Clark Wolf's Rants, Raves, Diatribes...and a few other Thoughts

Creating Luxury in Days of Denial

“WATCH out for obstacles,” Michael White said as he navigated between two construction workers — one hammering a plank, the other shearing plywood with a power saw. “It’s a bit precarious right now.”

Mr. White, the congenial chef behind Convivio and Alto, was referring to extension cords that hung like snakes from rafters inside Marea, his ultra-deluxe Italian seafood restaurant expected to open in early May on Central Park South. At least 45 workers milled around the dining room in early April, six of them flown in from Italy to install Indian rosewood paneling and a honey-colored onyx wall backlighted by tiny bulbs.

But by precarious, he could just as easily have been talking about Marea’s future. Last July when he and his business partner, Chris Cannon, announced their latest venture, the city seemed flush. Since the stock market’s collapse, though, worried New Yorkers are rejecting anything opulent, driving even gold-card-carrying customers to the nearest Shake Shack.

Marea is one of a surprising number of high-end restaurants set to open this year. Their timing may be inopportune, but with leases signed and construction underway before the economy took its nose dive, the restaurateurs had little choice but to forge ahead. Some, like Mr. Cannon and Mr. White, have sought to pare their rent while maintaining their original vision. Others have cut prices or added new dishes to appeal to a wider array of patrons. Everywhere, there is anxiety, as owners learn to adapt to the new austerity.

The downturn has had benefits: Mr. Cannon said that some suppliers and contractors had shaved their fees, saving the restaurant about 30 percent on construction materials and labor. (They plowed those savings back into refined touches like hand-polished lacquer radiator covers.) The two also went back to their landlord three months ago to renegotiate their rent. They say it was already much less than the $750,000 a year the former tenant, the San Domenico, was reported to have paid. The landlord agreed to defer a portion of the rent for two years, at which point, Mr. Cannon hopes, the economy will have rebounded.

Still, the restaurant will cost more than $4.5 million, and they have been paying rent since signing their lease last summer. And Mr. Cannon concedes that he wishes the money had started to roll in three months ago.

“I have three kids to support,” he said. “I don’t have an option to fail.”

It is a common refrain from the Upper East Side to TriBeCa. Among the slate of upcoming restaurants is SD26, a venture from Tony May that has already delayed its opening until the fall. (Mr. May was the owner of San Domenico, which used to occupy Marea’s space.)

Even before the economic implosion, Brushstroke, David Bouley’s elaborate vision of a robata grill paired with a kaiseki restaurant, was hampered with troubles, including a battle to get its liquor license. And two established restaurants, Oceana and Aureole, are leaving their East Side town houses for larger spaces in Midtown, with plans for grand openings this fall.

“Everyone wants to make a 15 percent profit margin,” said Nick Livanos, whose family owns Oceana. “But if you make 10 percent you are happy.”

That’s if. “A bunch of restaurants are going to close in the next year,” said Clark Wolf, a restaurant business consultant. “There will be a weeding out. Restaurants have to be careful how they calibrate the experience for the diner. People don’t want to feel like they are paying for a stained-glass ceiling.”

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Eat the Plate

Humble, filling and wholesome, it's more than a meal—it's a pizza your heart

By Clark Wolf

In difficult economic times, it's valuable to look at ancient cultures to see how they fared in adversity. Sometimes the resulting food is rather spectacular. Take pizza.

Why is pizza such perfect food? Maybe because it's so very old. Maybe because it wasn't developed by some random R&D team, but rather through experimentation by generation after generation of hungry folks. Maybe it's because it reduces a meal to good, solid, basic elements that deeply satisfy.

Bread is one of the oldest foods and dates back to at least Neolithic times. The practice of adding other stuff to bread can be found throughout antiquity. The ancient Greeks had a flatbread that was eaten with toppings that probably included herbs, onions and garlic. And in Virgil's epic poem The Aenied (written, oh, about 19 B.C.E.), he refers to bread as an edible plate. Talk about a long, slow, trend movement. Love that.

Now, if you want to taste a benchmark, you may wish to go to Italy, where, it turns out, they waited until recently (the 1980s, just in the nick of time) to formalize some nearly ancient, deeply solid traditions. It was the feisty Neapolitans, the people in and around Naples, who brought it all into focus and format. They're a people and it's a city well-versed in good times and bad times. A lot like now.

The fabled Antica Pizzeria Port'Alba in Naples is said to be the world's first pizzeria. Rumor (or history) has it that they started making the magic pie in about 1738 and sold it from an open-air stand straight through until some time in 1830, at which point they evolved into a restaurant with indoor and outdoor seating, which is where they still make and sell boatloads of extraordinary pizza to this day.

What makes a perfect pizza? The Association Verace Pizza Napoletana has some pretty basic ideas—rules, actually—that in fact do ensure that what gets called a pizza is indeed the real deal.

Wood The pizza must be cooked by wood. Gas, coal or electric ovens do not conform to tradition. You never get the right blistering or that lightly smoky finish.

Ingredients 00 flour, San Marzano tomatoes, all natural fior-di-latte or buffalo mozzarella, fresh basil, salt and yeast. Only fresh, all natural, nonprocessed ingredients are acceptable. Variations are fun and tasty, but for me it's a simple Neapolitan (tomato, buffalo mozzarella and basil) or it's a no-go.

Technique Hand-worked or low-speed-mixed dough. Proper work surface (usually slab or marble) and oven temp (800 F). Cranky or even hammy show cooks not required.

Review A designated representative of the association must assure that the ingredients, technique and final product conform to the tradition.

Around 1830 (maybe just after the grand opening party for the indoor seating of the Antica Pizzeria Port'Alba), the French writer Alexandre Dumas described pizza as the only food of the humble people in Naples during winter, and wrote that in those days it was flavored with oil, tallow (pork fat), cheese, tomato or anchovies. All throughout Campania you see those core ingredients on happy and natural display. Their elongated tomatoes are grown in the rich volcanic soil of Vesuvius and get hung under rafters away from the rain and wind to gently dry. The arugula seems to be peeking out everywhere (on menus, that is), and the mozzarella fairly pops out of the water buffalo nearby.

We have all those ingredients here—even the water buffalo. They roam along the Sierra foothills and give the milk that the folks at Bubalus, Bubalis in Gardena, Calif., turn it into oozing, milky balls. We can do it. And one good thing about this drought we seem to be facing is that dry farming, especially of delicious tomatoes, is sure to increase.

On a recent trip to Italy's pizza heartland, I visited a place that sold pizza by the meter. Two toppings per nearly three-foot expanse. The place was clean and big, and the pizza, a bit thicker than that had at other places, was delicious. But clearly this could have been ground zero for bad American pizza, could have been where "concept" escaped and ran amok, producing fun and life and profits and lousy pizza; but it was still shockingly delicious.

As we emerge from what has felt to many like a frightening economic nuclear winter, many of us are hopeful about what's to come. Certainly, our regional bounty of intensely flavorful foodstuffs can be part of the value systems realignment that the world really needs to address. Simple pleasures may well be priceless. And these days, simpler seems so much more right and yet so much harder to do. But so very worth the trouble.

Full article here