Danny Meyer

No, if anything, my restaurants have always reflected the opposite experience. We typically take a long time to reach our potential, and then work hard to improve every year thereafter. Since we've never had the experience of doing the same restaurant twice, each one has been a steep learning curve. We'll hire the human being before the professional, and so sometimes our staffs take a while to jell. I usually hold my nose for the first 6 months of a new restaurant, and don't begin to feel truly proud until the first or second birthday. From that point on, we work to constantly fine tune -- usually in response to constructive comments from the people who enjoy using the restaurant. That's when they get really good, and that's when I have a lot more fun with them.

In the process of doing research once we decided to do Blue Smoke, my team and I logged nearly 65,000 miles, tasting BBQ in at least 100 different spots across Tennessee, Missouri, Illinois, North Carolina, Mississippi and Texas. The places varied in quality, but most were ideosyncratic, and often in ways that would not appeal to New Yorkers. (Big jars of pickles and rolls of paper towels on the tables, no silverware, etc.) You're absolutely right about the brown paper as plates at Kreuz Market. It works there, but wouldn't here. But we DID consider that, and everything we saw. (By the way, we loved Kreuz and even use their hot links at Blue Smoke -- the only restaurant you can get it outside Lockhart, I think). This dichotomy of "What is a real BBQ joint" vs. "What is a real New York restaurant" became a central question for us to answer. I have zero interest in opening something that's not real, and yet to date, BBQ hasn't been real in NYC. But that's no reason New Yorkers shouldn't get to enjoy the flavors. I refused to consider creating the typical Disney-esque barbecue joint decor of piggies and bowling trophies. So we asked ourselves what the essence was of a barbecue joint in REAL barbecue land, and also, what is the essence of a real joint in NYC. And we came up with Blue Smoke. Some things that work in BBQ land work in New York. Like our huge beverage sign above the bar. Or the iced down bottles of beer in tubs. It's designed to be a place that's about eating, not dining. And it's designed to let you know that you can roll up your sleeves and just be with who you're with and hang. That said, every restaurant I've ever done has struggled to re-contextualize things from other places. They've all been a process of taking something I love from somewhere else, and then expressing that something through a New York perspective. That's what makes them challenging for me and for sometimes for our guests -- particularly at the outset. Union Square Cafe did that with the Italian Trattoria. Gramercy Tavern with a countryside 2-star restaurant from Italy or France. Tabla the typical Indian Restaurant, and Eleven Madison Park the French Brasserie. I've never been interested in doing "a real French Brasserie" or an "Indian restaurant" or, a barbecue restaurant", per se. I love taking the essence of what I love about something, and then asking, how would this feel most real in New York. And brown paper as plates would not feel real in New York. Neither would a wrapped stack of saltines -- which would be very much at home in Lockhart, Texas.

My choice to do Blue Smoke in the old 27 Standard/Jazz Standard space was complex, but logical -- at least to me. Having opened Eleven Madison Park and Tabla in late 1998, within 4 weeks of each other, I remember saying to myself: "I'll never again open 2 restaurants at the same time, and if I ever do open another restaurant, it's going to be a non-white table cloth joint. About that same time, my first cousin, James Polsky, began to ask me whether I'd have any interest in collaborating with him on his restaurant and jazz club. He was a jazz fanatic and Jazz Standard was doing pretty well, but inspite of its 2-star Ruth Reichl review, 27 Standard was sort of floundering. I grew up in St. Louis loving ribs and always thought that barbecue and jazz (a coupling which Kansas City made famous) was a natural fit. I also was eager to preserve Jazz Standard, being a jazz buff myself. (I was a jazz DJ while in college and used to drive down to NYC just to go to jazz clubs.) My cousin had had a lot of offers on the space (this was 1999, after all) but everyone interested would've demolished the club. So that's why I picked the 27 Standard space. As for the retrofit, it went way, way beyond what we had hoped or imagined. And that was mostly driven by the engineering requirements to vent the smoke from our two pits. In fact, the only thing we were able to keep from the original space was the cozy little bar downstairs at Jazz Standard. From an accountant's standpoint, building Blue Smoke was not like most joints.