compliments at another table. Seeing this, plus
being charged after having been on the receiving end of painfully
slow service, understandably infuriated the writer. Clearly, I had
played this one wrong.
One critic who had given Tabla a no-star rating when it opened
was about to review Blue Smoke. He wrote for another infl uential
publication in New York, and I understood through the restaura-
teur grapevine that he welcomed being “hosted.” I had also heard
that whether or not he was hosted might even affect the tone of his
review.When one of my managers spotted this critic in Blue Smoke
one night, she let me know. To that point, I had never comped a critic
before in my entire career. I had learned that most newspapers and
magazines prohibited their writers from accepting freebies in order
to avoid any conflict of interest. But after weeks of watching the
restaurant take a public beating, I decided to experiment. With the
miserable reviews we were getting, there was nothing to lose. And
since critics aren’t public officials, I reasoned that hosting them wasn’t
illegal. As instructed, the manager went to the critic’s table and said:
“Danny is honored that you’re dining with us tonight and he wants
very much to welcome you as our guest for your fi rst visit.” That
one visit was enough to produce a glowing two-star review, one of
the very best we got early on. The strategy had worked so well that
I tried it again, this time with a freelance reviewer doing a piece for

184 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
a downtown magazine. Another shining review: two for two. In sev-
enteen years I had never tried to stage a comeback by hosting critics.
Choosing to do so in those circumstances was testimony to the pain
from the scar tissue that had been forming on my rear end.
Some re staurant reviews de fy explanation. One of these ran
in the New York Times in late February 2005, just shortly after The
Modern had opened, and it blindsided us. Unexpectedly, it was not
a review of our new restaurant—The Modern—but rather a rere-
view of six-year-old Eleven Madison Park. I had actually hoped for
some time that we’d get another look from the New York Times. Ruth
Reichl had given the restaurant a “very good” two-star rating three
months after we opened (to the dismay of the staff and chef, who had
been hoping for three stars and were actually in tears on receiving the
news). After six years of continual evolving and improving, I felt that
we were very close to deserving a third star.
The first half of the review, by Frank Bruni, now the Times’s lead
reviewer, read like a valentine: “If anyone has cracked the code for
high-end restaurants in this fickle city,” it began, “it is Danny Meyer.”
Our way of nourishing and nurturing guests had, Bruni wrote, trans-
formed them into “besotted loyalists,” while enabling us to “achieve
sophistication without self-consciousness, polish without pretension.”
He also took note of the smile in the reservationists’ voices on the
phone, the smile at the front door, the smile on the waiters’ faces. I
was loving it—at least until I continued on to the next column.
Abruptly, his tone veered sharply from a valentine to damning
with faint praise to outright scolding. True, the roasted lobster with
lemongrass velouté was “unforgettable,” but the zinfandel-marinated
beef cheeks tasted like “day-old pot roast,” the chicken was “over-
cooked,” and the sweetbreads were “dry.” Only the pastry chef Ni-
cole Kaplan’s desserts—“pure pleasure”—survived unscathed. By the
time Bruni was done dissecting our offerings, he reversed course. He

185 B r o a d c a s t i n g t h e Me s s a g e , Tu n i n g i n t h e Fe e d b a c k
had initially praised our hospitality but now he issued the cynical sug-
gestion that the welcome was all a facade.“Although the dining room
is flooded with those smiling servers,” he observed,“their dance is less
a ballet than a military drill, glaringly mechanized.”
The last line was painful to staff members at Eleven Madison Park,
and to me. The restaurant retained its two stars, but this was not, in
the end, just a review of Eleven Madison Park. It felt like a sweeping
judgment about the genuineness of our hospitality. I couldn’t fi nd
a scintilla of usefulness in being told by a critic that our hospitality
was not sincere, or that it was executed by rote—especially when his
experiences with us, detailed earlier in the review, seemed to imply
caring treatment by warm human beings.
I had no clue as to what Bruni’s motivation was in admonishing
Eleven Madison Park. He summarized his review as less a “complaint”
than a “rumination on the limitations of all formulas, even Mr. Mey-
er’s.” I was anguished about his observations and pained to see them
shared with hundreds of thousands of readers. Believe me, if someone
has that big and loud a megaphone, I’d much rather it was one of our
“besotted loyalists.”
Frank Bruni had been right about those loyalists; in fact, he had
stirred them to action. Clearly, a three-star review would have put the
wind at our backs by generating more first-time guests; but no review
could have produced as strong—as protective—a reaction from our
enormous following as this one had. We got many dozens of letters
as well as e-mails and visits from people who found his comments off
base and contrary to their own experience. I was stopped at my sons’
school the next morning by a mother. “This just makes us want to
come to the restaurant all the more,” she said indignantly.
I felt a need to address our staff at the restaurant. I immediately
reminded them that I’m the first one to welcome and refl ect on
constructive criticism. If the beef cheeks at Eleven Madison Park are
too dry, or the service is too slow, we have a responsibility to fi x the
problem. And in a long e-mail to my chefs and general managers,

186 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
who then forwarded it to their teams, I let everyone know exactly
how I was feeling.“It was truly disturbing that Mr. Bruni chose to use
Eleven Madison Park as a vehicle to analyze the success of each of our
restaurants,” I wrote.“In applying his judgment that our hospitality is
on ‘autopilot,’ he also implied that the welcome we give is in some
way disingenuous or rote. It’s almost as if Mr. Bruni wanted to try to
explain the very experience that our guests most cherish, and then
knock us for it.There is no way that our team has been so capable of
winning the hearts of thousands of jaded New Yorkers with insincere
smiles and robotic service.”
I ended the memo by quoting something my late grandfather,
Irving Harris, always used to remind me. “People will say a lot of
great things about your business, and a lot of nasty things as well. Just
remember: you’re never as good as the best things they’ll say, and
never as bad as the negative ones. Just keep centered, know what you
stand for, strive for new goals, and always be decent.”
That’s what I hope our restaurants will always work toward—just
as we have done since day one.

c hap te r 9
Co n s t a n t, Ge n t l e Pre s s u re
Thre e hallmarks of e ffective leadership are to provide a
clear vision for your business so that your employees know where
you’re taking them; to hold people accountable for consistent stan-
dards of excellence; and to communicate a well-defined set of cul-
tural priorities and nonnegotiable values. Perhaps most important,
true leaders hold themselves accountable for conducting business in
the same manner in which they’ve asked their team to perform.
I struggled mightily with the emotional and technical skills re-
quired for that kind of leadership as a twenty-seven-year-old fi rst-
time leader of my own company. As Union Square Cafe grew up, I
realized that I too would have to develop new skills just to keep pace
with my own restaurant and its staff.
During one of his uncannily well-timed, impromptu visits to
Union Square Cafe when I was still in my twenties, Pat Cetta sat
down at a table with me and indulged my need to fret about the
travails of managing my staff. I bemoaned the fact that I was failing
187

Rocio Ramos Reyes

188 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
to get any kind of consistent message across to my staff members re-
garding standards of excellence.Waiters and managers (at least half of
whom were older than I) were continually testing me and pushing
the limits, and this was driving me crazy.
“If you choose to get upset about this, you are missing the boat,
luvah,” Pat said with reassuring calm, in his indelible New York accent.
Then he gave me a demonstration that has become integral to the
way I view management. Pat Cetta’s simple lesson has helped me
navigate through years of challenging moments as I’ve worked to
encourage our team to build and sustain standards of excellence, es-
pecially while we’re growing.
Pat pointed to the set table next to us.“First,” he said,“I want you
to take everything off that table except for the saltshaker. Go ahead!
Get rid of the plates, the silverware, the napkins, even the pepper mill.
I just want you to leave the saltshaker by itself in the middle.” I did as
he said, and he asked,“Where is the saltshaker now?”
“Right where you told me, in the center of the table.”
“Are you sure that’s where you want it?” I looked closely. The
shaker was actually about a quarter of an inch off center. “Go ahead.
Put it where you really want it,” he said. I moved it very slightly to
what looked to be smack-dab in the center.As soon as I removed my
hand, Pat pushed the saltshaker three inches off center.
“Now put it back where you want it,” he said. I returned it to
dead center. This time he moved the shaker another six inches off
center, again asking,“Now where do you want it?”
I slid it back. Then he explained his point. “Listen, luvah.Your
staff and your guests are always moving your saltshaker off center.
That’s their job. It is the job of life. It’s the law of entropy! Until you
understand that, you’re going to get pissed off every time someone
moves the saltshaker off center. It is not your job to get upset.You
just need to understand: that’s what they do.Your job is just to move
the shaker back each time and let them know exactly what you
stand for. Let them know what excellence looks like to you. And

Rocio Ramos Reyes

Rocio Ramos Reyes

189 C o n s t a n t , G e n t l e P r e s s u r e
if you’re ever willing to let them decide where the center is, then
I want you to give them the keys to the store. Just give away the
fuckin’ restaurant!”
Wherever your center lies, know it, name it, stick to it, and believe in it. Everyone who works with you will
know what matters to you and will respect and appreciate your
unwavering values.Your inner beliefs about business will guide
you through the tough times. It’s good to be open to fresh
approaches to solving problems. But, when you cede your core
values to someone else, it’s time to quit.
That center point of the table, Pat was saying, represented my core
of excellence. Every other point on the table was, to some degree, a
measure of mediocrity, or even failure. But his powerful lesson also
taught me to preserve my energy and not waste it getting upset about
a basic, ongoing fact of life: “Shit happens, luvah!”
Understanding the “saltshaker theory” has helped me develop
and teach a managerial style I call constant, gentle pressure. It’s the way I
return the saltshaker to the center each time life moves it.A restaurant
is like the stage for a modern dance ensemble, designed with props
and animated by an intricate choreography from the front podium
through the dining room, into the kitchen, and back to the dining
room again. It doesn’t take much to move our saltshaker off center.
All it takes is for one guest to be late, having taken longer than ex-
pected to send that last e-mail from the office, to kiss the kids good
night, or to finally get a taxi in the rain or cold. One party’s tardiness
may cause us to be as much as twenty minutes behind for the next
reservation. If two or more tables are running late, we may end up

Rocio Ramos Reyes

190 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
with a pileup at the front door—causing our standards to appear less
than excellent. Our job is to adjust to circumstances, and keep the
dance flowing with technical precision and artful grace.
It’s my job, and consequently the job of every other leader in my
company, to teach everyone who works for us to distinguish center
from off center and always to set things right. I send my managers an
unequivocal message: I’m going to be extremely specifi c as to where
every component on that tabletop belongs. I anticipate that outside
forces, including you, will always conspire to change the table set-
ting. Every time that happens, I’m going to move everything right
back to the way it should be. And so should you! That’s the constant
aspect. I’ll never recenter the saltshaker in a way that denies you your
dignity. That’s the gentle aspect. But standards are standards, and I’m
constantly watching every table and pushing back on every saltshaker
that’s moved, because excellent performance is paramount.That’s the
pressure.
Constant, gentle pressure is my preferred technique for leader-
ship, guidance, and coaching. It’s the job of any business owner to
be very clear as to the company’s nonnegotiable core values.They’re
the riverbanks that help guide us as we refine and improve on per-
formance and excellence. A lack of riverbanks creates estuaries and
cloudy waters that are confusing to navigate. I want a crystal-clear,
swiftly flowing stream. Riverbanks need not hinder creativity, and
in fact I leave plenty of room between the riverbanks for individual
expression and personal style.
Every business needs a core strategy to be what I call always on
the improve, and for us it’s constant, gentle pressure.The name for this
management style came to me from another restaurateur, who was
using it to describe his view of our company. I was in Aspen for one
of my annual summer appearances as a speaker at the Food and Wine
Classic. My partner at Union Square Cafe, Paul Bolles-Beaven, and
I had returned to town following an appearance on Good Morning
America at the crack of dawn, and we dropped in to the Ajax Tavern

191 C o n s t a n t , G e n t l e P r e s s u r e
in search of a cup of coffee.We got to talking with Michael Chiarello,
who was then the chef and coowner, and who was holding court
at the bar. This was in June 1998, a few months before we were to
double the size of our company by launching Eleven Madison Park
and Tabla, and we were looking for all the strategic advice we could
get. Michael was in a growth mode himself, with restaurants in Cali-
fornia and Colorado, and a big idea for a mail-order company to be
called Napa Style. We asked him a lot of questions about how he
managed his time with so many businesses to run, how he delegated,
and to whom. After sharing a number of valuable insights, he said,
“There are some things I could learn from you guys as well.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Well, the word on the street is that you’ve got the single best
management style of any restaurant company.”
“It’s nice of you to say that,” I said.“But what do you mean?”
“I’d call it constant, gentle pressure,” Michael said, and then de-
scribed precisely what we had been doing.
That morning was the first time I ever stopped to really think
about this important aspect of my own business style, which so far
had been intuitive. Michael Chiarello had given us a great gift by
providing language that would allow us to share and teach a busi-
ness philosophy. It helped me understand that we needed all three
words—constant, gentle, pressure—working at once to push our busi-
ness forward.This is one aspect of business where batting .667 isn’t a
winning average. Leave any one element out, and management is far
less effective. If you are constantly gentle but fail to apply pressure when
needed, your business won’t grow or improve: your team will lack the
drive and passion for excellence. If you exert gentle pressure but not
constantly, both your staff and your guests will get a mixed message
depending on what day it is, and probably won’t believe that excel-
lence truly matters to you. If you exert constant pressure that isn’t gentle,
employees may burn out, quit, or lose their graciousness—and you
will probably cease to attract good employees. Leaders must identify

192 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
which of the three elements (constant, gentle, or pressure) plays to their
greatest natural strengths and, when necessary, they must compen-
sate for their natural weaknesses. For example, over the years I’ve
learned that constant and gentle are my natural instincts, and so I’ve had
to focus on developing ease at applying pressure. My friend Robert
Chadderdon has his own variation on this management style:“Spread
some sunshine, kick ’em in the ass, and always remember who loves
you! (And hope you’ll wake up tomorrow to do it again!)”
Ultimate ly, the mo st succe ssful business is not the one that
eliminates the most problems. It’s the one that becomes most expert
at finding imaginative solutions to address those problems. And last-
ing solutions rely on giving appropriate team members a voice, as
well as responsibility for making decisions. There is definitely an art
to this inclusive type of leadership. It can take a lot more time than
leadership based on “my way or the highway.” It demands dialogue,
compromise, and a willingness to share power. Two keys to build-
ing consensus for problem solving are coaching and communication.
Coaching is correction with dignity. It’s helping people refi ne skills,
showing how to get the job done, and truly wanting employees to
reach their peak potential.
Communication is at the root of all business strengths—and weak-
nesses.When things go wrong and employees become upset, whether
at a restaurant, a law firm, a hardware store, a university, or a major
corporation, nine times out of ten the justifiable complaint is, “We
need to communicate more effectively.” I admit that for many years,
I didn’t really know what this meant. I had no problem standing up
in front of a group to give a talk. I thought I was a pretty good com-
municator, but then it dawned on me: communicating has as much
to do with context as it does content. That’s called setting the table.
Understanding who needs to know what, when people need to know
it, and why, and then presenting that information in an entirely com-

193 C o n s t a n t , G e n t l e P r e s s u r e
prehensible way is a sine qua non of great leadership. Clear, timely
communication is the key to applying constant, gentle pressure. To
illustrate the point, I teach our managers about the “lily pad” theory.
Imagine a pond filled with lily pads and a frog perched serenely
atop each one. For the fun of it, a little boy tosses a small pebble into
the water, which breaks the surface of the pond but causes just a tiny
ripple.The frogs barely notice, and don’t budge. Enjoying himself, the
boy next tosses a larger stone into the center of the pond, sending
stronger ripples that cause all of the lily pads to rock and tilt. Some
frogs jump off their lily pads, while others cling to avoid falling off.
But the ripples affect them all. Not content, the boy then hurls a
huge rock, which creates a wave that knocks each and every frog into
the water. Some frogs are frightened. All are angry (assuming that
frogs get angry). If only the frogs had had some warning about the
impending rock toss, each one could have timed its jump so that the
wave would have had no serious impact.
Grasping the lily pad theory and training yourself and your manag-
ers to implement it prevents many, if not all, communication problems.
People who aren’t alerted in advance about a decision that will affect them may become angry and hurt. They’re
confused, out of the loop; they feel as though they’ve been
knocked off their lily pads. When team members complain about
poor communication, they’re essentially saying, “You did not give
me advance warning or input about that decision you made. By
the time I learned about it, the decision had already happened to
me, and I was unprepared.” Team members will generally go with
the flow and be willing to hop over the ripples, so long as they
know in advance that you are going to toss the rock, when you’ll
be tossing it, how big it is, and—mostly—why you’re choosing to
toss it in the first place. The key is to anticipate the ripple effects

194 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
of any decision before you implement it, gauging whom it will
affect, and to what degree. Poor communication is generally not
a matter of miscommunication. More often, it involves taking
away people’s feeling of control. Change works only when
people believe it is happening for them, not to them. And there’s
not much in between. Good communication is always a factor of
good hospitality.
In the fall of 2004 I was invited to appear on the Today Show
with Terry Miller, a gourmet sausage specialist from Colorado, to do
a segment on pairing hot dogs and wine. This was based on a popu-
lar seminar we had conducted together the previous summer at the
Food and Wine Classic.The jovial Miller, a self-described redneck, was
in New York to help us with our inaugural Shacktoberfest at Shake
Shack. On the segment with Al Roker and Ann Curry, Terry men-
tioned some of the specialty bratwursts (jalapeño-elk, smoked buf-
falo, pheasant-and-mushroom) that we’d be serving at Shake Shack
throughout our Shacktoberfest festival. He got a whoop from the
studio audience when he asked Ann Curry to kiss the colorful, life-
size smiling hot dog he had tattooed on his calf.
I am not naturally inclined to send out a lot of e-mails whenever
I’m going to be on television. (To her chagrin, I usually don’t even
remember to tell my mother.) But by not forewarning anyone that
day, I tossed a rock and failed to give my team adequate warning of
some wave-like ripple effects. The seven-minute segment on Today
caused the day’s lunch business at Shake Shack to soar, and our staff
had no idea what had hit them, what had caused it, or how to prepare
for it.Their lily pads were pounded, turning what should have been
a public relations triumph into a fiasco. The cooks couldn’t keep up
with the unanticipated demand for bratwursts, guests waited far too
long for their orders, and we quickly ran out of food. Any company

195 C o n s t a n t , G e n t l e P r e s s u r e
that thrives on a steady flow of creative ideas needs correspondingly
strong communications. Ideas at their best happen for people. At their
worst they happen to people. Had the staff members known in ad-
vance about the Today Show, they probably would have brought in an
extra cook and additional product, and we would have had a lot more
fun serving a lot more bratwursts.
In the bimonthly training sessions I conduct with all our new
managers, most of whom have just recently taken on the big new re-
sponsibility of becoming someone else’s boss, I stress how fundamentally
different their new job is from their old one. As “line” employees (cooks,
waiters, hosts) their first concern was to achieve win-win transactions
for guests.As managers, their primary job is to help make other people
on our team successful. I urge them to use their position to maximize
the positive impact they can have on and for our team. By what they
embody and the spirit in which they embody it, good managers can
have a multiplier effect and add significantly to the company’s excel-
lence. Poor managers have the power to do just the opposite.
The moment people become managers for the first time, it will
be as if the following three things have happened:
• An imaginary megaphone has been stitched to their lips, so
that everything they say can now be heard by twenty times
more people than before.
• The other staff members have been provided with a pair of
binoculars, which they keep trained on the new managers at
all times, guaranteeing that everything a manager does will be
watched and seen by more people than ever.
• The new managers have received the gift of “fire,” a kind of
power that must be used responsibly, appropriately, and con-
sistently.

196 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
The imaginary “megaphone” is to let our managers know that
we place so much value on what comes out of their mouths that we
want to make sure everyone hears it.The “binoculars” are to convey
that we expect each of our employees—as well as our guests—to
watch them as they exemplify the values and goals of our restaurants.
The megaphone and the binoculars place a weighty responsibility on
the shoulders of the managers. What they say and embody matters
and will be heard, seen, and scrutinized by all. If we were a copy ma-
chine, managers would be the documents we’d want to replicate.We
are very careful about which documents we feed into that machine.
“Fire” is the most important element in management’s application
of constant, gentle pressure. During my early, inexperienced years as a
boss when I first got into business, it was far more important for me
to please people and be liked than to be respected. By abandoning my
fire, our excellence suffered.The biggest mistake managers can make
is neglecting to set high standards and hold others accountable. This
denies employees the chance to learn and excel. Employees do not
want to be told,“Let me make your life easier by enabling you not to
learn and not to achieve anything new.”
I’m a bottom-up manager who subscribes to the concept of “ser-
vant leadership,” as articulated by the late Robert Greenleaf. He be-
lieved that organizations are at their most effective when leaders en-
courage collaboration, trust, foresight, listening, and empowerment.
In any hierarchy, it’s clear that the ultimate boss (in my case, me) holds
the most power. But a wonderful thing happens when you fl ip the
traditional organizational chart upside down so that it looks like a V
with the boss on the bottom. My job is to serve and support the next
layer “above” me so that the people on that layer can then serve and
support the next layer “above” them, and so on. Ultimately, our cooks,
servers, reservationists, coat checkers, and dishwashers are then in the
best possible position to serve our guests. A balanced combination of
uncompromising standards and confi dence-building reassurance sends
a very clear and consistent message to your team: “I believe in you

197 C o n s t a n t , G e n t l e P r e s s u r e
and I want you to win as much as I want to win.” You cannot have
a dynamic organization unless you are constantly encouraging people
to improve, and believing that they can do it.
For years I didn’t believe that power was a positive force, or any-
thing to strive for. I grew up in the 1960s, and 1970s, when many
young people saw business as about taking, not about creating value
for the world as you profi ted.
When I first went into business in 1985, I was determined not
to display power overtly. I thought I could be a business owner and
a manager without using my own fire. I was entirely wrong, and for
years I unwittingly sent mixed messages, befriending staff members
rather than leading them. So I now tell new managers:“Fire is power.
We are giving you the gift of this fire. Use it responsibly, appropriately,
and consistently. People need it, want it, crave it, and expect it. Use it
wisely, and you will become the greatest leader your team ever had.
Use it abusively, and you will lose your fire.” Don’t be afraid to lead
and to teach.As it does in cooking, fire adds heat, clarifies, and distills
the ideas that drive your business to solid results.
Most managerial problems stem from an irresponsible, inappro-
priate, or inconsistent use of fire. It takes time to learn, but until
managers understand all the different ways they can—and must—use
their fire, depending on the circumstances, they cannot reach their
own greatest potential or help others reach theirs. Managers can use
their fire as a torch: a light for guidance and teaching, and for leading
and showing the way. They can use their fire to offer warmth and
empathy, to make employees feel safe. A manager’s fire can be used
as a campfi re, to form collegial bonds with employees, and to inspire
others and help them grow. A fire can also be a bonfi re to rally the
troops, to foster team folklore, to get the group motivated, and to
bring people together in a unified pursuit of a common goal. Manag-
ers who inspire high levels of performance in their employees know
how to produce magical results that leave people in awe. Managers
must be wizards—the way they “breathe fire” is a source of motivation

198 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
that impels employees to imitate them, and to grow. And managers
must learn to use the fire in their own bellies as a way to fuel and refuel
their own ongoing passion for this business. If leaders lack fi re, why
would anyone want to follow them?
When managers use their fire improperly, employees will always
figure out ways to snuff it out. If a manager builds too many camp-
fires (suspending his or her power and authority and spending too
much time relating to certain employees as close friends), power may
be compromised, causing the line between manager and employee to
dissolve. And others may resent feeling left out. Even the most com-
passionate manager must sometimes use fire to singe or scorch someone
who is dishonest, or disrespectful to a teammate, a guest, the commu-
nity, a supplier, or the restaurant itself. An organization puts itself in
grave danger when it permits integrity to be compromised.
The development and training of managers and the articulation
of a cohesive and consistent management model are crucial for any
company, especially a company that is experiencing rapid growth.
With each year I’ve spent as a leader, I’ve grown more and more con-
vinced that my team—any team—thirsts for someone with authority,
and power, to tell them consistently where they’re going, how they’re
doing, and how they could do their job even better.And all the team
asks is that the same rules apply to everyone.
By 20 04, as we prepared to open the complex of dining opera-
tions for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) that now together
serve up to 2,000 people each day, I realized that we had been making
an error that left us ill prepared for success. However well we had
hired and trained line employees, we had done only a middling job of
developing managers who had the requisite skills to open and oper-
ate a high-volume, high-level restaurant.There wasn’t enough depth
on our team to transfer managers to the MoMA complex without
also stripping away talent we needed at our existing restaurants. For

199 C o n s t a n t , G e n t l e P r e s s u r e
me this was a troubling, slap-in-the-forehead moment. I asked myself,
How could we have been in denial all this time? As our company
grew, virtually overnight, from about 650 employees to over 1,000, we
needed to focus even more intently on strengthening operating and
accounting systems, human resources, and technology. It’s delusional
to think that the day-to-day performance of your business is anything
other than a reflection of how motivated (or unmotivated) your man-
agers make your line employees feel. It was suddenly imperative for
us to give priority to the development, education, and coaching of
managers. This part of our infrastructure was all but nonexistent. It
was as if we had been basing my approach to readying managers on
the tenuous assumption that anyone we hired as a manager already
“got it,” knew the system, and could articulate and pass along the
values and methods that define the company. Not only was I wrong;
this sweeping assumption—“just add water”—was grossly unfair to
the managers and the people they led.We were at a turning point.
The bigge st change in our industry over the past twenty years
has been the emergence of “fine-dining” restaurant groups. They
didn’t exist when I got into the business. In those days, you encoun-
tered either a single-unit fine restaurant—like Lutèce, where the
peerless chef and owner, André Soltner, was always present and actu-
ally lived upstairs—or multiunit restaurant chains like T.G.I. Fridays.
There was a widespread belief that one could own only a single fi ne-
dining establishment, because it was mandatory to be on site all the
time, greeting every guest, watching every employee, and personally
inspecting every plate that left the kitchen.
That all changed in the 1990s, when the restaurant business at
last came to be viewed as a valid entrepreneurial pursuit, and conse-
quently began to attract more and more people who, in addition to
their culinary and hospitality skills, had a solid education and impres-
sive business acumen. As a way to provide growth opportunities for

200 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
outstanding employees so that I wouldn’t keep losing them to restau-
rateurs who could provide “next-level” jobs, I gradually found myself
with four, then five, and then six restaurants. And of course, when I
was in one of them, I was not in any of the others.
For the first time, it hit me—although I had tried hard to deny it—
that I was no longer purely a restaurateur. Rather, I had become the
CEO of a growing restaurant company.That was a huge pill to swallow.
My passion and professional identity had been based on the pure plea-
sure I derived from greeting guests at the front door and in the dining
room, as well as working closely with our restaurant staffs. But now my
responsibilities had become far broader. For years, I had been afraid of
overexpanding as my father had done; and I had contended with this fear
by simply pretending that our organization was in fact not expanding.
Turning a blind eye to reality was handicapping me and my company.
When we launch a new restaurant, I am still intently focused on
the entire opening process and on trying to help the venture become
as good as possible as quickly as possible. It’s demanding to be in that
mode and also to play the role of CEO and do “big picture” things like
formulating and presenting our five- or ten-year strategic plan. Con-
sciously or not, I’d created a new challenge for myself by reinventing
my own job description. Nothing about being the CEO at a restaurant
company had diminished my yearning to be in my restaurants all the
time.The only way I can be effective is to remain a high-touch leader
and stay involved with our staff, our guests, and our product. It’s rare that
I’m in my office more than 25 percent of my day.Yet as recently as 2003
I was actually trying to operate five restaurants, a jazz club, and a hot dog
cart out of my basement office at Gramercy Tavern without any type of
corporate structure at all. My philosophy back then was that supposedly
smart organizations (where there was a corporate chef and pastry chef, a
corporate wine buyer, a corporate everything dictating to managers how
to toe the company line) led to dumb—or at best average—restaurants.
Wherever I saw the word corporate applied to restaurants, I saw cookie-
cutter or at least derivative establishments with little soul.

201 C o n s t a n t , G e n t l e P r e s s u r e
I’ve always strived to create and develop distinct restaurants that
each bear, over time, the handcrafted feel of a mom-and-pop venture.
But our growing pains were making it clear to me that we needed to
figure out how to remain soulful and become a lot more sophisticated.
I was now sharing my basement office with David Swinghamer, my
CFO and partner in business development. Another partner, our di-
rector of operations, Richard Coraine, worked out of an offi ce four
blocks to the north at Eleven Madison Park. We had no public rela-
tions, marketing, IT, human resources, or any other infrastructure. I
wanted us to become a group of intelligent restaurants served by an
intelligent organization, but I just didn’t think it was possible. I hon-
estly believed that to sustain smart restaurants, we would need to have
a “dumb” organization. And that’s exactly what we got.
I admired some excellent restaurant companies in New York and
across the country. But those large groups seemed more effective at
building systems, “stores,” and “concepts” than they were at taking
the time to develop the personal, groundbreaking, soulful restaurants
I was interested in.
Not surprisingly, thanks to my own mixed feelings about expand-
ing, our undeniable business growth had at last butted up against my
skittishness and inertia. Standing in place had become unacceptable and
risky. I had to figure out some way to have both smart restaurants and a
smart organization. Finally, I listened to my partners, and bit the bullet.
Taking the lead, David Swinghamer persuaded me to join him in search-
ing our neighborhood for office space. We looked throughout a long,
hot summer, and eventually we found a bare-basics offi ce overlooking
Union Square, which had been vacated by a failed dot.com. In 2003,
almost twenty years after I’d opened my first restaurant in New York, I
finally admitted to myself that I needed to change my career and become
chief executive officer of Union Square Hospitality Group, or USHG.
At first,“USHG” had simply been my way to name the family of
restaurants of which I was the founding and principal owner. Each
restaurant began as a separate company with, in some cases, separate

202 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
outside investors.That would still be the case. But now USHG would
also need to evolve into a management company on its own—to
provide coherent direction and support for each of the restaurants
in whose success I and others had such a large stake. My goal was to
extend my reach over many restaurants by surrounding myself with
a team of people who were more talented at any given specialty than
I had ever been on my own. I wanted a capable team that would act
for me as “owner’s representatives,” applying their respective talents
to my style of doing business. In my first decade as a restaurateur at
Union Square Cafe, I was solely responsible for the kinds of things I
would now need an entire team to accomplish:
1. Human resources—making sure we get the best (and right)
people on our team, training them to succeed, and ensuring
the kind of healthy culture and environment in which they
can thrive.
2. Operations—making sure that people and things work as ex-
cellently as possible and that we are executing to our fullest
potential.
3. Accounting and finance—making sure we have a constant
stream of timely, accurate information that reflects our past
performance, and helping us make good, informed choices
about our future through a culture of planning, budgeting, and
analysis.
4. Public relations and marketing—making sure we are telling
the stories about our business and its employees that will keep
our restaurants on the tip of people’s tongues, whether they
be journalists, prospective guests, or employees; and building
relationships with other like-minded companies with whom
we can forge the kind of business partnerships where 1+1=3.
5. Information technology (IT)—making sure we have the most
effective software and hardware to allow us to communicate

203 C o n s t a n t , G e n t l e P r e s s u r e
internally and externally, and to assess and improve our perfor-
mance as a company.
6. Business development—making sure we’re not leaving money
on the table with existing businesses, and analyzing and nego-
tiating potential new business ideas to keep our employees and
company vital and moving forward.
7. Community investment—making sure our company and its
employees are finding and taking ample opportunities to play
an active role in helping our communities fulfi ll their greatest
potential.
At last I realized that the dynamics of company and restaurant
need not be either dumb-smart or smart-dumb.We had to make the
dynamics smart-smart. Like any business owner, entrepreneur, or cor-
porate executive, I had to figure out how to put winning systems in
place, clarify for others all the things that I do and all the things that
I expected everybody else to do, while repeatedly asking myself one
essential question: How many of these things could be done at least
as well or better by somebody else if only I were willing to let go and
allow that to happen? I was suddenly faced with a mandate to grow
personally. An extra year to prepare me for becoming a CEO would
have been wonderful. But I hadn’t given myself that luxury.This was
a deeply disconcerting time of organizational change and self-redefi –
nition—it felt like trying to change the wheels on a high-speed train
while the train was roaring down the track.This hugely challenging
period taught me critical lessons about how to lead a business. Often,
I wanted to throw in the towel, and I fantasized about traveling back
to 1985 and finding myself welcoming guests for lunch at Union
Square Cafe’s front door. But I had chosen the appropriate path, and
I knew there was no going back.
Until now, our restaurants had been determinedly individual and
therefore inconsistent in the way they did just about everything: pro-
moting themselves; recruiting, hiring, orienting, coaching, reviewing,

204 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
disciplining, and “transitioning” employees; and establishing vacation
policy. Dissatisfied staff members had no systematic way to air griev-
ances beyond speaking with their general manager or chef. But what
if they needed advice on how to solve a problem that involved their
general manager or chef ? Their issues would come to our attention—
sometimes in unhealthy ways, such as anonymous letters, Internet
posts, or even via a legal complaint.We lost some good people along
the way.We found ourselves handling an increasingly large number of
HR issues from a reactive posture.
One of the first things I did as CEO was to promote my longtime
colleague Paul Bolles-Beaven from managing partner of Union Square
Cafe to director of human resources for all of USHG. I wanted to bottle
his exceptional judgment, wisdom, and sensibility about working effec-
tively with people and sprinkle it liberally over my entire organization.
Paul’s efforts in human resources swiftly provided inputs and outlets
for people where previously there were none. He’d host “roundtables”
and other forums where employees felt safe about providing feedback.
At the outset the process uncovered some unpalatable realities—some
areas of discontent that we hadn’t previously known about. But the
openness was a breath of fresh air and allowed us to address the pre-
existing issues as we learned of them. More dialogues began fl owing
among team members. Instead of chronically internalizing their anger
and frustration, people now had far healthier ways to express their feel-
ings about problems that arose with colleagues or management.
As we had learned to do many years ago with our guests, we were now giving our staff a lot more opportunities to feel
heard. My mentor (and our longtime consultant) Erika Andersen
gave me a gift when she taught me that for most people it’s far
more important to feel heard than to be agreed with.

205 C o n s t a n t , G e n t l e P r e s s u r e
You can get the best productivity from your employees only
when they believe that their leadership is open-minded, is accessible,
and welcomes input. Managers who give only lip service to an open-
door policy effectively shut the door by being defensive, by not hold-
ing themselves accountable when they make a mistake, and mostly
by not actively looking for ways to make their employees feel heard.
We apply constant, gentle pressure to our leaders to stay tuned in to
the aspirations and frustrations of staff members.We want the leaders
not just to keep the door open but to walk out that door and actively
beckon people to come in.
H I R I N G M A N A G E R S
I have yet to find any skills more pivotal to success than effective re-
cruiting and hiring. And the most important hires are the managers,
who are themselves responsible for hiring and setting the tone for
the business. Like it or not, it’s their performance that represents the
highest excellence and hospitality you can expect from your staff. At
any given time, approximately 15 percent of our employees are man-
agers. Since I believe that as our management team goes, so goes our
staff, Paul Bolles-Beaven and his HR staff created a list of nine spe-
cific traits that define the mind-set and the character traits we look
for when making a decision about hiring a manager.
1. Infectious Attitude
Does this person have the type of attitude I would want to have
spread around? Would I want my staff to be imbued with it? If the
answer is yes, I continue on.
2. Self-Awareness
When I scan their resumés, I often tell management candidates
that their career story is like an autobiography they have been writ-
ing for many years: “You’ve made a lot of interesting choices. I’m

206 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
very curious about why a job with us strikes you as the logical next
‘chapter’ in the book of your life.” I also want to know why they feel
they have finished the most recent chapter:“Why does this particular
twist in the plot make perfect sense to you right now?” Candidates
may convey a straightforward desire to move on to a better place.
They may express resentment about the managers they have been
working for. If a person shares details that are none of my business,
that can reveal something about his or her discretion, or lack thereof.
Sometimes candidates indicate that they have simply maxed out on
their present employer’s career curve, and are determined to make
a wise next choice. I am also quite interested in people who have
shown enough enterprise and curiosity to have learned something
about our restaurants. I’m most impressed when they apply what they
know about themselves and about us to what they know they want
for their career.
3. Charitable Assumption
Enlightened hospitality is a philosophy that works best with op-
timistic, hopeful, open-minded people at the helm. It tends not to
work when the leaders are skeptics who think they already have all
the answers.Those people are a finished product in their own minds,
and so is everyone else they work with.A charitable mind-set assumes
the best in other people. Mind-sets tend to become self-fulfi lling
prophecies. When you assume that people’s stumbles are honest mis-
takes that come from a good place, you get farther with them during
their victories. When you assume the worst of people, you get the
worst from people. It’s important that our managers maintain a char-
itable assumption about the people with whom they work and about
the guests we serve. Doing so even when a mistake has been made
gives employees the chance to react with integrity and to be ac-
countable for their actions.
I expect our managers to have the same mind-set with regard
to our guests. I’ve been to many restaurants where management be-

207 C o n s t a n t , G e n t l e P r e s s u r e
rates guests for being twenty minutes late for a reservation—when
there may well have been a good reason for their tardiness. It’s hard
to justify being ungracious to anyone who wants to spend money at
your restaurant. A charitable assumption might be, “You must have
had a tough time getting here. We’re delighted that you made it!” I
am going to get the most out of my relationship with every guest,
including repeat business, when I base the relationship on optimism
and trust. Hospitality is hopeful; it’s confident, thoughtful, optimistic,
generous, and openhearted.
To be sure, there are other ways to run an organization. Many
people have grown very successful by managing the downside.They’re
nobody’s fool, and they’ll be damned if they’re going to be taken to
the cleaners.That’s a valid attitude. But skeptics tend not to thrive in
our organization, because their values are the antithesis of the busi-
ness and personal principles that guide every decision we make, as
well as the way I choose to connect with people. My way is certainly
not the only right way, but it is my only right way.
4. Long-Term View of Success
If you have a philosophy that puts employees first, guests second,
community third, suppliers fourth, and investors fifth, you implicitly
have a long-term perspective—at least as long as your lease.We create
restaurants for the long haul, and we make decisions based on that
commitment. Every time I’m faced with a decision that involves an
investment of money, I analyze the potential return by asking, “Will
this yield today dollars, tomorrow dollars, or never dollars?” Only the
third alternative—never dollars—is unattractive to me.
For example, if you come to one of our restaurants and the waiter
accidentally breaks the cork on your bottle of wine, everyone is un-
comfortable.The waiter is embarrassed, and you might be wondering
if that means the wine itself is bad. At this point I would want the
waiter to be candid: “I’m sorry I broke the cork. I assume the wine
is still fi ne but if for any reason it’s not, please let me know and we’ll

208 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
gladly replace the bottle for you.” If the wine is good, we’ll get our
today dollars. If it’s not, we’re still in the running for tomorrow dollars,
because we’ve established goodwill with our guest.
This approach also gives the guest a stress-free opportunity to be
right (in the event that the wine turns out to be “off ”) and removes
the onus on them to challenge us.
There’s practically no downside to a hospitable, charitable as-
sumption. Experience has shown me that 90 percent of the time the
bottle of wine whose cork broke is going to be good. If the guest
rejects it and I still believe it’s good, I can always sell the wine by the
glass at the bar. And if the bottle’s not good, it’s far better for me to
have been gracious about the transaction in the first place. That’s a
long-term view, and it’s one that sees an investment in a guest’s con-
tinuing loyalty as being far more valuable than almost anything else.
5. Sense of Abundance
One of the toughest disciplines in every business is to measure
and predict cash flow—the volume of money available after all ex-
penses have been paid. In very lean times (such as we’ve experienced
during serious recessions or in the weeks and months following 9/11)
effective managers and owners need to develop the ability to squeeze
olive oil from a stone. In our restaurant culture that tightfi sted ap-
proach can put the optimistic principles underlying our business style
to the test. This approach makes it much more difficult to be gener-
ous to staff members, guests, and the community. In hard times, it can
be enormously challenging to be generous with suppliers, and next
to impossible to be generous with investors. But counterintuitively,
we’ve also learned that it is sometimes possible to recharge and stimu-
late the top line of a business by instilling a generous and confi dent
sense of abundance.
Just after September 11, 2001, the revenue at each of our res-
taurants dropped precipitously. The number of guests reserving was
also way down. For about two months following the attacks on the

209 C o n s t a n t , G e n t l e P r e s s u r e
World Trade Center, the entire downtown restaurant and business
sector suffered. Of our restaurants, Tabla suffered most and had the
toughest time recovering. One reason was that Tabla (like Eleven
Madison Park) is housed on the ground fl oor of the investment bank
Credit Suisse, whose own business suffered dramatically following
9/11, and whose bankers cut back on their business entertaining. A
further reason was that Tabla, being associated with Indian culture,
was unfortunately an object of the early backlash after 9/11. Some
Americans were prejudiced against any person who looked like what
ignorance and fear imagined a terrorist to be, or toward any business
staffed by such people. Bangladeshi and Indian taxi drivers in New
York were affected by this ill-informed wariness, and so was Tabla.
We tried hard to not lay anyone off, but to make ends meet we
did have to shorten the hours many of our staff members were sched-
uled to work. We looked at the menu and asked ourselves whether
we really needed to use expensive ingredients like lobster. Did we
really need twelve entrees if ten would save money by ending each
night with less waste?
We also analyzed the menu to see if it might be possible to elimi-
nate a cook through attrition.The fewer menu items, the fewer hands
we’d need. It occurred to me that starving our way out of this predic-
ament might protect our business; but for me, playing defensively was
an unnatural approach to the underlying problem of too few guests
and too little revenue. I hated doing business that way.
So I made a decision that taught me a lasting business lesson:
rather than apply a sense of scarcity and uncertainty to Tabla, I ap-
plied a sense of abundance. Hand-wringing over low covers and low
revenue was getting us nowhere. I truly believed that a sense of abun-
dance would create more business. Though it made little apparent
budgetary sense, we began participating in charity fund-raisers and
offering gift certificates for dinners at Tabla as auction prizes—far
more generously than ever before. It was a very effective way to target
our marketing to people who tended to care about our favorite causes,

210 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
and who also might take an interest in Tabla. If an occasional guest at
Tabla happened to attend a charity fund-raiser and noticed that we
were a sponsor of the charity, he or she would probably feel a sense
of affiliation with our restaurants. And anyone who would compete
to make the highest bid on an auction item for our restaurants is a
fan or a potential fan. By giving more, we’d end up getting more. If
you want to be busy, especially in times of scarcity and uncertainty,
you cannot accept diminished standards of excellence in even one
area. You do everything you possibly can afford to show your staff
and guests that you care deeply about improving. That’s acting from
a positive and hopeful place, rather than from fear that can ultimately
be self-fulfilling. The mind-set “We’re just hanging on” perpetuates
scarcity. Investing money, imagination, and hard work to create a
mind-set of abundance achieves abundance.
Not long ago we donated dinner for four at six of our restau-
rants to the Brady Center for Handgun Safety, which would auction
off the dinners. The winning bid for the twenty-four dinners was
$12,000. We helped a cause that mattered to us, created an opportu-
nity for like-minded guests to affiliate with us, and effectively adver-
tised all our restaurants to an ideal audience.
Since 1992, we have applied our philosophy on abundance most
effectively during New York City’s annual Restaurant Week. More
than 150 participating restaurants throughout the city have offered a
three-course lunch for about $20. (The price began at $19.92; then
it rose to $19.93, $19.94, and so on.) Most restaurants are packed
during Restaurant Week as guests flock in to experience new restau-
rants as well as old favorites.The value is unbeatable, and people feel
good about doing something collectively with so many other New
Yorkers. Some restaurants, unfortunately, offer inexpensive fare and
propose very limited menu options as a way to manage costs and do
a bit better than break even on a three-course meal.We take the op-
posite approach. I am convinced that if you’re going to offer a gift,
it’s important to give it graciously.We approach Restaurant Week by

211 C o n s t a n t , G e n t l e P r e s s u r e
offering a generous number of choices for the appetizer, main course,
and dessert, representing considerably more than $20 worth of food
and quality. The point is to make people feel a sense of abundance
and value.
In several of our restaurants, we go a step further. As the already-
low check is dropped, each guest at the table is presented with a
thank-you note as well as a gift certificate to welcome him or her
back for lunch at another time. (In 2005, for example, we presented
each guest with a “come back” lunch certificate for $20.05.) At this
point, guests are thinking, “They’ve already offered an outstanding
lunch for $20.05, and now they’re giving me a $20.05 gift certifi cate
to return!” And return they do.
Countless times, this has proved that the more we give the more
we get back. Generosity is clearly in our self-interest. We get two
things out of the deal. We gain a means of reaching new guests and
remaining in touch with them, because the only way guests can
redeem their certificate is first to provide us with their name and
contact information. And when they return, we’ve gained a crucial
second opportunity to create regulars. In fact, a returning guest may
bring, say, three new guests with him or her, having told them how
generous we were during Restaurant Week. So, for example, four gift
certificates worth $80 can have a multiplier effect and produce as
many as twelve additional new guests at full price. Roughly 80 per-
cent of the certificates are redeemed at lunch in the season following
Restaurant Week, and lunch business in each of our restaurants has
consistently grown each year.
As I always point out to managers and staff members, the single
most powerful key to long-term success is cultivating repeat busi-
ness, and ultimately regular guests. I don’t believe you even enter the
competition for regulars until you get people to try your product for
at least a third time. Restaurant Week provides us with a perfect op-
portunity to do that.
Although this event—organized by NYC and Company—is cer-

212 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
tainly a bargain and a huge promotional occasion for New York City,
it pays its largest dividends to restaurants by generating goodwill—
and, eventually, revenue (tomorrow dollars). Some of our managers
have asked me whether all this largesse is worth it. I remind them that
after each year’s Restaurant Week, our restaurants have grown more
popular and more profitable. No amount of generosity has so far suc-
ceeded in putting us out of business!
6. Trust
It’s extremely difficult for a manager to motivate people if he or
she tends not to trust others. Similarly, it’s extremely difficult for em-
ployees to trust or want to follow the lead of a manager who doesn’t
trust them. It’s hard to do your best for an extended period of time
when your primary motivation is to avoid disapproval. We look for
people who are naturally trusting.True, it’s necessary for a manager to
have a modicum of healthy cynicism in order to identify team mem-
bers who act out of self-interest or who work the system to their ad-
vantage. But it is never useful to cause paranoia in everybody else by
having a mind-set of mistrust and fear.
Most human beings are motivated far more by the desire to please
other people than by the desire to stay out of trouble. Mistrust tends
to breed more mistrust and ultimately dishonesty. If your bosses do
not trust you to begin with, they unwittingly set up a game, or a trap:
the employee is challenged to figure out ways to beat “the system.” If
I can’t please you by just being good and honest, and I can’t advance
at work by performing admirably, I may as well play a game in which
I can win by giving you what you’re expecting from me: mistrust.
Trust and mistrust are also mind-sets that become self-fulfi lling.
Some bosses and managers rule by constantly threatening disap-
proval or, as is often worse, by giving no feedback whatsoever. Being
nonresponsive keeps employees on edge, off-balance, feeling vulner-
able and divided. For many insecure managers, that’s the point. It’s not
an oversight; it’s a strategy—or it’s insecurity about confronting con-

213 C o n s t a n t , G e n t l e P r e s s u r e
flict. Either way, it’s counterproductive. It will not sustain a healthy
workplace.
Our managers need to understand the dramatic distinction be-
tween fear-based and trust-based control. Analyzing this distinction
helps us to sharpen the managerial skills needed to defi ne excellence
and failure in our model of enlightened hospitality.
FE A R V E R S U S TRU S T
Fear: them against us Trust: us as a team, together and united
tyranny collaboration
ruling empowering
fl eeting enduring
selfi sh giving
scarcity abundance
closed expressive
telling listening
knowing learning
cynical hopeful
gatekeeper agent
In the divisive fear-based system, employees miss out on the true
joys of sustained satisfaction, the satisfaction that comes from achiev-
ing for the sake of the pleasure that achievement itself affords. They
also miss out on the pleasure of being part of a unified ensemble that
achieves great things together. Fear-based management fosters a cor-
rosive, dim-witted business culture where huge amounts of energy
are squandered by bosses who fear employees, and by employees who
fear bosses. There’s a steep price to pay for an organization when a
staff member feels confused or intimidated. Prospective leaders often

214 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
opt to leave before they can become great managers; and good em-
ployees quit because they know they can never thrive in such a neg-
ative climate. That leaves the kind of employees whose emotional
needs are met by autocratic, non-empowering bosses. And those are
not always the world’s brightest, happiest, or healthiest employees.
And so goes the business.
The good news, for us, is that there are enough bosses out there
who rule by fear that they actually make hiring well-trained, moti-
vated managers much easier. It often happens that bosses who rule
through fear are actually very good at teaching skills.You never need
to wonder what’s expected of you when you work for an ironfi sted
boss.When they drive people with excellent skills out the door, some
of those talented people find a haven working for a company that
welcomes them and encourages them to contribute and thrive. Hap-
pily, they often come to us.
7. Approving Patience and Tough Love
Tough love is another term for frank,“I’m on your side” honesty.
It’s saying,“I care enough about you to tell you the truth, even if the
truth is tough to hear.” Patience with tough love sends a clear mes-
sage to your staff that you’re on their side.We also put a premium on
outward and unequivocal messages of approval. It is absolutely in-
cumbent on managers to praise employees for good work. As I once
read in Kenneth Blanchard’s One Minute Manager, it’s the managers’
job to “catch people in the act of doing things right.” I subscribe to
that and take it one step further.When managers catch somebody on
their staff doing something right in a consistent or remarkable way, I
encourage those managers to let me know about it fi rst so that I can
learn, and also so that I can connect with employees and tell them
that their boss told me what a great job they’ve been doing, with spe-
cifics.This allows the employees to feel seen and appreciated by both
their boss and me. It feels especially good and is a powerful motivator
when your boss’s boss catches you doing something right.

215 C o n s t a n t , G e n t l e P r e s s u r e
Our former chef at Eleven Madison Park, Kerry Heffernan, once
told me that since a dishwasher named Juan had been on the dish
station, 50 percent fewer forks and knives were being lost by getting
carelessly thrown into the trash. Juan was helping to sort through
dirty plates that hurried waiters and busboys were bringing back to
the kitchen after clearing tables in the dining room. Such savings add
up. I found out when Juan, who had been with us for many years,
was working his next shift, and I was there that day to catch him in
the act of doing something right. “Chef Kerry has told me that you
are doing an amazing job saving our silverware, and I want you to
know how much I appreciate that,” I told him. “Your work means
a lot to the restaurant.” He learned that his boss had noticed what a
terrific job he was doing, and that Kerry was so pleased that he had
chosen to tell his own boss—me—about it. I hope the experience
made Juan feel good about the value of his work and proud that his
contribution was appreciated by somebody he didn’t even know was
paying attention.
Feeling seen and acknowledged is a powerful human need. Paul
Bolles-Beaven taught me that a traditional greeting among South Af-
ricans is umbuntu. It is not traditional there to salute people by saying
“Hi,” “How are you?” or “What’s new?” Umbuntu is an expression of
humanness, which conveys “I see you.” That simply and effectively
addresses the core human need to be seen and to feel seen. It’s hard to
imagine that it wouldn’t also apply to an employee, a customer, or a
manager of a company.The number one reason guests cite for want-
ing to return to a restaurant is that when they go there, they feel seen
and recognized. Imagine if our hosts consistently conveyed, “I see
you!” I’m fairly certain that’s precisely what most people want.
8. Not Feeling Threatened by Others
I would not want to follow a paranoid leader who is always look-
ing over his shoulder, fearing that someone was trying to put out his
or her fire. I’d want to follow a leader who is secure, firmly in control

216 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
of that fire to illuminate the way for me, to keep me enlightened;
teach me; keep me warm, motivated, awed, and inspired. Under those
circumstances I’d be delighted to follow my leader and, occasionally,
even lead my leader.
But I would certainly not be at my best as an employee if I were
constantly enabling my leader’s insecurities. Show me a defensive boss
and I’ll show you a team desperate for new leadership. Great bosses
own up to their mistakes, insist on learning from them, thank others
for pointing them out, and move on.
9. Character
For our managers to become great leaders, we identify and assess
a number of crucial character traits that are a subset of the fi ve core
emotional skills—optimistic warmth, intelligence, work ethic, empa-
thy, integrity, and self-awareness—that make a “51 percenter.” Those
traits include honor, discipline, consistency, clear communication, courage,
wisdom, compassion, flexibility, ability to love (and be loved) humility, con-
fi dence (to possess it and to inspire it in team members), passion for the
work and for excellence, and a positive self-image. These traits may mean
something slightly different to different people, but in the aggregate
they are the ideal characteristics of a highly effective leader, no matter
what business he or she is in.You cannot be a great leader unless a
critical mass of people are attracted to following your lead.
Overall, integrity and self-awareness are the most important core
emotional skills for managers.You must be self-aware enough to know
what makes you tick. You have to understand your own strengths,
weaknesses, and blind spots. You need to surround yourself with a
team of people who will mirror your integrity but complement and
compensate for your strengths and weaknesses.That’s critical.There is
absolutely an art to surrounding yourself with great advisers and eff-
fective auxilliary sets of eyes and ears.These are the leaders on whom
you must rely to present you with timely, accurate, balanced informa-

217 C o n s t a n t , G e n t l e P r e s s u r e
tion and to apply constant, gentle pressure on your team so that you
can move your company decisively forward.
A leader can be charismatic and lack integrity. A leader can be
charismatic and have no compassion or empathy. A great leader must
repeatedly ask himself or herself this tough question: “Why would
anyone want to be led by me?” And there had better be a good number
of compelling reasons.
I believe that leadership is not measured just by what you’ve ac-
complished, but rather by how other people you depend on feel in
the process of accomplishing things. Frequently, the people who tend
to get tripped up in our company at higher levels have a tough time
plugging into how other people feel. It’s not that they don’t care
about others. They just lack a strong natural sense of empathy. We
do the best we can to coach them and to show them where they are
missing the boat. Some are able to rise to this challenge; many aren’t.
The air grows increasingly thin the higher up the ranks of leader-
ship a manager moves. The more powerful people become in an or-
ganization, the more emotionally intelligent their management skills
must become.We’ve had many, many people who have succeeded as
dining room managers and even in the next position up, such as assis-
tant general manager. But they’ve subsequently fallen short as general
managers, and we’ve had to part ways.This has also been true of some
cooks who became sous-chefs and ultimately executive sous-chefs,
the rank just below chef. Many excellent cooks have become sous-
chefs after technical cooking prowess won them the respect of the
staff. But when they next became executive sous-chefs, their emo-
tional skills were no longer adequate for this higher level of authority
and power, and the staff withdrew its support—making it clear that
we should do the same.
For some reason, when certain people gain more authority and
power, they tend to demand respect from those who work for them.
But what got them their promotion in the first place was their natu-

218 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
ral ability to command respect. Demanding respect creates tension that
can make it very tough to lead, and very uncomfortable to follow.
Strong technical skills are usually the reason most people get their
first or second promotion. But the higher you climb the ladder of
power, the less technical skills count and the more signifi cant emo-
tional skills become. Employees are expert boss-watchers who in-
stinctively focus their “binoculars” on the bosses with the most power.
If they see weaknesses in character traits and ideals, they can and often
do strive to put out the boss’s fire in a hurry. Sometimes we have
terminated managers not because I decided unilaterally to fi re them,
but because over time the staff came to a collective decision that they
were lacking in some of these character ideals.
Managers have a power over employees that creates a distinct
imbalance in their relationship, and that power must be consistently
and fairly imposed for the good of the restaurant and the way we do
business. And team members are fully entitled to hold management
to even higher standards, particularly in a company that embraces for
itself the same character ideals that it demands of others.
This becomes a “virtuous cycle.” People who get promotions
should earn them not just because they’re ambitious, but primarily
because they embody the company’s character traits in abundance.
And since they are willing to do everything it takes to perpetuate
those ideals, we function as a “hospitalitocracy,” with the entire team
reciprocally bound by the same underlying culture of enlightened
hospitality.

c hap te r 10
Th e R o a d t o Su c c e s s Is Pa v e d
w i t h Mi s t a k e s We l l Ha n d l e d
In Se ptembe r 19 94, I traveled to Dallas, Texas, to begin a tour
promoting The Union Square Cafe Cookbook. During a dinner hosted
on my behalf by the owner of San Saba Vineyards, Dr. Mark Lemmon,
at the Mansion at Turtle Creek, I had a chance to sit next to Stanley
Marcus, the department store mogul, whose family had founded the
luxury department store Neiman Marcus in Dallas in 1907. Marcus
was then nearly ninety, and for more than half a century he had used
his genius as a marketer and retailer to expand the Neiman Marcus
chain and burnish its reputation for extraordinary service. It turned
out that he was interested in meeting me too; although he had dined
at Union Square Cafe through the years, we had never had a chance
to connect one-on-one.
It should have been a wonderful evening—here I was, seated
next to a legendary figure whose company I admired greatly. But I
was preoccupied. Gramercy Tavern had just opened, in late July, and
in part because of all the early media hype, it was getting knocked
219

220 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
around in the press. I was deeply troubled by this, and also by Union
Square Cafe’s performance, which was wobbly. Union Square Cafe
wasn’t used to operating without me at the helm every minute of the
day. I had betrayed my own commitment to expand only if I was cer-
tain I could do so without compromising quality there. I confessed all
this to Stanley and told him that I felt guilty for traveling out of town
so soon after opening Gramercy Tavern.
“Opening this new restaurant,” I said,“might be the worst mistake
I’ve ever made.” Stanley set his martini down, looked me in the eye,
and said,“So you made a mistake.You need to understand something
important. And listen to me carefully: The road to success is paved with
mistakes well handled.”
His words remained with me through the night. I repeated them
over and over to myself, and it led to a turning point in the way I
approached business. The problem wasn’t that I naively believed in
perfection. Perfection is impossible in business. As a company policy,
the notion of perfection can be dangerous, and the folly of pursu-
ing it can stunt your team’s willingness to take intelligent risks. How
could I expect my staff to create “legends of hospitality” if they were
playing it safe by trying to avoid mistakes? Stanley’s lesson reminded
me of something my grandfather Irving Harris had always told me:
“The definition of business is problems.” His philosophy came down
to a simple fact of business life: success lies not in the elimination of
problems but in the art of creative, profitable problem solving. The
best companies are those that distinguish themselves by solving prob-
lems most effectively.
Indeed, business is problem solving. As human beings, we are all fal-
lible.You’ve got to welcome the inevitability of mistakes if you want
to succeed in the restaurant business—or in any business. It’s critical
for us to accept and embrace our ongoing mistakes as opportuni-
ties to learn, grow, and profit. Baseball’s top hitters can make seven
mistakes out of every ten at-bats, and still ride a .300 lifetime batting
average into the Hall of Fame.

Rocio Ramos Reyes

Rocio Ramos Reyes

Rocio Ramos Reyes

T h e R o a d t o S u c c e s s Is Pa v e d w i t h M i s t a k e s We l l Ha n d l e d 221
We also need to expect the unexpected. We never know in ad-
vance if the next pitch will sail up and in or down and away. Will it be
a fastball, a forkball, or a knuckleball? For us, the secret of the game is
anticipating mistakes, harnessing them, and addressing them in con-
structive ways so that we end up in a better spot than if we had never
made them in the fi rst place.
Ilike to think of our staff members not as servers, but as surfers. Surfing is an arduous sport, and no one pursues it
involuntarily. No one forces you to become a surfer, but if you
choose to do it, there’s no point in wasting energy trying to
tame the ocean of its waves. Waves are like mistakes.You can
count on the fact that there will always be another wave, so
your choice is to get back on the surfboard and anticipate it. The
degree to which you ride it with better form than the next guy
is how you improve and distinguish yourself.
The style with which a company rides the tough waves and ad-
dresses mistakes can define its heart, soul, and talent. Otherwise, there
is no art to doing business. Our company is populated with surf-
ers—fortunately, since in the restaurant business you can always count
on another wave.
In our restaurants, we’ve experienced all kinds of mistakes, mis-
haps, and adversity. Once a large dried floral arrangement caught fi re
in the dining room, with flames shooting ten feet high. We’ve sur-
vived electrical failures and flooding; we’ve called EMS units after
guests have passed out in the middle of the dining room.We’ve seen
a mouse once run across a guest’s white tablecloth, and a beetle turn
up in someone’s salad. Back when we permitted smoking, a two-inch

222 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
cigar ash was flicked from the upstairs balcony down into someone’s
bowl of risotto at Union Square Cafe. A drunk man took his pants
down and mooned our guests through the outside window of our
front dining room. We’ve sent out our share of garments for quick
dry cleaning when servers have accidentally spilled soup or drizzled
olive oil on designer scarves hanging over the backs of chairs. But
the worst mistake is not to figure out some way to end up in a better
place after having made a mistake. We call that “writing a great last
chapter.” Whatever mistake happened, happened. And the person on
the receiving end will naturally want to tell anyone who’s interested
all about it. That’s to be expected. While we can’t erase what hap-
pened, we do have the power to write one last episode so that at least
the story ends the way we want. If we write a great one, we will
earn a comeback victory with the guest. Also, the guest will have no
choice but to focus on how well we responded to the mistake when
telling anyone we made it. We can, then, turn a mistake into some-
thing positive.To be effective, the last chapter must be written imagi-
natively, graciously, generously, and sincerely.And sometimes we even
write a great last chapter when it was the guest, not us, who made the
mistake. If someone spills his or her glass at the bar, we pour another
round, period. A child once spilled a glass of Sprite at his table, so
we bought all six members of his family a round of what they were
drinking. If a guest doesn’t like his or her dish, it is to be removed
from the bill.
I have found that when you acknowledge a mistake and genu-
inely express your regret at having made it, guests will almost always
give you a chance to earn back their favor. Take, for example, a mis-
take as simple as a dropped plate of food. If a waiter who is head-
ing for a table of six accidentally drops a plate on the way there, fi ve
people in the party will have hot food but a sixth guest will be left
with nothing to eat. Do we make all six people wait? Do we leave
one person feeling awkward while the other five eat? We deliver the
five ready dishes, and, checking to see what the sixth guest has already

T h e R o a d t o S u c c e s s Is Pa v e d w i t h M i s t a k e s We l l Ha n d l e d 223
eaten, we come up with a quick (and complimentary) midcourse—a
small soup or salad—for him or her to enjoy while we remake and
replate the missing dish.
TH E FI V E A’S F O R EF F E C T I V E LY
AD D R E S S I N G MI S TA K E S
• Awareness—Many mistakes go unaddressed because no one
is even aware they have happened. If you’re not aware, you’re
nowhere.
• Acknowledgement—“Our server had an accident, and we are
going to prepare a new plate for you as quickly as possible.”
• Apology—“I am so sorry this happened to you.” Alibis are
not one of the Five A’s. It is not appropriate or useful to make
excuses (“We’re short-staffed.”)
• Action—“Please enjoy this for now. We’ll have your fresh
order out in just a few minutes.” Say what you are going to do
to make amends then follow through.
• Additional generosity—Unless the mistake had to do with
slow timing, I would instruct my staff to send out something
additional (a complimentary dessert or dessert wine) to thank
the guests for having been good sports. Some more serious
mistakes warrant a complimentary dish or meal.
Unless something truly grave has occurred (food poisoning,
someone slipping in a pool of olive oil), it’s sometimes helpful, when
appropriate, to inject a little humor into the “great last chapter.” I was

224 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
at Eleven Madison Park during lunch one day when the former sena-
tor Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, a regular at our restaurants since becom-
ing president of the New School, came in.When he greeted me, he
asked, “Did you hear what happened last night at Gramercy Tavern?
We had a dinner party in your private dining room.”
I had not heard about it, and that embarrassed me. I should have
been given a heads-up by my staff.
“So how was it?” I asked
“Well, it was good except for the beetle in my friend’s salad,” he
said.
“Oh, my God. I feel horrible,” I said.“I apologize. I hope my team
handled it well. Did you bring it to their attention?”
“Oh, yeah,” the senator said. “[The person] was a bit upset, but
your people handled it incredibly well.” I walked away, shaking my
head.What a business.
After seating Senator Kerrey, I spoke to our manager at Eleven
Madison Park.“There was a mistake with a salad last night at Gramercy
Tavern.We’ve got to figure out how to write a great last chapter here,”
I said. I gave her the background, adding, “Whether or not Senator
Kerrey or his guest orders a salad during his lunch, I want you to de-
liver a beautiful salad and garnish it with a small piece of paper. On
that piece of paper I want you to write the word RINGO, and when
you deliver it, you can tell them, ‘Danny wanted to make sure you
knew that Gramercy Tavern wasn’t the only one of his restaurants
that’s willing to garnish your salad with a beatle.”
Fortunately, the mistake hadn’t been very serious; no one had
gotten sick or been hurt. But it was now impossible for Senator
Kerrey to tell anyone the story about the beetle in the salad without
also mentioning the “last chapter” we wrote the following day.
Most mistakes, like this one, are simple enough to fix. But when
we receive complaints of any type, our mission is twofold: fi rst, to
learn from the mistake and to profit from what we’ve learned; and
second, to write a great last chapter that allows us to end up in a

T h e R o a d t o S u c c e s s Is Pa v e d w i t h M i s t a k e s We l l Ha n d l e d 225
better place with the guest than if we had never made the mistake in
the fi rst place.
The time frame for addressing mistakes is crucial. When some-
thing goes wrong, it is essential for the manager on whose watch
the mistake occurred to make every effort to connect with the guest
within twenty-four hours. Meanwhile, we immediately review and
analyze our own performance to determine exactly what happened.
(When a baseball pitcher hangs a curveball that gets whacked out of
the park for a home run, you can bet he reviews the videotapes the
next day to avoid making the same mistake again.) No matter how
much you may try to erase what’s happened, you cannot.Why wait for
a second or third letter from somebody who has now cc’d his report
of your fallibility and culpability to the Chamber of Commerce, the
restaurant critic of the New York Times, and the Zagat Survey? Instead,
take the initiative:
1. Respond graciously, and do so at once.You know you’re going
to resolve the mistake eventually. It’s always a lot less costly to
resolve the matter at the outset.
2. Err on the side of generosity. Apologize and make sure the
value of the redemption is worth more than the cost of the
initial mistake.
3. Always write a great last chapter. People love to share stories of
adversity. Use this powerful force to your advantage by writing
the closing statement the way you want it told. Use all your
imagination and creativity in thinking about your response.
4. Learn from the mistake. Use every new mistake as a teaching
tool with your employees. Unless the mistake involved a lack
of integrity, the person who made it has actually helped your
team by providing you with new opportunities to improve.
5. Make new mistakes every day. Don’t waste time repeating the
old ones.

226 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
When we do learn about a mishap in one of our restaurants, I
always want to hear the staff member’s side of the story before I con-
nect with the guest, since our first responsibility in the culture of
enlightened hospitality is to be on the side of our team. If a complaint
involves a server’s “bad attitude,” we will find out exactly what took
place and then use that knowledge to help the staff member learn from
what happened. (Sometimes we learn that guests brought in their own
bad attitude. In that case, there’s still an opportunity to learn about
how to respond more effectively to a guest’s challenging mood.) If a
server repeats the same mistakes—a second or third spill, a pattern of
complaints about his or her attitude—then we may need to address
that person’s overall ability to excel or comply with our priorities.
Sometime s it is our job to go the extra mile for guests to solve
problems not of our making. One day at Tabla a woman walked in for
lunch and realized that she had left her wallet in the taxi. A summer
intern from Cornell was working at the front desk that day and did
his best to comfort the shaken woman, reassuring her that we’d of
course extend her credit, and urging her to relax and enjoy lunch.
That was good, but I thought we could do even better. I got Tab-
la’s general manager, Randy Garutti, involved. “Randy,” I said, “this
woman is going to tell the whole world that she left her wallet in a
taxi while she was on her way to Tabla. I know we can create a legend
out of this somehow.”
I didn’t give Randy a script to follow. But he knew exactly what
I meant by creating a legend. He spoke to the woman and learned
that she had also left her cell phone in the cab. He immediately had
a staff member start calling her cell phone number. Meanwhile, the
woman was seated, her friend arrived, and they ordered lunch. After
half an hour of persistent redials, a man’s voice finally answered her
phone. It was the taxi driver, who was by now way up in the Bronx.
He confi rmed that he had the wallet in his car too.

T h e R o a d t o S u c c e s s Is Pa v e d w i t h M i s t a k e s We l l Ha n d l e d 227
Unbeknownst to the woman, we sent a staff member uptown to
meet the driver and retrieve the wallet and cell phone, both of which
were in her hands before the check for lunch was on the table. She
was amazed and obviously delighted.We had turned a nightmare into
a legend of hospitality. Our round-trip taxi ride had cost $31. I’d be
surprised if the woman hasn’t already given Tabla 100 times that value
in positive word-of-mouth.
One night a few years ago at Eleven Madison Park, a couple came
in to celebrate their anniversary with us. Our maître d’ congratulated
them and offered them each a complimentary glass of champagne.
They were quite pleased.Then the man asked, “Do you know much
about wine?”
“I know a lot about our wine list,” the maître d’ said. “Do you
need some help selecting a great wine for your dinner?”
“No,” the man said, “I have a technical question. We have a very
special bottle of champagne at home to celebrate with after dinner.
But the bottle was warm, so before we came here tonight I put it in
the freezer. Is that bottle going to explode?”
“Yes, it’s going to explode,” the maître d’ said.The man stood up
in a panic and said to his wife, “Oh, my God, honey, I’ve got to go
home and deal with this before that bottle explodes.”
The maître d’ saw a great last chapter taking shape. “Listen,” he
said, “you’re here for your anniversary, and we want you to have a
great night. If you’ll give me your address, I’ll gladly go over to your
apartment and take the champagne out of the freezer.”
“All right, you’re on,” the man said. He called to alert his doorman,
and our maître d’ took a cab to their address where he transferred
the champagne from the freezer to the refrigerator. And next to the
bottle, he set some dessert chocolates from the restaurant and a small
tin of caviar along with a note that read, “Happy Anniversary from
Eleven Madison Park.”These folks became dedicated regulars.
In handling mistakes, our goal is always to alter course to create a
positive outcome and an experience that ends up being memorable for

228 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
the right reasons. Sometimes that has required an athletic effort—lit-
erally and figuratively. One night when we’d closed Tabla for a pri-
vate party, a couple walked in for dinner. “What do you mean, you’re
closed?” the man asked Richard Coraine, who was then acting as Tab-
la’s general manager.“Then why did one of your people take our reser-
vation for tonight?”To make matters much worse, they had driven 250
miles from New Hampshire just to eat at Tabla. Richard was in a tough
spot. Obviously, he couldn’t seat them. Frustrated and angry, the couple
stormed out and headed uptown along Madison Avenue.
For one very long minute, Richard and his maître d’ sat mortifi ed
and wondered what they should do. Suddenly, they had a solution.
They bolted out of the restaurant and sprinted up Madison Avenue,
catching up with the couple a few blocks away.“We’re so sorry about
the situation at Tabla,” Richard told them. “We want you to come
back soon.” He gave them a gift certificate for a future dinner at Tabla.
He next called Gramercy Tavern on his cell phone to make sure
there was a table available immediately, and he offered to buy them
their dinner that night.They accepted, and the maître d’ walked them
to the restaurant on East Twentieth Street and made sure that they
would be very well cared for.
Later Richard handwrote them a note in which he reiterated his
apology. The couple kept up a correspondence with him and eventu-
ally became regulars at Tabla, making the 500 mile round-trip nearly
every month for dinner.
We’re most interested in developing a good relationship that re-
sults from the way people feel about how we’ve overcome a mistake.
Just before lunch on a sweltering summer day, the air compressor at
Eleven Madison Park broke down. More than 100 people had reser-
vations.The ambient temperature was in the mid-eighties and rising
as noon approached. For one of our managers, this crisis became an
opportunity to write a great last chapter.
First, he ran out and bought two oscillating fans for the two per-

T h e R o a d t o S u c c e s s Is Pa v e d w i t h M i s t a k e s We l l Ha n d l e d 229
spiring reservationists, who were stuck in a small, hot offi ce fi elding
calls. He instinctively understood that it was crucial for the people
on our front line in offering hospitality to remain comfortable while
they were taking care of callers seeking reservations two and three
weeks ahead. Next, he went to a nearby Woolworth’s and purchased
every small battery-operated mini-fan in the store’s entire inventory.
On entering the sauna (aka Eleven Madison Park), each guest
received not just a deep apology about our air-conditioning failure,
but a gift of one of the fans.The mood in the dining room was actu-
ally festive, not hostile. New Yorkers often take adversity and crises in
stride, and the guests that day seemed to be enjoying the novelty of
the tiny fans on each table.
One of the most challenging days of my professional life was the
result of another heat wave. It was April 2002, just a few weeks after
Blue Smoke opened, and because the temperature was freakishly high
for spring—in the high nineties—we had a brownout in the restau-
rant. I was out of New York on business when I got a cell phone call
with the news that our electrical system had failed. Both Blue Smoke
and Jazz Standard were completely booked and scheduled to open in
half an hour.
Between the restaurant and the jazz club, we had taken some 500
reservations that we were now unable to honor. I called my senior
management team and instructed them to reach (or leave messages
for) as many as possible of the people who had made reservations .We
needed to let them know that because of our brownout we couldn’t
open that night, but also to assure them that we would gladly rear-
range dinner at their convenience.
We decided that every guest who did show up—and nearly 200
did—would receive not only an apology but also a Blue Smoke to-
go bag filled with barbecue sauce, Magic Dust seasoning, and a $50
gift certificate to the restaurant. We also made reservations for the
guests, wherever they chose to dine that evening. We sent seventy-

230 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
fi ve people to Eleven Madison Park and bought their dinners. (That
we went so far overboard with our apology is an apt illustration of
how defensive we felt about our performance in those very early days
at Blue Smoke.)
Eventually the electricians and engineers jerry-rigged a system
to pump just enough air-conditioning into the dining room to let
us seat about two dozen hardy guests. Even without kitchen exhaust
fans, the staff followed through professionally and fed all those people,
a display of remarkable grace under sweltering and smoky pressure.
Running (and working for) a company whose restaurants are
known for their hospitality and superior service can sometimes be a
double-edged sword. I’ll bet we get at least as many letters of com-
plaint from guests as other restaurants do precisely because we set the
bar for excellence so high. The great majority of objections follow
the same format: whatever has gone wrong always comes as a “com-
plete letdown” because the guests had arrived with such high expec-
tations, and we’ve let them down.They’re correct to let us know.
During lunch service one day in 1995, in the very early months
at Gramercy Tavern, the hostess of a party of six told her server that
she didn’t care for her salmon and asked for something else. A man-
ager on duty was alerted and told the server to leave the salmon on
the woman’s bill, since there was nothing wrong with it and she had
eaten more than half of it. As the host of a business meeting, she did
not contest the bill, understandably wanting to avoid an awkward
scene. Then, on her way out, the woman was handed a doggie bag
containing the uneaten balance of her salmon. There was no confu-
sion; this was done by design. The guest wrote to me: “I can’t be-
lieve how insulting and passive-aggressive that was, and it’s not what I
would expect at one of your restaurants.” She was spot on, and I was
mortifi ed when I learned what had happened.
This incident led to a pivotal moment in my career. Until then,

T h e R o a d t o S u c c e s s Is Pa v e d w i t h M i s t a k e s We l l Ha n d l e d 231
hospitality had been no more than a personal instinct. I hadn’t ar-
ticulated to myself what hospitality meant—or, for that matter, what
the absence of hospitality meant. How could I possibly have been
explicit about it to anyone else? These were the initial days of my
becoming a two-restaurant restaurateur, and for the first nine years of
Union Square Cafe’s existence, I had always been on hand to see and
fi x things as they were happening—demonstrating what to do rather
than teaching others how or why to do it. I had never had to codify
how particular mistakes or crises should be addressed.
At the weekly management meeting immediately after this in-
cident, it became clear to me that a number of others on our team
would have done exactly what the manager did. Why remove the
salmon from her bill when it was perfectly good and she had eaten
most if it? Contrary to my belief that you get more by giving more,
they were concerned about how to get screwed less by protecting
yourself more.That’s a valid model for some people—including many
across the entire spectrum of businesses—but it’s one with which I’m
completely uncomfortable. I don’t believe that the principle of erring
on the side of generosity is inherently superior to the principle of
fiercely protecting yourself in order to make as much money as pos-
sible. But generosity is the way I choose to do business in my restau-
rants, and so far it has always contributed mightily to our success.
Are you in it for keeps? It’s almost always worth bearing a higher short-term cost if you want to win in the long run.
I’m convinced that you get what you give, and you get more by
first giving more. Generosity of spirit and a gracious approach to
problem solving are, with few exceptions, the most effective way
I know to earn lasting goodwill for your business.

232 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
I realized that a critically important role for me, as the leader of
the company, was to define upfront what was nonnegotiable. That
way, if employees were not comfortable, they could choose to walk.
More than any other previous mistake had done, the incident of the
doggie bag taught me that it was more imperative than ever for me
to articulate my core values and vision.
Our training has evolved and improved dramatically through the
years. I’m quite explicit now in setting the table for our staff. I make
it absolutely clear that if guests don’t like something they’ve ordered,
it is removed from the check, period. It’s the server’s job to sense that
guests are unhappy before they have to tell you. (As for the manager,
we parted ways, as it became increasingly clear that we just saw busi-
ness differently.)
Though lapses in hospitality, fortunately, don’t happen every day,
we have had plenty of other examples from which we’ve been able
to learn. In the early days of Tabla, chef Floyd Cardoz felt strongly
that he and his staff could never do a superior job of cooking for
tables larger than a party of eight. Floyd had come from the old, rigid
French school of kitchen management, having been sous-chef for
seven years at the very refi ned Lespinasse.
I understood his fear, though not his position. When a table of
eight or two parties of six arrive all at once, their orders can clog up
the restaurant’s flow and wreak havoc.Trying to cook for and coordi-
nate the timing of too many large parties can be very challenging. It
demands precise alignment among the various stations in the kitchen
and the dining room—and meanwhile, service for the smaller tables
can grind to a halt.
We managed to get along with Floyd’s party-size limitation until
a night when one of our most loyal customers, having made a reser-
vation for eight, arrived with an unexpected ninth guest in tow. Floyd
absolutely refused to let the maître d’ seat them, giving the entire
party of nine no choice but to leave Tabla.
This shouldn’t have happened to anybody, but it turned out that

T h e R o a d t o S u c c e s s Is Pa v e d w i t h M i s t a k e s We l l Ha n d l e d 233
the host of the party was Fern Mallis, who, while heading the in-
fluential Council of Fashion Designers of America for more than a
decade, conducted the “Seventh on Sixth” fashion shows in Bryant
Park and was a friend and a frequent guest at our restaurants. Fern
was disappointed and justifi ably furious.
When I heard about this, I immediately met with Floyd. My mes-
sage was stern and clear: Policies are nothing more than guidelines to be
broken for the benefit of our guests. We’re here to give the guests what they
want, period. Floyd was initially stubborn in arguing his point; but to
his credit, he listened, understood the impact his inhospitable reac-
tion had made on our guests, and changed his approach dramatically.
Tabla has since found ways to seat parties of nine, ten, twelve, and
even sixteen without compromising quality; and Floyd’s adaptivity
has been an important source of hospitality and profitability for the
restaurant. Still, it’s a shame that a loyal guest was offended before we
learned the lesson that took our restaurant to a much better place
than before.
As for Fern, I acknowledged, apologized, and acted on our mis-
take.“I am embarrassed and I feel terrible,” I told her.“We absolutely
made the wrong decision, and I’d hate for you to never come back as
a result of that one incident. Next time, it’s my treat.” I wouldn’t blame
anyone who had received that kind of non-welcome for choosing to
never return.
An even worse kind of mistake is one that involves a lapse in
character—theft, deception, or disrespect. In the fall of 2000, in an
article in Gourmet magazine, an unnamed maître d’ at Union Square
Cafe was alleged to have accepted a $50 bribe (palmed in a hand-
shake) from a walk-in guest who had just been told there were no
tables available without a reservation. The guest was actually the re-
porter, who had gone undercover at a number of top restaurants to
learn at which ones a table might be bought.
Reading the piece was deeply disturbing to me. Union Square
Cafe had been publicly humiliated, and we had no idea who on our

234 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
team had been involved. It put us in a position where we had to ask our
entire front-door staff if this could be true (no one confessed), and the
questioning alone hurt the team’s morale. I refused to go on a witch
hunt. Instead, I wanted to turn the incident into a group learning ex-
perience. I wasted no time writing a great last chapter: in this case, an
actual letter to the editor, which was published in the next issue of
Gourmet. Despite what I called Gourmet’s “successful sting operation,”
I wrote: “[It] is absolutely against the policy of Union Square Cafe for
anyone on our staff to accept a tip as an inducement to provide a last-
minute table.We are deeply embarrassed that one member of our staff
violated our standards . . . and, above all, apologize to the hundreds of
thousands of Union Square Cafe patrons who have made their reser-
vations the fair way throughout the 15 years we’ve been in business.”
The story had a very happy ending when I got to know the author of
the article, Bruce Feiler. He ended up featuring Union Square Cafe in
another article in Gourmet, for which he infiltrated the ranks of our
staff to understand the secret behind the restaurant’s “hospitality culture.”
He won a James Beard Award for that piece. Not a bad last chapter.
I find it enormously instructive to observe how other companies
handle their mistakes. I was in Bloomingdale’s department store on
the Upper East Side to stock our home kitchen, and I bought several
items, including an electric hand mixer. Several weeks went by before
my wife needed the mixer to make a cake.When she opened the box
for the fi rst time, she found that there were no blades inside.
Audrey didn’t get around to bringing the mixer back to Bloom-
ingdale’s until several months later, after the kids were back in school.
When she found a saleswoman in the housewares department, she
opened the box and began explaining: “I feel so bad, I was out of
town for the summer, I can’t find the receipt, and this is the fi rst
chance I’ve had to come back . . .”
The woman interrupted Audrey with one of the greatest hospi-
tality responses I’ve ever heard. “Say no more! You didn’t even have

T h e R o a d t o S u c c e s s Is Pa v e d w i t h M i s t a k e s We l l Ha n d l e d 235
to bring the box in.You could have just called. Now let me get two
replacement blades for you right away.”
Audrey was so impressed that she ended up buying fi ve more
things in housewares—and Bloomingdale’s ended up in a much
better place with her than if those blades had come with the mixer
in the first place.The story gets even better.When the sales clerk saw
Audrey eyeing a set of barbecue tongs and spatula for the pit, she said,
“That’s on sale today. Do you have one of our coupons?” Audrey said
no.“Too bad,” the saleswoman said.“It’s thirty percent off today. Hold
on—I’m going to go find you a coupon in the back office.” On her
way there, she stopped to pull the two mixer blades from the demo
model on the floor, and then returned with the coupons.
Say no more! There’s always a solution if you’re open to fi nding
one.
Another example of a company that knows how to overcome a
mistake is JetBlue. Not long after the airline had started up, Richard
Coraine booked a flight to Florida to visit his parents.The day before
he was to depart, he received a phone call and an e-mail asking him
to call JetBlue immediately. First, the airline confirmed his reserva-
tion.Then, it admitted making a mistake.“We overbooked that fl ight,”
the agent told him. She gave Richard a choice: travel the next day as
planned, or give up his seat on that flight in exchange for a later trip,
free, to Palm Beach.
Typically, most airlines don’t address their overbookings until just
before, or sometimes even after, everyone has boarded the plane.This
was the first time, Richard said, that an airline had ever reached out
twenty-four hours ahead of time to give him such a choice. Richard
chose to give up his seat, got a free trip, and had hardly any disrup-
tion of his plans: he was able to depart just two hours after his original
fl ight.
Bloomingdale’s and JetBlue, their five A’s soundly in place, wrote
great last chapters with Audrey and Richard, and won loyal custom-

236 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
ers and enthusiastic apostles for their businesses. Richard’s experi-
ence also helped encourage our company to want to build a strong
business relationship with JetBlue.The airline now sponsors our Big
Apple Barbecue Block Party as well as our annual Autumn Harvest
dinner and auction at Eleven Madison Park to benefit the hunger
relief organization Share Our Strength.
Stanley Marcus was absolutely right. By viewing mistakes as op-
portunities to repair and strengthen relationships, rather than letting
them destroy relationships, a business is paving its own road to suc-
cess and good fortune. And mistakes are the best form of job secu-
rity I know of. Just as with waves in the ocean, you can bet your
bottom dollar that there’s always another mistake behind the one
you’re confronting at any time. So long as you’re determined to dis-
tinguish yourself and your company by how well you approach mis-
takes, you’ll always have steady work.

c hap te r 11
Th e Vi r t u o u s Cy c l e o f
En l i g h t e n e d Ho s p i t a l i t y
The re are five primary stakeholders to whom we express our
most caring hospitality, and in whom we take the greatest interest.
Prioritizing those people in the following order is the guiding princi-
pal for practically every decision we make, and it has made the single
greatest contribution to the ongoing success of our company:
1. Our employees
2. Our guests
3. Our community
4. Our suppliers
5. Our investors
As any rational businessman would, I’d like our restaurants to earn
a handsome profit and ultimately create a sustainable return for our
237

238 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
investors. In the model of enlightened hospitality, only after you have
first taken good care of your top four stakeholders will you be able
to take care of your fifth group—your investors—and provide them
with a sound and enduring return on their investment.To prioritize
differently breaks the virtuous cycle of enlightened hospitality and
seriously compromises the chances that your business will achieve
excellence, success, good will, and soul.
Guests
Investors
Employees
Community
Suppliers
Why do we care for our stakeholders in this particular order?
The interests of our own employees must be placed directly ahead of
those of our guests because the only way we can consistently earn
raves, win repeat business, and develop bonds of loyalty with our
guests is first to ensure that our own team members feel jazzed about
coming to work. Being jazzed is a combination of feeling motivated,
enthusiastic, confident, proud, and at peace with the choice to work
on our team. I place the interests of our investors fi fth, but not be-
cause I don’t want to earn a lot of money. On the contrary, I staunchly
believe that standing conventional business priorities on their head
ultimately leads to even greater, more enduring fi nancial success.And,
just as important, it’s the kind of success that adds tangible value to
the lives of a wide range of stakeholders.As business or organizational

239 T h e Vi r t u o u s C y c l e o f E n l i g h t e n e d Ho s p i t a l i t y
logic, enlightened hospitality can be applied far beyond the restaurant
industry.
Suppose that you care for your investors’ interests fi rst.You can
then potentially make a speedier financial hit for them, but it’s not as
likely to sustain itself over time. There will inevitably be a revolving
door of staff members who, finding themselves in a business culture
that does not place their own or the customers’ interests ahead of the
other key stakeholders, will quickly cease to feel particularly proud,
motivated, or enthusiastic about coming to work. By contrast, pri-
oritizing our way has enabled us to offer investors an opportunity to
affiliate with a business known for outstanding employees, warm hos-
pitality, strong ties with exceptional suppliers, and a solid commit-
ment to playing an active, valuable role in its community. And we
believe those investors are also delighted to be affiliated with the con-
sequent quality of our restaurants, themselves.
Our investors (as well as our other four stakeholders) also trust
that I am not going to affiliate any of our restaurants with any other
brand that would diminish ours. For example, it was a simple deci-
sion for us when we had a chance to affiliate with a company like
Timberland. That is an exceptional organization whose products
exemplify enduring quality, whose employees are outstanding, and
whose community-building culture is impressive and inspiring. It
was natural to choose Timberland as the supplier for Blue Smoke’s
staff uniforms as well as the merchandise we sell, like Blue Smoke
baseball caps and T-shirts.
We don’t have many outside investors in our restaurants—most of
the investors have been family members, close friends, or colleagues.
We’ve been fortunate that those we have attracted are stimulating
people who bring broad experience, fascinating perspectives, and
strength of character to the table—all with a supportive mind-set.
We’re blessed to have such investors, who take a genuine interest
in sharing the financial risk upfront while offering their abundant
wisdom through the duration of their investment. Few things make

240 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
me prouder than when a restaurant begins to make profi t distribu-
tions to its investors.
I make sure that every investor knows going in that enlightened
hospitality is a business model designed for long-term, sustained prof-
itability. It’s not a recipe for overnight distributions or instant riches.
It is inherently expensive to design high-quality restaurants that are
built to become institutions, and then to operate them with a long
view. While our investors are willing to be patient upfront, they do
rightfully expect a healthy long-term return on their investment and
we feel a solemn responsibility to deliver it. And since I personally
invest in each one of our businesses, all of our interests are aligned.
In a private entrepreneurial (and nonliquid) investment—unlike
a typical stock market play—investors aren’t simply looking for a
strong return; they’re also making a bet on an affiliation with the
overall principles of the company.
By prioritizing our five stakeholder groups in this way, we have
been able to build loyalty where it most counts. The long-term suc-
cess of our business is determined by, and intrinsically linked to, the
degree to which we excel at taking care of these stakeholders’ respec-
tive interests.
T H E F I V E S T A K E H O L D E R S I N
E N L I G H T E N E D H O S P I T A L I T Y
1. Employees
When I first walk into any restaurant or any business, I can imme-
diately guess what type of experience I’m in for by sensing whether
the staff members appear to be focused on their work, supportive of
one another, and enjoying one another’s company. If they are out to
help one another succeed, I know I stand an excellent chance of having
an excellent experience accompanied by a feeling of welcome. From
any business, what better outcome is there than that? People who like
to please others tend to do so with many, if not all, constituencies.

241 T h e Vi r t u o u s C y c l e o f E n l i g h t e n e d Ho s p i t a l i t y
Well before our staff members can extend any kind of meaningful
hospitality to our guests, they need to first understand the primary
importance of being on each other’s side. Mutual respect and trust are
the most powerful tools for building an energetic, motivated, winning
team in any field.And the most talented employees are often those at-
tracted to companies that can provide them with the most important
job benefi t of all: other great people with whom to work.
Considering that most of us spend about one-third of our lives
at work, it is the value of the human experience we have with our
colleagues—what we learn from one another, how much fun we
have working together, and how much mutual respect and trust we
share—that has the greatest influence on job satisfaction.
When I talk about the staff caring for each other, I stress that it’s
incumbent upon all members of our team to be citizens of our com-
pany and to come to work looking for opportunities to be on one
another’s side.
The restaurant business can be grueling.When you are the expe-
diter in the kitchen, you may have thirty-five “dupes” (guest checks)
staring you in the face, each of which needs to be cooked “on the fl y.”
That means trying to send appetizers out to thirty-fi ve tables, coordi-
nating dishes from the sauté station, the pasta station, the grill station,
and the salad station. Waiters are running in and out of the kitchen
asking for an update on table 26’s food and telling you that table 28
needs its main courses in order to make a theater curtain. And the
kitchen is hot, with up to thirty people racing around while perform-
ing tough tasks in tight quarters. It’s tense.
Under those circumstances our people need to remember that
the best, most efficient way to work through all the dupes is fi rst to
take care of one another and work together as a team. Does work-
ing together take more effort than screaming and yelling—a more
common practice in restaurant kitchens? Not especially. But the re-
sults of respectful collaboration build long-term success and prevent
the same problems from recurring every day. I love to hear waiters

242 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
asking one another,“Is there anything I can do to help you with table
41? Can I help carry any of these plates out?” When there is abun-
dant mutual respect and trust, and people are continually looking for
opportunities to help one another, that infectious spirit becomes the
culture.That reciprocally uplifting feeling then translates into a better
product because managers help waiters, waiters help cooks, cooks
help waiters, and cooks help cooks. If a waiter is “in the weeds” (res-
taurant-speak for “up shit creek”), there is invariably a waitress one
or two stations away who is for the moment in control of her station,
and able to offer help. What I never want to see is a cook getting
short with the expediter, or the expediter getting short with a waiter,
or any other such combination. Guests can definitely pick up on and,
I think, even taste discord among employees, even if it’s taking place
offstage, in the kitchen.
Yet our employees don’t come to work just because our “culture
of hospitality” resonates with them and feels good.They have to pay
the rent, too. It is critical to me that our wage scales be competitive
with those of other restaurants, and that we provide the fi nest ben-
efits we can afford, including medical and dental insurance for all our
full-time employees.
The primary reason we have such a loyal and dedicated staff (in
a fickle industry notorious for high turnover), is that we understand
what people want most from their workplace is to respect and be re-
spected.And it certainly helps to know that their honest day’s work—
mistakes and all—is appreciated. We try to find opportunities to ex-
press our respect in many ways.
Just as we invite our customers to give us feedback on comment
cards, we also conduct periodic roundtable discussions with each res-
taurant’s staff, during which we invite employees to provide honest
feedback about how they feel our business is performing.
We also conduct a monthly dining-voucher program for all staff
members with at least three months’ tenure that allows them to dine
at any of our restaurants using a credit.The catch is that in exchange

243 T h e Vi r t u o u s C y c l e o f E n l i g h t e n e d Ho s p i t a l i t y
for the credit, employees must answer a detailed questionnaire about
their dining experience. Why do we prize—even need—the input
of our own employees? Better than almost anyone else, they under-
stand the mission of our restaurants, and they are in the best position
to react to and measure our actual performance against our ideal
outcome.They are expert at observing their colleagues in the dining
room, tasting the food they know so well, and assessing the restau-
rant’s overall performance.They get to observe and be on the receiv-
ing end of the consistent, unifying power of hospitality throughout
all our restaurants. They see that each sibling restaurant is staffed by
“51 percenters” who have the same excellent technical and emotional
skills for which they themselves were hired.
It’s especially useful for us to hear and read where improvement
is needed, from insiders who are on our side.This is certainly prefer-
able to first learning about a problem from a critic whose megaphone
reaches an enormous audience.Above all, the program sends our own
team a crucial message:“We respect, trust, and care enough about you
to actively seek and value your input.”And we put our dining dollars
where our mouths are.
We’ve also asked our staff members to periodically participate
in a questionnaire created by our human resources department: our
“Walk the Talk Survey.”This offers them a chance to tell us how we’re
doing as leaders and managers. It’s a remarkably instructive report
card that provides illuminating, challenging, uplifting, and occasion-
ally discouraging results.When you take the risk of telling your staff
what your company stands for and what’s nonnegotiable, and then
give them a mirror to hold up, they are delighted to reflect an accu-
rate picture. For example, we’ve learned about managers who weren’t
effective listeners or who didn’t seem to consistently inspire standards
of excellence. We’ve heard that a restaurant’s management has fallen
behind on repairs and maintenance, sending out a message that per-
haps we don’t take enough pride in the facility.And we’ve also picked
up clues that the degree to which a restaurant is subscribing to the

244 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
tenets of enlightened hospitality is flagging. That encourages me to
take an even closer look at how well management is or isn’t investing
in our staff.
2. Guests
Hospitality starts with the genuine enjoyment of doing something
well for the purpose of bringing pleasure to other people. Whether
that’s an attitude, a behavior, or an innate trait, it should become a
primary motivation for coming to work every day.We strive to treat
our guests the way we would want to be treated.The golden rule re-
mains as fresh and meaningful as ever; and beyond how well it serves
people in their lives, it may also be the most potent business strategy
ever devised. In business, as in life, you get what you give. We try to
apply a humanitarian viewpoint to every business challenge, to fi nd
creative, gracious solutions and reassure our guests that we are solidly
on their side.
Our front line in delivering on our promise of hospitality is our
team of telephone reservationists. I consider the initial dialogue so
crucial to our business that for years the path to becoming a manager
at Union Square Cafe began with being a reservationist. Answering
our reservation telephone lines remains an excellent proving ground
for this business: when a reservationist can maintain composure under
the non-stop volume of calls taking place on the telephone and still
be an agent of hospitality—all without the benefit of eye contact or
smiles—that’s a strong indicator that he or she has the right stuff to
advance in the hospitality profession.
In the course of their calls, our reservationists must continuously
listen to themselves and ask: am I being perceived by this caller as an
agent or a gatekeeper? An agent makes things happen for others.A gate-
keeper sets up barriers to keep people out.We’re looking for agents.

245 T h e Vi r t u o u s C y c l e o f E n l i g h t e n e d Ho s p i t a l i t y
In every business, there are employees who are the fi rst point of contact with the customers (attendants at airport gates,
receptionists at doctors’ offices, bank tellers, executive assistants).
Those people can come across either as agents or as gatekeepers.
An agent makes things happen for others. A gatekeeper sets
up barriers to keep people out. We’re looking for agents, and
our staff members are responsible for monitoring their own
performance: In that transaction, did I present myself as an agent or a
gatekeeper? In the world of hospitality, there’s rarely anything in
between.
It’s not an easy job.At most of our restaurants, as many as four out
of five callers on any given day don’t end up with the exact time they
initially wanted for a reservation. Whether a reservationist is in an
office or at the host’s desk, most calls present opportunities to make
callers feel that we genuinely care about them—or that we don’t.This
exchange also gives callers, free of charge, an excellent preview of
how they might expect to be treated at our restaurants. Reservation-
ists are under heavy pressure because they can’t control how many
people call; but they’re trained to maintain a hospitable composure
no matter how many calls come in and no matter how quickly the
calls come.The true test of a win-win dialogue with an agent is that
somebody who does not get the exact time or date he or she wanted
nevertheless leaves the call convinced that we tried. One year, among
its highly complimentary comments about Union Square Cafe, the
Zagat Survey quoted a participant:“The reservationists even feel badly
when they can’t accommodate you.”That made me very proud.
Gatekeepers for very busy restaurants often say things like,“We’re
fully committed,” or, “All we have is six or ten o’clock in the eve-
ning,” without expressing genuine regret or suggesting an option like

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246 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
placing the person’s name on an active waiting list. The hospitality
door is slammed shut. Many callers, conditioned to expect such ex-
periences, assume we’re all gatekeepers who are somehow bent on
keeping them out. As a result, they have learned that the best way to
get what they want is to be pushy and nasty from the get-go.That has
never been an effective strategy, since someone who is impolite on
the phone will likely treat our staff members the same way once he
or she is in the restaurant.We don’t play those games. I’m convinced
that nice gets nice.
Inside our dining rooms, one basic way we take care of our guests
is by providing an atmosphere of comfort and welcome. Control-
ling noise and designing a thoughtful seating arrangement are ef-
fective tools to help us do that. I hear noise the way a good chef
tastes salt: too much is overbearing; too little can be stifl ing. Guests
are equally uncomfortable whether they have to shout to be heard
or are required to speak in self-concious, hushed tones in order not
to have their conversation heard by other tables. With just the right
noise level, each table has the luxury of becoming enveloped by its
own invisible veil of privacy, allowing animated conversation to fl ow
within that discreet container.Too much noise, on the other hand, ag-
gressively invades the space and interferes with the guests’ ability to
engage with one another. It’s annoying, stressful, and inhospitable.
With regard to music, we can control what’s playing and at what
volume. We also put a lot of effort into dampening ambient noise
with acoustical treatments (for example, hanging draperies, and sta-
pling sound-absorbing fabric to the backs of chairs and to the un-
dersides of tables). We’ve placed acoustic tiles behind walls of wine
bottles and applied ceiling and wall treatments wherever they made
sense. Because a carpet feels institutional, picks up smells, and is hard
to maintain, I am not a fan of most restaurant carpeting.An absorbent
floor treatment would solve a lot of noise issues, but purely as a matter
of my own taste, our floors are almost always hardwood or terrazzo.
A restaurant’s seating arrangement also contributes mightily to

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247 T h e Vi r t u o u s C y c l e o f E n l i g h t e n e d Ho s p i t a l i t y
how guests are made to feel throughout their meal and is a potent
opportunity to create a social environment. In the design of each
of our restaurants we’ve been quite conscious about dividing seat-
ing plans as if we were forming several smaller communities within
a larger zip code. Walk into any of our restaurants, and you’ll see a
series of different dining areas that are meant to make a larger space
feel more intimate and more human.That format and scale allows our
guests to feel anchored, and it encourages genuine connections be-
tween the staff and guests as well as between guests and other guests.
After all, beyond cooking your food and doing the dishes, a restaurant
must provide a public social environment that distinguishes it from
the experience of eating at home.
I’m not pleased when tables are so close together that it’s impos-
sible to have any kind of private conversation with your companions.
That’s one of the most inhospitable things a restaurant can do to
its guests. It immediately breaks down the imaginary wall of inti-
macy between tables. For example, when you see a restaurant with
banquettes against a long wall, it’s often a design strategy for fi tting
more people in as efficiently as possible. And to shoehorn in the
maximum number of tables, most restaurants choose the narrowest
possible tables to line up along the banquette. But in order for all the
food ( plus bread and butter, wine bottle, fl owers, and salt and pepper)
to fit on these very narrow tables, they are often designed to be both
very narrow and very long. That puts a guest twice as far from the
face of the person he or she came to dine with and twice as close to
the ears of strangers at the tables on either side. It’s almost impossible
to be intimate with anyone other than the people on either side of
you. That’s inhospitable.
With its classic brasserie-like volume of space, we conceived
Eleven Madison Park to be a restaurant filled with banquettes. In
deciding on table sizes, I asked our architects, Bentel and Bentel, to
design every one of the tables along our banquette walls two inches
shallower than the standard table (allowing closer, more intimate

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248 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
face-to-face communication), and also to make the tables a bit wider
than the standard.The spatial effect is subtle, but significant: in a very
grand space that could feel imposing and make our guests feel remote
and small, they instead are seated slightly closer than usual to their
dining companions and a little farther from their neighbors on either
side.That strategy also has the effect of controlling noise throughout
the restaurant. In such an arrangement, there is no need to yell to be
heard.
A lot of people enjoy being seated at a corner table, so in each
restaurant we try to design as many corner tables as possible. Rather
than designing a restaurant as one big room, creating subcommuni-
ties within each space has the advantage of giving us more corners
to work with. For example, Gramercy Tavern has three dining rooms
with twelve corner tables. At Eleven Madison Park there are three
dining areas with sixteen corner tables.That’s actually a lot of corner
tables. Another design goal is to avoid having any “bad” tables. We
try to anchor every “deuce” (table for two) to a wall or to a window,
and rarely, if ever, float a deuce out in the middle of the dining room.
Most deuces are interested in intimacy. A table of five to eight is most
often positioned in the center, exerting its gravitational pull on the
rest of the dining room. The people at that table have one another
as anchors, and are less sensitive about precisely where their table is
placed.
The genuine welcome with which we make our fi rst impression
while greeting guests is a simple but extremely powerful statement
about our care for them. For any guest, the greeting should provide
an immediate affi rmative answer to the question:“Are they happy to
see me or not?” Guests know when a host is insincere, harried, or just
going through the motions in greeting and seating them. It’s not gen-
uine hospitality when the host fails to make eye contact, fails to smile,
or fails to thank the guests for coming. It’s also inhospitable when a
host rushes ahead of you while showing you to your table, making
you feel like a dog being yanked along on a leash.You try to keep up,

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249 T h e Vi r t u o u s C y c l e o f E n l i g h t e n e d Ho s p i t a l i t y
but inevitably end up trailing several paces behind. It’s all function,
with no emotional connection between the host and the guests. Eye
contact tells a guest, “I see you.” A smile is an assurance that you are
happy to see the guest. Each is a simple but crucially important non-
verbal expression at the very beginning of a dining experience.
It’s a wonderful thing to be in the presence of a host who knows
how to establish a warm welcome and natural rapport. The image I
have of a guest’s ideal experience with our host is an ongoing sen-
tence that begins with the host’s genuine welcome; continues with
the host’s reassuring visit to the table at some point during the meal
to let guests know he or she is there if they need anything; and is
completed with the punctuation mark of gratitude and an invitation
to return to end the sentence as the guest is leaving. If our staff is on
its game, guests cannot help feeling that they matter, and that we have
taken a true interest in them.
A close examination of our reservation sheets and of our detailed
“guest notes” provides our fl oor managers and hosts with a signifi cant
edge in conveying a warm welcome and good-bye. The host may
have collected some dots for an effective initial point of contact, such
as, “I noticed you came here all the way from Florida. How did you
hear about us?” Or, upon saying thank you and good-bye, the host
offers a business card and says,“I hope we’ll get to see you again next
time you visit New York. When you’re ready to return, just let me
know and I’ll assist with your reservations.”
When guests make reservations online using OpenTable.com,
their two most frequent special requests are, “Quiet table, please” or
“Romantic table.” Over the years a number of people have called us in
advance to let us know they’re planning to propose over dinner. We
definitely share that detail with the host and waitstaff. The kitchen
can then be ready with a congratulatory dessert plate, and the man-
ager with a bottle of champagne.
Providing exceptional hospitality depends on the alertness and
instincts of empathetic staff members.We urge them to develop their

250 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
own athletic style in actively looking for golden moments of oppor-
tunity to go above and beyond.
We truly value our guests’ opinions, whether these opinions are
expressed on comment cards or in face-to-face exchanges. But there
are many businesses, restaurants included, that don’t really want to
learn from such feedback.Their strategy is “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” and
it sends a message that these businesses aren’t looking for problems
and aren’t interested in you. No news is good news.
I’m not pleased when a waiter or host asks a perfunctory “How was everything?” as you’re leaving.You’ll probably say
“Fine,” which is exactly what the waiter or host wants to hear.
In our restaurants, if the answer is “Fine,” we’ve failed. If our
overarching goal is to create a rave for each and every guest
experience—“fine” falls short of the mark. Some variation of
“thank you” and “I hope we’ll see you again soon” is more to
the point.
3. Community
One of the most signifi cant benefits we offer our employees is
the opportunity to work for a company that stands for something
well beyond serving good food in a comfortable environment. I make
it very clear to all new employees that they’ve joined a company
that chooses to take an active interest in its community, and that we
rely on members of our staff to step up and participate as citizens
within that culture.We encourage employees to become involved in
the community because doing so makes them even better at taking
care of one another and our guests. And it’s the most effective form

251 T h e Vi r t u o u s C y c l e o f E n l i g h t e n e d Ho s p i t a l i t y
of team-building I know.When our colleagues work, serve, and play
together beyond the normal confines of work, they invariably return
to work knowing each other better and working together more ef-
fectively.They become stronger leaders and tighter teammates.
At its best, investing in our community also creates wealth for
the community, which in turn often leads to good luck for our own
company—something any corporation needs in order to sustain its
success. Our good luck spreads goodwill among our stakeholders,
making them even prouder and more satisfied to be affiliated with us.
By taking active leadership roles in working to revitalize two great
city parks that anchor the neighborhoods in which we do business,
we’ve demonstrated that a rising tide lifts all boats.This component of
enlightened hospitality has beautified our neighborhood, and in turn
has enhanced our business.
I am convinced that doing things that make sense for the com-
munity leads to doing well as a business.We would never undertake a
project in the first place if we didn’t believe it was the right thing to
do, or a useful thing to do. But we also understand that doing good
things well brings loads of potential ancillary benefi ts.
It is in any company’s self-interest to take what it does best and
apply that core strength to an appropriate form of outreach beyond
its own four walls. For those of us who make a living by nourishing
and nurturing guests in our restaurants, there’s a logical connection
to feeding people in our community who don’t have enough. Over
the years we have hosted or participated in hundreds of hunger-relief
events that build on the natural synergy among our staff, other great
chefs and restaurants, our guests, and the organizations—most nota-
bly Share Our Strength—that share our activist spirit. For years, City
Harvest has made regular pickups of our leftover food. It’s natural for
us to want to support a rescue agency that annually delivers more
than 20 million pounds of food to New York City’s missions and
shelters, but we don’t dictate to our staff members what community
programs they should or shouldn’t be involved in.We do urge them

252 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
to play leadership roles in causes that are personally important to
them, and we invite them to seek our support. Our hospice dinner
program at Beth Israel Hospital, in our neighborhood, was the brain-
child of Blue Smoke’s general manager, Mark Maynard-Parisi, who
previously had managed at Union Square Cafe. Mark approached me,
confident that his idea would fall on eager ears. I told him that con-
ceiving a good idea was one thing and executing it was something
else; and I encouraged him to grow as a leader by asking him to per-
suade all the other GMs and chefs to embrace the idea, which he did.
(Mark is now managing partner of Blue Smoke.)
Every Tuesday and Wednesday night, one of our restaurants pre-
pares about twenty dinners for the hospice unit, and volunteers from
that restaurant’s staff bring the food to Beth Israel, serving the meals
to the hospice patients and their families as well as to the unit’s nurses
and attendants. Emotionally, it’s a tough experience to confront
people who are steps away from dying. But for our staff to be able to
serve others this way, and possibly to put one of life’s last smiles on the
faces of the patients and comfort their anguished families, is actually a
gift for us. It’s impossible for anyone on our team to serve at the hos-
pice program and not return to work with a far deeper understanding
of the true meaning and impact of life and hospitality. (It’s no coinci-
dence that hospice and hospitality share etymological roots.)
Whenever our employees take a leadership role and collect
pledges from colleagues in order to participate in an event like the
Avon Breast Cancer Walk or the Northeast AIDS Ride, their restau-
rant matches the money they’ve collected from their colleagues. If an
employee asks for our help with a more personal cause (for example,
supporting a special school for someone related to an autistic child),
we’ll very often say yes. Our restaurants have also pulled together and
organized events to raise funds for disaster relief. For example, the
catastrophic fl oods of 1993 that ravaged vast stretches of the Midwest
(where I’m from), and an earthquake in western India (where Tabla’s
executive chef Floyd Cardoz is from), led us to build instant con-

253 T h e Vi r t u o u s C y c l e o f E n l i g h t e n e d Ho s p i t a l i t y
stituencies and host dinners to raise funds for emergency relief. And
in response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, each of
our restaurants took a leadership role in a national “dine-out” eve-
ning sponsored by Share Our Strength called Restaurants for Relief.
We donated a percentage of our revenues to Share Our Strength for
its relief work in the Gulf. Additionally, we invited our employees to
contribute a portion of their paychecks to relief. Together we raised
$30,000. The program effectively allowed us to join forces with our
staff and our guests to make a meaningful community contribution.
Our efforts to connect with and support our neighborhood
through the years have paid off both in the community and for our
business. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Union Square, now
one of the busiest retail destinations in Manhattan.Way back in May
1986, before Union Square Cafe was even open for Saturday lunch, I
agreed to host a brunch on behalf of the Union Square Park Com-
munity Coalition. The USPCC was a grassroots group seeking to
improve quality of life in and around the park—which was then a
dangerous place—and to protect the interests of the greenmarket and
the historic neighborhood. We designed our menu around ingredi-
ents from the greenmarket (this was years before it became the prac-
tice of chefs all over New York to buy seasonal produce there), and
raised close to $10,000—not a bad fi gure for those days.
It was a pivotal day for me because the brunch was the very fi rst
project that connected me as a citizen to Union Square. The event
also proved to be a marketing coup for our restaurant. Attendees re-
sponded so favorably to our brunch that within weeks we launched
a regular Saturday Greenmarket Brunch. Everything (appetizer, soup,
entrée, dessert) was prepared using products from that morning’s
greenmarket items.
Union Square has long since become a magnet for the city’s
chefs—and for anyone who loves fresh food.To this day, between May
and October our chefs and sous-chefs (from each of our restaurants as
well as Hudson Yards Catering) buy between 80 percent and 90 per-

254 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
cent of all of our fruit and vegetables at the greenmarket. For years we
have conducted tours of the greenmarket for both adults and school-
children, and we invite farmers to our morning “market meetings” to
discuss their produce before we use it to demonstrate a recipe.
We also support the Union Square community by participating
in the annual Harvest in the Square, an event I had a hand in creating.
In the 1990s, Rob Walsh, who had been instrumental in fi rst getting
me involved in the redevelopment of Union Square Park, came to me
with an idea to raise money for the Fourteenth Street–Union Square
Business Improvement District and Local Development Corporation.
(That name was an impossible mouthful, so Walsh, the organization’s
executive director, was commonly called the “mayor of Union Square.”
He went on to become New York City’s very effective Deputy Com-
missioner for Small Business.) The original idea was for a $1,000 sit-
down dinner with chefs from the top four or five restaurants in the
neighborhood, which at that point was filling up with three-star res-
taurants. I told Rob, “Why not make it far less exclusive, make it af-
fordable for a lot more people who love the park, and let’s really brand
Union Square as the best-tasting neighborhood in the city? And in-
stead of charging $1,000 to a few, let’s charge $75 to attract as many
people from the community as possible.We should get a big tent and
make it a walk-around party with a lot more restaurants involved.
We can invite the farmers, too, and try to show the restaurants in the
neighborhood how easy it is to buy from the greenmarket.”
For an entire decade, the event has been a huge success. Forty-
five neighborhood restaurants participate and nearly 1,500 guests
attend, under a huge white tent. The party nets over $100,000 with
proceeds used for park improvements and restoration projects. Just
as the Amish perfected the barn raising, Harvest in the Square has
become our local “park raising”—a community joining together to
care for its own park.The annual party has raised funds that have been
used for large capital projects like new park lighting and the addition
of ornate iron fencing.

255 T h e Vi r t u o u s C y c l e o f E n l i g h t e n e d Ho s p i t a l i t y
By the late 1980s, my community involvement was limited to
serving on the boards of the Union Square Local Development Cor-
poration and the New York Chapter of the American Institute of
Wine and Food (AIWF). The AIWF was a not-for-profi t organiza-
tion founded by Robert Mondavi and Julia Child to educate the
masses on the joys of gastronomy. We raised money from culinary
events that brought consumers together with producers. I remember
organizing a series of ethnic breakfasts—one morning each in Chi-
natown, in Little India, at a kosher deli, at a Mexican restaurant, and
at a good old-fashioned American brunch—to experience and learn
how different cultures approached breakfast.We also held microbrew
beer tastings (in the days before most people had ever heard the term),
wine-and-food dinners, artisanal cheese tastings, champagne dinners,
and farmers’ events.
For much of the food-loving public these were heady days of
learning, and it was a thrill to be along for the exciting ride at the
outset of New York’s culinary revolution. And being there was good
for business. The board of AIWF presented excellent networking
opportunities among people—chefs, restaurateurs, consumers, wine
makers, journalists, producers, and growers—who were passion-
ate about food. By attending AIWF’s national conference, I had the
chance, very early in my career, to meet all kinds of industry luminar-
ies and develop meaningful relationships that would serve me well in
building our business. I have always believed that networking builds
stronger relationships that can lead to good luck for a corporation.
But I was putting a lot of my time into AIWF, and it dawned on me
that I’d derive even more joy if I could do this for a group that was
feeding people in need, and not just educating attendees.
My fi rst chance to engage Union Square Cafe in a philanthropic
leadership role came about through serendipity.“Taste of the Nation”
was a pioneering benefit organized by Share Our Strength in cities
across the United States and Canada. Charging people money to
attend a big party where you could walk around to taste small plates

256 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
from big-name chefs was still a fresh concept in 1989, and when chef
Lidia Bastianich of Felidia ristorante invited Union Square Cafe to
contribute and serve our food at Taste of the Nation in March 1989,
I was fl attered and quickly accepted the invitation, knowing it would
be a great opportunity to showcase our new chef, Michael Romano.
However, I didn’t appreciate the experience. All of our pre-event
planning had been about logistics, with little said about the cause
we were supposed to be addressing. It occurred to me during the
course of the evening that I didn’t even have any idea what Share
Our Strength actually was. Bon Appétit magazine was the chief spon-
sor of the event, at Lincoln Center, and, more than an event to raise
money to fi ght hunger, it seemed primarily to be an opportunity for
the magazine to throw a top-toque gourmet party to entertain their
advertisers.At one point, as I stood over a chafing dish, trying to keep
up with scooping food for a long line of guests along with Michael
and our sous-chef, Jamie Leeds, I began muttering under my breath,
“Who and what are we trying to raise money for here, anyway?”
At that moment, the guest holding her plate out in front of me
overheard my impolitic carping. She happened to be Debbie Shore,
who, along with her brother Billy, had founded Share Our Strength
in 1984. Debbie brought Billy over and they introduced themselves.
Turning over the rocks, in a matter of moments we began connect-
ing dots and I learned that Billy Shore knew both my grandfather
Irving Harris and my uncle Bill Harris. Before founding Share Our
Strength Billy had worked for Senator Gary Hart of Colorado and
later Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, both of whom supported in-
vesting in early childhood (zero to three) research and programs, a
cause my grandfather and uncle worked for with limitless passion
through an organization called KidsPac. My social gaffe—complain-
ing aloud about the event—was about to create one of my life’s most
extraordinary learning and leading opportunities.
When I mentioned to Debbie and Billy that I felt their message
was not coming through clearly, Debbie said, “You’re absolutely right.

257 T h e Vi r t u o u s C y c l e o f E n l i g h t e n e d Ho s p i t a l i t y
More people do need to understand that this is an event to help fi ght
hunger. We’d love to tell you more about it, and we could really use
your leadership. Since you obviously want the event to be stronger, you
need to be its leader. How about sharing your strength next year?”
For the next two years, I took on the responsibility of chairing
New York’s Taste of the Nation, and I loved it. I convinced the city’s
best chefs to participate by telling them,“I don’t want you to do this
unless you’re fully committed to fighting hunger.” Interestingly, the
more chefs I asked not to participate unless they were doing so be-
cause they cared about the cause, the more chefs chose to commit
themselves.We got World Yacht to contribute use of its largest yacht,
the New Yorker, and to let us host a 1,400-person party onboard while
cruising out to the Statue of Liberty. We raised ticket prices to $200
and got just about everything donated—food, wine, auction items,
design, flowers, printing. Even the coat checkers contributed their
tips to Share Our Strength. We got the right companies to support
the cause and raised serious money in the process of getting them to
become sponsors.The event turned into a brilliant confl uence of gas-
tronomy, commerce, philanthropy, and fun. Having raised $40,000 at
the event at Lincoln Center in 1989,Taste of the Nation now raised
$240,000 and then $360,000 in the next two years. It was a stroke of
genius when my friend Jim Berrien, then the publisher of Food and
Wine (owned by American Express Publishing), asked Schieffelin and
Somerset (importers of Möet et Chandon) to sponsor Taste of the
Nation. The beverage company agreed to donate $100,000 as well
as several cases of Dom Perignon as an inducement for attendees
to spend more money to arrive early and gain entrance to the “VIP
Dom Perignon Lounge.” Share Our Strength distributed every penny
of our revenues to hunger-relief agencies like City Harvest, God’s
Love We Deliver, Oxfam International, and Food for Survival, which
later became the Food Bank For New York City.
With the help of Jim Berrien and another visionary at American
Express,Tom Ryder, I was able to bring Amex on board as a national

258 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
sponsor, to the tune of $250,000 for each year I chaired the event. In
that instance, creating community absolutely led to good luck for
Union Square Cafe and me.
But first, the backstory: In the 1980s, Amex had been the domi-
nant charge card for fine dining, especially among those who used
it for business entertaining. But by the early 1990s, as a deep reces-
sion approached, the company was losing restaurant market share to
other credit cards. In no small part, one factor was Amex’s attitude:
“You need us, so we’ll charge what we like.Take it or leave it.”Ameri-
can Express had always charged higher “merchant’s commission” fees
than other credit card companies, but now its arrogance was inciting
a revolt. In Boston a large group of restaurateurs now threatened to
boycott American Express cards in their establishments, dramatically
planning to slice up Amex cards with scissors and dump the plastic
pieces into Boston Harbor—a new twist on the Boston tea party.
I had my own reasons to feel miffed about American Express’s at-
titude.The company had a new marketing program called Plus Busi-
ness. Our local account manager told us that if we agreed to provide
discount coupons to cardholders, Amex would drive “plus business”
our way—customers who, they claimed, would subsequently spend
more money in our restaurant than people using MasterCard or Visa.
I couldn’t abide the notion of issuing discount or giveaway coupons
at Union Square Cafe.The company’s arrogant approach was making
me furious; it implied, “You need this, and if you don’t do it you’re
stupid.”
Around that time, I went home to St. Louis for one of my pe-
riodic visits to see my father, who was battling lung cancer. I told
him I was angry with American Express and that I was considering
joining the boycott. He shook his head. “I understand your frustra-
tion with their behavior,” he said. “But American Express is a well-
established, very successful company that’s not going away for a long
time.They’ve got a lot more muscle than you’ll ever have.And you’re
going to lose if you try to fi ght them.”

259 T h e Vi r t u o u s C y c l e o f E n l i g h t e n e d Ho s p i t a l i t y
But I was young and feisty, my restaurant was packed for every
lunch and dinner, and I was feeling my oats.
“But we could make a difference,” I argued. “We’d be fi ghting
alongside a lot of other restaurants.”
“Why don’t you figure out a way to embrace them instead ?” my
dad urged me. “Maybe they’ll listen to you if they feel like you’re
working with them, and not just one more restaurant owner like all
the others.”
I could see his point—and I sensed an opportunity to do one of
my favorite things, and be a bit of a contrarian. Back in New York I
met with Jim Berrien and Tom Ryder—the two friends I had grown
to love and admire who ran the magazine publishing side of Ameri-
can Express. I once again told them that I had just attended Share
Our Strength’s Conference of Leaders—the annual gathering for its
network of Taste of the Nation leaders from across the United States
and Canada, many of whom were chefs and restaurateurs. I had been
struck by our industry’s passion for helping Share Our Strength fi ght
hunger, and it was clear to me that more and more restaurants were
realizing that participating in a Taste of the Nation event was a really
smart way to do something good while also making a special con-
nection with their customers.And everyone involved enjoyed it.This
community-marketing model seemed the best of all possible worlds.
“The bulk of the American fine-dining industry is up in arms
against your company,” I told Jim and Tom. “An amazing way for
American Express to re-earn their favor would be to champion a
cause that so many chefs and restaurateurs have already shown is very
important to them. Now you’re seen only as the company that is
charging us all more money and imposing your own marketing de-
sires on us.” I suggested that they find a way for American Express to
put serious dollars on the table and become the national title sponsor
for Taste of the Nation. The two men liked the idea, quickly ran it
up the corporate fl agpole, and succeeded at getting Amex to become
the $250,000 title sponsor. At a time when Taste of the Nation had

260 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
no other national sponsors, this was a trailblazing move for American
Express. And by finding a way to embrace the huge company when
it was down, and when so many others in our industry were reviling
it, I became a friend. My father’s advice had been sound. One by one,
restaurants across the country took note of the role Amex was play-
ing with SOS, and slowly, but surely, the company began to pick up
momentum in rebuilding its relationship with establishments.
Soon thereafter, American Express invited me to do a test radio
spot that would be broadcast in the Boston area.They hoped it would
defuse the still explosive situation with Boston’s merchants. They as-
sured me that the spot would raise the profile of Union Square Cafe.
But mainly they wanted me to tout the Amex card for bringing my
restaurant “a higher quality, higher-spending customer than any of
the credit cards.”
I said,“No thanks.”That message would sound offensive to those
guests of ours who chose to use other charge cards. But I made a
counteroffer. “What I would do, and do very proudly,” I said, “is talk
about American Express’s incredible generosity in supporting Share
Our Strength. For your company to be partnering with our industry
for the purpose of fi ghting hunger is an extraordinary story, one you
should be proud of, and I’d be delighted to tell it.”
They looked at me as if I were crazy. A cause-related ad by a
big corporation was all but unheard of then. Months went by with-
out a response, and I had just about given up hope of hearing from
them when an executive from Ogilvy and Mather called me saying
that Amex had scrapped the test radio spot in Boston. Instead, they
wanted to launch a national television campaign. It would tell the story
of American Express’s work for hunger relief, and they wanted me to
appear in it. I thought about the invitation overnight and phoned in
my enthusiastic “yes” the next morning.
The commercial was eventually filmed at Union Square Cafe
using a big league production company.We staged a scene of people
dining late at night.There was a jazz saxophonist playing in the back-

261 T h e Vi r t u o u s C y c l e o f E n l i g h t e n e d Ho s p i t a l i t y
ground.The ad cut back and forth between scenes of people dining
at Union Square Cafe and cutaway shots of hungry New Yorkers. I
talked about hunger in New York and how Share Our Strength raises
money so that leftovers could be delivered to shelters in New York City
(there was a scene with a City Harvest truck picking up food). “Be-
cause American Express has provided the funding,” I say,“their dollars
are actually going to connect food with someone who needs it.”
American Express spent huge amounts of money on the cam-
paign. The commercial reached an enormous audience when it was
broadcast during the first inauguration of President Bill Clinton on
January 20, 1993, and again during that year’s Super Bowl.Two-page
print ads with my photo ran in the Sunday New York Times Maga-
zine and the Washington Post Sunday Magazine. The campaign marked
a pivotal moment for me in appreciating the intersection between
business and philanthropy. It conclusively identified Union Square
Cafe as doing business in a particular way; and because of the public
awareness it created, it raised the stakes by encouraging my team and
me to fi nd other ways to do even more to support the community.
My ongoing active affiliation with Share Our Strength as a board
member has allowed me to meet some extraordinary thinkers. Billy
Shore has always recruited an exceptional roster of board members,
staff members, and experts in hunger relief, whose ideas have helped
shape how my company continues to work for community outreach.
What helped me to understand Share Our Strength’s work was view-
ing it as a mutual fund whose expertise was hunger relief. The or-
ganization has done all the homework, and has identified the most
effective hunger-relief agencies in which to invest. I liked that. I also
admired the way it knew how to blend entrepreneurial and not-for-
profit cultures. Share Our Strength truly understands how to tap into
corporations and encourage profi table, cause-related marketing.

262 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
The greatest gift I have received from Share our Strength founder, Billy Shore—beyond his friendship—is his brilliant
notion that creating community wealth is the most effective way
to achieve lasting social change. Instead of relying exclusively on
individuals to make charitable donations or on governments to
make grants or subsidies (the two traditional—and self-limiting—
means of fund-raising), Share Our Strength has encouraged
the corporate community to create self-sustaining, for-profi t
businesses and programs that in and of themselves add consumer
value, build business, and do the community some lasting good.
This creates a virtuous cycle that links the corporate interest in
earning profit to the consumers’ desire to affiliate with brands
that embrace social causes they believe in.
I’ve often seen this model at work. For several years, Calphalon,
the cookware manufacturer, marketed a “Share Our Strength” pot
that was sold in department stores. The packaging prominently fea-
tured Share Our Strength’s logo, and let the buyer know that $10 of
every purchase would go to fight hunger. For customers browsing
through the housewares section of a department store, this created a
reason to purchase Calphalon’s pan rather than any of fi fteen other
brands. If the buyer didn’t already think the Calphalon pan was best,
here was another outstanding reason to buy it: “When I cook for
myself, I’m going to help feed somebody else.Why wouldn’t I want
to support a brand that does that?” The promotion spurred lively
retail activity; Calphalon made more money on sales; and for its per-
centage, Share Our Strength received close to $250,000 annually.
In the late 1990s the organic yogurt producer Stonyfi eld Farm
used its plastic container lids to promote Share Our Strength. Stony-
fi eld’s founder, Gary Hirshberg, viewed each container lid as a minia-

263 T h e Vi r t u o u s C y c l e o f E n l i g h t e n e d Ho s p i t a l i t y
ture billboard to be used for messages promoting causes he believed
were important. Stonyfield’s commitment to use its lids to promote
the work of Share Our Strength led me to select its product as the
main ingredient for our yogurt-based raita when we opened Tabla in
1998. We identified it on our menu (“Stonyfi eld Farm raita”) and, in
return, Tabla got a discount on purchases of the yogurt. It was good
business and a satisfying affi liation for both companies.
As I learned with Union Square Park, it’s essential to create pro-
gramming that gives people good reasons to use a park. For that
reason, we selected Madison Square Park as the site for our annual
Big Apple Barbecue Block Party (BABBP), held over a weekend in
mid-June just a couple of blocks from Blue Smoke. For this ’cue-
lovers’ event, we invite ten of the country’s leading barbecue chefs to
visit New York and cook their award-winning barbecue right in the
middle of Manhattan. In 2006, nearly 110,000 barbecue fans attended
BABBP during the two-day event, and devoured over 5,000 pounds
of brisket, three dozen whole hogs, and close to 10,000 pounds of
ribs. Beyond attracting so many people to enjoy two days of food and
music in the park, BABBP makes a contribution from its revenues
to the Madison Square Park Conservancy, and in its first three years
it raised $140,000 for the organization, which in turn plowed the
money into horticulture, and more programming (sculpture, music
concerts, performances for kids, readings, and so on).
Because our company is committed to community outreach week
after week, year after year, we’ve also been able to recruit a different
kind of employee over time. Certain people are drawn to work for us
because of this reputation.The person for whom this stuff is exciting
tends also to be someone who intuitively cares about making other
people happy.That is what hospitality is all about.
In the hours and days after 9/11, it was quite natural to ques-
tion the significance of one’s own life role or profession. I know I
was asking myself, “After all this, who really cares about restaurants?”
Quickly, though, I answered my own doubts. In their ability to nour-

264 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
ish and nurture, and to provide a buoyant place for human beings to
be with one another, and to smile, restaurants—as a healing agent—
seemed more relevant than ever.
The collective experience of 9/11 caused the entire city to put
down differences and pull together as never before.At that time I was
the chairman of the Restaurant Committee for NYC and Company,
the city’s tourism marketing organization, and in the first weeks after
9/11 we met practically every day.At first, we tried to figure out what
we could do for the rescue workers and for the bereaved families.
Next, we tried to figure out what we could do for our community
of restaurants, many of which were empty and in fi nancial jeopardy.
The downtown restaurant community especially was paralyzed.As far
north as our Union Square–Gramercy Park–Madison Square neigh-
borhood, one could smell the acrid, burning rubble for two months
after the towers fell.
It was especially gratifying that in a crisis of this magnitude, the
greatest strength of the hospitality industry expressed itself. By follow-
ing their natural instincts, New York’s chefs and restaurants, including
the members of our own team, knew exactly how to play a special
role in aiding and comforting other New Yorkers.
4. Suppliers
These days, more and more people want to do business with a
company in whose business principles they believe, not just with a
company whose roast chicken and creamy polenta they fi nd delicious.
We’re the same way when choosing suppliers.At the outset, we make
our own business values and goals very clear, and we try to under-
stand theirs. We look for common ground, and we put a premium
on integrity. We’re looking for enlightened companies whose teams
consist of “51 percenters” who are passionate about what they do. Just
as we ask our employees to join us in community outreach programs,
we admire suppliers who do so.
We express care for our fourth core group—our network of pur-

265 T h e Vi r t u o u s C y c l e o f E n l i g h t e n e d Ho s p i t a l i t y
veyors and vendors—by building loyal, mutually respectful relation-
ships and by seeking win-win transactions. The most fundamental
way we accomplish this is by doing what we say we’re going to do. If
we strike a deal for certain payment terms, we honor it. Saying what
we will do implies an agreement to also say what we cannot do. If un-
foreseen circumstances arise—a compressor breaks, for instance, re-
quiring a large cash outlay for repairs—and we unexpectedly cannot
meet our obligations to a supplier, we need to be absolutely upfront
and ask the supplier’s permission to work out an alternative solution.
Not long ago we made a shift in several of our restaurants from
Evian bottled water to Fiji. Primarily, this was because I had heard
from more and more of our chefs, staff members, and guests that they
preferred the taste of Fiji, which they said “seemed wetter,” more
effectively quenched their thirst, and had a less “oily” texture than
Evian.
I had insisted on using Evian for years, out of loyalty as well as for
emotional reasons. The first time I had ever seen bottled water was
when my family took me on my inaugural trip to France when I was
seven years old. I kept a bottle of Evian next to my bed at night and
loved snapping its plastic cap on and off. I grew up associating Evian
with the adventure of traveling to France, as well as with memories
of dining in excellent restaurants there, and so we began serving it. In
fact, I’d credit Evian with playing an important supporting role in the
legitimization of fine dining in America in the late 1980s and early
1990s. Restaurants that wanted to be taken seriously carried Evian. It
was like having a French stamp of authenticity and approval.
Second, through Audrey’s role in advertising sales for Gourmet
magazine, we became quite friendly with some terrifi c people at
Evian, one of her accounts. Evian’s CEO, David Daniel; and his suc-
cessor, Mark Rodriguez, were both brilliant market-builders and am-
bassadors for their brand. I always felt intensely loyal to them.Through
those relationships, I helped persuade Evian to sponsor Share Our
Strength’s Taste of the Nation events, using the same logic that had

266 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
earlier convinced American Express. For several years, Evian was
spending approximately $500,000 each year to help Share Our
Strength fight hunger and to reach their target fi ne-dining audience.
If all things were equal in terms of product quality and pricing, Evi-
an’s commitment to Share Our Strength had given them an edge
with me (and others in my industry) over any erstwhile competitor.
But in later years, Evian had undergone significant changes in
management leadership and distribution; with direction from its
French management, the company had started to retrench in its spon-
sorship of Share Our Strength, cutting back its fi nancial contribu-
tions as well as its overall marketing commitment to the fi ne-dining
community by eliminating a large part of its consumer advertising
budget. It was no coincidence that now, for the first time, I was open
to hearing the enthusiastic comments about Fiji’s quality; and three
of our restaurants made the change. Before doing so, however, I felt
obliged to call a manager at Share Our Strength to help ascertain any
potential conflicts. “I want to make sure that this move on our part
will in no way cause Evian to further remove its support and under-
mine your fi ght against hunger.”
“They’ve already been diminishing their financial support,” the
manager said.“You should do whatever you need to do for your busi-
ness, but thanks for caring enough to ask.”
When we interviewed Fiji, we asked: “Will you join us in sup-
porting causes that are important to us and our community? We’ll ask
you only when we think it will actually help your business.” Their
answer was resoundingly positive.
Fiji came on board, and in 2004 we asked the company to become
a sponsor of our annual Autumn Harvest dinner for SOS, an event
Evian had cosponsored for years.Again, out of loyalty to our relation-
ship, we asked ourselves if we should invite Evian one last time. We
decided not to. But Fiji then asked if it could donate just product, not
money. (Sponsors generally contribute both.) We were very honest:
“Evian has sponsored us historically with both product and dollars.We

267 T h e Vi r t u o u s C y c l e o f E n l i g h t e n e d Ho s p i t a l i t y
made a conscious decision not to go back to them because it might
be uncomfortable now that we have Fiji at Eleven Madison Park”—
that was where the Autumn Harvest dinner was held. “But we can’t
ask you to do less than Evian did.That wouldn’t be fair to Evian, or
to Share Our Strength.” Fiji, fortunately, found the cash.
This isn’t business as usual; most businesses ordinarily just go with
the best supplier that offers the best price. Of course pricing is an
important calculation; but for us, excellence, hospitality, and shared
values must also be prominent factors in the selection process. It’s
hard for me to imagine deriving so much pleasure from the restau-
rant business were it not for the important and enjoyable relationships
we’ve had with our suppliers. And the range of those relationships is
broad: greenmarket farmers, wine producers, meat suppliers, kitchen
repair people, cheese mongers, printers, graphic designers. The en-
thusiasm with which we approach each day is infused with a deep
respect for how well we represent those people who have supplied us
with the tools to succeed.
5. Investors
It’s not natural for a young child to be inclined to share. Until we
were taught by parents and teachers about the importance of sharing,
none of us wanted to do it. Sharing something important to us with
someone else always meant that there would be less of it for us.With
patience, maturity, and practice at the art of negotiating and com-
promise, most of us eventually learned that sharing a toy, a candy bar,
or even a friend could actually enrich the experience of life. Less of
something for us now could ultimately yield more.
That’s the way it is when you choose to take on investors for
your business. I suppose if I had all the money in the world, I might
choose to own 100 percent of the risk and the financial returns. But
I’ve learned over time that while the child in me may want the pie all
to myself, the wisest thing I can do in my own self-interest is to share
pieces of that pie with others. By selling or even giving away some

268 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
pieces, I’ve never given up having control in preparing the recipe, but
I have always ended up with a bigger, better-tasting pie.
For that reason, in each of my businesses I have chosen to share
ownership with managing partners who can earn and purchase a slice
of the pie through their hard work and their excellent, effective ad-
herence to our business values. Ethics, loyalty, longevity, and the high-
est possible leadership skills also count for a lot.These are leaders who
have helped make others on our team successful, whose judgment
mirrors my own, and who, above all, are on my side.There’s nothing
original about my discovery that a business stands a better chance at
thriving when an ownership point of view is present. Clearly, had I
chosen not to share equity with leading managers, I would have di-
minished my own opportunities to expand our business, and short-
changed the potential of each of the restaurants within my company.
As our company has grown, it has done so with the benefi t of
funding from an array of sources. I’ve never done a deal without in-
vesting a sizable amount of my own funds. If I’m not willing to make
a personal bet on the successful outcome of a project, why should I
expect anyone else to do so? Additionally, I welcome and encourage
investments from my managing partners. It gives comfort and confi –
dence to an outside investor—whether it’s a bank, an organization, or
an individual—to know that those of us charged with running the
business have our own “skin” in the game. Beginning with my fi rst
restaurant investment at Union Square Cafe, I invited a few close
relatives to join me in taking on the financial risk of opening a new
restaurant. I had no track record as an entrepreneur, and their faith
in me was clearly an act of love and support more than a reasoned
investment. Fortunately, the restaurant’s performance exceeded our
expectations, and 100 percent of those investors subsequently chose
to come along for the ride at Gramercy Tavern.
It wasn’t until the simultaneous openings of Eleven Madison Park
and Tabla—at the collective cost of more than $11 million—that I ac-
tually needed to solicit significant additional outside funding just to

269 T h e Vi r t u o u s C y c l e o f E n l i g h t e n e d Ho s p i t a l i t y
get the places built and open.With some trepidation I went first to my
grandfather, who was then eighty-eight years old and whom I hadn’t
invited to invest in either of my first two restaurants. His response was
characteristically direct and tough: “I’m in a position where I could
take on the entire piece of the investment you’re talking about, but
I’m not going to do it.You need to find other, nonfamily people to
buy into your plans.You need to know whether this is actually a good
investment. Family members alone won’t tell you. When you fi nd
other support, come tell me and we’ll discus it further.”
I was deflated.Why was he making this so unnecessarily compli-
cated? I turned to a very small group of friends whose combination
of financial wherewithal, sharp business acumen, and longtime loyalty
to me made them seem like excellent candidates. I explained that
these would be long-term investments, and that the time until pay-
back—assuming the restaurants were winners and survived—would
be lengthy.We’d be spending quite a lot to build the restaurants, and
would be further delaying any return on their investment by taking a
necessary leadership role in the revitalization of the park and neigh-
borhood right outside the front door of the restaurants.These restau-
rants were the kind that might one day become New York institu-
tions. At that point, they’d also provide a solid fi nancial return—we
hoped. For any rational investor, from a purely fi nancial standpoint
the time frame for this investment was only mildly attractive lined up
against any number of other possibilities.
Despite that, the funding flowed in. People trusted me and my
management team, and were above all pleased with the opportunity
to affiliate themselves with our new restaurants and with our existing
approach to the restaurant business. They also believed in the invest-
ments as a solid long-term play.
I’ve repeated that model with each subsequent business and have
accepted that my grandfather’s advice was sage. By taking on the
right kind of outside investors, we’ve not only given our business
the fuel necessary to grow, but enlarged our spheres of information,

270 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
advice, wisdom, contacts, and infl uence. The fi duciary responsibil-
ity I feel toward our investors (both managing partners and outside
investors) has also sharpened my own discipline as a businessman to
provide a healthy, sustainable return on their investment.
Investors are a crucial link in the virtuous cycle of enlightened
hospitality. Without trusting, satisfi ed, confident investors we cannot
continue to grow, and therefore cannot provide opportunities for
those members of our staff who are ready to grow. Nor can we rein-
vest in and re-up the kind of operational excellence that made them
want to be associated with our restaurants in the first place. Our in-
vestors understand—and believe—that by taking their place in line
behind our other chief stakeholders, they stand an even better chance
to reap sound, ongoing financial rewards. They are buying into a
business whose employees, customers, community, and suppliers have
been given good reason to support our success. From the moment
I first went into business, I was far more focused on excellence and
hospitality than on profitability.Today, earning a profit is still not the
primary destination for my business, but I know that it is the fuel that
drives everything else we do. Whether you call it enlightened hos-
pitality or enlightened self-interest, it’s the safest and surest business
model I know.

c hap te r 12
Co n t e x t, Co n t e x t, Co n t e x t
I drive my company with an eye on the same kinds of destina-
tions—excellence, growth and profitability—that most other leaders
would have. No matter what the destination, my style as CEO is to
steer Union Square Hospitality Group along a route that represents
a balanced quest for safety, for thrills, and, mostly, for taking the road
less traveled. I tend to view new business opportunities as chances
to explore and learn, rather than as a license to expand the company
without limits, at any cost. I’m not hell-bent on opening the greatest
number of restaurants we are capable of operating. That would feel
reckless and would make it nearly impossible for a company whose
success is based on meaningful human interaction to retain its soul. I
am not too interested in making deals just because we can make them.
Since there will never be more than twenty-four hours in a day, the
careful choices I make about how to spend that time determine the
style with which my colleagues and I will spend it.
I have always believed that you can tell as much about a com-
pany by the deals it does not make as by those it does. Much of the
success we have had has resulted from saying “no, thank you” to op-
portunities that, while initially compelling, would not have been wise
271

272 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
to pursue. In fact, by avoiding some potential mistakes, I sometimes
wonder whether we’ve made much more money by choosing the
right things to say no to, than we have made from those things we’ve
chosen to say yes to. I often try to measure the money we haven’t lost
and all the quality and soul we haven’t squandered.There is much to
learn by understanding what goes into a “no” decision, and there’s an
art to analyzing the deals you don’t make.
Over the years, we’ve declined some amazingly generous offers to
create restaurants in casinos, chic hotels, upscale shopping malls, train
stations, sports stadiums, airports, and office buildings. Many deci-
sions to decline have been primarily driven by our own sense that the
framework within which we’d be doing business just didn’t feel right.
It’s similar to a gallery owner who, having first selected a wonderful
piece of art, must not only take exceptional care to frame, hang, and
light it in the most careful, appropriate way, but also to ask the most
important question: Does this piece of art even belong in this gallery?
To make such decisions with confidence and clarity involves know-
ing who you are, and precisely what your product or brand represents
for your stakeholders. Even when the context feels right, before en-
tering into a deal I also make a very careful “gut check” of my own
sense of personal balance, knowing that a new project will challenge
me (and my colleagues) in every possible way.
Sometimes my senior team and I make as many as fi fteen explor-
atory forays to learn about a new venture that we eventually don’t
undertake. Each step is a process of learning about the specifi cs of
the deal and—even more—an opportunity to “try it on for size,” to
see how saying yes would feel. Too many people throw themselves
into a deal without considering whether or not their business actu-
ally needs the deal or should be undertaking it in the first place. In
the process of exploring a new venture, we make repeated visits to
the prospective site; meet with the landlords, developers, or prospec-
tive partners (in their office as well as ours—since you can learn a
lot by seeing and feeling how people conduct their own business in

273 C o n t e x t , C o n t e x t , C o n t e x t
their own environment); get the flavor of the surrounding commu-
nity (thinking ahead about what role we might one day play there);
and assess our prospects and capacity for fi elding a winning staff.
TH E “YES” CR I T E R I A F O R NE W VE N T U R E S
1. The opportunity fits and enhances our company’s overall
strategic goals and objectives.
2. The opportunity represents a chance to create a business
venture that is perceived as groundbreaking, trailblazing, and
fresh.
3. The timing is right for our company’s capacity to grow with
excellence, especially in terms of our having enough key
employees who are themselves interested and ready to grow.
4. We believe we have the capacity to be category leaders within
whatever niche we are pursuing.
5. We believe our existing businesses will benefit and improve
by virtue of or notwithstanding our pursuing this new
opportunity.
6. We feel excited and passionate about this idea. Pursuing it will
be an opportunity to learn, grow, and have fun!
7. We are excited about doing business in this community.
8. The context is the right fit. Our restaurant and our style of
doing business will be in harmony with its location.
9. An in-depth pro forma analysis convinces us that it is a wise
and safe investment.

274 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
The greatest source of entrepreneurial inspiration for me has
always been my rich storehouse of personal memories and interests,
from which I draw ideas for new business ventures. For instance, I
have always loved sports—and I continue to follow every game of my
hometown team, the St. Louis Cardinals. It has occurred to me from
time to time that there might be something to add to the quality and
kinds of food available at sporting events, a category which has cer-
tainly improved since my youth, but which still has a long way to go.
There must be an enormous number of people who love both sports
and good food. Why should the two be mutually exclusive? And a
little more hospitality at the ballpark certainly wouldn’t diminish a
fan’s enjoyment of the game.
Now that our company has begun to gain experience in the kind
of businesses—off-site catering, burgers, hot dogs, frozen custard, bar-
becue—that could easily be adapted to a sports stadium, I’d be willing
to listen carefully if the right opportunity to do something distinctive
in this niche presented itself at the right time. Sports are entertain-
ment, and so is eating out.An excellent food experience can enhance
the fun of watching your favorite team win, and even take some of
the sting out of a defeat.
One of the more unusual business opportunities I’ve seen was
actually presented to us by a house of worship, asking if we might
be interested in opening a café on its premises. Manhattan has a
number of beautiful old churches sitting on prime real estate. In
recent years many have apparently gone underutilized, with fewer
people attending church regularly. Churches often have a next-door
auxiliary building that can be used as a community center or re-
ception hall. The idea was to create a popular, well-run café in the
adjoining space as a means to entice more people to come to wor-
ship and to realize some income for the congregation. The church
was in the same neighborhood as our restaurants, and the proposal
was definitely worth at least one meeting because it satisfi ed both
our community and our “groundbreaking idea” criteria. But there

275 C o n t e x t , C o n t e x t , C o n t e x t
was no need to go forward.Where would it lead? Which of our staff
members would find this a satisfying move in their careers? Where
was our passion for operating a church café?
We have considered very lucrative proposals whereby we would
open a second unit of one of our existing restaurants in another city,
such as Las Vegas, Miami, Atlantic City, or Tokyo. From a short-term
financial standpoint it has been frustrating to turn down some of
these proposals, but either the timing or the context discouraged a
“yes.” For instance, the underlying premise of Las Vegas—the world’s
most successful marketer of illusion and fantasy—makes it an improb-
able context for an authentic restaurant possessing soul. Since we have
built our company’s long-term success in New York on a foundation
of a genuine sense of place, rather than by selling illusion, those op-
tions didn’t feel like the proper context. This has been particularly
true of our restaurants named and created explicitly for their locations.
Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, and Eleven Madison Park are
not concepts. They are restaurants of, by, and for their communities.
It’s important for me to understand that and act accordingly.
Of course, there may yet come a time when the context, timing,
and value feel just right for us to open something in Las Vegas, or
perhaps in Tokyo, whose restaurant-going public seems to adore all
things “New York.” For example, I would not rule out opening a
Blue Smoke or Tabla in Las Vegas. For me, that context feels more
appropriate for a restaurant with a strong theme. After all, opening a
barbecue restaurant and an Indian fusion restaurant in New York re-
quired a certain culinary poetic license; doing so in Las Vegas would
be no different. And the challenge could be thrilling. But I would
have to be very careful before going forward. I would first have to be-
lieve that, say, Blue Smoke was on a very solid, steady course at home
in New York. Next I’d need to feel confident that our organization
had enough depth, and enough managerial and culinary capacity, so
that I would not have to be the one traveling continually to Las Vegas
or Tokyo or London or wherever. If I were to do that, I would be put-

276 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
ting into jeopardy not only my sense of corporate balance, but also
my sense of personal balance and my preference to spend as much
time as possible with my family.
Another serious consideration is that wherever and whenever we
open a new restaurant we must have the talent and capacity on all
levels to meet our guests’ expectations for high quality. And if our ex-
isting businesses are not constantly improving, then expansion loses all
of its merit.Think of a balloon: it isn’t really a balloon until it’s infl ated,
but as soon as you blow too much air into it, it’s going to pop. Having
seen firsthand the consequences when my father expanded his busi-
ness too rapidly, I am wary of blowing too much air into our balloon.
Often, when businesses fail in our industry it’s because of too much
expansion; quality suffered and the organization couldn’t handle it.
As my company’s leader, I have certainly learned to be decisive
with an appropriate sense of urgency, but I always prefer to make
my decisions after first building consensus among various colleagues,
whose unique vantage points give me further confidence to move
forward. This process can be lengthy, but so long as the spirit of any
decision is consistent with what I’d want, bringing others’ views to
the table allows us to move forward with a more fully realized plan
supported by those who are responsible for its execution. Our
decision-making about whether or not to pursue new deals is always
sharpest when I call on members of my advisory board to advocate
on behalf of their primary role in our company.
First I call on our senior vice president of strategic business de-
velopment, David Swinghamer, as our “secretary of the future and
forward movement.” He is our minister of deals; and he is especially
gifted at imagining, structuring, designing, and developing new proj-
ects. He also creates and analyzes financial models and pro formas. I
rely on our senior vice president for people, Paul Bolles-Beaven, to
tell me if we have the requisite depth of human capacity and essen-
tial training systems we’ll need for more growth. Our senior vice
president of operations, Richard Coraine, is my secret weapon for

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277 C o n t e x t , C o n t e x t , C o n t e x t
assessing whether we can actually execute a plan. He knows what it
takes to make things work at the level of excellence expected from us.
Our culinary senior vice president, Michael Romano, who excels at
carefully figuring out the specifics of any recipe, helps to stop a half-
baked plan, contributes essential know-how to kitchen design, and
contributes his wise culinary counsel to ensure that what we end up
with is delicious.
I meet with this “kitchen cabinet” for ninety minutes every Tues-
day morning to discuss and debate the strategic direction of our com-
pany.We also include our chief adviser and “wisdom keeper,” Richard
Goldberg, a penetrating thinker and brilliant teacher who assumed
that role for us after his retirement as a partner at the law fi rm Pros-
kauer Rose.
Also at the table is Jenny Dirksen, our director of community
investment, who’s there to take minutes to assure that we follow
through on agreements and do what we say we’re going to do. She
is our “agenda keeper.” Each participant may initiate and “own” a
weekly agenda item so long as he or she relays it to Jenny by the end
of the previous week and provides the rest of us with any supporting
collateral materials so we can prepare for the discussion in advance.
As an experienced colleague whose views are valued, Jenny is free to
express dissenting, supporting, or new perspectives on whatever it is
we’re discussing. These meetings give me a balanced input on deci-
sions I’ll need to make about our company, with the point of view of
just about all of our stakeholders represented by a trusted associate.
Even after all the business aspects of a prospective new deal are
discussed, dissected, and examined, I always call on Audrey, who, as
my “secretary of life balance,” generally has an opinion as to whether
a presumably good business decision is or isn’t a good thing for me
and our family.
Audrey is the first to notice when I’m out of balance, and call me
on it. She knows that I tend to approach a new opportunity the way
mountain climbers assess another mountain. It’s a tempting challenge

278 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
that may look quite good from afar; but on closer scrutiny, many op-
portunities are far from good. I’m curious to see the view going up
the mountain, and I’m curious to see it from on top of the mountain.
One aspect of climbing I especially enjoy is the adventure and chal-
lenge of getting to know all the people with whom I’ll collaborate
along the way. Each business journey attracts a new and different
group of players—chef, general manager, cooks, waiters, hosts, res-
ervationists, managers, bookkeepers. The joy I derive from creating
something new with a fresh ensemble is a major part of what I enjoy
about growth. I also check in with a small group of longtime trusted
friends and mentors before I make a decision. Many of them are ac-
quaintances and even customers, and some have become investors in
our new restaurants. Their business perspectives and expertise have
often proved indispensable. They also know me well enough to call
me on the carpet when that is warranted—always doing so out of a
sense of support, and with respect. I’ve taken great care to surround
myself with highly capable people of integrity, each of whom brings
something different to the table, and often something I am lacking.
“What are you thinking?” is neither an uncommon nor an unwelcome
response to some of my unbridled dreaming.
It’s David’s role to explore and help create new business ventures
that are true to our strategic vision and to further the dialogue with
a prospective business partner. If things advance to a second conver-
sation, David and I then discuss the project with our other partners,
who most often shoot holes in it. Michael brings thoughtful bal-
ance to this group, being somewhat risk-averse and highly analytical.
Richard Coraine is the ultimate realist. He knows what it takes to
launch a new business, and he doesn’t mince words. He also knows
food and wine and lives for the tireless discovery of the best. He’s ac-
tively involved in the selection of chefs and general managers. He’ll
most often stick to his guns whenever our growth seems to outpace
our ability to execute at the highest levels of quality. After all, when
something goes awry, he and his operations team will be the ones

279 C o n t e x t , C o n t e x t , C o n t e x t
most responsible for fixing it. Paul keeps us focused on the quality
and capacities of the people who work in our organization, knowing
that they are our core strength. He’s the adviser who best knows how
much or how little “people depth” we have at any given time. And
as the only one of my colleagues who’s been with me since day one
in 1985, Paul also has a deep knowledge of what makes me—and
us—tick.
I actively seek and benefit from my partners’ input, a process that
often generates some healthy tension among us. The conversation is
always candid, passionate, and constructive. I carefully weigh all of
their views as well as my own gut as I study our options. Making a
unilateral decision to grow is not my style, and I believe that such
a decision won’t lead to optimum success down the road. Being in
agreement is important so that when we go into the new business,
we’ll be a more effective team and better able to excel.
I don’t reg ret any of the “no” decisions we have made, but to
this day I have occasional misgivings about passing up an opportunity
to create a new restaurant in the Metropolis Cafe space next door
to Union Square Cafe in the early 1990s. Even though I am entirely
convinced that this was the right decision for our company at the
time, it’s about the only deal we passed up that I continue to think of,
primarily because I walk by the space nearly every day.
Metropolis Cafe had opened just days before Union Square Cafe
in 1985; and more than any other restaurant space overlooking the
park, the Metropolis, on the northwest corner of East Sixteenth Street
and Union Square West, benefited from the increased development
and energy surrounding Union Square. Nowadays, the park is almost
always filled with a diverse group of residents, business people, students,
shoppers, theatergoers, and tourists. The Metropolis space fronts di-
rectly on the square, and along its long East Sixteenth Street side, con-
tiguous to Union Square Cafe, it has a narrow strip of a terrace that is

280 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
a compelling place to sit and watch an endless parade of passersby, not
unlike a café on the Via Veneto in Rome. Our two restaurants shared
a landlord, and I had a neighborly relationship with the outgoing res-
taurateur, so I was given the opportunity to take a first look.The con-
text and location were ideal; the issue was the timing, which was off
by a couple of years. Intrigued though I was, I just did not have it in
me then to open a second restaurant. I still wasn’t ready emotionally;
nor were we prepared as a business. In 1991 I was still struggling with
whether or not I would or should ever expand my company.
Despite any second thoughts about having passed up that space
and missing out on operating a bustling, highly profitable café with
outdoor seating just off the park, I know I made the right decision
at that time. Given our lack of managerial depth at all levels coupled
with my own ambivalence, a restaurant in that space would likely
have proved problematic.And had I said yes, Gramercy Tavern would
never have been born three years later.
Metropolis Cafe was the last remaining great space adjacent to
Union Square Park.That frontier had closed, but by 1996, and with
Gramercy Tavern beginning to hit its stride, I thought the timing
was right for us to begin thinking about the next project. I now
knew that the gestation period for one of my restaurants was often
three years from initial idea to opening day. I had become deter-
mined to be a restaurant pioneer on Madison Square Park, and to
take a leading role in that park’s restoration. I remember thinking
that creating a restaurant overlooking Madison Square Park—deso-
late as it was back then—would be like flying to the moon and
planting the fi rst fl ag.
In order to do a gut check on how much I really want to take a
space or do a deal, I always ask myself whether I would do this deal if it
were given to me for free.That sounds simplistic, I know, but it works.
Believe it or not, my answer to this question is most often “no.”
When Tom Colicchio and I scoured the city in 1993 in search of a
location for the new restaurant we were cooking up together (which

281 C o n t e x t , C o n t e x t , C o n t e x t
would eventually become Gramercy Tavern), we went one day to the
site of the recently shuttered Coach House Restaurant in Greenwich
Village. We walked through the depressing space, which had once
been a glorious American restaurant—it received four stars from
Mimi Sheraton in the New York Times and was a favorite of James
Beard’s. Now it was musty and depressing: there are few things more
putrid than the stench of a dead restaurant. After touring the place,
we walked across the street, looked at the building, and refl ected.
“I don’t think I would want that even if it were free,” I said.Tom
wholeheartedly agreed, and we passed it up.
Not long thereafter, Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich opened the
excellent and enormously popular Babbo in that very space, creat-
ing magic within those walls.Their guts told them that the space was
right for their vision. It just wasn’t right for ours.
Selecting a restaurant space is a lot like trying on a pair of new shoes.
The style has to be right, the size has to fit, and they have to feel good,
or I simply won’t buy them. If I did buy them, I’d never wear them.
I’ve declined a significant number of sweetheart deals from developers
that were essentially offered for free. I understand how that resistance
can frustrate my partners and investors. But the fact that something is
free alone doesn’t make it wise or compelling to proceed.
Also, there really is no such thing as a free lunch. We’ve learned
that even when a landlord or developer is generous in offering to
contribute some or all of the costs associated with building a new
restaurant, there are proprietary expectations to consider that are real
and very natural. For example, The Modern is our restaurant, but it
must operate in harmony with the overall goals of the Museum of
Modern Art. We are prohibited from using our restaurants there for
weddings or fund-raisers—two typical sources of profi table business.
Eleven Madison Park and Tabla are also our restaurants, but they op-
erate with sensitivity to the business goals of the mammoth offi ce
building (headquarters of Credit Suisse) in which they are housed.
We must keep the building informed of every new initiative we un-

282 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
dertake, and sometimes our business is affected by its needs. For ex-
ample, after 9/11 the building increased its security, and we had to
decrease the serving area of Tabla’s outdoor patio to accommodate a
huge concrete planter constructed to prevent a wayward vehicle from
penetrating the building.
I don’t take a “rearview mirror” approach to life. Generally, I
drive looking straight ahead. But I do try to spend time analyzing the
wisdom of choices I’ve made not to go forward with new ventures;
and that analysis requires abundant self-awareness and some hindsight.
There are a handful of difficult “nos”—projects that I thought would
have been the right fit for our company but that presented them-
selves at the wrong time. Other assessments have led me to conclude
it was the right time for a project, but the wrong fit. A yes decision
has to meet both of those criteria. My regret isn’t that I came to the
wrong conclusion, but that I made a difficult, though correct, deci-
sion about what our company needed at a precise moment in time.
I remember the difficult decisions my colleagues and I made to
decline opportunities to open restaurants at the W Hotel and the
Gramercy Park Hotel in Manhattan. In 1997, just as Starwood Hotels
was planning to launch its new “W” brand, senior executives reached
out to us to discuss creating the restaurant for their first W Hotel in
New York, on Lexington Avenue and Fiftieth Street. I had three core
concerns. First, the timing was definitely wrong. These discussions
took place while we were in the process of conceiving and designing
Eleven Madison Park and Tabla.That double project alone had forced
me to question whether or not I could maintain excellence at my
two existing restaurants while simultaneously opening and operat-
ing two new restaurants at 11 Madison Avenue. Some people already
thought we were crazy to be opening two ambitious fi ne-dining
places at once, so adding another new project—no matter how excit-
ing—would have been mad. It would take attention, focus, and time
to develop the kind of soul necessary to make the two new restau-
rants into great restaurants. I didn’t feel we needed another project.

283 C o n t e x t , C o n t e x t , C o n t e x t
The second issue was location: I was still insisting that I needed
to be able to walk to each of my restaurants from home within fi ve
minutes. (The first exception I made, and only after nineteen years,
was for the opportunity to create a restaurant and cafés for MoMA.)
The third issue was context. Here I was thinking of the W Hotels
brand itself.The Starwood executives I met were extremely effective
at communicating how they would position their new brand. What
they described was a trendy, hip, sexy, more youthful version of a
Four Seasons hotel. They were out to attract high-end, experienced
travelers looking for a bit of nightclub in their hotel experience. But
anytime I hear or sense “trendy” (as opposed to “enduring”) as an
important aspect of what’s going on, my antennae go up. It all comes
down to knowing what you stand for and putting your product in
the proper context. None of that description sounded like any of the
restaurants I had opened to date, and so we passed up the offer. Nei-
ther the timing nor location nor the context fi t.
In 1999, not long after we’d opened Eleven Madison Park and
Tabla, Starwood’s developers approached us again, this time about
creating a restaurant for their next big W Hotel, to be situated in the
renovated landmark Guardian Life Building, just off Union Square.
The timing now felt right, the location was perfect, and the W had
successfully realized the initial, very hip vision of its brand; but the
context still didn’t pass my gut check. Tabla, whose sensuous fl avors
and décor were attracting a dynamic clientele, might have been an apt
concept, but we had just opened it eight blocks to the north. Once
again, we passed up the offer.
In 2004 we were invited by the hotelier Ian Schrager (then the
owner of the Royalton and the Hudson Hotel in New York and the
Delano in Miami) to open a restaurant as part of his very upscale ren-
ovation of the Gramercy Park Hotel. It overlooked another gorgeous
park in New York, and it was a tempting opportunity. David Swing-
hamer and I knew we should closely examine its context, timing, and
value for our company.The hotel was about as centrally and perfectly

284 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
located as anything could possibly be, directly across the street from
Gramercy Park, just blocks from our office and five of our restau-
rants, and a stone’s throw away from my home. Given our history
of wanting to connect restaurants with parks and to be on parks, we
met twice with Schrager. He lavished praise on our restaurants and
discussed the generous business terms he had in mind, which were
impossible to ignore. I sat there thinking, This will be a huge, lucrative
business for someone. How can we not do it?
Schrager, famous for having founded Studio 54 in 1977 with the
late Steve Rubell, described his vision for his new hotel as a “down-
town version of the Pierre,” a classy grande dame of a hotel that over-
looks Central Park, and said he was ready to create his own enduring
legacy—one that would be a perfect context for the kind of “New
York institution” we were known to create.
Still, I was wary. “I want to make sure that we’re not putting a
trendy frame on a traditional painting here,” I told him. “You may say
you want nothing more than to have our painting hanging in your
hotel, but as much as I admire your style, it’s quite different from ours.”
“You’ve got to trust me,” he said. “I’ve changed. No more Page
Six.We’re going for a low profile. For quality.This is going to be my
masterpiece. I’ll even share the bar business and give you the banquet
opportunities for your new catering company.Trust me.You are per-
fect for this.” He was beginning to be convincing.
By our ballpark calculations, he was handing us a potential
$12 million business. I was almost willing to ignore my gut and take
a leap of faith on the context, considering how effectively he had ad-
dressed all our concerns.
Against that temptation, I spent a week arguing with myself: This
is a born-again Ian Schrager. He’s no longer interested in hot places, not in-
terested in the New York Post’s Page Six. Not interested in paparazzi and
gossip. His company has upscale hotels all over the world. He says he wants to
do something of substance that will stand the test of time.That’s precisely why
he’s calling us. If he merely wanted to create a hot new restaurant, he could

285 C o n t e x t , C o n t e x t , C o n t e x t
have called any number of other restaurateurs all over the world with whom
he has relationships.They would say yes in a heartbeat.
The deal was favorable. David wanted us to explore the strate-
gic fit: would there be abundant banquet space that could be served
by our forthcoming new company, Hudson Yards Catering? Paul
wondered if the new restaurant would provide growth opportuni-
ties for any of our top staff members, and, as importantly, whether
or not we had enough of them to go around. Was anyone on our
team ready to be promoted to chef or general manager? Looking
ahead, would anyone be prepared in thirty months, when the hotel
was to open? Audrey had another wise question. Perhaps this restau-
rant was too well located:“Do you really want to walk right by your
restaurant every morning and night as you walk the dog and take
the kids to school? You’ll never get away from it.” Also, Schrager’s
restaurant would butt up against the enormous project we had just
undertaken at the Museum of Modern Art. Even though the hotel
opening would be nearly three years away, we were so involved
with the launch of our MoMA restaurants that there wasn’t even
enough time or mind space to dream. Saved by timing! It kept
me from soul-searching over whether the context was truly right.
Tempting as this offer was, we passed it up.
There’s another kind of “road not taken”—a decision that falls
between a definitive no and an unequivocal yes. A potentially excel-
lent venture may not be something we should pursue at the time
of the offer, but might very well become right in due time. For
example, JetBlue Airways approached us to get into the business of
airport food kiosks. It was worth listening just for the opportunity to
learn more about an engaging company whose culture of excellence
and employees-first hospitality seemed so closely aligned with ours.
The JetBlue officials explained that the opportunity had enormous
growth potential, given the significant amount of “dwell time” trav-
elers now spend in airports because of the increased security after
9/11, and because the airline does not serve passenger meals. The

286 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
sales potential appeared quite large. “We love your restaurants,” their
people told us. “We love the way you do business. It feels consistent
with our culture.We want to be on the cutting edge of this business
and we’d like to talk to you about it.”
We were delighted to meet them at their hub, John F. Kennedy
International Airport, and take a good look at their blueprints and
plans for their terminal. But once again, the timing wasn’t right for
us.With a year to go before opening at MoMA, we were entirely fo-
cused on that project and lacked the additional organizational capac-
ity we’d need to succeed at this new opportunity. But by exploring it,
we did realize that the time might come someday for us to venture
into the airport food business.The risk in saying “not yet” is that an
opportunity could be taken by some other, more prepared company.
Still, our hope was that if we built a solid relationship with JetBlue
and did not put our reputation for (and ability to deliver) quality in
jeopardy, some aspect of the opportunity might one day jibe with
our own timing. I trusted that there could come a time when we
would have the operational, tactical, and human capacity to pull it off,
especially since we were just about to build a large off-site kitchen
facility for our Hudson Yards Catering venture. (Hudson Yards was a
logical outgrowth of our deal with the Museum of Modern Art, for
which we were to become the “preferred caterer.” It also made sense
to launch an off-premises catering business as an effective and profi t-
able way to extend our brand of culinary excellence and enlightened
hospitality into the off-premises event niche.)
Moreover, we were developing businesses—Blue Smoke, Shake
Shack, and Cafe 2—that could be adapted smoothly for airport ter-
minals. There might even one day be a way to open a Bread Bar
concession stand for Indian “street” food, or to create something new
from scratch that would effectively add to the dialogue on how food
is viewed and enjoyed in airports.

287 C o n t e x t , C o n t e x t , C o n t e x t
Timing is everything. There is an important art not only to determining whether one should or should not go into a
deal, but to knowing whether one might want to go into such
a deal somewhere down the road. Especially in cases where
timing was the decisive factor in not making a deal, there is
value in remaining in close contact with the potential future
partner. While it’s true that today’s potential business deal may
later evaporate, it also may one day evolve into something
bigger, better, and more richly textured. Patience has its rewards.
I want to expand our company on my own terms. My unwav-
ering, long-term vision of our company is that everything else is
subsidiary to context—no matter how seductive a prospective deal
may appear. In the early 2000s, we were shown plans for, and briefl y
flirted with opening, a restaurant in Manhattan’s enormous Time
Warner Center at Columbus Circle. One fundamental issue was that
a number of other elite dining establishments would also be opening
there. That clustering of excellent eateries was the reason develop-
ers felt the complex would be so successful—they believed the res-
taurants would constitute a critical mass. But I didn’t feel especially
comfortable joining a collection of great restaurants in a Manhattan
shopping mall, no matter how beautiful it was supposed to be.
In almost every way, the opportunity at Time Warner didn’t feel
ideal for us. First, beyond my own personal preferences, I believe
that other New Yorkers also prefer to dine out at street-level restau-
rants that are themselves destinations, rather than being ensconced in
higher floors of a shopping center. Second, the mall itself, and peoples’
experience of going to the mall, was not a frame that seemed right
or would add any value for any restaurant that we might open there.
Third, opening in the Time Warner Center would not have marked

288 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
any kind of growth or evolution in the kind of company we are:
There was no true community to engage (with the possible excep-
tion of Jazz at Lincoln Center), and there was no niche we could
creatively fi ll. It was a deal I knew we didn’t need.
I became convinced that I was making the right decision the day
I drove my daughter Hallie, who was then eight years old, home from
a weekend soccer game. In slow traffic, we inched by the Columbus
Circle site, which was then just a deep construction pit.“What would
you think,” I asked Hallie, “if Daddy opened a restaurant there?” She
stared over at the hole in the ground. “Why would you open a res-
taurant in there?” she asked.
“Oh, it’s going to be a beautiful new building,” I explained, there’s
going to be a fancy hotel (the Mandarin Oriental), a beautiful jazz
hall ( Jazz at Lincoln Center), and a big TV station (CNN) is going to
be there too. A lot of people who like restaurants will live at the top,
in a really tall apartment building.There are going to be all kinds of
nice shops, a grocery store, a gym, and they’re going to have four or
fi ve other great restaurants there.”
With that, Hallie burst into tears. “I never want you to have a
restaurant where people are going there for some other reason than
to go to your restaurant. People go to your restaurants because they
want to be at your restaurant,” she said.
That day, I added Hallie to my list of unofficial advisers. I knew
she was right. It was her wise way of telling me that the context
would not have been right for our company.
Context, context, context! For years I had heard the business mantra, “Location, location, location”—an ironclad
principle that the key to the success for any retail establishment
was picking the right address to set up shop. My own experience
indicates that a far more significant contributor to success is

289 C o n t e x t , C o n t e x t , C o n t e x t
context. A powerful example is Tiffany’s famous blue box. The
box is the context that provides a strong indication of what
you can expect to find inside. Whatever is in that box may not
be the exact gift you were anticipating, but it must be entirely
consistent with your expectations of something that belongs in
a Tiffany box. The box enhances the value of the object inside;
and conversely, the object inside supports and further defi nes the
meaning of the blue box. That’s not location. That’s context!
I had a chance not long afterward to tell Hallie about yet another
venture—again, at a site where thousands of people would be gath-
ering for purposes other than for dining. But this time, there would
be no restaurants other than ours at the site.We would have our own
entrance for our guests, and we would have a chance to add some-
thing to the dialogue on dining for people who would be visiting the
site anyway.
In many ways, opening The Modern and two visitor cafés at the
Museum of Modern Art was the biggest gamble that I’d ever un-
dertaken, and a test of my organization’s core business values and
competence. But if ever there was a case to be made for growing
and stretching, this was it.We’d be in very new territory in terms of
concept, context, and complexity. If we could pull this venture off, it
would open unimaginable new doors of opportunity for our busi-
ness.

c hap te r 13
Th e Ar t o f Ho s p i t a l i t y
Novembe r 20, 20 04, was a day I’ll never forget. New York’s
Museum of Modern Art, which to my art-loving family’s way of
thinking vied for interest with the seven wonders of the world, had
closed for major renovations in 2001. Now, on this red-letter day
three years later, it was reopening after a stunning new expansion as
the art world looked on in anticipation. And Union Square Hospital-
ity Group was part of all this, opening not just one but four eating es-
tablishments within the museum’s complex. For us this was not just a
matter of conceiving and operating all of the food service at MoMA;
it was about doing so during the high-profi le relaunch of an interna-
tionally renowned institution. The degree of pressure and scrutiny I
felt numbed me into a surreal sense of calm.
As a businessman, I listen to two internal voices. First, there is
one urging me to succeed, expand, and grow.The other is a persistent
ambivalent voice whispering,“Caution: go deeper, go slower.” Some-
times I have to get smacked in the face a few times before my com-
petitive juices start flowing and I say,“OK, I’m ready for it.” I’d really
291

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292 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
wanted our company to win the high-stakes competition for the
MoMA contract, but now that we had it, I wondered if we’d bitten
off more than we could chew.
The museum had been doing everything possible to overcome all
kinds of complicated last-minute construction obstacles and delays so
that it could be ready for its announced reopening on November 20,
and it mandated that we be open that day too. Making matters even
more challenging for us, MoMA had decided to offer free admission
to the public on November 20—there would be 20,000 people de-
scending on the museum that day.There was no way to tell them they
couldn’t come to the restaurant; ready or not, we just had to serve
them. Despite having only four days to train our staff, we managed to
get Cafe 2, our fresh take on the traditional museum cafeteria, open
that day, and we served around 1,500 people there.We served another
500 hungry visitors at Terrace 5, our café for desserts and light fare;
and 250 more guests in the Bar Room portion of The Modern, the
only part of that restaurant which we were even remotely prepared
to open on November 20. (For several nights leading up to the open-
ing, I had uncomfortable visions of museum trustees and executives
peering at us with disapproval, wondering why they had selected us,
and why we weren’t yet on top of our game.And that was in addition
to even sharper concerns about what the critics would have to say.)
Because the museum prohibits open-flame cooking at Cafe 2 and Ter-
race 5 (the kitchen is in the basement, and with no service-elevator
access to the fi fth floor), our inexperienced staff members were
pushing white carts full of meals and dishes up and down the public
elevators, riding cheek to jowl with the throngs of visitors.
Our new staff members brought a bright attitude to work that day,
but I was concerned about whether we had done enough to prepare
them for the onslaught I knew they were about to face. In just over
three months, we’d enlarged our overall USHG staff by nearly 50 per-
cent, from 650 to more than 1,000 employees. And we’d engineered
that buildup under substandard circumstances: We’d had insuffi cient

293 T h e A r t o f Ho s p i t a l i t y
time for careful interviewing, hiring, and training them. In fact we
had no place to train them. Because construction delays meant there
was no certificate of occupancy for the restaurants, it wasn’t until Oc-
tober that these spaces were even habitable. And even had we hired
the staff, there was no locker room available—there was not even a
staff bathroom.At one point on opening day, as I watched the snaking
line of people waiting to get into Terrace 5 brush up against Henri
Rousseau’s The Dream, I had two distinct reactions that encapsulated
my ecstatic anguish at achieving this day at MoMA.
First: Oh, my God.We’ve just opened a restaurant with one of the art
world’s greatest masterpieces hanging outside the front door!
Second: Oh, my God.The people wating in line to eat at my restaurant
are going to ruin the masterpiece, and I’ll be responsible!
The courage to grow demands the courage to let go. Whenever you expand in business—not just the restaurant
business—the process is incredibly challenging, especially for
leaders who first rose to the top because of their tendency to
want to control all the details.You have to let go.You have to
surround yourself with ambassadors— people who know how
to accomplish goals and make decisions, while treating people
the way you would. They’re comfortable expressing themselves
within the boundaries of your business culture, and content with
the role they play in helping a larger team achieve its greatest
potential success.
Opening a new restaurant can make some of your existing cus-
tomers irate. Each time we’ve undertaken a new venture, a certain
percentage of our existing customer base opts not to come along

294 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
with us. Some people won’t even try the new place; some others go
just once out of politeness. My first awareness of that reality was a
crushing blow for me. You mean not everything we do is necessarily lovable
to those who love us?
But this has happened so regularly that I’ve had the chance to
analyze what’s going on. Sometimes our loyalists are unable to em-
brace a new restaurant, just as an older child may not fully celebrate
the arrival of a newborn sibling. Customers have a natural fear that
we might forget them. You can almost hear some of them saying,
“Why the hell is he going into Indian food? Now he’s going into the
barbecue business? Is he off his rocker? What? Another one? Frozen
custard? This is the end. I’m done. He doesn’t love me anymore.”
One of the fi rst people to express that concern to me was Paul
Gottlieb, then publisher at Harry N.Abrams. Paul began eating lunch
at table 24 at Union Square Cafe in 1985 and continued to do so on
more days than not for the next eighteen years. He became a great
friend—always providing caring feedback—and we talked frequently.
His reactions were typically paternal and direct, starting with the fi rst
time I told him about my plans to open Gramercy Tavern in 1994.
“You’re not going to open a second restaurant!” he said. “We’ll never
see you here again. It won’t be the same.”
Paul, who was also a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art, ex-
pressed the same concern about my expanding four years later, with
the opening of Tabla and Eleven Madison Park.Yet, ironically, it was
he who in the early 1990s, even before Gramercy Tavern existed, had
first tried to persuade me to open a restaurant at MoMA. We met
at his office, and Paul spoke on behalf of the board of trustees. The
museum then had a restaurant on its second floor called the Members’
Dining Room. I had been fascinated with MoMA since I was a child:
people on both sides of my family were serious collectors of modern
art, and my mother had run an art gallery and was a trustee of the St.
Louis Art Museum. Our kitchen calendar was always from MoMA,
and our home was furnished with all kinds of products from the mu-

295 T h e A r t o f Ho s p i t a l i t y
seum’s design collection. In fact, for the twenty-five years my parents
were married, the bond they most consistently shared, beyond their
children, seemed to be their mutual affection for contemporary art.
Paul’s entreaty was compelling, but after two or three enticing
meetings and lots of careful thought, I told him that I simply wasn’t
ready to open a second restaurant, and that if I ever did, I couldn’t
imagine opening one in midtown. I lived downtown and understood
how important being able to walk to all my restaurants had been as
a factor in our success. Nor did it seem to make economic sense to
operate a restaurant in which people could eat only during museum
hours. This would essentially be a lunch restaurant—and one that
didn’t have its own separate sidewalk entrance.
Paul remained a close friend and source of sage advice through
the years. One day in mid-2001 he called and said he had something
very exciting to tell me. “We’re closing the museum,” he confi ded
when we met. “There’s going to be a fantastic expansion and reno-
vation unlike anything in our history.” He added, “We want to put a
restaurant in the new MoMA, and this time we’re serious about the
food. The museum is ready to discuss a stand-alone restaurant with
its own street entrance.”
Recalling our discussion a decade earlier, he said, “This time
around, you need to take it seriously.What you and your team could
do with dining at the Museum of Modern Art could be amazing.
There will definitely be others competing for this, but you must
submit a proposal.”
That meeting was one of the last times we ever spoke. Paul died
suddenly a few weeks later at the age of sixty-seven, long before those
who had the honor of knowing him were prepared to say good-bye.
His revelation about MoMA’s historic expansion—and his insistence
that we be a part of it—started me on a passionate pursuit whose out-
come ultimately became a legacy of our long friendship.
In November 2001, David Swinghamer and I had our fi rst in-
troductory meeting with the two senior executives at MoMA: James

296 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
Gara and Mike Margitich.We learned that the museum would reopen
not just with a restaurant but also with three cafés—two for museum
visitors and another for its staff. The restaurant organization selected
for this opportunity would also become the “preferred” (but not ex-
clusive) caterer for museum events.The museum executives urged us
to consider opening a concession stand at MoMA QNS, the muse-
um’s temporary quarters in Long Island City, Queens, during its three-
year absence from Manhattan.They enthusiastically told us about the
throngs of people who would be attending the forthcoming block-
buster Matisse-Picasso show at MoMA QNS. From our conversation,
it seemed implicit that whoever ran the temporary concession would
earn their favor and enjoy a competitive edge in landing the big deal
when MoMA eventually reopened on West Fifty-third Street.
At about this time, my assistant, Jenny Dirksen (now our director of community investment), shared a priceless
expression her grandmother had taught her: One tuchas can’t
dance at two weddings. It’s nice to be invited to a lot of parties.
But as much as you may want to attend them all, it’s important
to acknowledge that you can be in only one place at a time, and
do one thing well. My own grandfather used to express similar
wisdom: Doing two things like a half-wit never equals doing one
thing like a whole wit.
Regrettably, the timing for the concession in Queens could hardly
have been worse.We were still in the throes of preopening construc-
tion at Blue Smoke, and it didn’t take long to determine that we did
not have the wherewithal to do both projects well. It was extremely
diffi cult to turn MoMA down again, but that was the right decision.

297 T h e A r t o f Ho s p i t a l i t y
Still, we assured the museum that we would be very interested in
discussing the larger project down the road; and to keep our relation-
ship with MoMA alive, we conducted several more meetings with
executives, curators, and trustees over the next year. One opportunity
presented itself when the museum temporarily shifted its basement
film center to the Gramercy Theater on East Twenty-third Street off
Lexington Avenue—a short walk from three of our restaurants. We
created a co-marketing deal: museum members who came to see a
MoMA film received a certificate good for dessert at Eleven Madison
Park, Tabla, or Blue Smoke. We kept our irons in the fire until late
2002, when the museum set the deadline for receiving proposals.
Serving food in MoMA seemed like a remarkable opportunity,
and yet we weren’t entirely sure we really wanted to win this thing.
Having received countless pitches from real estate developers over the
years, we had always had the luxury of being selective about which
ones to weigh seriously. Having the tables turned and being judged
by others was uncomfortable. I also had my usual nagging mixed feel-
ings about the pace at which we were now growing and at which we
would continue to grow if we were to prevail. The MoMA project
would transform our business by bringing us into the world of insti-
tutional dining, quick-service cafés, and catering.And all the new em-
ployees it would require to staff four new dining establishments and
an off-premises catering facility would make the company balloon
in size. Wasn’t this the kind of expansionist dreaming that my more
sober-minded colleagues and relatives had always counseled against?
But something unusual happened.The people in my life whom I
had always counted on to ask,“What are you thinking, Danny?” were
actually encouraging me. Right up until he died, Paul Gottlieb, who
had groaned with dismay every time I opened another restaurant, was
relentless in urging me to submit a proposal to MoMA. My mother,
whose skeptical view of business growth had been colored by my
father’s failed expansions, was now a member of MoMA’s Prints and
Illustrated Books committee and was tickled by the idea of our open-

298 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
ing a restaurant there. My grandfather Irving Harris had been a gen-
erous supporter of MoMA. He was now in the sunset of his life, but
he urged me on.And then there was my own voice. I was increasingly
confident in the capacity of the leadership team I had surrounded
myself with. Most important, I trusted myself and my own motives.
So, the chance to create something for the Museum of Modern
Art excited me.This was one venture I viewed not just as a business
opportunity but also as a tremendous privilege. Then Audrey, who
knew how consuming this project would be for me—and for our
family—said,“Of course you’ve got to go for this!” That settled it.
I didn’t know (and still have no idea) whom we were compet-
ing with in the selection process, but I did know that the thorough,
painstaking evaluations (conducted for the museum by PriceWater-
houseCoopers) would be focused on three broad categories:
• Our overall creative vision—how we would conceive of the
restaurant, the cafés, and the catering for museum events.
• The value of our financial package to the museum (what kind
of capital investment we’d propose making along with the
museum to build the restaurants, and how much we’d pro-
pose paying in rent).
• What we brought to the table in the way of relevant experi-
ence and organizational capacity to indicate that we’d actually
be able to pull all this off.
Conceiving the restaurant itself, would no doubt be challenging,
but it seemed relatively straightforward in terms of our prior experi-
ence.Tackling the two very different visitor cafés within the museum
as well as the cafeteria for MoMA’s staff would be a fresh challenge.
And the blueprints for the museum didn’t indicate enough space had
been allocated for a catering kitchen, so it was clear we’d have to
lease space and build an additional kitchen elsewhere. Funding all

299 T h e A r t o f Ho s p i t a l i t y
this would present its own steep hurdles, but the biggest question was
whether we could actually juggle all those plates at the same time.
If ever we were to launch a restaurant outside the familiar pre-
cinct in which we had done business for twenty years, MoMA felt
like the ideal place. The museum is viewed in the world of art pre-
cisely as I dreamed our restaurants might be in the world of fi ne
dining: an institution that endures and is at once forward-looking,
sensibly grounded in tradition, and relevant today.
I asked David Swinghamer to do much of the legwork for the
proposal. We didn’t go nuts trying to create the sexiest-looking pre-
sentation of all time, although we did enlist the professional support
of Eric Baker, the imaginative graphic designer we had worked with
on the logo for Blue Smoke, as well as many other projects.The pro-
posal was a simple eleven-page document, describing our identity
and why we saw ourselves as being a good fit for MoMA. Our fi nan-
cial offer assured MoMA that we’d have plenty of skin in the game
(in terms of how much of our own money we’d be investing in the
build-outs, as well as what percentage of sales we’d be paying to the
museum as rent); our ideas for the restaurant and cafés were creative,
reasoned, and sound; and as for relevant experience, that would be
entirely up to MoMA to judge.
During the selection process, we chose not to lobby anyone con-
nected to MoMA, even though I was well aware that a number of
regular guests at our restaurants were trustees who might be involved
in the selection. If we were chosen, I wanted the choice to be based on
merit. Later, there would be plenty of opportunity to compete with
passion at making the restaurant, cafés, and catering operations the best
they could be. We were asked to participate in a few intensive inter-
views with members of the museum’s senior executive team. I felt fully
prepared to fi eld their questions, and the experience was exhilarating.
About ninety days after we had submitted the proposal, we re-
ceived a call from MoMA’s chief operating officer, James Gara: we
had been chosen. Within moments, another call arrived, this one

300 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
from a trustee, Bob Menschel, who was warm in his congratulations
and generous in his praise. At first the news was numbing; in a fl ash
I began to imagine the extraordinary amount of work that lay ahead
of us. And being MoMA’s choice didn’t mean that we had a deal. As
it turned out, eight months of detailed work and negotiations still
remained before we would actually sign our deal in November 2003.
During those eight months we were not permitted to announce or
discuss our selection with anyone.
We batted around different rent structures for our various food
businesses and established that MoMA would have control over what
kinds of art could and would be displayed in our dining rooms. We
determined that the museum would have approval rights over our
design of the restaurants, as well as in our choice of chef and gen-
eral manager. (The museum’s reasoning was that our dining facilities
would be a representative extension of the museum experience, and
that this high level of control would insure the institution against in-
appropriate or poor hiring decisions on our part.) We went back and
forth over real-estate issues, debated design layouts down to the inch,
struggled to find adequate space for our back-of-the-house offi ces,
debated whose phone system we would use, and agreed about which
museum restrooms were available to or off-limit for our staff.
Not long after signing our deal, I came up with the name for
our fine-dining restaurant. I remembered what my dad had taught
me during the naming of Union Square Cafe. “Just name it what it
is.” “The Modern” answered that challenge. I bounced the idea off
trustee Ronald Lauder, who had taken a generously supportive and
nearly proprietary interest in the restaurant project, and when he later
expressed the board’s enthusiasm, the decision was made.
As my team and I began to think about what we might add to
the dialogue on museum dining, I asked myself:“Who ever wrote the
rule that you can’t enjoy an elegant, intimate fi ne-dining experience

301 T h e A r t o f Ho s p i t a l i t y
in a warm, hospitable ambience within the traditionally institutional
context of a museum? And who ever wrote the rule that you can’t
get a warm welcome and have excellent food, hospitably delivered
to tables in what is traditionally a tray-service museum cafeteria?” In
both cases the challenge was to take what has historically been an
institutional, captive audience experience and make it feel warm, per-
sonal, and worthy of becoming a dining destination on its own.
What was there to add to the dialogue on museum cafeterias?
To begin with, we acknowledged the basic reasons museum visitors
patronize a cafeteria: it gets you off your feet, feeds you quickly, and
charges a reasonable price. Museum cafeterias are typically designed
to appeal to a very broad swath of customers: older people, younger
people,Americans, foreigners, locals, tourists, students. Not being per-
mitted to cook in the cafés due to their proximity to the art galleries
would add an element of challenge.We would have to come up with
a delicious menu that could be prepared in our basement kitchen, de-
livered to the cafeterias, and still taste fresh and delicious.
We identified two aspects of museum cafeterias we thought we
could improve upon. First, most people don’t really like having to
carry a tray and look for a cafeteria table, especially with young kids
hanging on them, or while they’re trying to assist an aging parent or
grandparent. Second, cafeteria food—no matter how fresh it may once
have been—has already been prepared and plated and has invariably
been sitting out for some time in a steam table or wrapped in plastic.
We realized that if we could quickly assemble fresh ingredients
to order and eliminate trays and prepackaged, preplated, prewrapped
foods, we would have something special. I remember scratching my
head, thinking about all the world cuisines that actually benefi t from
having been cooked in advance. What came to my mind most con-
clusively was the Roman rosticceria, one of the world’s original quick
service concepts, and one I had always enjoyed when I was a student
in Rome. These places serve seasonal foods that have already been
braised or roasted, as well as cured meats or cheeses, plated to order.

302 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
This kind of cooking has been done for ages in Rome, but it was a
fresh approach for a museum eatery. It was a solution that suited our
model perfectly: a classic culinary concept within a new framework.
In the style of service that we had in mind, you would order your
food from a cashier, who would give you a number; then you’d go
find your own seat; and soon we’d come find you with your food.
Other restaurants had successfully done it in the past. In fact, David
Swinghamer first brought the idea to us, having seen it used by his
former colleagues at the Corner Bakery, and then I saw it again at
Culver’s (a frozen custard and burger specialist) in St. Joseph, Michi-
gan. I was skeptical at first, but on seeing the system work in Washing-
ton, D.C., at a Corner Bakery, I was sold. As with almost everything
else we’ve ever done, we were rearranging familiar, existing notes to
play a fresh-sounding chord.
We looked at the respective roles of the three MoMA dining expe-
riences we were creating as replenish, refresh, and restore. Cafe 2 would
be for replenishing, filling your body with fuel.Terrace 5 is situated op-
posite the gallery in which are hung masterpieces from the museum’s
permanent collection—Cézanne, Seurat, van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse,
and more. Not a bad address for a restaurant! We imagined Terrace 5
as a place to refresh visitors after the fatigue that can set in after seeing
so much good art. We would serve lots of things that featured the
stimulating triumvirate of sugar, alcohol, and caffeine.The very loca-
tion of Terrace 5 added significantly, in our view, to the dialogue on
museum dining (and, in fact, the whole museum experience). Being
able to view Starry Night or Les Desmoiselles d’Avignon after enjoying
a martini, a glass of wine, or an ice cream sundae and a cappuccino
could allow you to see it as you’d never seen it before.The Modern
would be for restoring. It would serve as a restaurant both for New
Yorkers and for museumgoers whose choice was to sit down, eat well,
and also be taken care of.The Modern was conceived to nurture food
lovers as well as to nourish them.

303 T h e A r t o f Ho s p i t a l i t y
We we re re lieve d whe n the museum agreed to select our long-
time architects, Bentel and Bentel, as designers for the restaurant.
Their family’s deep modernist roots made them perfectly suited for
the complex task, and our experience collaborating on four previ-
ous restaurants would be an important advantage in order to tackle
MoMA’s challenging project under a very tight timeline.
Another crucially important artistic decision for this project was
selecting the chef for The Modern. I wanted The Modern to become
a critically acclaimed destination restaurant—not just an excellent
version of a museum restaurant. My initial thought was to fi nd one
chef for the restaurant and another to oversee the cafés and catering.
By dividing these duties, I believed we’d have a better chance at ex-
celling in all areas. I ran through my own mental Rolodex of many
prospective chefs, most of whom, on reflection, would have been
completely wrong. When I thought about someone who was cook-
ing primarily Italian, it didn’t make sense. If I thought about someone
who was cooking with southwestern flavors, it felt odd (this was not
the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum). So did anything else ethnic, such as
Indian, Asian, Chinese, or Japanese.
The modernist art movement was rooted primarily in Austria,
Switzerland, Germany, and France. Not only would the new restau-
rant be taking its design cues from the museum’s existing architecture
and from modernism; it would also be looking out onto the Abby Al-
drich Rockefeller sculpture garden, with famous works by the artists
Joan Miró, Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, Ellsworth Kelly, Joel Shapiro,
Gaston LaChaise, and Alberto Giacometti. If that was going to be
the elegant backdrop for our restaurant, then our cooking had better
present an entirely consistent foreground.
At one point I had made a list of thirty prospective chefs, and
others called me to throw their toques into the ring. One leading con-
tender took himself out of the running when the very complicatted
scope of the project became apparent to him. Indeed, the reality of this

304 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
complexity was catching up with me.The clock was suddenly ticking
down to 365 days for an opening in November 2004, and we needed
to hire a chef to get up and running by then, as well as to overcome
major issues of design and construction that were suddenly no longer a
matter of “what if ”—they had become real. On New Year’s Day 2004
I was at a party in the home of Dorothy and Doug Hamilton, founders
of the French Culinary Institute, the most prominent culinary trade
school in New York, when I ran into the school’s dean, the esteemed
French chef Alain Saillhac. I described my vision for The Modern and
asked chef Sailhac whom he thought I should hire. Immediately he
suggested a dynamic young chef named Gabriel Kreuther.
Why hadn’t I thought of that? I had enjoyed Gabriel’s cooking
at Atelier, a French restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Manhat-
tan, where he had served as executive chef following several years at
Jean Georges. Gabriel was from the province of Alsace, in the north-
east corner of France; and what I knew of his cooking style (forward,
personal, classic, spare, and soulful) seemed completely compatible
with a modernist setting. Gabriel was still in his midthirties but had
already cooked at some of the best restaurants in New York.That year
Food and Wine had named him one of the top ten best new chefs in
America. The fit felt very right. Over the course of several months
Gabriel and I proceeded to discuss the project and visit the construc-
tion site.We got to know one another before I made an offer, which
Gabriel accepted.
In hiring chefs, my goal is to do three things: develop a close, mutu-
ally trusting and respectful relationship; establish a shared vision of what
the food should be; and encourage them to search their own heart and
soul for inspiration, urging them to go further than they’ve ever gone
before. I am especially proud of the enduring bonds of shared success
and loyalty that I have enjoyed with our chefs over the years.
I’ve learned that an effective way to achieve all those goals with a
new chef (and to get to know the essence of the person) is to return
with him to his roots. It was a moving experience to travel with

305 T h e A r t o f Ho s p i t a l i t y
Gabriel in Alsace and to see his homeland through his eyes and his
palate. Of course the region holds special meaning for me too; my
parents had lived in the neighboring Lorraine for the first two years
of their marriage. Alsace-Lorraine has historically been a melting pot,
with French, German, Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish cultures living
together through war and hardship, producing a resilient people and
excellent, soul-satisfying food.
Gabriel devised our ambitious itinerary and chose the restau-
rants, which ranged from a Michelin three-star in Strasbourg (Buere-
hiesel) and another in the middle of the forest well to the north
(L’Arnsbourg) to quaint, out-of-the way winstubs—the traditional
“wine bistros” of Alsace. He took me to the village of Niederschaf-
folsheim (population 1,246), where he grew up, and told me how he
began helping his mother and grandmother with kitchen chores by
the time he was six. Before he was a teenager, he was cooking for real.
Gabriel was fascinated by his family’s cooking, or, as he put it, “our
everyday home cooking.” (Also, he confided that by making himself
more and more useful in the kitchen he avoided more grueling farm
chores outside!) He learned from his mother and grandmother ev-
erything he needed to know about selecting the best fresh ingredients.
We visited his boyhood home, where his proud mother served us a
hunk of perfectly ripened Muenster cheese (the local favorite) that
she had procured at the nearby farmers’ market; this Muenster was
superior to the one we’d had the night before at the three-star restau-
rant.And even though she knew we were heading off for a three-star
lunch, she insisted that we first try her homemade quiche lorraine
with salad and cheese. Gabriel showed me his grade school; but he
saved his greatest enthusiasm for our trip to the musty wine cellar in
his mother’s chilly basement where he had been collecting and stor-
ing bottles since the age of fourteen. He showed me where he lov-
ingly made eau-de-vie—or schnapps, as he called it in German—and
presented me with a Campari bottle filled with homemade mirabelle
to take home to New York. It was an engrossing three days.

306 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
A pattern I’ve noticed in chefs is that many spend tremendous
energy when they’re young working to build a life away from where
and how they grew up, in order to free themselves and defi ne who
they are on their own terms. It takes a lot of confidence and emo-
tional security for people—and especially chefs, whose cooking can
so clearly reveal their roots—to feel they have accomplished enough
in the outside world to “come home” in a culinary or an actual sense.
My “getting to know you” trips to Italy with Michael Romano and
(before Gramercy Tavern opened) with Tom Colicchio were in part
meant to encourage them to rediscover their culinary roots. It struck
me that Michael had proved himself as an extraordinary French chef
before he permitted himself to cook Italian from his heart and re-
member the joy that he got from his mother’s or his grandmother’s
cucina. There had been little on Tom’s excellent menus at his former
restaurant, Mondrian, that revealed much exploration of his family’s
Italian heritage. Similarly, Tabla’s executive chef, Floyd Cardoz, who
was born in Bombay and grew up in Goa, a former Portuguese colony
on India’s west coast, had begun his stellar career as sous-chef to Gray
Kunz and his French-based cooking at Lespinasse. Just as it took Mi-
chael some time to willingly express his Italian roots at Union Square
Cafe, it took Floyd a couple of years to fully embrace his Indian iden-
tity and create not just Tabla’s elegant fusion fare but the bolder, more
ethnic Indian “soul food” we serve downstairs at Bread Bar.
I wanted Gabriel to be able to hasten that journey to his culinary
home. Given the high-profile scrutiny I expected at The Modern, he
wouldn’t have the luxury of waiting years to learn and grow on the
job. It’s not that I was interested in seeing Gabriel faithfully replicate
an Alsatian winstub. Some elements of that rustic cuisine would trans-
late and others would not, if we imported them to the Museum of
Modern Art in Manhattan.What was crucial was for him to cook for
New Yorkers from his Alsatian heart.
We spent our time driving through farmland, strolling around
small towns and villages, and studying dozens of menus—their shape,

307 T h e A r t o f Ho s p i t a l i t y
size, categories, formats, and even font styles. We talked about what
kind of uniforms we’d want our staff to wear. We checked out pot-
tery and furniture shops and discussed décor. We visited dozens of
pastry, cheese, and butcher shops. It was easy to see how Gabriel’s very
personal style of cooking had been nurtured in and around the farm-
houses of his extended family. He told me, for instance, all about the
classic Alsatian baeckoffe, a pork, veal, or beef stew made by marinating
the meat in local white wines (Riesling, Edelzwicker, and Sylvaner),
and then baking it with layers of potatoes (sliced an eighth of an inch
thin), carrots, leeks, onions, parsley, pepper, and tomatoes on top. Each
family’s recipe was just a little different. Baeckoffe means “baker’s oven,”
and is so named because homemakers hauled their own huge pots to
the village baker before church and would later pick them up, bring
them home, and then serve the one-pot meal for Sunday dinner.
The idea of creating a new hybrid by blending classic Alsatian
elements with dishes more familiar to Americans thrilled me. As we
ate together I would look at a menu item—baeckoffe, tarte à l’oignon,
choucroute, foie gras, quiche lorraine—and ask Gabriel:“What does that
dish mean to you? Can you remember the best version you ever ate?”
He’d say, “Sure. My grandmother made the best one I’ve ever had.”
“Well, then, tell me about that,” I’d ask.“Can you imagine any applica-
tion for The Modern?”
Together we saw how many wonderful things butchers did with
livers and sausage and discussed how meats are butchered differently in
Alsace, and throughout Europe for that matter. (Many familiar Ameri-
can cuts for steaks and chops are virtually nonexistent there. Instead
one finds an abundance of lengthwise cuts and roasts.) We saw how
many types of sausage are made from so many different parts of so
many different animals. At one butcher shop I pointed to something
that looked just like liverwurst and said,“Gabriel, there it is.We should
be able to make the best liverwurst sandwich New York has ever had.”
“Ah, that’s saucisse de foie!” he said.“I remember when I was grow-
ing up we would stud it with black truffl es.”

308 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
“If you take something traditional, like saucisse de foie, that’s done
exquisitely well in Alsace,” I said, “and then make it the best ver-
sion of liverwurst that New Yorkers have ever had, then you’ve added
something exciting to the dialogue.”
I urged Gabriel to view his work at Atelier—excellent as it was—
as a launching pad for what he would do next at The Modern. I told
him that I was absolutely convinced that he had yet to do his greatest
work. And where better to frame that work than inside the Museum
of Modern Art!
Our gastronomic adventure was my version of an off-site man-
agement meeting designed to help me get to know, motivate, and
build bonds with a new colleague. I love to encourage a pastry chef
or a cook or an executive chef to remember the first time he or she
ever successfully cooked chocolate chip cookies or brownies (or, in
Gabriel’s case, tarte flambée). If I can get people to relive the pride of
such an accomplishment—the joy of having solved a problem, of
tasting something delicious, and most important, the pleasure of pre-
senting a gift to their parents—I know we’ll be in good shape.
I also encountered more fortune when I met Ana Marie Mor-
mando. In mid-2003, I’d heard that Ana Marie, the longtime director
of operations for Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s restaurants, was con-
sidering a career change. I’d agreed to interview her even though we
didn’t have any specifi c job opening for her.
We hadn’t yet gotten the go-ahead from MoMA, and it hadn’t
dawned on me whom we’d put in charge of our museum operations
if we were to take on the project. In our first meeting, I learned that
Ana Marie had run an earlier incarnation of the Members’ Dining
Room at MoMA, and that she had experience operating restaurants
at Lincoln Center. The lights went on. We brought her aboard for a
full year before opening at MoMA, during which time she was re-
sponsible for our construction and opening timeline.We also wanted
her to get a flavor for and become an established part of our Union
Square Hospitality Group culture.

309 T h e A r t o f Ho s p i t a l i t y
Ana Marie led a talented team of over 300 staff members to open
our dining facilities at MoMA with little time, scant practice, and
unrelenting pressure. And this was all without a general manager for
The Modern, since the GM we hired at the outset had resigned about
a week before the restaurant opened—acknowledging a mutual mis-
take. He was someone about whom we had heard wonderful things,
but who unfortunately was just not the right fit to open this restau-
rant in this setting, and under this amount of pressure.
In the final days leading up to our opening, as it became clear
that we were on a collision course with November 20, I remember
saying something to the museum executives that was not especially
appreciated: “Unlike a piece of art, restaurants are not inanimate ob-
jects.You can’t simply hang them on a wall by a set date and expect
them to work or even look good.They need to be trained, fi ne-tuned,
focused, recalibrated.” It was my emotional way of trying to bring
reality to bear on the near impossibility of our mandate to hire and
train so many people in a rushed, high-pressure situation. Reluctantly,
the museum agreed to allow us to push back the opening of the Bar
Room to the general public until January 2005. On February 7 we at
last opened our doors to the public for dinner in the dining room of
The Modern. And just one night later, on February 8, the New York
Times’s restaurant critic Frank Bruni paid the restaurant a visit.
Unbeknownst to us, Mr. Bruni was also dining at Eleven Madi-
son Park. His two-star review of the restaurant on February 23 caught
the staff by surprise, and resulted in a demoralized team.We had never
known what he looked like (the custom for food critics is to be
anonymous whenever that is possible, even if it means dining in dis-
guise), but the first time he came to The Modern, a champagne sales-
man who happened to be at the bar pointed to a dark-haired man at
a table and said to one of our bartenders, “That’s Frank Bruni over
there.” By our best count, the reviewer paid us eleven separate visits

310 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
in total before he had at last gathered enough information to write
his review. At the very least, his visits alone had generated signifi cant
revenue for the restaurants.
I have never opened a restaurant where the members of the staff
were as keyed up and uptight about a review as everyone at The
Modern was in anticipation of this one. Managers, cooks, and serv-
ers were so concerned about how well or poorly we would fare that
many of them stopped acting naturally. The morning after one of
Bruni’s visits, at the end of March 2005, I was on a spring vacation
with my family at the Colony Beach & Tennis Resort in Longboat
Key, Florida, when I got a call just as I was leaving the tennis court. It
was Ana Marie phoning to say that something terrible had happened
the previous night. One of our wine captains had gone up to the
critic as he was retrieving his coat at the end of the meal and told him
how grateful she was that he had just given a glowing two-star review
to her friend’s restaurant, Stone Park Cafe, a small place in Brooklyn.
Some members of the staff were beside themselves because our
wine captain had broken a ludicrous cardinal rule: even if you know
who a critic is, you must play the game of pretending that you don’t
know. This wine captain, therefore, had acted unprofessionally, Ana
Marie said.What should we do? I had to laugh.
It would be unnatural behavior not to extend especially warm
hospitality to someone who has returned to the restaurant even three
or four times, never mind eleven.That wine captain had been express-
ing “hospitalitarian” soul! And soul was what seemed to me to be
missing from The Modern. We were quickly becoming technically
proficient. In fact, knowing that we were on such a big, brightly lit
stage (with all those trustees, foodies, journalists, regulars from our
other restaurants, and museum visitors watching us at close range), I’d
reversed my usual strategy and focused on hiring more “49 percent-
ers,” with their seasoned technical skills. But the staff was stiff and so
psyched out by the perceived pressure to be perfect that our service
wasn’t nearly as warm and hospitable as our standards required, or as

311 T h e A r t o f Ho s p i t a l i t y
our guests expected it to be. The fact that incidents like this one were
being blown out of proportion made me realize just how uptight
everyone was. Did anyone truly believe that a genuine expression
of gratitude would have any downward influence on the number of
stars we would receive from the New York Times? Would a restaurant
critic lower his judgment of the restaurant or its food because some-
one had actually spoken to him?
Eleven visits were a lot of experiences to arrive at the conclusion
that The Modern was a two-star restaurant, as Bruni did in May 2005.
I’ve always wished that restaurant critics would be more like wine crit-
ics.They taste wines that are very young and predict the future:“This is
where the wine is going. It will be a classic someday.” I don’t think Bruni
would have betrayed his readers or damaged his reputation if he’d writ-
ten,“This restaurant is on a fast trajectory to become a three-star restau-
rant.”We didn’t conceive or design The Modern to be “very good.” It
was born to be excellent, and in its first year the restaurant was judged so
by the Financial Times, the International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, Esquire
(“Best New Restaurant in the United States”), Wallpaper (“Best New
Restaurant in the World”), Time Out New York (“Best New Restaurant
in New York”),The James Beard Foundation (Best New Restaurant in
America), and even the 2006 Michelin Guide to New York City, which
gave The Modern one star just months after its opening.
In some ways, Bruni’s review was a turning point for the restau-
rant. It at last liberated the senior management team from the stress of
waiting and wondering, and encouraged them to roll up their sleeves
and begin to have some fun. It took the hot lid off a highly pressur-
ized boiler. I even think the food improved soon after the review
because Gabriel had been playing it safe in anticipation of the piece.
The waiters loosened up and began smiling and looking people in
the eye, and they too improved. Everyone had been playing not to
lose, as opposed to playing to win. Now the staff was finding it enjoy-
able, for the first time, to exceed expectations. “You mean to tell me
this is only a two-star restaurant? You guys are good!”

312 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
In fact, I too felt free. I was, for the first time in my career of
opening restaurants, feeling relaxed. This project was so huge and so
far beyond any fantasies I may have had about actually being in con-
trol that it forced me let go. It made me do what I’d always known I
needed to do—surround myself with very talented people; give them
clear direction, goals, and feedback; and not try to be everywhere at
once. Well, except for the first three or four months, when I made
two trips each day to the museum to go on my rounds, collect and
connect the new dots, turn over all the rocks, and check in on ev-
erything.
Be fore we ope ne d The Modern, I’m not sure there had ever
been a museum restaurant in America that was a destination in and of
itself.The museum restaurants I knew of had been designed primarily
as amenities for attendees.They were meant more to serve a captive
audience than to be competitive, stand-alone eateries.We were deter-
mined to create a restaurant that you’d want to go to even if it did not
overlook one of the world’s most spectacular sculpture gardens.
You can spe nd many years in the restaurant business trying to at-
tract and earn the loyalty of a regular, core clientele. At The Modern
we basically had a built-in club—the museum, its trustees, its curators,
and its executives.That is both a wonderful privilege and a high-class
challenge as we worked to build a new community of friends.
Since The Modern is the first restaurant at MoMA that has also
been open to the non-museumgoing public, we’d presented our-
selves with another new challenge: how do we operate, on one hand,
as an exclusive club and, on the other hand, as a public restaurant?
Learning to do this was quite tricky at the outset. People who were
used to hearing “yes” were instead getting incessant busy signals, only
to finally get through and hear, “I’m sorry, we’re booked.” We were

313 T h e A r t o f Ho s p i t a l i t y
trying hard to balance the needs of several constituencies, each en-
titled to the utmost in hospitality: the MoMA community, the legion
of loyalists from our existing restaurants, our investors, and of course
the thousands of curious New Yorkers who line up to be among the
fi rst to visit a new restaurant.
One day I stood in The Modern and observed a trustee of the
museum sitting next to a high-powered fi nancier. A couple of tables
away were some art-loving tourists from Minneapolis; dining not
too far from their table was the alternative singer Björk, who was
sitting next to a well-known book editor. It’s a richly diverse clien-
tele, and one that is unpredictable—in the most positive way—each
day. Making my dining room rounds is every bit as exciting at The
Modern as it was when I began doing it at Union Square Cafe in 1985.
I cannot wait to go there. Like all of our restaurants,The Modern will
take time to fulfill its greatest potential, but I am confident it will
become a great and enduring New York restaurant. That will have
happened when it develops its own soul through the same process of
conducting a dialogue with its guests that each of the other restau-
rants has gone through for a sustained period of time.
MoMA provides the perfect frame for The Modern: it’s a peak
career opportunity for my company and me. When the Museum of
Modern Art buys a piece of art to hang on its walls, the artist’s career
is instantly affirmed. When MoMA selects a chair or a watch for its
design collection, the esteem in which that product is held grows in-
stantly and dramatically. I have to hope that the same has happened
for us. The Museum of Modern Art is an established arbiter of taste,
design, and art, and creating a living product for such an institution is
something I could hardly have dreamed of as a restaurateur.
Soon after we embarked on our deal with MoMA, Glenn Lowry,
who is the museum’s director and a highly effective CEO, offered me
some heartfelt advice. “Please don’t get caught up in the aura of the
museum,” he said.“We selected you because of what we know of you.
Too often, people try too hard with us and end up not doing their

314 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
best work.” I heard his advice, but for me it was impossible not to try
hard, when I was part of creating a restaurant whose thirty-fi ve foot
windows overlook the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller sculpture garden.
Why do I ke e p climbing mountains? Because with a few excep-
tions there’s always a higher, steeper mountain to scale, and I’m will-
ing to confront all sorts of treacherous conditions, especially when
I’m convinced that they’ll lead to exhilarating views from the top. It’s
the same with opening new restaurants, and with any new business
initiative.The MoMA project was a massive challenge for our organi-
zation. I wish I could think of an even bigger word to describe it. As
with each new business I’ve ever opened, I am profoundly confi dent
that this story will have a happy ending. Lacking a crystal ball, I have
no idea how many or what kind of episodes and temporary setbacks
there will be along the way, or what shape they’ll take. However, we’ll
have no choice but to improve and persevere with each step we take
up the mountain.
I am now growing excited about seeing our organization take
on another new challenge: to expand one of our existing businesses.
Replicating something that we’re already doing will demand a new
set of skills and will represent a wonderful opportunity for me to
stretch as a professional and for the organization to stretch as well.
Whenever we do it, our challenge will be to do so in a way that con-
veys excellence, hospitality, and soul. And of course, wherever we do
it, the timing and context must be a neat fi t.
That is precisely how we’re addressing the challenge of off-prem-
ises catering. We launched Hudson Yards Catering in late 2005, and
named it (as we like to do) for the emerging neighborhood in which
the commissary is located. Through a persistant search, our team
found a spot that was affordable and in Manhattan—overlooking the
Hudson River, in the West Twenties. Just as we have done with our
other businesses, connecting our catering company with its commu-

315 T h e A r t o f Ho s p i t a l i t y
nity reflects our broader, long-range interest in becoming an active
stakeholder in the revitalization of an emerging part of the city.
We will also take the same approach to the catering business that
has worked so well for every other business we’ve tackled: we’ll apply
the strategy of enlightened hospitality while challenging ourselves to
find a way to add something fresh to the experience of off-premises
catering.And we’ll always look for unique ways and places for Hudson
Yards Catering to serve its food.
On a Monday afternoon in May 2005, I came home unusually
early, around four-thirty, to don my tuxedo and get ready for the
evening’s event: the James Beard Foundation awards. Getting home
that early was so unusual that my five-year-old son, Peyton, tore him-
self away from his play date and ran down the hall to bear witness:
“Daddy’s home before dinner!”We hung out while I struggled—as I
always do—with my tuxedo.
“You look like Mr. Davison,” he said, pointing to my bow tie.
That’s the headmaster at his school. “Are you going to school to-
night?”
“No,” I said,“I’m actually going to an awards event.”
“What’s an award?”
“That’s a kind of prize you can get if people think you did some-
thing really well.”
“Well, Daddy, are you going to get one of those tonight?”
“I don’t know. They’re giving out prizes for people who do a
good job at being in the restaurant business.”
“Well,” he said, “I think you should get that prize. I think Shake
Shack is the best restaurant in the world. I love their frozen custard.”
That joyous moment with my son was the most meaningful thing
that happened to me all night.The second most meaningful was win-
ning the first-ever James Beard award for Outstanding Restaurateur,
in a national field of impressive colleagues. I proudly accepted it on
behalf of our entire organization.
It was clear to me that we weren’t really winning for being the

316 s e t t i n g t h e t a b l e
best at any one specific cuisine or concept. The reason had more
to do with our stretching the contours and the applicability of our
hospitality-driven business model, from Union Square to Gramercy
Park to Madison Square Park to Twenty-seventh Street, and up Fifth
Avenue to the Museum of Modern Art.We won it because, whether
you order a Shack Burger and a frozen custard at Shake Shack, or
a lamb tenderloin carpaccio with black truffles at The Modern,
whether you’re eating on paper plates or dining on Limoges china,
there’s plenty on the table we’ve set to nourish and nurture you. Our
job—and our joy—is to create restaurants you’d want to return to,
and to build businesses that ultimately contribute at least as much to
their communities as they reap from them.
For over two decades we’ve worked hard to create a broad com-
munity of people who have a real stake in our restaurants’ success.
And because we have first committed our loyalty to them, they have
paid us back abundantly.When people choose to become regulars at
Union Square Cafe or Gramercy Tavern or Eleven Madison Park or
Tabla or Blue Smoke or Jazz Standard or The Modern, or our museum
cafés, or at Shake Shack, or Hudson Yards Catering, they’re telling us,
“This is the place that most makes me feel I’ve come home.”

ac k nowle dg m e nt s
I’ve cho se n to acknowle dge by name only those people who
played a direct role in the publication of this book. Yet I am also
acutely aware of how privileged I have been throughout my years
to have known and learned from so many more remarkable family
members, teachers, trainers, colleagues, mentors, and friends. It’s hard
for me to fathom how I could have flourished in restaurants, busi-
ness, or life without the benefit of their vision and guidance, as well
as their faithfulness in standing by me while holding my feet to the
fire. As my unofficial team, their collective role has been essential in
shaping what lies within these pages.
Restaurants are a fascinating laboratory for life. It is hard work
to master one’s emotions, day after day, in the pursuit of providing
service, excellence, and hospitality for others. As human beings with
human emotions, some days are easier than others. But it’s often the
tough days that supply the most lasting lessons. I am deeply indebted
to the thousands of staff members—past and present—who have
317

318 A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s
shared a period of their lives with our restaurants and guests while
making a living in the hospitality business.Thanks to them, there was
no shortage of rich material that came to mind as I wrote this book.
Together with those colleagues, I have been engaged in an ani-
mated dialogue for over two decades with an army of devoted guests
who have rewarded our restaurants with their loyal patronage and
unflinching feedback in exchange for being listened to and feeling
heard. Sometimes our performance as a business has measured up to
and even exceeded their expectations; in other cases it hasn’t. But
because we’ve always taken a genuine, active interest in those guests,
they have always stuck by our side no matter how the chips have
fallen. I’m convinced that a business cannot be more successful than
the sum of the human relationships it has fostered and nurtured. By
that measure, we are triumphant. It is in that spirit that I thank the
thousands of guests who have not only patronized our restaurants
over these many years, but who have become part of our restaurant
family.
Specific thanks for this book begin with Susan Friedland, my
cookbook editor, whose solid conviction that people might be inter-
ested in lasting recipes for business—not just food—convinced me
this was a project worth undertaking in the fi rst place.
I am appreciative to Susan Lescher and Bob Lescher, who from
the outset advocated for this book with heartfelt optimism and sup-
port. I am grateful to Jim Jerome, who spent dozens of hours hurling
challenging questions my way, recording, transcribing, and chiseling
away at my exterior until I could reveal what I really wanted to say.
Thank you to my editor, Daniel Halpern, who urged me to write
this book long before he became its editor, and who managed to
overcome the familiarity that comes with our having been close
friends for many years to guide me with objectivity and excellence.
I’m proud of the work we’ve done together.
I am humbly grateful to editors Lisa Chase and Susan Gamer,

319 A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s
who each helped me to apply just the right grades of sandpaper when
I most needed them.
I am deeply thankful to my colleague Jenny Dirksen, who knows
me well, and who got me off the mark in the first place by keeping
me on schedule and providing the kind of frank feedback that assured
I would say what I meant, in my voice.
To Haley Carroll, who contended with gallons of black print and
red ink through a multitude of drafts and revisions with precision,
persistence, and above all, poise. I owe her a lifetime supply of read-
ing glasses, not to mention my immense appreciation. If she reads the
book again, Haley will see that her comments made this a far better
book.
To my partners, chefs, general managers, managers, and staff: thank
you for the gift of operating such excellent restaurants and allowing
me the time and space I needed to write this book over many chal-
lenging months. I hope you’ll find that I was accurate, fair, and able
to capture the indispensable role you have each played in the success
of our restaurants. Mostly I hope you will feel proud of the way I’ve
told our story.
Particular gratitude is due to my partner, Paul Bolles-Beaven,
who twice pored over the manuscript to assure its accuracy. Paul has
worked at my side since the day Union Square Cafe opened in 1985,
and if anyone understands the step-by-step history of how and why
we’ve gotten from there to here, it is he.
And I don’t know how to properly thank my friend David Black,
who expressed his care for me by pushing, questioning, challenging,
encouraging, and pushing some more, always urging me to write a
better book. I’m glad I listened to every word he uttered.
Which brings me to my family. To my beautiful children, Hallie,
Charles, Gretchen, and Peyton: thank you all for being so curious
and patient throughout every rewrite of every draft. You probably
thought I would never finish! I tried my best to write the book on

320 A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s
my time—not on yours—but I am aware that there must have been
many moments you had wished I was doing something with you
rather than engaged in the next round of editing. And I will never
forget the pride you expressed when you first learned your dad was
writing a book. That alone further fueled my interest in giving it my
best shot.
Finally, I am deeply grateful to my wife, Audrey, with whom I
have been fortunate to share my life and love for over twenty years.
Her profound influence on me is obvious, but suffice it to say that her
greatest gift has been to show me the way to my genuine center and
always strive to be my most authentic self. Audrey is at least half again
more successful than I when it comes to the career that matters most
to both of us: parenting. I admire her for doing so with an uncom-
mon wisdom and grace from which I learn volumes every day.

About the Author
DANNY MEYER is the co-author with
executive chef/partner Michael Romano of The Union
Square Cafe Cookbook and Second Helpings from Union
Square Cafe, and the founder and co-owner of eleven
New York establishments: Union Square Cafe, Gram-
ercy Tavern, Eleven Madison Park, Tabla, Blue Smoke,
Jazz Standard, Shake Shack, The Modern, Cafe 2, Ter-
race 5, and Hudson Yards Catering. He lives in New
York City with his wife, Audrey, and their children,
Hallie, Charles, Gretchen, and Peyton.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive
information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Othe r Books by Danny Meye r
The Union Square Cafe Cookbook
(co-authored with Michael Romano)
Second Helpings from Union Square Cafe
(co-authored with Michael Romano)

Credits
JACKET DESIGN BY CHRISTINE VANBREE
JACKET PHOTOGRAPH © DEBORAH FEINGOLD
DESIGNED BY HELENE BERINSKY

Copyright
SETTING THE TABLE. Copyright © 2006 by Danny Meyer. All rights
reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive,
non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen.
No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded,
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whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented,
without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader December 2006 ISBN 978-0-06-135558-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Meyer, Danny.
Setting the table: the transforming power of hospitality in business /
Danny Meyer.
p. cm.
ISBN-10: 0-06-074275-5
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-074275-1
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Cover Image
Title Page
Dedication Page
Contents
Introduction
Chapter One: The First Course
Chapte Two: In Business
Chapter Three: The Restaurant Takes Root
Chapter Four: Turning Over the Rocks
Chapter Five: Who Ever Wrote the Rule. . . ?
Chapter Six: No Turning Back
Chapter Seven: The 51 Percent Solution
Chapter Eight: Broadcasting the Message,Tuning in the Feedback
Chapter Nine: Constant, Gentle Pressure
Chapter Ten: The Road to Success Is Paved with Mistakes Well Handled
Chapter Eleven: The Virtuous Cycle of Enlightened Hospitality
Chapter Twelve: Context, Context, Context
Chapter Thirteen: The Art of Hospitality
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by Danny Meyer
Credits
Copyright Notice
About the Publisher

THE LEGAL ASPECTS
OF RESTAURANT MANAGEMENT

Chapter 3

David K. Hayes | Allisha A. Miller | Jack D. Ninemeier

The Professional
Restaurant Manager

Book Title
Author name

© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved

© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved

The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Restaurant Organizational Structures

Business structure

A legally recognized business entity.

Organizational structures for restaurateurs

–

Sole proprietorship

– Partnership

– Corporation

Book Title
Author name
© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved
© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved
The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Restaurant Organizational Structures
Sole proprietorship

A form of business structure in which one
individual owns, and frequently operates, the

business.

Book Title
Author name
© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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Restaurant Organizational Structures

Sole Proprietorships

• Sole ownership

• Owner assets used for expense, taxes, and
debts

• Profits taxed at the same rate as personal tax

• A sole proprietor’s business may operate using
a DBA

“Doing business as”

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Restaurant Organizational Structures

Partnerships

• Two or more individuals or entities agree to
share in the ownership of a business.

• Assume personal and joint liability for debt

• Taxed at the same rate as owners’ personal
income

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Restaurant Organizational Structures
Partnerships

Limited partnership
A form of partnership similar to a general

partnership except that, in addition to one or more
general partners (GPs), there are one or more

limited partners (LPs).

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Restaurant Organizational Structures

Partnerships
Limited partners (LPs)

• Invest money in the partnership

• Responsible for debt equal to the amount
invested

• Cannot engage in management of the business

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Restaurant Organizational Structures

Partnerships
General Partners (GPs)

• May share in control of the business and profits

• Jointly responsible for the debts of the business

• May or may not be investors, but serve as the
business’s operating managers

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Restaurant Organizational Structures

Corporations

• Recognized as a legal entity, with privileges and
liabilities separate from those of its owners

• Owners are called shareholders or stockholders

• The corporation, not the shareholders, are
responsible for all business’ debts

• Profits are taxed twice

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Restaurant Organizational Structures

Corporations

• Double Taxation
– Taxes paid on profits earned
– Taxes paid by owners on dividends issued to

them

Dividend

The portion of its profits paid by a corporation to its
shareholders

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Restaurant Organizational Structures
Corporations

S corporation (Subchapter S Corporation)
A corporation that offers liability protection to its

owners but is exempt from paying corporate taxes
on its profits.

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Restaurant Organizational Structures
Corporations

• Avoids double taxation
– Must pay tax on profits even if they have not

be distributed to owners

• Good for smaller businesses with few
employees

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Restaurant Organizational Structures
Corporations

Limited Liability Company (LLC)
A form of corporation created under state law

rather than federal law.

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Restaurant Organizational Structures
Corporations

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Restaurant Laws and Regulations

Laws Related to Restaurant Operations

Duty of care

A legal obligation that requires a specific type of
conduct.

Reasonable care

The amount of care a reasonably prudent person
would use in a similar situation.

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Restaurant Laws and Regulations

Laws Related to Employees

Workplace
discrimination Worker pay

Worker
evaluation

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Restaurant Laws and Regulations

Laws Related to Employees
Workplace discrimination

Discrimination

Unfair treatment to another person based on his or
her religion, race, age, national origin, gender or

the condition of pregnancy.

Sexual harassment
Threatening and illegal verbal, physical or visual

conduct of a sex-related nature

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Restaurant Laws and Regulations
Laws Related to Employees
Workplace discrimination

Quid pro quo

The asking or demanding of sexual favors in
exchange for maintaining employment

Hostile environment
The presence of a verbally, physically or visually

offensive workplace

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Restaurant Laws and Regulations
Laws Related to Employees
Workplace discrimination

Americans
with

Disabilities Act
(ADA)

Age Discrimination
in

Employment Act
(ADEA)

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Restaurant Laws and Regulations
Laws Related to Employees
Workplace discrimination

Reasonable accommodation
Any modification or adjustment to a job or the work

environment that will enable a qualified person
with a disability to participate in the application
process or to perform essential job functions.

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Restaurant Laws and Regulations

Laws Related to Employees
Worker Pay

The Federal
Equal Pay Act

The Fair
Labor

Standards Act

The Family
and Medical
Leave Act

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Restaurant Laws and Regulations

Laws Related to Employees
Worker evaluation

Employee discipline

Performance appraisal

Progressive disciplinary program

A carefully planned series of corrective actions
designed to encourage employees to follow
established policies, rules and regulations.

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Restaurant Laws and Regulations

Laws Related to Guests

All Guests Serving Food
Serving

Alcoholic
Beverages

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Restaurant Laws and Regulations

Laws Related to Guests

Title III requires all restaurants to:

• Remove barriers that prevent people with mobility
impairments to use their facilities.

• Provide auxiliary hearing and visual aids.

• Modify any operating policies that could be considered
to discriminate against people with disabilities.

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Restaurant Laws and Regulations
Laws Related to Guests

Restaurants must protect guests from
foodborne illnesses

or
other harm

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Restaurant Laws and Regulations
Laws Related to Guests

Restaurant managers must know which of the

wide variety of state-mandated alcohol-related

laws, regulations and codes apply to their own

businesses.

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Restaurant Laws and Regulations

Laws Related to Guests
Who may sell it
When it may be sold

Where it may be sold

Who may serve it

Who may buy it

How it can be sold
Required records of its sale

The Restaurant Business
Chapter 1

David K. Hayes | Allisha A. Miller | Jack D. Ninemeier

The Professional
Restaurant Manager

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The Restaurant Industry

National Restaurant Association (NRA)

A professional trade and
lobbying group

representing nearly
400,000 restaurant

locations.

It also operates the
National Restaurant

Association Educational
Foundation (NRAEF).

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The Restaurant Industry
National Restaurant Association (NRA)

Founded in 1919, the
NRA is headquartered in

Washington, DC.

Each May, it holds its
annual conference in

Chicago, IL.

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A Brief History of Eating Out

Those who ate away from home
• Merchants involved in the trading of goods from

one area of the world to another

• Those traveling for religious purposes

• Those that ate out to entertain others or
themselves

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Modern Restaurant Industry Segments

Restaurant
Industry

Commercial
(for profit)

Noncommercial
(not for profit)

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Modern Restaurant Industry Segments

Commercial food service
Food service operations that are typically open to

the general public.

Noncommercial food service

Food service operations that are not typically
open to the general public.

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Commercial Restaurants
Segmented by Price and

Service

Segmented
by Price and

Service

Quick Serivce

Family

Casual/
Fast Casual

Fine Dining

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Commercial Restaurants
Segmented by Menu Option

Segmented
by Menu
Option

Pizza

Mexican

ItalianSeafood
Asian

Steakhouse

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USDA Beef Grades

Prime
(highest quality)

Choice Select Standard

Commercial Utility Cutter Canner (lowest quality)

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Planning for Success in the
Restaurant Industry

Concept

A clearly stated and well-thought out idea for a

restaurant.

Target market

A well-defined group of potential customers.

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The Restaurant Business Plan

Business plan
A formal, written statement of business goals and
strategies for how those goals will be achieved.

Start-up funding

The money needed to open and sustain a
restaurant until it becomes profitable.

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Preparing a Restaurant Business Plan

Location

Concept

Menu

Design

Marketing

Financing

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Preparing a Restaurant Business Plan

Sample Business Plan Content Checklist

qCover sheet

qDate of plan preparation

qOne- to two-page executive summary

qTable of contents

qDescription of the organization

qDescription of the restaurant’s concept

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Preparing a Restaurant Business Plan
Sample Business Plan Content Checklist

qMarket analysis

qTarget market

qCompetitive analysis

qAdvertising and marketing plan

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Preparing a Restaurant Business Plan
Sample Business Plan Content Checklist

qFinancial projections

qPre-opening financing

qRequired amount

qUse of funds

qSource of funds

qFunds repayment plan

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Preparing a Restaurant Business Plan
Sample Business Plan Content Checklist
qFinancial projections

qThree-year balance sheet

qFor the legal entity developing the

restaurant

qFor the new restaurant

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Preparing a Restaurant Business Plan
Sample Business Plan Content Checklist
qFinancial projections

q Three-year P&L statement

qYears 1–2: Monthly forecasts

qYears 1–3: Annual forecasts

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Preparing a Restaurant Business Plan
Sample Business Plan Content Checklist
qFinancial projections

q Three-year cash flow statement

qYears 1–2: Monthly forecasts
qYears 1–3: Annual forecasts

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Preparing a Restaurant Business Plan
Sample Business Plan Content Checklist
qFinancial projections
q Three-year cash flow statement
qYears 1–2: Monthly forecasts
qYears 1–3: Annual forecasts

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Preparing a Restaurant Business Plan
Sample Business Plan Content Checklist

qRecommended appendices

qOrganizational chart

qSample menu

q Sample menu

q Copy of leases

q Copy of licenses

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Preparing a Restaurant Business Plan
Sample Business Plan Content Checklist
qRecommended appendices

qCopy of fire permits

qCopy of insurance policies

qCopies of staff job descriptions

qBlueprints or floor plans

BEVERAGE PRODUCTS AND SERVICE
Chapter 10

David K. Hayes | Allisha A. Miller | Jack D. Ninemeier

The Professional
Restaurant Manager

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Alcoholic Beverages

Alcohol

A colorless beverage created by fermenting a
liquid containing sugar.

Wine
An alcoholic beverage produced from fermented

grapes or other fruits.

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Alcoholic Beverages

Beer

A beverage fermented from cereals and malts and
generally flavored

with hops.

Spirits
Beverages distilled to remove water from a liquid

that contains alcohol.

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Alcoholic Beverages

Types of Beverage Operations

Beverage and food
operations

Beverage-only
operations

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Alcoholic Beverages

Physiological Effects of Alcohol

Absorption Distribution

Oxidation
(elimination)

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Alcoholic Beverages
Physiological Effects of Alcohol

Blood alcohol content (BAC)
The amount of alcohol contained in a liter of an

alcohol drinker’s blood.

Proof
A measure of a beverage’s alcohol content.

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Alcoholic Beverages

Regulation of Alcohol Sales

Common topics for each state’s Department of
Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) include:

• Permitted hours of operation

• Approved purchasing sources

• Restrictions on admittance of customers

• Employee-related regulations

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Alcoholic Beverages
Regulation of Alcohol Sales
Common topics for each state’s Department of
Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) include:

• Prohibitions on certain types of promotions

• Regulations regarding certain types of pricing
decisions

• Required record keeping

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Wine and Foods

Restaurant managers should know
basic information about wine, be
familiar with traditional wine and
food pairings and know how to

produce wine lists.

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Wine and Foods

• To the eye:
– Red wine should appear rich.
– White wine should sparkle.

• To the nose:
– Should be pleasant, with a hint of flowers, spices or

other common characteristics
– The aroma (bouquet) should linger and be an

indicator of the taste to come.

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Wine and Foods

• Common Classifications

– The country in which it was made

– Its age (vintage)

– The type of grape used to make it

– Its sugar content (dry, semi-dry or sweet)

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Wine and Foods

• Dry wine
– Least sweet
– Sugar content below 0.8%

• Semi-dry wine
– Sugar content between 0.8–2.2%

• Sweet wine
– Sugar Content more than 2.2%

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Wine and Foods

• Red wine
– Accompanies beef, wild game and other dark meat

entrées
– Best served at temperature range of 55–65ºF

(12.8–18.3ºC)
– Alcoholic content ranges from 10 to 14%

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Wine and Foods

• White wine
– Complements more delicate foods such as fish,

poultry and pork
– Best served chilled
– Alcoholic content ranges from 10 to 14%

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Wine and Foods

• Sparkling wine
– Characterized by the presence of carbonic acid in

solution in the wine
– Champagne is the most well-known
– Alcoholic content ranges from 10 to 14%

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Wine and Foods

Wine Bottle Sizes and Capacities
Bottle Size (Capacity) Common Name Description
0.100 liters Miniature (mini) A single serving bottle

0.187 liters Split 1/4 standard bottle

0.375 liters Half bottle 1/2 standard bottle

0.750 liters Bottle Standard wine bottle

1.5 liters Magnum Two bottles in one

3.0 liters Double magnum Four bottles in one

Note: 1 U.S. quart = 0.946 liters
1 U.S. gallon = 3.785 liters

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Wine and Foods

Sample Food and Wine Pairings

Robust Red Wines

Wine Type Serve With
Cabernet Sauvignon and
red Bordeaux

Lamb roasts and lamb chops, all cuts of
beef steak, roast duck, goose

Merlot Beef and lamb roasts, venison, sirloin
steaks, grilled or roast chicken

Pinot Noir Roast chicken, rabbit, duck, grilled salmon,
grilled tuna

Shiraz Grilled or roast beef, game meats, BBQ,
pizza

Sangiovese (Chianti) Roast pork, roast chicken, pasta, grilled
vegetables, Italian sausages, pizza

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Wine and Foods
Sample Food and Wine Pairings

Rosé/Blush Wines
Wine Type Serve With

White Zinfandel/white Merlot Seafood salads, pastas, grilled
chicken, grilled pork loin, Mexican
food

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Wine and Foods

Sample Food and Wine Pairings
White Wines

Wine Type Serve With
Chardonnay Sole, halibut, cod, scallops, lobster,

roast chicken, pasta with seafood or
chicken

White Riesling Roasted pork, chicken, veal, smoked
salmon, sushi

Sauvignon Blanc Fish, shrimp, calamari, fresh oysters,
sashimi

Pinot Grigio Pastas, grilled chicken and shrimp,
veal

Sparkling (champagne) Caviar, fresh oysters, sushi, sashimi,
lobster

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Wine and Foods

Wine List

• List wines in the order they would be consumed

• List wines by their color

• List wines by their selling prices

• List wines by their origin

• List wines using a combination of two or more of
the above

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Other Alcoholic Beverages

Beer

Fermented
from malted
grain and
flavored

with hops.

U.S. brews
more than
any other
country.

Classified
by lagers
and ales.

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Other Alcoholic Beverages
Lagers

Bock
Dark lager
Light lager
Light beer
Dry beer
Ice beer

Malt liquor
Pilsner

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Other Alcoholic Beverages

Ales

Light ale

Brown ale

Porter

Stout

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Other Alcoholic Beverages

Spirits

• Contain the highest concentration of alcohol.

• Spirits are the distillation of grains, grape juice,
and other fermented sugar products.

• The proof of an alcoholic beverage is equal to
two times the amount of alcohol it contains. 50%
alcohol = 100 proof product)

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Other Alcoholic Beverages

Spirits
Popular Spirits

Vodka
Gin
Rum

Tequila
Whiskey (Whisky)

Brandy
Liqueurs/ Schnapps

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Bar Operations

Quality Beverage Service

1.
• Control of beverage product costs

2.
• Enhanced guest satisfaction

3.
• Demonstration of reasonable care

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Bar Operations

Responsible Beverage Service

What is sold

Where it’s sold

When it’s sold

How it’s sold

In what quantity it’s sold

To whom it’s sold

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Bar Operations
Responsible Beverage Service

First party The individual intoxicated

Second party The restaurant

Third party An injured individual

The Restaurant Facility
Chapter 6

David K. Hayes | Allisha A. Miller | Jack D. Ninemeier

The Professional
Restaurant Manager

Book Title
Author name

© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Restaurant Layout and Design

Owner Architect Restaurant manager

Chef Designer Builder

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Restaurant Layout and Design

Layout Factors

Restaurant
Layout

Guest Employees
Owners,

restaurant
managers,
and chef

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Restaurant Layout and Design

Workstations

Receiving
and storage

Entrée
preparation

General food
preparation

Vegetable
preparation

Pantry Pot/pan/dishwashing Cook’s line
Server
pick-up

Server
station Bar

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Restaurant Layout and Design

Layout Basics

• Consider functional areas
Step 1

• Design specific workstations
Step 2

• Integrate workstations into functional
areas

Step 3

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

• Modify functional areas

Step 4

• Make final layout decisions

Step 5

Restaurant Layout and Design
Layout Basics

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

External areas of concern

• Grounds/landscaping

• Parking

Restaurant Layout and Design
Exterior Design Concerns

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Restaurant Equipment

Managers choosing foodservice equipment
typically have two options:

Stock

equipment

Custom equipment

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Restaurant Equipment
Stock equipment

Equipment manufactured in large quantities
according to standard plans that is often

available in dealer inventories or which can
be quickly obtained from the manufacturer or

distributor.

ü Lower cost, immediate availability

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Restaurant Equipment

Custom equipment
Equipment designed according to unique plans or
drawings that requires special construction and/or

instillation.

ü Higher cost, lesser availability, but better
operational fit.

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Restaurant Equipment

Function Capacity Total cost

Design-
Appearance

Size-
Dimension

Safety-
Sanitation

Flexibility

Equipment Purchase Factors

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Restaurant Equipment

Food
preparation
equipment

Cooking
equipment

Serving
equipment

Refrigeration
equipment

Cleaning and
Misc.

equipment

Common Food Service Equipment

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
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Designing Restaurants for
Takeout Food Services

Drive-through Food Services

Carryout Food Services

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Designing Restaurants for
Takeout Food Services

Drive-Through Food Services

Local requirements may include:
– Drive-through lane size
– Parking lot design
– Required entrances and exits
– Required carry-out related signage

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Designing Restaurants for
Takeout Food Services

Carryout Food Services

Very common service now offered by Casual as
well as Fast Casual and QSRs

Can account for 10% or more of total Casual
revenue

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Designing Restaurants for
Takeout Food Services

Carryout Food Services
Walk-in sales

Will orders be received by telephone, fax, through
the restaurant’s website and/or when guests arrive

at the property?

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Designing Restaurants for
Takeout Food Services
Carryout Food Services
Walk-in sales

Is a separate workstation required in the reception
area to accommodate a dedicated employee to

take orders, transmit them to production personnel
and bring the order to the customer?

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Designing Restaurants for
Takeout Food Services
Carryout Food Services
Walk-in sales

Will a carryout customer wait in line with guests
waiting to speak to a receptionist during busy

times?

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Designing Restaurants for
Takeout Food Services
Carryout Food Services
Walk-in sales

Where are customers to wait if their order is not
ready when they arrive?

Where are prepared orders to be kept until
carryout customers arrive?

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Designing Restaurants for
Takeout Food Services

Carryout Food Services
Curb-service sales

qTypical in warm weather locations

qEmployee dress will be affected by
weather/climate

qSeparate workstations and designated
employees are best if both curb-service and
indoor dining are offered

MANAGING A PROFESSIONAL STAFF
Chapter 4

David K. Hayes | Allisha A. Miller | Jack D. Ninemeier

The Professional
Restaurant Manager

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Securing Professional Staff

Recruiting employees

Selecting employees

Orientating employees

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Securing Professional Staff

Recruiting Employees

Job description

A list of the tasks that must be performed by a
person working in a specific position.

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Securing Professional Staff
Recruiting Employees

Internal recruiting

External recruiting

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Securing Professional Staff

Selecting Employees

Application
form Employment

interview

Drug test
results

Knowledge
or skill tests

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Securing Professional Staff
Selecting Employees
Application
form Employment
interview
Drug test
results
Knowledge
or skill tests

Book Title
Author name
© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Securing Professional Staff
Selecting Employees

Reference checks

Background checks

Physical examinations

Other (internal) interviews

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Securing Professional Staff

Orientating Employees

• Overview of the property

• Employee’s current role and future promotional
opportunities

• Explain policies

• Outline expectations

• Motivate new staff members

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Leading Professional Staff

Training Employees

Motivating Employees

Facilitating Employee Performance

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Leading Professional Staff
Training Employees

• Define training needs

Step 1

• Conduct position analysis

Step 2

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Leading Professional Staff
Training Employees

• Develop training objectives

Step 3

• Develop a training plan

Step 4

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Leading Professional Staff
Training Employees

• Develop training lessons

Step 5

• Prepare trainees

Step 6

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Leading Professional Staff
Training Employees

• Conduct training

Step 7

• Evaluate training

Step 8

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Leading Professional Staff
Motivating Employees

High absenteeism rates

High turnover rates

Increases in accidents

High number of employee complaints

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Leading Professional Staff

Facilitating Employee Performance

Autocratic
A leadership approach in which decisions are

typically made and problems are resolved without
input from affected staff members.

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Leading Professional Staff
Facilitating Employee Performance

Bureaucratic
A leadership approach that involves “management

by the book” and the enforcement of policies,
procedures and written rules.

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Leading Professional Staff
Facilitating Employee Performance

Democratic
A leadership approach in which employees are

encouraged to participate in the decision-making
process.

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Facilitating Employee Performance
Facilitating Employee Performance

Laissez-faire
A leadership approach that minimizes directing

employees and, instead, maximizes the delegation
of tasks and results to affected staff members

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Leading Professional Staff
Facilitating Employee Performance

Consider the
viewpoints of

others

Seek to learn
what others

know
Make messages

meaningful

Being tactful Emphasizing positive actions

Demonstrating
and reviewing
appropriate
procedures

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Leading Professional Staff
Facilitating Employee Performance

Explaining the
reasons for

changes

Maintaining
open

communications

Providing
professional
development
opportunities

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Leading Professional Staff
Facilitating Employee Performance

Allowing interested
staff members to

contribute to their work

Conducting negative
coaching interviews in
private and praising

staff members for good
performance in public

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Leading Professional Staff
Facilitating Employee Performance

Comparing employees’
performance against
standards rather than

against other staff
members’ work

Establishing and
agreeing upon

corrective action time
frames

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Leading Professional Staff
Facilitating Employee Performance

Code of ethics
A formal statement that defines how restaurant
employees should relate to each other and the
persons and groups with whom they interact.

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Leading Professional Staff

Ethics

Is the proposed action legal?

Does the proposed action hurt anyone?

Is the proposed action fair?

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Leading Professional Staff
Ethics

Am I being honest as I undertake the proposed
action?

Can I live with myself if I do what I am
considering?

Would I like to publicize my decision?

What if everyone did it?

Quality Foods
Chapter 8

David K. Hayes | Allisha A. Miller | Jack D. Ninemeier

The Professional
Restaurant Manager

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Emphasis on Food

Quality

Quality assurance
All of the activities restaurant managers and their
employees undertake to deliver quality products.

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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Farm-to-Fork

Sustainability

Farm-to-fork

A term used to describe the handling of food

through the stages of growing, harvesting, storage,
processing, packaging, delivery, preparation (and

service to guests).

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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Farm-to-Fork Sustainability
Farm-to-fork

The path food follows
from those who grow or raise it

to those who will prepare and serve it.

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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Farm-to-Fork Sustainability
Farm-to-fork

Improved food quality

Lower prices paid

Lessened impact on the environment

Support of local farmers and economy

Potential for good press and publicity

Enhanced guest appreciation

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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Farm-to-Fork Sustainability
Sustainability

Conserving energy

Recycling

Purchasing practices designed to protect long-
term sources of foods

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Meats, Poultry and Seafood

Highest priced menu items

Highly prized by guests

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved
© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved
The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Meats, Poultry and Seafood
Quality

NAMP

North American Meat Processors
Association

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Meats, Poultry and Seafood

Preparation

Dry Heat Cooking Methods
Tender cuts of meat are best cooked with dry

cooking methods, such as grilling, broiling,
roasting and sautéing.

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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Meats, Poultry and Seafood
Preparation

Moist Heat Cooking Methods
Tougher cuts of meat are generally best cooked by
a moist heat cooking method, such as simmering,

or a combination of dry and moist cooking, such as
braising, pot-roasting or stewing.

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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Meats, Poultry and Seafood

Receiving and Storage

Delivery
Fresh meat
and seafood

items

30°F – 34°F
-1°C – 1°C

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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Meats, Poultry and Seafood
Receiving and Storage

Arrival
Frozen
foods

At or below
0°F

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Meats, Poultry and Seafood
Receiving and Storage

Refrigeration
Raw poultry
and fresh
seafood

1 – 2 days
@

40°F

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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Fruits and Vegetables

Quality

• Published by Produce Marketing
Association

• Details produce standards and quality

The Fresh Produce Manual

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Fruits and Vegetables
Quality

• U.S. Fancy
• U.S. No. 1
• U.S. No. 2
• U.S. No. 3

USDA Fruit Grades

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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Fruits and Vegetables
Quality
• U.S. Fancy
• U.S. No. 1
• U.S. No. 2
• U.S. No. 3

USDA Fresh Vegetable Grades

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Fruits and Vegetables

Storage and Preparation

Always discuss specific vegetable and fruit storage
requirements with produce suppliers.

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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Dairy and Egg Products

Dairy

Generally refers to cow’s milk and the basic foods
that are produced from it

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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Dairy and Egg Products

Milks

Whole milk Dry whole milk

Low-fat milk Evaporated milk

Skim milk Condensed (canned) milk

Flavored milk Dry whole milk

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Dairy and Egg Products

Creams

Half-and-half Light cream

Light whipping
cream Heavy cream

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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Dairy and Egg Products

Other Milk-Based Foods

Butter Yogurt

Sour crème Ice cream

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Dairy and Egg Products

Eggs and Egg Products

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Dairy and Egg Products

Dairy and Egg Storage

• Fluid milks, butter, cream, yogurt, most cheeses
and egg products should be refrigerated at 41ºF
(5ºC).

• Frozen desserts stored at temperatures below
0°F (-18°C) and keep for about one month.

Developing a Restaurant
Chapter 2

David K. Hayes | Allisha A. Miller | Jack D. Ninemeier

The Professional
Restaurant Manager

Book Title
Author name

© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved

© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

The Rise of the Restaurant Chain

Franchise
A relationship through which a business is run
using the same name and operating system of

another business.

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
The Rise of the Restaurant Chain

Franchisor
A person or business entity that sells a franchise.

Franchisee
A person or business entity that buys a franchise.

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Costs of Franchise
and

Independent Restaurants

Initial franchise fee

Royalty fees

Marketing fees

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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Costs of Franchise
and
Independent Restaurants

The Initial Franchise Fee

Franchisors charge a
one-time fee to their

franchisees.

Fee amount is directly
related to the chain’s
history of success.

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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Costs of Franchise
and
Independent Restaurants

Royalty Fees

Fees paid
over the life
of franchise
agreement.

Fees
expressed as
a percentage

of total
revenue.

Fees typically
range from 4
% to 10%.

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Costs of Franchise
and
Independent Restaurants

Marketing Fees

Used to finance chain-
wide advertising and
marketing programs.

Intended to
supplement individual
unit marketing efforts.

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Author name
© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Costs of Franchise
and

Independent Restaurants
The Cost of Independence

Avoid high franchise fees

Must pay for services otherwise provided by the
franchisor

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved
© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved
The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Operating Franchised
and

Independent Restaurants
Advantages of Franchise Restaurants

Success in the market

Opened and operated at a lower cost

Training systems are in place

Enhanced ability to secure start-up funding

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved
The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Operating Franchised
and

Independent Restaurants
Disadvantages of Franchise Restaurants

Large fees charged by franchisors

Expansion may be limited

Restricted operating control

Book Title
Author name
© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved
© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved
The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Operating Franchised
and

Independent Restaurants
Advantages of Independent Restaurants

Best for unique operations

Total operational control

Profits and expansion potential may be greater

Book Title
Author name
© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved
© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved
The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Operating Franchised
and

Independent Restaurants
Disadvantages of Independent Restaurants

Lack of name recognition

Higher operating costs

Reduced ability to secure external funding

Book Title
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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved
© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Securing Needed

Capital

Capital

The investment cash used to start a new

restaurant.

Equity funding
The personal money used to finance a new

restaurant.

Debt financing
The borrowed money used to finance a new

restaurant.

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved
The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Securing Needed Capital

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved
© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Securing Needed Capital

Book Title
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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved
© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

The Impact on

ROI

Annual Profits

Investment

ROI

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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

The Impact on ROI

$50,000
Annual Profits

$500,000
Investment

10%
ROI

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

The Impact on ROI

$50,000
Annual Profits

$250,000
Investment

20%
ROI

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
The Impact on ROI

Leverage

The use of borrowed money to fund an investment.

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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
The Impact on ROI

Book Title
Author name
© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved
© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
The Impact on ROI

Effect of Debt Service on Debt Coverage Ratio:

Annual profit
generated

Required
debt service

Debt
coverage

ratio

GETTING READY FOR PRODUCTION
Chapter 7

David K. Hayes | Allisha A. Miller | Jack D. Ninemeier

The Professional
Restaurant Manager

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Author name

© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved

© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved

The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Production Forecasting

Number of guests to be served

Number of each menu item that should be
produced for sale

Revenue anticipated for a specific time period

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Production Forecasting

Historical
sales trends

Current
sales trends

Future sales
trends

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Production Forecasting

Historical Sales Trends

The prior day’s

sales

Average sales
for the prior five

same days

The prior week’s
average daily

sales

The prior two
weeks’ average

daily sales

The prior
month’s

average daily
sales

Actual sales on
the same day of

previous year

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Production Forecasting

Current Sales Trends

Unusual and
adverse
weather

conditions
Concerts Sporting events

Festivals
Other activities
in the market

area

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Production Forecasting

Future Sales Trends

Opening of
competitive
restaurants

Specially featured
menu items

Planned
promotions

Changes in
operating hours

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Purchasing

Centralized purchasing

A system in which purchasing is the responsibility
of a specialist in the purchasing department in a

large restaurant or is coordinated with purchasing
specialists outside the restaurant in a multi-unit

operation.

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Purchasing

GOALS

Right Quality

Right Quantity

Right Supplier

Right Price

Right Time

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Purchasing

Purchasing Specifications

Purchase specification

A tool that details the product characteristics of a
specific food or beverage item purchased for a

restaurant.

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Author name
© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Purchasing
Purchasing Specifications

• Product name or specification number
• Pricing unit
• Standard or grade
• Count/weight/range/size

Product Specification

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Purchasing
Purchasing Specifications

• Tolerance allowed
• Color
• Geographic origin
• Processing and/or packaging
• Intended use

Product Specification

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Purchasing

Product Yield Percentage

Recipe-ready
The form of an ingredient when it’s fully prepared

to be added to a recipe.

Book Title
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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Purchasing
Product Yield Percentage

Ending product
amount

Beginning
product amount

Product
yield

percentage

Book Title
Author name
© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Purchasing

Edible Portion (EP) Amounts

Production loss
The amount of a product’s AP weight that is not

servable.

AP
amount

(100%)

Yield % Product loss %

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Purchasing
Edible Portion (EP) Amounts

EP
amount

needed

Yield %
Amount

to
purchase

Book Title
Author name
© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved
The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Purchasing

As Purchased (AP) Amounts

AP
amount Yield %

EP
amount

Book Title
Author name
© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved
The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Purchasing
As Purchased (AP) Amounts

EP
amount Yield %

AP
amount

Book Title
Author name
© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved
The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Inventory Management

Product
amount

needed

Product
amount

in
inventory

Amount
to buy

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved
The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Inventory Management

Receiving

Personnel

Receiving area

Needed tools and equipment

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Inventory Management
Receiving

• Maintain food safety standards

• Maintain quality standards

• Are qualified to resolve product delivery issues

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© 2012 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Inventory Management
Receiving

Step 1
Compare
delivery

invoice and
PO

Confirm
quantity

Confirm
unit price

Step 2
Confirm
product
quality

Step 3
Sign delivery

invoice
Step 4

Move product
to storage

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Inventory Management

Storage

Dry
storage

50ºF – 70ºF;

10ºC–21.1ºC

Refrigerated
storage

less than

41ºF; 5ºC

Frozen
storage

less than

0ºF; -17.8ºC

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
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Inventory Management
Storage

Physical inventory system
A process used to determine the quantity and

value of product inventory on hand at a specific
point in time.

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Inventory Management
Storage

Perpetual inventory system
A process that records all products entering and

being issued from storage so managers know, on
an ongoing basis, the amount of product that

should be in inventory.

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Inventory Management

Issuing

Ø Actual amount of product in inventory

Ø Par stock amount

Ø Time lapse between order placement and its
delivery

IT ALL STARTS WITH THE MENU
Chapter 5

David K. Hayes | Allisha A. Miller | Jack D. Ninemeier

The Professional
Restaurant Manager

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Planning the Menu

The menu dictates a restaurant’s operating
procedures and how the procedures are

implemented.

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Planning the Menu

The Importance of a Menu

Value
A concept addressing the relationship between

selling price and quality.

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Planning the Menu

Menu Planning Strategies

• Remember menu planning priorities
• Guests
• Operating limitations
• Quality
• Financial goals

Strategy 1

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Planning the Menu
Menu Planning Strategies

• Consider menu categories
Strategy 2

• Select menu items for each category
Strategy 3

• Establish quality standards for each menu
item

Strategy 4

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Planning the Menu
Menu Planning Strategies

Standardized recipe
Instructions to produce a food or beverage item
that help ensure that the restaurant’s quality and

quantity standards for the product are consistently
met.

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Planning the Menu
Menu Planning Strategies

Product

Preparation method

Price

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Designing the Menu

A properly designed menu must provide guests

needed information and be designed to sell.

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Designing the Menu

Basic Menu Information

À la carte

Table d’hôte (prix fixe)

Cycle menu

Du jour menu

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Designing the Menu

Design Menus to Sell

Use a different size or

Use a box

Use shading

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Food Safety

Kitchen Sanitation Tour

Temperature danger zone
The temperature range of 41°F (5°C) to 135°F

(57C°) in which harmful germs multiply quickly.

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Food Safety
Kitchen Sanitation Tour

Purchasing Receiving Storing

Production After Production Clean up

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Food Safety

Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points

• Assess hazards
Step 1

• Identify critical control points (CCP)
Step 2

• Define CCP limits
Step 3

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Food Safety
Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points

• Monitor CPPs
Step 4

• Implement corrective actions
Step 5

• Establish record-keeping systems
Step 6

• Verify HACCP system success
Step 7

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Standardized Recipes: Quality Control

Developing Standardized Recipes

Review and revise recipe draft

Write recipe draft

Consider preparation details

Observe menu item preparation

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Standardized Recipes: Quality Control
Developing Standardized Recipes

Use recipe

Consider further revisions

Evaluate recipes

Use recipes

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Standardized Recipes: Quality Control

Recipe Conversion Factor (RCF)

1.Converting number of servings

2.Converting serving size

3.Converting number of servings and serving size

Desired
servings

Current
servings RCF

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Standardized Recipes:
Costing Procedures

Part I: Volume Measure—Gallon to Teaspoons

1 gallon = 4 quarts = 128 fluid ounces

1 quart = 2 pints = 32 fluid ounces

1 pint = 2 cups = 16 fluid ounces

1 cup = 16
tablespoons

= 8 fluid ounces

1 tablespoon = 3 teaspoons = ½ fluid ounces

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Standardized Recipes:
Costing Procedures

Part II: Volume Measures—Cup to 1/2 Tablespoon

1 cup = 16 tablespoons
¾ cup = 12 tablespoons
⅔ cup = 10 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons
½ cup = 8 tablespoons
⅓ cup = 5 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon
¼ cup = 4 tablespoons
⅛ cup = 2 tablespoons
1 tablespoon = 3 teaspoons
½ tablespoon = 1½ teaspoons

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Standardized Recipes:
Costing Procedures

Part III: Weight—Pounds to Ounces
1 pound = 16 ounces

¾ pound = 12 ounces

½ pound = 8 ounces

¼ pound = 4 ounces

1 ounce = ½ fluid ounce

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Standardized Recipes:
Costing Procedures

Part IV: Metric Weight and Volume
Measurements

1 kilo = 1000 grams (weight)

1000 milliliters = 1 liter (volume)

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Standardized Recipes:
Costing Procedures

Part V: U.S Measurements and Metric
Equivalents

Volume
U.S Metric

Gallon 3.79 liters
Quart .95 liters
Pint 473* milliliters
Cups 237* milliliters
Tablespoon 15* milliliters
Teaspoon 5* milliliters

*Indicates rounded amount

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Standardized Recipes:
Costing Procedures
Part V: U.S Measurements and Metric
Equivalents

Weight
U.S Metric

Pound 455* grams
¾ pound (12 oz.) 340* grams
½ pound (8 oz.) 228* grams
¼ pound (4 oz.) 114* grams
1 ounce 30* grams

*Indicates rounded amount

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Standardized Recipes:
Costing Procedures

Key costing terms

Purchase unit As purchased (AP)
Edible food yield Edible portion (EP)

Managing Revenue
Chapter 12

David K. Hayes | Allisha A. Miller | Jack D. Ninemeier

The Professional
Restaurant Manager

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Revenue Analysis

• Total Revenue
• Guest Check Average
• Revenue Variance

Three
important
indicators of
an operation’s
revenue are:

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Revenue Analysis

Total Revenue Indicators

Day-part
A segment of the day that represents a change in

menu and customer response patterns.

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Revenue Analysis

Total Revenue Indicators

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Revenue Analysis
Total Revenue Indicators

Revenue
from source

Total
revenue

Revenue
source

contribution
percentage

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Revenue Analysis

Guest Check Average Indicators

Total F&B
revenue

Number of

guest

s

served

Guest
check

average

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Revenue Analysis

Revenue Variance Indicators

Actual
revenue

Forecasted
revenue

Revenue
difference
(variance)

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Menu Analysis

Menu Pricing Basics

Mark up pricing requires three steps:

Determine food
costs for the
item(s) being

priced.

Determine the
mark-up.

Establish a
base selling

price by
multiplying the
food cost by
the mark-up.

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Menu Analysis
Menu Pricing Basics

Two steps are used in contribution margin pricing:

Determine the average
contribution margin per

guest.

Add the average
contribution margin per

guest to the item’s
standard food cost.

(Nonfood
costs) +
profits

Number of
expected

guests

Average
contribution
margin per

guest

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Menu Analysis

Menu Engineering

The original menu engineering model altered the
common definition of “popular.”

For example, if there
are four equally popular

menu items, and 100
were sold, each would

achieve 25% of all
sales.

100 sold ÷ 4 = 25 sold

Menu engineering
defines a “popular” item

as one that sells only
70% of its expected
sales percentage.

25 sold x 70% = 17.5 sold

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Menu Analysis

Menu Engineering

The traditional names assigned by menu
engineering for each classification are:

Plow
horse Puzzle Dog Star

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Menu Analysis
Menu Engineering

• Increasing price gradually and carefully
• Relocating to lower profile sections on

the menu
• Combining with lower food cost items

Action plan for Plow Horses:

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
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Menu Analysis
Menu Engineering

• Repositioning to high profile areas
• Highlighting items
• Providing extensive menu descriptions
• Renaming the item
• Decreasing the item’s price

Action plan for Puzzles:

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Menu Analysis
Menu Engineering

• Doing “nothing”
• Placing in highly visible menu

locations
• Carefully increasing selling prices

Action plan for Stars:

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Menu Analysis
Menu Engineering

• Remove from menu
• Increase prices to equal that of Puzzles

Action plan for Dogs:

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Revenue Control

Importance of Revenue Control

When revenue collection systems are inadequate,
cash shortages will continue:

– If the time and specific cause(s) of the shortage
cannot be identified

– If the cause of a cash shortage cannot be traced to
a single individual

– When “small” shortages are ignored

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
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Revenue Control

Revenue Control Systems

An Effective Revenue Control System
Addresses:

1. Charging the Guest

2. Collecting Revenue

3. Protecting Revenue

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Revenue Control

Revenue Control Systems
High-quality revenue control systems record:

The name of items purchased

The quantity of items purchased

The prices of items purchased

The sum of the costs of all items purchased

Calculation and payment of applicable taxes

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Revenue Control

Minimizing Guest Theft
When accepting payment cards

Examine the card for signs of alteration.

Verify the card’s expiration date.

Compare the signature on the charge slip with
the one on the card’s back.

Refuse to accept unsigned cards.

Ask for another form of picture identification.

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Revenue Control

Minimizing Employee Theft

Attempts to defraud guests and the restaurant include:

Incorrect totals of legitimate purchases.

Charging for items not purchased.

Returning less than the correct amount of
change.

Reducing check totals after the guest has paid.

Voiding sales after guest has paid in full.

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Revenue Control
Minimizing Employee Theft

Managers can use a pre-check/post-check system
to help prevent employee theft.

Pre-check/post-check System
A system that matches the quantity and value of
orders placed by servers to the number of items

paid for by guests

Serving Guests

Chapter 9

David K. Hayes | Allisha A. Miller | Jack D. Ninemeier

The Professional
Restaurant Manager

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Attracting Guests

Management’s primary
function in the restaurant

business is simply to obtain
and retain customers.

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Attracting Guests

Target Markets

Features
Specific menu items and services that a restaurant

offers for sale.

Benefits
An advantage or desirable consequence that

results from the purchase of a product or service
feature.

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
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Attracting Guests
Target Markets

DemographicsPsychographics

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The Marketing Plan

What is to be done?

Who will do it?

When should it be done?

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The Marketing Plan

What funding will be required?

How will results be monitored?

How will results be measured?

How will results be evaluated?

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The Marketing Plan

Traditional Marketing

Advertising Promotions

Publicity Public Relations

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The Marketing Plan

Contemporary Marketing

It is characterized by a
restaurant’s successful use

of social media.

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The Importance of Quality Service

Service Standards

• Guest loyalty increases

• Minor mistakes in service delivery are more
often forgiven

• Guests will share positive/negative experiences

• Customer feedback systems work better

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
The Importance of Quality Service

Service Standards
• Guest loyalty increases when excellent service is consistently

delivered.

• Minor mistakes in service delivery are more often forgiven
when it’s clear the restaurant is striving to do its best for
customers and apologizes for the errors.

• Guests who have a positive experience will tell others about it
(just as they will share their negative experiences!).

• Customer feedback systems work better because guests
know management truly cares about service improvements.

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© 2014 by Pearson Higher Education, Inc
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 • All Rights Reserved
The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
The Importance of Quality Service
Service Standards

Servers:

• Think and act as “hosts” of the guests being
served.

• Remember and use the names of regular
guests: “Regulars.”

• Make a genuine effort to ensure that each guest
has a memorable dining experience.

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
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The Importance of Quality Service
Service Standards
Servers:

• Anticipate and respond to the needs of guests.

• Are proud of their appearance.

• Help other staff members.

• Sincerely thank guests and invite them to return.

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Service Standards

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
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Serving Guests

Table clearing and resetting

Guest payment

Taking and delivering guest orders

Greeting guests

Managing guest arrivals

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Serving Guests

Managing Guest Arrival

Facility
appearance

StaffStaff appearance

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Serving Guests
Managing Guest Arrival

Smiling
Energetic
Respectful
Visible
Engaged

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Serving Guests

Greeting Guests

Moment of truth
An instance of interaction between a customer and
a business that gives the customer an opportunity
to form or change his or her impression about a

business.

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Serving Guests

Taking and Delivering Guest Orders

Order taking and food delivery is a skillful art that
reflects on the quality of the server and the
restaurant.

Total
F&B

revenue

Total
number

of guests
served

Check
average

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Serving Guests

Potential Guest Payment Issues

• Slow delivery to the guest

• Processed too slow by server

• Delivered too quickly to the guest’s table

• The guest check contains errors

• Credit or debit card charges don’t match the
original guest check amounts

• Improper change is returned

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Serving Guests

Table Clearing and Resetting

• Tablecloths may need to be replaced

• Hard surface tabletops to be cleaned & sanitized

• Chairs, booths and child seats to be cleaned
between uses

• Table-top items should be clean and free of food
spills

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Evaluation of Guest Service

RevPASH (revenue per available seat hour)

A measurement designed to assess efficiency in

using the seating capacity of a restaurant.

Total
revenue

Seat
hours

available
RevPASH

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Evaluation of Guest Service
RevPASH (revenue per available seat hour)

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Evaluation of Guest Service

Responding to On-site Guest Feedback

Step 1:
• Introduce yourself by name and position.

Step 2:
• Seek information.

Step 3:
• Empathize with the guest.

Step 4:
• Fix the problem and apologize on behalf of the restaurant.

Step 5:

• Thank the guest for bring the issue to your attention.

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Evaluation of Guest Service

Responding to Social media site feedback

Step 1:
• Thank the reviewer for his or her feedback.

Step 2:
• If the customer’s version of the events is correct;

apologize.

Step 3:
• Provide a clear and direct explanation of what

caused the problem.

Step 4:
• Assure the site’s readers that specific actions have

been taken to avoid a repeat of the problem.

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Evaluation of Guest Service
Responding to Social media site feedback
Step 5:

• Offer a direct line of communication between
you and the negative reviewer (via email or
phone).

Step 6:

• Directly quote any part of the reviewer’s
comments that was positive.

Step 7:

• End the posting by again thanking the reviewer for
the feedback and for helping the restaurant provide
better food and service to its customers.

Managing for Profit
Chapter 13

David K. Hayes | Allisha A. Miller | Jack D. Ninemeier

The Professional
Restaurant Manager

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The Budget Process

• Requires managers to consider future
external events and their financial
impacts.

• Challenges managers to recognize the
importance of sales when projecting
expenses and allows them to carefully
prioritize competing sales demands.

A well prepared operating budget is critical
because it:

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The Budget Process

• Creates a standard (benchmark) against
which to compare actual versus budgeted
performance.

• Helps managers establish an appropriate
menu pricing structure.

• Communicates a realistic estimate of
future financial results to owners so they
can evaluate the restaurant as an
investment.

A well prepared operating budget is critical
because it:

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
The Budget Process

Importance of

Budgeting Sales

Budgeted
sales

Budgeted

expense

Budgeted
profit

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
The Budget Process
Budgeting Sales

Step

5

Estimate impact of price changes on revenue

Step

4

Estimate long-term effect of menu changes on revenue

Step 3
Evaluate changes in external environment

Step

2

Evaluate changes in internal environment

Step 1
Review revenue data from previous years

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The Budget Process

Monitoring the Budget

Variance is the difference between actual and
planned results.

Actual
$

expense

Budgeted
$

expense
$

Variance

Actual
expense

Budgeted
expense

Variance
%

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The Budget Process
Monitoring the Budget

Step 4:
Take corrective action, if appropriate

Step 3:
Determine cause(s) of the variance

Step 2:
Identify areas of significant variance

Step 1:
Compare actual results from income statement to the budget

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The Budget Process
Monitoring the Budget

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The Budget Process

Return on Investment (ROI)

$100,000 $1,000,000 10% ROI

$100,000 $2,000,000 5% ROI

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The Budget Process

Considerations for revising the budget

1
• The opening or closing of a competitor.

2

• Opening, by the same or different ownership, of
an identical restaurant in the property’s market
area.

3
• A significant and long-term change in major

menu ingredient prices.

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The Budget Process
Considerations for revising the budget
4

• Significant and unanticipated increases in
fixed expenses, such as insurance or taxes.

5

• Unplanned road construction that
significantly affects consumers’ abilities to
reach the restaurant.

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The Budget Process
Considerations for revising the budget

6

• Natural disasters (floods/hurricanes) that
significantly affect forecasted sales.

7
• Significant changes in operating hours.

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The Budget Process
Considerations for revising the budget

8
• Permanent changes in service style that

appreciably affect labor costs.

9
• Changes in financial statement formats and/or

bases for allocation of financial resources.

10
• The loss of especially skilled or talented

employees.

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The Corrective Action Process

Model for Corrective Action

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The Corrective Action Process

Decision Making Process
The Decision Making (Problem Solving) Process
• Step 1:

• Define the Problem
• Step 2:

• Generate Solution Alternatives
• Step 3:

• Evaluate Solution Alternatives
• Step 4:

• Select the “Best” Solution Alternative
• Step 5:

• Implement the Best Solution Alternative
• Step 6:

• Evaluate the Effectiveness of the Solution

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The Corrective Action Process

Tactics to Implement Change

Continuous quality improvement (CQI)
Ongoing efforts within the restaurant to better meet
or exceed guests’ expectations and to define ways
to perform work with better, less-costly and faster

methods.

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The Balance Sheet:
Summary of Financial Status

The balance sheet provides a summary of financial
sustainability.

It also indicates the amount of retained earnings:
the amount of profits made that have not been
withdrawn from the business.

Assets Liabilities Owner’s Equity

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The Balance Sheet:
Summary of Financial Status

• Current assets

• Property and
equipment

• Other assets

Three types
of assets:

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The Balance Sheet:
Summary of Financial Status

Current Ratio

Measures the ability of a restaurant to meet its
short-term debt.

Current
assets

Current
liabilities

Current
ratio

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The Balance Sheet:
Summary of Financial Status

Solvency Ratio
Shows the relationship of a restaurant’s assets to

its liabilities

Total
assets

Total
liabilities

Solvency
ratio

Cost Control
Chapter 11

David K. Hayes | Allisha A. Miller | Jack D. Ninemeier

The Professional
Restaurant Manager

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier

Managing Food and Beverage Costs

Cost of goods sold: food

The actual

cost

of the food used to gene

rate

food
revenue for a specific time period; also called

adjusted food cost or net food cost.

Cost of goods sold: beverage

The actual cost of the beverages used to generate
beverage revenue for a specific time period; also
called adjusted beverage cost or net beverage

cost

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Managing Food and Beverage Costs

Managers Calculate Cost of Goods Sold:

To compare the
operating budget with

actual costs

To include as an entry
on the property’s
income statement

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Managing Food and Beverage Costs

Calculation of Cost of Goods Sold

Income statement

A summary of the restaurant’s profitability that
details revenues generated, costs incurred and

profits or losses realized during a specific
accounting period

Also called a profit and loss statement (P&L) or an
income and expense statement

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Managing Food and Beverage Costs
Calculation of Cost of Goods Sold

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Managing Food and Beverage Costs

Food and Beverage Cost Percentages

Food-cost percentage
The percentage of food revenue used to purchase

the food that generated the revenue.

Beverage-cost percentage
The percentage of beverage revenue used to

purchase the beverage that generated the
revenue.

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Managing Food and Beverage Costs
Food and Beverage Cost Percentages

Prime costs
The term used to describe the sum of food and

beverage costs plus labor costs.

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Managing Food and Beverage Costs
Food and Beverage Cost Percentages

COGS:
food

(Unadjusted)

Food
revenue

Food
cost %

(Unadjusted)

COGS:
Bev.

(Unadjusted)

Bev.
revenue

Bev.
cost %

(Unadjusted)

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The Professional Restaurant Manager, 1e
David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Managing Food and Beverage Costs

Concerns About Cost of Goods Sold

Inventory turnover rate
The speed with which food or beverage inventory
is turned into revenue within a specific time period

* Average inventory = (Beginning inventory + Ending inventory) ÷ 2

Cost of
goods sold

(food or
beverage)

Average
inventory
(food or

beverage)*

Inventory
turnover

rate

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Managing Food and Beverage Costs
Concerns About Cost of Goods Sold

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Managing Food and Beverage Costs

Factors Affecting Costs

Menu Food preparation methods

Desired service
levels

Quality of
employee training

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Managing Food and Beverage Costs

Five-Step Labor Control System

• Select productivity measuresStep 1

• Forecast revenues Step 2

• Establish staffing requirementsStep 3

• Schedule staffStep 4

• Evaluate labor control resultsStep 5

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Managing Food and Beverage Costs
Five-Step Labor Control System

Lunch and Dinner Labor Cost Percentages
Meal Period Cost of Labor Revenue Labor Cost %
Lunch $2,500.00 $5,000.00 50.0%
Dinner $4,000.00 $12,000.00 33.3%
Total $6,500.00 $17,000.00 38.2%

Cost of
Labor Revenue

Labor
Cost %

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Managing Food and Beverage Costs
Five-Step Labor Control System

Total
Revenue

Total

Labor
Hours
Used

Revenue
per

Labor
Hour

Total
Labor
Dollars

Number
of

Guest
Served

Labor
Dollars

per
Guest

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Managing Food and Beverage Costs
Five-Step Labor Control System
Guest
Served
Labor
Hours
Used

Guests
Served

per
Labor
Hour

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Managing Food and Beverage Costs

• Days and dates covered
• Employees’ first and last names
• Days to work and scheduled days off
• Start and stop times
• Total hours to work
• Requested vacation time or personal days off
• On/off days for salaried personnel
• Date of schedule preparation
• Name of manager preparing/approving the schedule

Effective employee schedules should
always indicate:

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David K. Hayes, Allisha A. Miller, and Jack D. Ninemeier
Managing Food and Beverage Costs

• Develop a productivity target and schedule to
meet it

• Determine forecasted revenue
• Schedule for the needs of guests first and

employees second
• Avoid scheduling overtime whenever possible
• Use part-time employees for peak-volume

periods

When preparing employee
schedules:

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Managing Food and Beverage Costs

• Minimize split shifts
• Grant employee schedule requests when

possible
• Be fair when scheduling preferred work periods
• Comply with all applicable laws and company

policies
• Communicate scheduling decisions in a timely

manner

When preparing employee
schedules:

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Managing Other Costs

Variable Costs and Fixed Costs

• Food
• Labor

Variable costs are those that change in
direct proportion to changes in revenue.

• Rent
• Insurance

Fixed costs are those that do not vary as
revenue changes.

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Managing Other Costs

Common Restaurant Costs