Not many people grow up dreaming of becoming a statistical modelling analyst or a retail logistics capacity and flow planner. But running and owning a brilliant restaurant (or pub in Ireland) is an ambition up there with being a respected doctor or professional footballer or musician for many people.
It’s a dream career for people who love other people, the bon vivants, the extroverts. It attracts people who are creative, epicureans who love good food and wine, it attracts people who are disenchanted with the corporate world, people who want to work for themselves. It draws mavericks, it lures people back (like this writer) who grew up in hospitality and went off to plough other furrows but often make their way “home”.
It’s probably the most life consuming and financially risky business a person can enter into and before you do you would be well advised to read the following three books, each penned by a restaurateur who has earned their place in the restaurateur Hall of Fame. Each of the three men presents a different viewpoint on restaurant life but a few common themes emerge such as genuine hospitality, a determined vision and years of experience and learning.
THE ART OF THE RESTAURATEUR by Nicholas Lander
The genteel Nicholas Lander is a respected food columnist with Financial Times and owned the legendary L’Escargot in London in the 1980s. This handsome book in a duck egg blue hardcover profiles twenty accomplished restaurateurs from around the world including Hazel Allen of Ballymaloe House.
Favourite Quote: “While chefs may use plates for their art, restaurateur’s imaginations work on much bigger canvases. They look at empty spaces – modern, old, on one floor or on several, in bustling parts of town or in down at heel areas- and begin to paint pictures in their heads of what these spaces will look like when they are full and bustling with customers and staff. This exhilarating experience is the most exciting aspect of this noble profession”
RESTAURANT MAN by Joe Bastianich
The crude Joe Bastianich owns nearly a dozen restaurants including some of New York’s most celebrated addresses including Babbo, Del Posto and Eataly. He has a high profile media career and produces his own range of wines.
Favourite Quote: “He (Bastianich’s Father) taught me at an early age the enigma of the business - you need to appear to be generous, but you have to be an inherently cheap fuck to make it work. It’s a nickel and dime business and you make dollars by accumulating nickels. If you try and make dollars by grabbing dollars you will never survive. It’s come down to a simple concept that my partner Mario Batali and I live by in all our restaurants: We buy things, we fix them up and we sell them for profit."
SETTING THE TABLE by Danny Meyer
Danny Meyer opened his first restaurant in 1985 aged twenty seven, after nearly thirty years of building an empire he now heads up the Union Square hospitality group which includes a dozen landmark restaurants including Union Square café, Bluesmoke and Gramercy Tavern.
Favourite Quote: “Understanding the distinction between service and hospitality has been at the foundation of our success. Service is the technical delivery of a product. Hospitality is how the delivery of that product makes the 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 guests side requires listening to that person on every sense, and following up with a thoughtful, gracious appropriate response. It takes both great service and great hospitality to rise to the top”.
For the last thirty years it has been celebrity chefs who have tended to get the headlines and the glory for successful eateries but in most cases behind every great chef rattling pots and pans in the kitchen there is a great restaurateur pulling the strings out front, behind the scenes, raising the finance and planning the next venture.
William Barry
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