Fusing business and cuisine
The business partnership between restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow and chef Zak Pelaccio turns up the heat in and out of the kitchens of Manhattan and London Portrait Tony French High-profile chefs and their wealthy patrons are famously known for tempestuous flare-ups, so when white-hot chef Zak Pelaccio teamed up with restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow, New York’s gossip [...]
The business partnership between restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow and chef Zak
Pelaccio turns up the heat in and out of the kitchens of Manhattan and London
Portrait Tony French
High-profile chefs and their wealthy patrons are famously known for tempestuous flare-ups, so when white-hot chef Zak Pelaccio teamed
up with restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow, New York’s gossip writers sharpened their pencils. Considering that Chodorow, creator of 20-plus showpiece restaurants including Manhattan’s Asia de Cuba, had turned the US version of reality show The Restaurant into a litigious
cauldron, this was a mouth-watering prospect.
There has been nothing for the gossip hounds on the menu though. Pelaccio, who wowed Manhattan with his cool take on Malaysian cuisine at the Fatty Crab restaurant, has fused his business relationship with Chodorow so well that their New York multi-cuisine project Borough will be followed with Kopi Tiam, a “Malaysian coffeehouse” concept on the Upper West Side. And the two men are still happily tweaking the menu at Suka, the star turn that has just replaced Alain Ducasse’s famously expensive Spoon at London’s Sanderson Hotel.
It’s the sort of hi-design “style destination” where one doesn’t merely dine; one participates in “a dining concept”.
But can everything be cooking so easily for the chef who has his eyes on his own restaurant empire and his
business partner, a foodie “trapped in a business person’s body”? Have the pair found the recipe for harmony or
will one soon be left simmering?
Jeffrey Chodorow:
“I met Zak while dining at Fatty Crab. We started talking and I found him to be knowledgeable about food, engaging and focused,” says Chodorow during a rare ceasefire with New York Times’ critic Frank Bruni, who slammed Chodorow’s pricey steak joint Kobe Club. (Chodorow spent $40,000 on full-page advertisement in the paper to repudiate Bruni’s review. The reviewer recently gave an okay-ish review to another of his restaurants; this time Chodorow spent a much smaller budget on an advert to acknowledge this).
“What I like about Zak, apart from his talent, is that he doesn’t let his ego get in the way of decisions about what’s right for the restaurants,” he says. “That’s refreshing; especially from a young guy who has not suffered any failures yet! I have had very successful and very unsuccessful ventures so Zak knows I know what I’m talking about.”
Chodorow says of their partnership that while he might be the producer, they are co-directors; they both bring something to the table. “His title is Contributing Chef. Take the dishes at Suka, for example, Zak came up with some dishes, I came up with others. This is different from the usual situation when I empower chefs to create. This case is really collaborative. Our relationship is excellent because, apart from the shared love of food, he acknowledges I have strengths and weakness.”
Clearly this is a recipe for success. Specialist magazine Restaurants & Institutions estimates Chodorow’s company China Grill Management’s turnover in 2006 at $205 million (£102 million) and rates the 24-restaurant chain as the third most successful “multiconcept operator” in the US. Moreover, the rise in R&I’s ranking from ninth in 2005 makes it the fastest growing “multiconcept” operator in the US.
Zak Pelaccio:
“Jeff is incredibly energetic, always throwing up different ideas. He’s never still for a moment,” states Pelaccio, when asked to reveal the best element about his volatile partner. Yet Pelaccio is hardly a slouch: as well as nurturing a young family and the Fatty Crab brand, he is currently exploring all sorts of other ventures, from international outposts to raising animals in upstate New York.3
“The partnership with Jeff is very different to my other projects. The New York restaurant Borough came about because we both wanted a restaurant that was very representative of the up-and-coming neighbourhood. These days I’m less of a nuts-and-bolts guy. I’m not the
day-to-day chef. Jeffrey is open to good ideas.”
He says he is as driven by business as much as the perfect Singapore black pepper mussels. “Jeffrey has had success in opening Asia de Cuba and China Grill. I would like to open more restaurants around the world, so Jeffrey is a very good person to listen to. The biggest problem I have had with Jeffrey is that the potential of doing things is so great we could easily get nothing done! We get so caught up in ideas, and then we’re not sure where to start so, we could actually launch into a world that’s not possible.”
Pelaccio is as keen on new launches as his partner and says that he thinks the Fatty Crab would work in London as well as Shanghai and even Japan. He would also like to open a Thai restaurant in London. “Nahm [the vertiginously priced west London Thai restaurant] is good but I’d like to do something funkier,” he says. “Jeffrey would be a good person to know for any business venture. He is both an
amazing resource and is amazingly resourceful.”
Suka at The Sanderson, 50 Berners Street, London, +44 (0)20 7300 1400; www.sandersonlondon.com
