Road Trip: Live from New York

Clark Wolf reveals why concept creators find the Big Apple fruitful ground.

By Lisa Bertagnoli, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 3/1/2005

Clark Wolf

Food is everywhere you look in New York. It spills out of bins at corner groceries, simmers in steam tables at delis, hangs on sidewalk pushcarts and, above all, beckons from restaurants. Lots of them.

It seems as if every other storefront is a restaurant, and that could be true. New York’s five boroughs hold 23,000 restaurants, so many that if the city were a state, it would rank eighth in the number of eateries nationwide.

And it’s hardly an island of independents. Most of the national quick-service chains have a presence in New York; Manhattan alone boasts almost 100 McDonald’s. Houston’s, Applebee’s, Red Lobster and Olive Garden are among the full-service nationals with a New York presence.

But the city is unique for its cachet of multiconcept operators. According to Restaurants & Institutions magazine, New York boasts 14 of the country’s 75 biggest multiconcept operators, ranging from behemoth Restaurant Associates, which ranks first, to 70th-ranked Cipriani Associates, operator of the fabled Rainbow Room.

What makes the Big Apple such fertile ground for concept creators? For answers, Chain Leader called on Clark Wolf, a food and menu expert who’s consulted in New York since 1982.

Dressed in charcoal-gray slacks, a black Prada T-shirt and lavender-tinted glasses, Wolf’s the picture of downtown chic. Sitting at his dining-room table, he offers a few insights into the city’s bustling concept-creating scene: “It’s familiarity and real estate and a loyal customer base.” Operators—among them Mario Batali, Steve Hansen of B.R. Guest Inc., and Jimmy Bradley and Danny Abrams of Abrams & Bradley—find a niche, then open concepts tailored to those customers. “There’s a place for [customers] to visit every day of the week,” Wolf says.

Expensive real estate, which confounds many a national chain, works better for concept creators, who aren’t as married to financial formulas hinged on square footage.

Too, small companies tend to open restaurants close to each other, the better to keep tabs on their growing empire. No concept creator illustrates that better than Tom Colicchio, whose three restaurants, Craft, Craftbar and ’wichCraft, sit right next to each other on East 19th Street. “It’s a great real-estate deal,” says Wolf.

That said, he grabs the last item of his urban uniform, a black leather jacket, and off we go.

Brasserie 101
We’ve come to TriBeCa for a tour of the city’s brasseries, beginning with Odeon. Opened in 1983, it was arguably the city’s first brasserie, and the first concept for Keith McNally, who’s since opened Balthazar, Schiller’s Liquor Bar, Lucky Strike, Pravda and Pastis.

There’s no national brasserie chain, Wolf muses, but then reconsiders. “Houston’s might be, or steakhouses,” he says. Like French brasseries, they have the same basic menu, and customers know what to expect from the dining experience, he explains.

As for Odeon, the upscale brasserie filled a niche for New York diners, Wolf says as he sits at the bar, snacking on frites and sipping a double espresso. “It was so useful. You could come here in jeans or in black tie,” he says.

The interior, dimly lit and with little in the way of obvious decor, thrills Wolf. Picture windows overlooking West Broadway, a noisy dining room and lighting add up to an interior Wolf calls “perfect.” “There’s not a single piece of original design,” he says, from the black-and-white-tiled bathrooms to the simple art-deco bar.

Interiors are McNally’s forte, he adds. “He’s a filmmaker—his restaurants are movie sets,” Wolf says. Indeed, when we stop at Balthazar later, every detail, from the clatter of dishes to the soft golden glow of light, is perfect. And for good reason: “Visual is critical in New York,” Wolf says.

Flower Power
Frites finished, we head to Chanterelle, the upscale brasserie David and Karen Waltuck own. On our way we pass more than a few Starbucks. “Everybody hates Starbucks, but why? Before Starbucks New York had burnt, bitter coffee,” he says.

Odeon, New York’s first brasserie, is going strong 21 years after opening.

“It’s good, and everybody’s so nice with their piercings,” he continues. Then there’s the company’s business savvy: “They don’t remodel, they install, which saves a bundle of money,” Wolf says.

We pause to check out Le Pain Quotidien, a Belgian bakery-cafe import testing the U.S. waters with seven New York and four Los Angeles locations. The airy, very French-looking place is semicrowded at lunch, with a few people seated at its signature communal table, but Wolf is not sure the concept will fly. “It’s a little too formal, and there’s too many words in the name,” he says.

At Chanterelle, Wolf points out the huge bouquet of flowers in the center of the quiet, elegant room. It’s a classic brasserie touch, he explains: The flowers decorate and perfume the whole room, so there’s no need to fuss with flowers on each table.

The Waltucks also own the more modest Le Zinc, a small square restaurant with a zinc bar, bare wood floor, poster-plastered walls and, again, a huge vase of flowers. When we walk in, Karen Waltuck greets us at the hostess stand.

A visible owner is key to the city’s successful concept creators, Wolf says. “People think of the husband and wife at the front door,” he says. It’s easier to replicate without that visible owner, but the result “lacks personal warmth, connection,” he says.

And that recognizable name on the door is all too important, especially in status-conscious New York. “It lends credibility, and [predicts] a successful experience,” Wolf explains, adding as an example, “There’s no Mario Batali restaurant I wouldn’t try.”

Wolf chats with Karen Waltuck at Le Zinc, her and her husband’s casual bistro. They also own the elegant Chanterelle.

Take the R Train
We take the subway north to Prince Street. Our destination: the kingdom of Batali, whose holdings include Otto Enoteca and Pizzeria, Babbo, Lupa, Esca, Casa Mono and Bar Jamon.

New Yorkers know Batali for his good food and interesting settings. Tourists are familiar with him from The Food Network show Molto Mario. As a result, customers congregate in the front of Babbo, his first restaurant, well before it opens for dinner at 5:30.

Our lunch destination is Otto (pronounced OH-toe, Italian for “eight”). Wolf quickly orders enough food for a small army: funghi mista, Brussels sprouts with vin cotto, autumn corn and fregula, all served in white ramekins; an arugula salad; a beet salad; a funghi and taleggio-cheese pizza; and for dessert, pumpkin gelato, goat-milk-ricotta gelato, apple crisp and Concord-grape sorbet.

Over lunch, Wolf talks about what keeps restaurants hot in a town where new places open practically every day. “It’s more than good food and service—there’s a little alchemy involved,” he says.

A visit to a restaurant can’t be a neutral experience, Wolf adds. Something’s got to happen, “and even if it’s problematic, it’s not what happens, it’s how it’s handled,” he says.

Curiously enough, we have an experience that makes his point. We’re almost finished with lunch, and our pizza has yet to arrive. Wolf calls over the server, who says calmly, “I’ll let the kitchen know you’re ready for your pizza.”

She leaves and Wolf laughs. “Genius!” he pronounces her cover-up. “It was B.S., but genius.”

The Neon Jungle
An hour and a half after lunch, we’re at the bar at Pace (pronounced pah-chay, Latin for “peace”), Abrams & Bradley’s latest venture. It’s on a corner, a signature for the duo, and features a display kitchen and small, crowded bar, which, like all good New York bars, is clearly visible from the street.

Mario Batali keeps customers loyal with imaginative Italian fare, as served at Otto. “There’s no Mario Batali place I wouldn’t try,” Wolf says.

But the drinks at Pace are merely a detour on the way to our last stop, Times Square. On the subway ride to Midtown, the car’s interior is plastered with red-and-white FOOD FOOD FOOD signs advertising Everyday Food, Martha Stewart’s recipe magazine. The presence of food even on the subway prompts Wolf to comment how universal sustenance is. “It could be the basis for the most broad-based educational experience,” he says.

At dusk, Times Square bustles with locals going home, tourists heading out, and even a wedding party. At 47th Street and Broadway, Wolf points out Hansen’s Blue Fin, its small, crowded bar visible from the street. There’s already a wait for tables in the bilevel interior, and no wonder: “He might be New York’s [Richard] Melman,” says Wolf of Hansen, who owns 10 concepts with 12 units in Manhattan and one in Las Vegas.

Red Lobster, whose façade features a giant, red, twirling lobster, and Olive Garden, with a grass-green neon sign, are situated not too far from Blue Fin. The lines there are forming, too.

“The chains satisfy expectations for a certain amount of customers,” namely tourists, he says. “They announce that New York City is much more accessible to America.

“Chains are a choice,” Wolf continues, “but not the only one.”