Restaurant Man

by Joe Bastianich

  My parents’ marriage and relationship mirrored the evolution of their restaurants and in many ways the restaurant world on the meta level, from a blue-collar business run by immigrants to the state of the art today: My mother became a superstar, Restaurant Man became a dinosaur.

  When they started in the sixties, my mom was a pregnant bartender. She’d never cooked in a restaurant in her life; she was just working there because she married Restaurant Man. Mostly she was behind the bar dealing with the drunks and my dad was in the back—cooking, chopping, doing everything. But he wasn’t a chef; he was just running the kitchen with two Mexican guys and maybe some guinea fresh off the boat, and he was running it no differently from the way a Russian-Jewish immigrant would have run his hardware store or plumbing-supply shop.

  You know the story: There was product, you bought it, fixed it up, sold it. You watched the margin like a fucking hawk and tried to make as much money as you could. You tried to buy cheap, sell high. It was more like a commodity-driven business that could make you a decent living if you played by the rules—Restaurant Man rules—and the harder you worked, the more money you made. And in time that changed, but that was the role my father relished. He was a hardworking, pragmatic guy, and when my mom suddenly became an artist, someone known for being creative rather than being some kind of workaday animal who sweated it out in the kitchen like a blacksmith or a coal miner, there was a lot of resentment on his part. And my mother, being a very strong and opinionated person, also had her opinions about him and what he did. He was the sort of guy who liked to play his accordion and go to the Istria Club on Sundays, knock back a couple bottles of white wine and sing till two o’clock in the morning with his buddies, all these guys who owned their own businesses—contractors, plumbers, and other restaurateurs. They were successful immigrants, and this is how they celebrated. They went to their social club in Astoria and got drunk and sang songs that were meaningful for them. They played boccie and ate lamb and drank to their relative success.

  That was not the life my mother wanted to live. Although she always respected it and would go and do her time with my father’s friends, they were a largely uneducated, blue-collar, pointedly simple crowd, and they really resented my mother for her ambition, for being upwardly mobile and successful. My mother is wicked smart, and no shit, she worked for everything she has, but there was always this attitude from my father and his friends: Who the fuck does she think she is?

  That kind of bitterness will kill you, and I’m not exaggerating or projecting any hippie good-vibes-and-positive-energy theories onto the situation, but you have to know that walking around with that kind of senseless anger is a formula for rapid decay, and it ran its course over the years. It didn’t help that my father drank on top of being a lifelong diabetic. If you’ve ever been to his social club to see him at it with his friends…well, these were not guys who made healthy lifestyle choices even when everyone knew better. They were like a giant hangover from the Old World.

  He didn’t take care of his blood-sugar levels, just kept doing what he did, what his family had done for generations, and eventually he died. There isn’t much more of a story to it than that, except for the heartbreak. We never had a great relationship, and it didn’t end as a great relationship. He was bitter toward my mother’s success, and our relationship was strained because he wasn’t the kind of father I thought I should have had, the kind of dad who took his kids to ball games and played catch with them. Simple stuff like that.

  Sometimes I think that in my own mind I glorify the story of the Restaurant Man more than it deserves to be, but it resonates with people, especially anyone who knows about the business, because it’s all true, it’s all there, none of it is made up or fabricated. The lessons are very real, sadly right down to my dad’s never having time for his kids because he was constantly working. I always wondered, is that part of being Restaurant Man? But you know what? Fuck that—I took the good part of Restaurant Man, the part that made me work like a deranged obsessive to make Becco and Babbo successful, and if anything I am guilty of doting too much on my kids. My love and passion for them are boundless, but occasionally my time is limited, because this year’s model of Restaurant Man is always on planes, so every now and then I bring them to work. Instead of a ball game with peanuts and hot dogs, they might wind up at a food-cost meeting, a shakedown with a building inspector, with maybe scraps of family meal at Babbo scarfed down before the dining room opens up for dinner—although I don’t throw my kids out when customers come in the way my dad used to do.

  I believe that my kids can be anything they want to be—and I tell them that every day, which is contrary to what my father told me. But at least one of them is already showing signs that the Restaurant Man DNA is taking control of his destiny. Every time I catch him pulling loose change out of the couch or speaking Spanish in the kitchen, I have to smile.

  My dad was absent when I was in school, at college, on Wall Street. He was never there. It was my grandmother who raised us, and she hated him because she thought that at the end he lived off my mother’s success and never contributed, although in the beginning he probably worked harder than she did. It was a very unfair way to look at him; he was the product of a war and of having lived under Communism, and she knew that, but still there was no love lost between those two.

  Ironically, Grandma has a lot in common with Restaurant Man. She’s a very intense, hard-core woman. She worked hard. She is very practical. She has that war mentality, intent on saving money so we could survive the next big crisis. She did a great job of raising me and my sister.

  At some point the paradigm shifted and Restaurant Man became obsolete—at least in the eyes of the new generation of hotshot chefs and fancy restaurateurs. Restaurant Man, the guy who ran the business with the no-bullshit, buy-it/cook-it/sell-it simplicity of an immigrant trying to earn a living, was suddenly not as important as the chef as artiste, not to mention the whiz kids who were graduating from hotel-restaurant school with degrees in menu marketing and strategic hospitality theory. But he brought a sensibility and a hard-edged reasonableness to operating restaurants that had a lasting impact on me and still affects how I run all our restaurants today. In many ways my mom contributed more to helping me find success—especially partnering with me on my first restaurant and then again later with Del Posto and Eataly—but Restaurant Man forged me in iron. He gave me the balance of running restaurants as a real workingman’s job. I don’t think there is anyone out there in today’s world spreading that message—all you see these days is the zest of restaurants, these media-driven, star-driven, made-for-TV experiences that somehow exist without all the backbreaking hard work that goes behind it—and I think the loss of that aspect of restaurateuring, the loss of an avatar who knew the real score, is a loss for everyone. The passing of Restaurant Man—the original gangsta Restaurant Man, my father—was the passing of an era. No one can replace him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Closing Time

  Closing time is that magical time in a restaurant when the worst debauchery, thievery, and the absolutely most destructive behavior happens. Much food and much wine have been served, everyone has worked hard, people have been made happy, and now everyone wants to blow off a little steam and play a little. Closing time is when the first bottle of wine that you stashed halfway through the night gets consumed. It’s when the first waiter grabs a Mexican busboy’s ass and calls him a maricón. It’s when the dishwashers start feeling itchy to get the hell out.

  This is when Restaurant Man has to keep his eyes open—this is where most customer complaints come from, too. You’re cutting teams, moving people out of the restaurant, maybe waiters are switching tables or covering for one another. Chaos is imminent. Bad shit happens. Running a restaurant is like driving a locomotive, and all of a sudden you’re bringing it to a grinding halt, and it requires the sage eye of management to make sure that the momentum you worked so hard to cultivate doesn’t drive the thin
g off the tracks the second you put on the brakes.

  The most important time at the end of the night is when you’ve gotten to the last three tables. That’s the final countdown. And I always mandate that all managers have to touch the last three tables, because the customer who eats at ten-thirty is really your best customer of the night. He is spending as much as the customer who came in at eight o’clock, but at eight you don’t really need him. You’re full, he’d just be waiting anyway, and a guy who actually wants to sit down and have dinner at ten-thirty, if he comes back again, he’s going to come at ten-thirty, exactly when you want customers, right? You love your before- and after-peak regulars.

  When I say “touch the tables,” that’s not a joke. I mean physically touch the tables, talk to the people, buy them an after-dinner drink, some dessert wine, whatever. Once again we’re pulling from the back to bring to the front, and our generosity must be seamless. Ask them how their experience was and make them feel some ownership—they should feel as though it is their place. If I’m there, I do it every time. I personally thank them for coming by, and more often than not that’s money in the bank and I’ll see them again.

  Something that really burns my ass is when the last tables are getting up to leave and the maître d’ is flirting with the coat-check girl or eating leftover pasta in the kitchen. He’s already called it a day, and then my customer is not getting the proper good night and good-bye. Walking out of an empty restaurant when no one acknowledges you makes you feel like you didn’t even eat there. It ruins the whole trip. It sucks. It’s important for the bartender to acknowledge the customers, to look them right in the eye and thank everyone. The bartender is going to be your fail-safe, because in any good restaurant the bar is the first thing in the restaurant, and you can catch the customer coming and going. A good Restaurant Man maxim is that restaurants that don’t have bars in the front generally fail.

  And the maître d’ should be there, too, right up front until the very end. At least two people have to say good night to every customer who leaves. Especially the last customers. You want to create a good experience with continuity so they feel appreciated. We don’t chase them out; we let them linger for a while and enjoy the experience.

  I love being the last customer. You feel like you’re part of the family, right? I think fostering that feeling is important. Because at the end of service, an empty restaurant doesn’t have the buzz and energy of a full restaurant, so you have to compensate for that. Instead of offering them the thrill of the peak of the evening, you offer them a bit of an insight into what the restaurant family is about. Sharing a little of that experience. That’s what we try to make happen at the end of the night.

  And then there’s all the other Restaurant Man stuff that has to happen while you’re getting ready to close—walking through the bus stations and making sure the place doesn’t look like a shithole, checking the bathrooms often, because they’re going to be the dirtiest at that point. Everyone is trying to rush to get all their jobs done, and invariably someone is pulling the linen bag through the dining room when he shouldn’t be. Or pulling out some garbage from the kitchen when he shouldn’t be. People want to leave, so they’re trying to do what they have to do. But is it at the cost of the customer experience? It is if you’re dragging bags of crap through the dining room.

  Restaurant Man’s greatest vulnerability is in those closing hours. You’re really doing damage control, both from the customer’s perspective and against the destructive nature of the people who work there. Theft, horseplay, fighting—that’s when it happens. People are tired. Maybe she had a shot of tequila she shouldn’t have had. He’s got to go home and meet his girlfriend. She’s in a rush because she wants to go to the disco. He didn’t sleep the night before. It’s when things go bad. Things are stolen or broken, and the restaurant loses money. It’s the time of badness. It’s the time when Restaurant Man has to pay the most attention.

  My usual spot at the end of the night would be the end of the bar. I indulge in a glass of white wine, a slice of cheese, and a couple of grapes to fortify myself, but also because I want to enjoy those last moments. I put Zeppelin on the stereo and turn it up a little.

  The most important thing is being present. Letting the customers and the staff know you’re there. You get a good pulse on the night. Maybe you query two busboys. What’s going on? Who was working hard? Who wasn’t working hard? You get the inside scoop from the bartender, find out which regulars were in. Talk to the maître d’. See how many covers he did. See how your VIP list was. Any complaints. Any feedback. After opening, closing is what separates Restaurant Boy from Restaurant Man.

  It used to be after closing we’d go a bit crazy, lock the doors, let the party really get started. Actually, the whole business used to be a lot crazier—every dinner was like a mini-fiesta. Nowadays it seems as if everyone feels that they have to act so buttoned up. Totally obvious sloppiness is not appreciated the way it used to be. People aren’t fucked up. People don’t create a scene anymore. We get rock stars in constantly, and they’re better behaved than the people from the philharmonic. They’re all foodies—they want to know where their beef cheeks are sourced. No one is chasing the dragon anymore.

  It’s a whole new paradigm, a new hierarchy for the aristocracy—the braisers of the beef cheek will inherit the earth! The dope smokers are relegated to college radio and limited-distribution indie releases. It’s kind of sad. I’m not sure how much we had to do with it. We always tried to encourage both—the focused experience and the wild abandon. That’s been our whole trip, but these days people are always on their best behavior, and I don’t mean me, I mean the customers! Since when don’t they get shitfaced at dinner? I’m not saying I want Babbo to look like a scene from Satyricon, but there is a reason we play the Rolling Stones at volume. You should be able to let loose a little without losing control. That’s the whole secret of living in New York City. And if you do lose control once in a while, who the fuck cares, as long as you don’t make it a habit?

  This is a business that lives and dies on excess—every night is a celebration for someone, and with celebration comes the booze and the drugs. When you’re the Restaurant Man, it’s tempting to think that you should be part of the party every night, when what you really need is to be able to separate yourself and understand, yeah, sometimes you’re part of the party, but mostly you’re hosting the party, facilitating the party, giving real estate to the party. That’s been kind of my demon—it is hard not to be the cheerleader. I feel that as the guy who wanted to be successful in this racket, not only do I have to kill it on the business side but I also have to be the champion of the party. It’s just recently that I’ve been able to step away from that, feeling that just maybe I don’t have to be the last one there every night. I don’t have to open the last bottle of wine. I guess that just comes with twenty years of being on the floor—that’s a hard way to live your life. And this is where many people in our business go wrong. Hosting the party is a big part of what you do, it’s your job, and then all of a sudden you can’t distinguish what’s work and what’s play. The downfall comes when you get so confused you slip too far in one direction and either become too uptight or get too loose. You can’t party every night and still function as Restaurant Man. Maybe you can when you’re twenty-four, but even then you’d better have your shit together. Nailed down. Tight.

  Restaurant Man is in the entertainment business. Every night I put on a show. The meal is just the visible part of the iceberg. There’s so much behind it—from conception to execution to kitchen maintenance and dealing with staff and vendors and watching margins and praying that the stock market doesn’t tank again or that we don’t get douched by evil landlords. But the main thing is that every night hundreds or even thousands of people come to a dozen different restaurants thinking they know what to expect, and I blow their minds and leave them looking forward to the next time they can come back.

  And then I get up in the
morning and do it all again.

  Whole lotta love: with my first guitar, circa 1973.

  My dad, Felice Bastianich, the original Restaurant Man.

  With my mom, Lidia. Years later, we’d take the act on the road and open up Becco.

  Ground Zero: Buonavia, my parents’ first restaurant, on Queens Boulevard, complete with the family station wagon parked outside.

  Inside Buonavia, in all its plush red-velvet glory—the same color as the sauce.

  My twelfth birthday, with my grandmother and Felice overseeing the proceedings.

  On an early Italian boondoggle with my folks. Note the Stones patch on one of the first versions of my ubiquitous denim jacket.

  The Fordham Prep photo lab, stoner central back in my senior year.

  A mid-1980s family portrait. From left to right: me; my sister, Tanya; Lidia; and Felice. I’m rocking my Brooks Brothers best.

  Bonfire of the vanities: on Wall Street, sporting my first Gieves and Hawkes pin-striped suit and my gold-and-steel Rolex Submariner.

  Restaurant Man 2.0, bringing the message to the masses: I love doing the Today show.

  Bringing Italian to L.A.—NYC style!

  The results of the Great Roman Boondoggle.

  Joe and Mario do the burbs.

  Del Posto: from delusional to four fucking stars.

  You only get one Babbo in a lifetime.