Change Partners

Departure of high-profile chefs brings opportunity and anxiety

By Scott Hume, Executive Managing Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, 8/1/2004

It is only fitting, perhaps, that Henry Adaniya is contemplating how to reinvent his restaurant, Trio, for the third time in its 11-year history.

Grant Achatz, chef at the restaurant in Evanston, Ill., north of Chicago, since 2001, left on July 31 to open his own as-yet-unannounced restaurant. His innovative style, focusing on pairings of interesting and exotic ingredients, earned a loyal following and plaudits that included the 2003 James Beard Rising Star Chef of the Year designation.

When he took over the kitchen, Executive Chef Cornelius Gallagher brought new energy to Oceana in New York City.

Adaniya understands that when he hired Achatz from French Laundry in Yountville, Calif., where he had been sous-chef to Thomas Keller, he really was only borrowing him. “Even more than expected, it’s encouraged,” Adaniya says of Achatz’s desire to move on and up. “I know that at some point, with the types of chefs I look at, they’re destined to open their own places. From the beginning, I knew that when Grant made it, he would want to leave.

“Usually it takes three to five years, but he moved extremely fast in grabbing the attention of the media. He’s ready and the time’s right for him, so we’re sort of walking the path together.”

The Art of Change
Adaniya has trod it before. Trio’s opening chefs were Rick Tramonto and Gale Gand, who left after two years to open Brasserie T and then Tru. Shawn McClain, elevated from chef de cuisine to succeed Tramonto, left in 2001 to open Spring and, this year, Green Zebra.

With each change has come the opportunity to rethink what he wants Trio to be, Adaniya says. It is both energizing and nerve-wracking. “What I’ve learned is that I can’t be afraid of change. I have to embrace it and say, OK, let’s not hang on to the past. With art, that just doesn’t work.”

"I always want to do something that's a twist on the conventional," says Trio owner Henry Adaniya.

In early July, before Achatz officially departed, Adaniya steeled his nerves and announced Trio’s next talent pool. Dale Levitski—a protégé of Blackbird’s Paul Kahan and most recently executive chef at Chicago’s La Tache—was named chef. Trio’s new pastry chef, Mary McMahon, previously was delighting patrons at Vivere. Adaniya promises “a dramatic new direction” for Trio’s cuisine, praising Levitski’s “playful creative energy.”

The celebrity-chef phenomenon is of course double-edged. High-profile kitchen talent attracts diners, but when the chef leaves, how does a restaurateur keep the loyalty of those guests?

“Any time you change, you’re at risk,” says Adaniya. “You’re going to risk your following, people who have in their minds a certain style of food, and now they’re going to see something different.

“You can say [to customers], ‘Everything’s the same; don’t worry about it.’ But here we like to say, ‘Everything’s different; don’t worry about it!’ I have core principles about the quality of what we present that are always going to be the same, whatever era we go through,” he says. “That’s what keeps people coming here.”

Before Levitski and McMahon take charge of the kitchen, Adaniya will close Trio to do some remodeling. When it reopens later this month it will look as well as taste different, he says. “My goal is to be a surprise. I always want to do something that’s a twist on the conventional,” he says.

Forever Young
Focus on the opportunity to reenergize a restaurant that a new chef can present, advises Nick Livanos, president of New York City’s Livanos Restaurant Group.

132,000
Number of chefs/head cooks among the 3 million U.S. food-prep workers in 2000, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

In the eight years Rick Moonen headed the kitchen at Livanos’ Oceana, the restaurant built a stellar reputation for fresh, imaginative seafood dishes. That didn’t need to end when Moonen left in 2002 to open his own New York City restaurant, RM.

Cornelius Gallagher, Oceana’s sous-chef was elevated to chef. “We didn’t miss a beat,” Livanos says. Gallagher has won wide praise for the Asian influences he brings to the menu. Oceana is at once the same and different.

“Sure, there was a tiny concern” about making a change, Livanos says. “But when we saw Cornelius’ abilities we knew he was the perfect successor.”

Oceana, with its 30,000-bottle wine cellar, was never just about Moonen or his menu, Livanos says. An operation that is dependent on any one person or element has reason to fear change, but Oceana has flourished, he says.

“It brings new excitement to a restaurant to have someone young and vibrant,” Livanos says. “It brings energy throughout the restaurant.”

One at a Time
New energy is what Chef Michael Lachowicz and his brother, Thomas, sought to bring to Le Francais in Wheeling, Ill., when they took over the 30-year-old restaurant last fall. Under founding Chef-owner Jean Banchet and his successor, Roland Liccioni, the upscale French restaurant had built a national reputation (winning Restaurants & Institutions’ Ivy Award in 1978).

Adaniya has repeatedly changed the décor of Trio (above and below), and plans to alter the feel again before it reopens.

A more casual menu instituted by Chef Don Yamauchi, who with partner Phil Mott bought the restaurant from Banchet in 2001, was too great a change for many loyal Le Francais diners. That and the post-9/11 slump for high-end restaurants resulted in Le Francais’ closing last year.

Michael Lachowicz, who had cooked under Banchet 16 years earlier (before opening the well-received Les Deux Gros in Glen Ellyn, Ill., with his brother), says he believed he knew what past and potential customers wanted. “It was daunting. The name Le Francais still had enormous equity, but it needed some help,” Lachowicz says. “We brought back some of the formality, without being stuffy, and a haute cuisine menu more in the style of Jean Banchet, with whispers of Roland Liccioni, whom I also admire.”

Getting out the word that the changes made have been for the good “has to be done one customer at a time. That’s the only way you really can do it,” he says.

Banking on Reputation
“It’s probably the single greatest challenge there is,” Michael Dunn says of a restaurant’s need to find a new chef. General manager of Goodfellows, a high-end, high-reputation Minneapolis restaurant, Dunn and owner Wayne Kostroski spent more than three months seeking a replacement for Chef Kevin Cullen, who left earlier this year.

70,068
Median salary as of June 2004 for executive chefs in the United States, according to Salary.com.

“I’d be lying if I said it was a breeze,” says Dunn. “You have to do a little damage control and bank on the reputation we’ve developed over 17 years.” For Goodfellows, that meant keeping the chef search very quiet while maintaining its food and service quality. Press inquiries about a replacement were met with promises to tell all when a hire was made (with help from a headhunter).

The right choice proved to be Jason Robinson, chef de cuisine at Tramonto and Gand’s Tru in Chicago. Kostroski and Dunn contacted local restaurant critics to announce the decision, but are letting Robinson, who took over the kitchen in June, settle in without huge fanfare.

A few subtle changes in Goodfellows’ décor were made during the search to make the restaurant a little warmer and make it more attractive for casual dinners and to theatergoers as well as the special-occasion diners who have been its core. But Robinson’s full menu won’t be in evidence until the end of August.

“We wanted to stay true to our style, which is regional American cuisine. We talked with Jason at length about [that style], but obviously it would be foolish not to take advantage of what he has to offer. Regional American is a broad [category],” says Dunn.

The Circle of Life
New York City’s BLT Steak, which opened in March, is a case study in how chef movement and restaurant closures constantly transform the landscape.

The restaurant, at 106 E. 57th St., previously was home to Mediterranean concept Pazo, gaining critical raves for Chefs Patricia Yeo and Pino Maffeo. After Yeo departed to open her own New York City restaurant, Naga, and Maffeo went north to Boston, taking over the kitchen at Restaurant L, Pazo owner Jimmy Haber had to decide whether to restaff Pazo or go in a different direction.

Enter Laurent Tourondel, who had been chef at New York City’s Cello until it closed in late 2002. Together, Tourondel and Haber created BLT Steak, a French bistro with steakhouse overtones, in the old Pazo space.