Daniel Boulud is known for his sumptuous menus and seamless service.
IN the middle of the kitchen at Daniel, a four-star restaurant on the Upper East Side, a set of steep stairs leads to a cozy little nook known as the skybox. It has one lacquered-wood table, room for four diners, a television and two large windows overlooking the action below. The space feels like the eating quarters of a yacht set in a tree house.
The skybox is available to customers by special request, but on a recent afternoon, the chef and co-owner Daniel Boulud is sitting here in a white, double-breasted chef’s coat, ready for the latest round of taste tests for a restaurant called DBGB. His first foray into casual fare and his 10th restaurant, it is slated to open on the Lower East Side in about two weeks.
First up is a small dish of escargot and tomatoes topped with a puff pastry, which is set before him by Jim Leiken, 34, who will be in charge of DBGB’s kitchen.
“Did you hear the music?” Mr. Boulud asks as he studies the plate and grabs some silverware.
“Yeah, it sizzled,” Mr. Leiken replies.
Mr. Boulud chews for a moment, and then there is silence.
“I’m still not convinced,” he finally says, speaking with the sort of French accent that sounds authoritative in any discussion of flavor. “I mean, I love escargot and garlic, and all that. But I’m still thinking of doing a custard on the bottom and then a purée of escargot and then the puff pastry so you have almost a reverse tart.”
Known for his sumptuous menus and seamless service, Mr. Boulud — the name, brain and palate behind one of the country’s gold-plated dining empires — has already taken a bow for just about every round of applause that the industry has to offer. With the Dinex Group, a management company he co-founded, he and a team of managers and accountants oversee an operation with more than 900 employees in markets as far-flung as Beijing and Vancouver.
They have not misfired yet, but Mr. Boulud and his cadre might be trying their trickiest maneuver to date, creating DBGB at a moment that is smiling on fast food and little else. In this environment, you could forgive the man for cutting a few corners, or scaling back his ambitions.
But by Dinex Group’s own calculations, DBGB must generate $4.5 million a year in revenue to be profitable, not easy in a time that a spokesman for the National Restaurant Association called “the most challenging the restaurant industry has seen in several decades.” A consumer marketing firm, NPD, issued a report a few weeks back stating that national restaurant traffic had dropped for a second consecutive quarter.
“And there will be at least one more down quarter, maybe two,” says Harry Balzer, an NPD vice president.
In New York City, it’s been ugly at nearly all price levels.
“Does the word ‘bloodbath’ meaning anything to you?” asks Clark Wolf, a Manhattan restaurant consultant. “The fact is that if you built your restaurant business on all these Wall Street guys getting ridiculous bonuses selling stuff that turned out to be worth nothing, your business is in trouble.”
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