You’re the Boss Blog: My Restaurant Adventure: Four Stars and Forewarned

Chris Koszyk Getting anything from our kitchen to our guests was the hardest stretch of the voyage.

Start-Up Chronicle

Getting a restaurant off the ground.

Editor’s Note: For more than two years, Bruce Buschel chronicled his experiences creating a restaurant on this blog. In a series of posts this week, Mr. Buschel explains why Southfork Kitchen will not be opening in Bridgehampton, N.Y., this season.

After my coffee shop dreams were dashed, I answered a classified ad in a local paper. An old nightclub, one with which I was familiar, if only through a bubbly haze, was for sale. The vibe was right. The price was right. The recession had not yet hit.

The owner had had blueprints drawn up for a needed renovation: $350,000, tops. He wanted me to be his partner. He settled on being my general contractor. All I had to do was trade in his cabaret license for a restaurant permit. And a health permit and a building permit and a county road permit and a state liquor license and a certificate of authority and a new septic system and a full sprinkler system and a parking lot and rain drainage. And then I had to find a chef and a staff and some fish and I would be in business.

I started writing about my misadventures for this blog and garnered more empathy in India than in my own backyard. Local bluebloods looked askance on the tooting of one’s own corn; the blue collars had their own idea of what kind of restaurant I should run, and none of them involved fish. While they wisely allowed for summer “gouging,” they expected burgers and beer come the fall.

Everyone wanted to know the details of my business plan. When onlookers demanded numbers, I offered these: 70 percent of all restaurants fail or change hands within their first three years, and according to my best guess, 98 percent of those failed enterprises had what they considered excellent business plans. My business plan, mostly guesswork, included these two sentences, reprinted now not as bravado but foreshadowing: “Eateries are finite in the Hamptons and therefore always in demand. If the restaurant fails, change the concept or rent the space or sell the property.”

Rehabbing the 100-year-old building didn’t quite work out. It was condemned. (Which was not in the plan.) And the contractor didn’t work out either. He was condemned. (Not in the plan.) I had to start from scratch. (N.I.P.) All of which required me to come up with a lot more scratch. (N.I.P.).

Chris Koszyk

But starting over did open up a host of design possibilities, and I took the bait. I employed a young architect from Brooklyn (TBD Design). And we obsessed about every little thing: Recycled bricks. Edison light bulbs. Invisible speakers. An antique fireplace. Booths, banquettes, alcoves. Reclaimed cypress from North Carolina. Old hemlock planks from upstate New York. Cedar from old pickle barrels. The crew called me Woody Woodpicker. Civilians accused me of wasting money on frivolous details like ceilings and walls and floors. I was investing in ambiance, I insisted, and ambiance would pay me back. Our basement was more colorful than a Crayola box.

The best restaurants in the Hamptons were the priciest; they attracted well-heeled customers who, in turn, attracted a good staff. Or maybe a well-trained staff attracted a good clientele. Either way, like a Long Island blowfish, my modest eatery at a roadside coffee shop had inflated into a fancy sustainable fish restaurant with a lovely vegetable garden and debt as high as sweet corn in July. Pass the butter, and a sharp knife. Rub sea salt here.

I hired a Michelin-star chef before tasting his food. I fired a public relations firm when its representatives claimed that not tasting the chef’s food had stymied their efforts. Critics and customers did the tasting. Chef Joe Isidori won an epaulet full of stars, and Southfork Kitchen was voted “best restaurant” on Curbed Hamptons. And Diner’s Choice Winner on Open Table.

Chris Koszyk

We were perceived as arrogant and expensive because we were, more or less, arrogant and expensive. We served no meat. We honored reservations. We charged for no-shows. We had no television and no discernible bar scene. Our staff was well trained and polite. We had more wines from Long Island than France. We were, flat-out, a fancy fish restaurant with advanced locavoritis. Our prix fixe was $68, not $28. We thought it was a good deal: brioche and whole grain breads, home-churned butter, local honey, spicy smoked paprika, Atlantic sea salt and three amuse-bouches — usually local oysters, a fish tartar and a vegetable from our garden with a Meyer lemon sauce, all served before the first course. And then the surprise party began in earnest, a pescatorian’s delight.

Getting the sea to the spoon and the farm to the flat top turned out to be fairly efficient. Getting anything from our kitchen to our guests was the hardest stretch of the voyage. The front of the house was in constant flux. If a kitchen is like a college, with genuine interest about teachers and degrees and grad school, the front of house is more a high school — servers and runners are concerned with their popularity, their workload and their take-home pay. They may or may not be studying for a career; their futures arrive each midnight. If during any service, half the servers followed half the 100 rules I had established, I would have considered myself a lucky man, if I had believed in luck.

Still, in the summers, we sailed as smoothly as any yacht in Sag Harbor Bay. And we were convinced that quality would conquer the off-season sag that had been foretold. If we were good enough, we believed (which rhymes with deceived) people would find us. Alas, in the end, we were a destination restaurant in an area where the most common destination at the end of a long winter’s day was hearth and home. And who could blame anyone?

The idea to rent out the space came in the form of two grown men and one small misunderstanding.

Wednesday: Two gentlemen from Della Femina plant a seed, and I start talking to brokers.

Article source: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/my-restaurant-adventure-four-stars-and-forewarned/?partner=rss&emc=rss