English and Hazen: The New Power Duo?

Top chef-restaurateur Todd English talks about his new partnership with former Tao top toque Sam Hazen and his upcoming big-time projects in New York City and Las Vegas.

By Allison Perlik, Senior Editor -- Restaurants and Institutions, 7/16/2008 4:49:00 PM

Celebrity chef and restaurateur Todd English (r.) has a lot on his plate. Not only does his Charlestown, Mass.-based company, Todd English Enterprises, operate nine different concepts totaling 17 restaurants (with one more scheduled to open in August), but also he’s a fixture on food television and an active promoter on the Home Shopping Network of his hot-selling line of cookware and lifestyle products.

It’s no wonder, then, that the 47-year-old entrepreneur decided to take on an extra pair of hands—a pair of well-known, talented hands belonging to acclaimed chef-restaurateur Sam Hazen, who recently left his post at the helm of the wildly successful Tao restaurants in Las Vegas and New York. Hazen will help English develop new concepts and partner on select projects as a member of the Todd English Enterprises team. To get the scoop on the deal between these two top chefs, R&I grabbed a few minutes of English’s minimal free time.

Q: You’ve been opening restaurants around the country for almost 20 years without bringing another chef-partner on board. Why now?

A: I’m just getting old (laughs). I’ve always had great people around me. It’s just gotten to the point now where we have a lot of projects in the works, and it’s a lot. It’s constant, it's every day, and you’re only good as your last meal—that's still true in this business. So from the standpoint of me keeping up with it, it just made sense for me to bring somebody in ... I felt it was time we brought in somebody that had a little bit of different experience, and is as creative and talented as [Sam Hazen] is as well, to help with the next phase.

Plus, I've been spending a lot more time on our lifestyle branding efforts. I’m down in Tampa [a lot] doing the Home Shopping Network, and I have numerous lifestyle branding projects I’m working on.  ... It’s just really time, if not long overdue. The business is growing—I’m doing more television now—so I needed somebody that was really keeping an eye on it day to day who was a talent in his own right. In the true entrepreneurial spirit, 90% of the art of it is hiring people that are better than you at what they do or just extremely competent and that can make things happen. This business will never change as far as that—talent is forever the end-all, be-all of this business.

Q: How did it come about that you chose Sam Hazen to fill this role?

A: He’s extremely talented, humble and bright. He’s been in the business for a long time. He understands how to do volume. He is very diplomatic from the standpoint of managing large volume and large staffs, so he’s just the right fit. It’s like we both have no egos in this; it’s all about getting this done and building a bigger company and having a little fun along the way.

Q: You mentioned Sam’s ability to work in high-volume environments. He came to you from Tao Las Vegas, which is the highest-grossing restaurant in the country, according to R&I’s Top 100 restaurants report for 2008, and Tao New York, which ranks fifth. Is the ability to open restaurants designed to do that kind of volume a big part of the reason you wanted to bring him on board?

A: Yes, we’ve got a couple of projects that are large-volume projects, and he’s a perfect fit for that. He understands how to work in those environments.

Q: Do you have any kind of plan, concept or location in mind for your first project together?

A:  I can’t really [discuss any details]. Nothing’s been signed, exactly. I can say that we’re going into the CityCenter [MGM Mirage’s $8 billion mixed-use development slated to opened in late 2009] in Las Vegas. We’ve got a number of things we’re working on, but none of them have been signed. We’ve only been together about two weeks now.

Q: Given Sam’s background, are you planning for one of these concepts to be an Asian restaurant?

A:  Yes, there’s definitely one of those in the works. 

Q: Your most recent restaurant, Beso in L.A., got a lot of initial press because of your partnership with Eva Longoria, but the restaurant later also received a pretty positive review in the Los Angeles Times. Do you view that as vindication that restaurants with celebrity names attached can still be known for great food?

A: Definitely. And especially because Eva was very involved. It wasn’t like she just put her name on it. We worked together on that, so her vision in this was certainly part of it.

Q: Your restaurant Riche, which opened at Harrah’s in New Orleans in 2006, closed earlier this year. Do you think that had anything to do with questions about the city’s continued viability post-Katrina as a top-tier restaurant and tourism destination, or was it more about the concept itself not being the right fit?

A: It was definitely Katrina. They wanted to move in a different direction after that, but we were in the middle of everything [before the hurricane] and we couldn’t really change directions because everything was already ordered and designed. That area is really about tourism, and there’s none there.

Q: What’s the status of your upcoming restaurant in the Thompson Hotel in New York City? Is it now set to open in August?

A: Yes, late August, September. It’s called The Libertine. It’s sort of an English tavern—

no pun intended. It has a great oyster bar/raw bar, great draft beers, that kind of English pubby feel, an English men’s-club feel. Great cuts of meat, hand-cut chips, malt vinegar, that kind of thing. Pickles, chutneys.

Q: Over the years you’re been on the receiving end of a lot of press, both good and bad. In this age of constant media attention for chefs and instant online reviews at sites such as Yelp and Chowhound, what’s your advice for others in the industry on how to handle negative feedback when it does come around?

A: From my experience—I don’t listen to blogs anyway—but you have to believe the good stuff and you can’t believe the bad stuff. You’ve got to believe in yourself and in what you’re doing.