Chris Koszyk.Can Chef Joe handle two restaurants simultaneously?
Start-Up Chronicle
Getting a restaurant off the ground.
Arthur on Smith is the name of our new restaurant in Brooklyn. It is a tribute to Chef Joe’s father, who passed away last year but whose spirit will be reborn at 276 Smith Street. Arthur also refers to la strada principale in the Italian section of the Bronx and will make naming any future restaurants a lot easier, like spreading ashes: Arthur on Bleecker, Arthur on Madison, Arthur on. … Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.
The lease is signed, the menu designed and the kitchen is being retrofitted with equipment suited to Chef Joe’s cooking style. Chefs hate fire more and more; they prefer flat-top stoves, planchas, grills, fryers, smokers, pickling jars, curing cages and thermal immersion circulators. And make no mistake, Arthur on Smith belongs to Joe Isidori. Legally, conceptually, and operationally.
If Southfork Kitchen was something I could not not do, the same is true for Chef Joe and this venture. He had no choice. After 15 years of a delicious education and spicy rebellion, it was time to come home. Geographically, gustatorily. And even though he balks at my grandma-to-table tag as “too cute, too unprofessional,” it’s not half wrong; Chef Joe’s nonna and Chef Arthur’s mamma, Filomena, was also a New York City chef.
I am an investor in Arthur on Smith. A major (hard-to-keep) silent investor, but only one of several. And I am investing in the chef more than the restaurant. I know Joe. I trust Joe. Together, we have seen fire and rain, earthquakes and meltdowns, a hailstorm of criticism and a drizzle of accolades. He has the energy of a Navy Seal and a Michelin star on his epaulets. I can’t imagine having opened Southfork Kitchen with anyone else. I may have been a greenhorn, but this wasn’t Joe’s first rodeo. He had graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, worked in Florida and Las Vegas, dealt with Mr. Trump (as he calls him) for five years, having opened hotels and golf courses and eateries across America. The offspring of an accountant and a chef, Chef Joe has a cerebellum divided into duel hemispheres, one chockablock with numbers, the other with recipes. Cranial dissonance.
Lena Shamoun.Joe Isidori
Expansion was always in the cards. Glib and confident, Chef Joe was honest enough to say that despite his love for the terroir and the tranquility, Bridgehampton would sooner or later drive any creative, ambitious 32-year-old male into a four-star funk. He was too talented and too telegenic to get stuck inside any one restaurant for too long, especially when he was living above said restaurant on the Bridgehampton/Sag Harbor Turnpike.
After lawyers drew up a capacious contract, we read it over, and threw it away. We are a couple of perverse and ornery critters; if I didn’t want Joe around, he didn’t want to be around; if he didn’t want to be around, adios pardner. Plain and simple, with long and complicated entrails. So we have a handshake and an understanding: what’s good for the chef is good for the owner, and vice versa. That profits did not appear instantly on the PL is secondary. We are patient men who trust our own instincts, and each other’s. Whenever there is a buck, we take off the saddle and find the burr before traveling the next mile. Our trail is not without gopher holes and rattlesnakes, but what trail is? (And where did all these cowboy metaphors come from? We’re opening in Carroll Gardens this spring, not Dodge City.)
I don’t plan to hang around or obsess about Brooklyn. It’s not my town and I wouldn’t pretend otherwise. Whatever positive influences I may have imparted will surely make the trip west. The design may mimic Southfork, the sourcing will be local, and the music will be sweet and lowdown. My 2 cents will always be available. But Brooklyn doesn’t need or want an old cowhand wandering around telling tall tales and recommending wrong wines. Besides, I have other fish to fry.
A chef out of kitchen is like a fish out of water. If Southfork is to be closed half the year, then Chef Joe needs a place to work and earn money. Unless Arthur on Smith goes belly-up pronto, it is an investment that can only help Southfork Kitchen. With public relations. New business partners. New patrons. A widening pool of talent. Possible profit. And another notch on the pistol. Joe and I have a budding business bromance. If not on dotted lines, then in spirit. We are inventing a partnership as it unfolds. We talk about a high end place in Manhattan, a sandwich shop, a brew bistro, a television show, a cookbook, and the inexorable conquest of North America, with headquarters on QVC and a bunker under the Food Network. (I’m kidding, cowpoke.) Each enterprise will have a different set-up, a discrete business model, and different investors/owners. One size does not fit all eateries.
Can Chef Joe handle two restaurants simultaneously or will culinary dissonance ensue? Chefs are masters of their domains, not slaves. One chef/one restaurant is an old school notion fading quickly in this post-modern world. Arthur on Smith and Southfork Kitchen are 90 miles apart. One could commute, whereas some successful and celebrated chefs have establishments on various continents; they oversee a line of pots and pans and frozen foods, not to mention writing books and appearing on television.
When Chef Joe had to miss some time for family affairs, charity events or his own engagement party, Southfork Kitchen functioned without a hitch. The smoother it went, the more credit accrued to his training style, his systems, his chefness. A chef (a cognate of chief) does more than most civilians imagine. In addition to creating the menu and all the dishes on it, chefs hire and teach. Chefs keep costs down and margins up. Chefs powwow with purveyors. Chefs set the tone for efficiency, sanitation, esprit de corps. (Joe bans music, intoxicants, phones, and funny clothing in his kitchen.) Chefs study farming and animal husbandry and what every other chef in the world is doing. In a seafood restaurant, the chef knows about bodies of water and all the creatures that dwell within. Chefs deal with catering and party packages. Chefs write internal manuals. Chefs kibitz with the clientele. (Joe has an elephant’s memory for names and faces.) Chefs deal with the media.
Chef Joe taped both “Extreme Chef” and “Iron Chef” last year. The less said about both the better, for wildly different reasons. “Extreme Chef” called with three questions: Can you ride a horse? Can you swim? Can you shoot a gun? “I come from Yonkers,” said the chef, “so I got the gun thing under control.” Then he took riding lessons, swam at the Y, and learned to shoot skeet. None of the three activities was required in his segment. They were replaced with cow milking, sandstorm cooking and long-distance wheel-barreling. Yonkers was no help.
Then Joe taped an episode of “Iron Chef.” That’s about all I can report lest a giant guillotine descend swiftly upon my neck, severing me from $2 million. Before entering Kitchen Stadium, everyone has to sign a contract that virtually invites the producers to collect $2 million if you reveal anything about the taping, including but not limited to the name of the Iron Chef, the secret ingredient, the identity of the judges, the scores, the eventual winner and or loser, and date of air time. On this last point, there is no worry. I have no idea. The release date of the iPad 2 was less clandestine than “Iron Chef” air dates.
When you catch Chef Joe in the right mood, there’s no one else on earth you’d rather be around; he can funnel mope into music and depression into a hot air balloon. He is smart and tenacious and really does want to save the world through right action. We are not always on the same page — Chef Joe is more sustainable and I am more local; he loves sardines from the Mediterranean while I prefer blowfish from Narragansett Bay — but the pages keep turning, and we keep reading.
Speaking of pages, Chef Joe has never second-guessed or objected to or requested a single word in these Start Up Chronicles; of very few people can that be said. Occasionally, in the middle of a kitchen contretemps or a dining room drama, he may sniff the air like a foxhound on the scent and I will ask what he smells (always fearing gas or smoke), and he will say, “A blog.”
Did I just write a long post and fail to mention Chef Joe’s food? I think I did. As Miles Davis said of John Coltrane, “He can cook.”
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=ec408e5ad14578ba3c668004b9f89cdd