Happy Thursday

I recently sat down with one of New York's most famous and regarded restaurateurs, Drew Nieporent, for an episode of The meez Podcast.  We sat in the dining room of his downtown Nobu location before service.  It was one of the most raw interviews I've seen in a long time.  We ended up spending another 90 minutes or so having lunch together at Nobu just after.  Somehow, after 25 years in the NYC restaurant world, Drew and I never had much chance to speak, so this was a real treat.

He has opened 40 restaurants in 40 years. Montrachet, Tribeca Grill, Nobu, Corton. He has had a 35-year partnership with Robert De Niro, among other celebrities such as Francis Ford Coppola, Sean Penn, Robin Williams, Christoper Walken, Ed Harris, Bill Murray, and Mikhail Baryshnikov.  He's a living map of downtown NYC dining.

Drew does not hedge on anything, and we went down a dozen roads that were just skating the line of trouble.

I recommend just listening to the episode if you want to hear more of Drew's thoughts on the players, the restaurants, the industry, etc. I decided to distill some of the biggest takeaways as it relates to the successful longevity of a restaurant business given his tenure.  

The recipe this week is an Angel Food Cake with passion fruit glaze and chopped pistachios. Something I learned from the very talented One Girl Cookies crew. Drew could be considered an angel in the industry; some may say otherwise. But he most definitely has passion and crushes some nuts during this conversation.

🤔🌶️ Hot Take

7 Biggest Takeaways from Legendary Restaurateur Drew Nieporent

Most of these are simply quotes taken directly from the conversation. I share a few thoughts and counterarguments.

1. Four ingredients for a restaurant that lasts, starting with the rent. Drew's formula for a restaurant that lasts starts with the lease. During the pandemic, he called his landlord and said, 'I'm not paying rent,' and the guy ate it. Frenchette pays $34k a month right next door to the $12k-to-$15k lease Drew held for 15 years. After rent, his formula is simple: be able to replace a chef and hold the quality of the food, build a room that's comfortable and spacious, and keep the prices gentle. That's 40 restaurants in 40 years.

2. Nobu hasn't changed its menu in 32 years, and you never noticed. 'They think the menu is evolving, but it's not.' The yellowtail jalapeño got copied a thousand times because it never moved. The chefs he watched 'twist themselves into pretzels' to reinvent a dish every night mostly didn't last. Consistency became the signature.

3. The restaurateur is the director, not the star. 'It took a long time in movies for the director to get any street cred. It's always the actors.' 35 years with De Niro taught him a restaurant is a cast you assemble and direct, not a solo act. (Reminds me a lot of the conversation I had with Giancarlo Pagani a while back.)

4. Never put your name on the door. When Bouley wanted to call Montrachet 'Bouley,' Drew talked him out of it. If it fails, you can never use your name again. Lutèce was André Soltner's room, and it was never called Soltner. I've got my own thoughts on this one, but his logic is hard to shake. As an aside: I don't necessarily agree with this, but I understand the sentiment.

5. Make it stupidly simple for the guest. He named it Nobu, not Matsuhisa, because 'Matsuhisa sounds like an electronics company,' and he flattened a confusing menu format so anyone could walk in and order. 'Everything I do is to make it easier on the customer.' Most designers design for other chefs or the media. Drew designs for the person in the seat.

6. There are two kinds of restaurants, and they're opposites. The 'wow' room you have to visit and love it before you've tasted a bite. And the 'food, food, food' place you go for the cooking alone. Both win. The mistake is not knowing which one you're building. Aside: I believe there is a 3rd - the place built for consistency over all else, with quality valued over innovation. These are the spots you go back to weekly/monthly.

7. Instagram is the best thing that ever happened to restaurants. That's a 71-year-old legend talking. He loves it, minus the 'ten best tacos' listicle crowd he calls 'screamers.' The flip side he lived through: he banned cameras at Corton right as Instagram broke, and the room paid for it.

👉 Watch a clip on Instagram or the full episode

🎙️ The meez Podcast

Drew Nieporent on Nobu, Tribeca Grill, and the Art of the Restaurateur

Drew has opened 40 restaurants in 40 years and named what he calls the most successful single restaurant idea of the last three decades. We sat down at Nobu Downtown to talk about the chefs he launched, the ones who walked, and how he kept the rooms alive for 30-plus years. He's brash, funny, and spares no one.

• Naming Nobu, and getting pushed out of the empire
• Why every great chef eventually leaves
• The 32-year menu you never noticed
• Kitchens in windows: genius or abomination
• The MSG burger that beat Shake Shack
• Bouley, Danny Meyer, and the age of the chef

👉 Watch the full episode

📔 Chef Notes

Who Put Caviar on Fried Chicken First?

Coqodaq made caviar and fried chicken feel like a 2024 invention. It's not. On the episode, Drew traced it back years earlier to Douglas Kim at Jeju Noodle Bar on Christopher Street, plating $30 fried chicken with caviar 'a hundred years before' the current hype.

Grégory Marchand, of Frenchie in Paris, has served a caviar fried chicken at his Frenchie To Go counter for years. Nobody really owns it.  I know David Chang was serving it at Ko, which I believe was a year before Frenchie opened. And I believe he pulled it from chef Wylie at WD-50 before that?

I'm sure there are others before all of those. I think that is Drew's whole point about signature dishes: being first doesn't matter, selling the public does. Simon Kim didn't invent the pairing. He made it the reason you book the table.

Who do you think did it first?

Recipe:

Angel Food Cake with Passionfruit Glaze & Pistachios

This is one of my favorite cakes to make AND to eat.  It lasts several days, and I often find myself grabbing a giant slice in the middle of the day the next day and not feeling bad about that at all.  I use a Mexican almond liqueur, but you can use any almond liqueur, really.  It's meringue, so you know the drill: take your time, don't rush, don't over- or underwhip, and get rid of all those yolks completely!!!

This is almost a complete copy of the recipe from One Girl Cookies in Brooklyn; big shout-out to them and all their delicious pastries, especially their whoopie pies!

👉 Get the recipe

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