NY Magazine Critical of Time Warner Restaurants

[bloviatrix]

I don't know that New Yorkers want or appreciate a 4 hour meal.

No, it's not a place for a quick meal, but if you want to luxuriate over wonderful food in a beautiful setting ( ideally with people that you love being with) and make an evening of it, it's the place to be. The four plus hours that I spent at Per Se flew by. Furthermore, this was one of the most pampered/cossetted blocks of time I've ever experienced outside of going to a spa.

[docsconz]

By virtue of the filled tables, I would say that plenty of New Yorkers are ready for four hour dinners, so long as the food, service and ambience are wonderful. Such is the case with Per Se.

[robert40]

Ruby Tuesday's has it all over Per Se on the salad bar front, though.

Darn good thing they have a salad bar.

Last time there the waitress came to our table and said, I got good news and bad news. Good news being I'm here to take your order, Bad news I have no pen so can I borrow yours.

[Ocean_islands]

To the contrary, most malls are extraordinarily successful, which is why developers keep building them. Quite simply, they work. To call them "boring" is a typical New York reaction, which is one reason why so few malls have been built here, and is why Time-Warner has been so vigorously pooh-poohed when malls generally are welcomed elsewhere.

Well I agree with you on that; I wasn't speaking about the business success of malls, only about their aesthetcs. If they were not a good business proposition, then they wouldn't be built so often.

Malls are welcomed where there are no stores; where there are a lot of stores, however, they are generally less welcome, especially by other store owners. Personally, I love malls, so there's no attitude here from me. The box-type mall with a skylight, though, leaves a lot to the imagination. It's boring when all the stores are the same -- a drawback to the mall.

I was being facetious about the 'restaurant mall'.

[CFO999]

Time Warner has struck management deals with each chef to enter this Vegas like experiment.

They foot the bill for the development and building of each concept.

Problem is their business model is flawed.

The rents are insainely high and the operators have no incentive to perform.(other than their reps)

Add to that this mall aversion issue and the profitability of these venues, are at least in the begining stages, questionable.

Problem is They may be in denial about the eventual turnaround of these venues.

Cost control of these venues are left to the operators who get paid no matter what the bottom line says.

So, if we loose 2 million we will make it up later?

This kind of thinking is definitely flawed.

Is there a law that says we have to front load costs and create this massive overhead that doesn't match your revenue...especially in the early stages of a restaurant.

It's not what you make....its what you leave on the table

[Pan]

As for the mall, I'm sure I'm not the only person posting on this thread who has been to Asia. You know all those cities that have risen to global prominence, like Singapore and Hong Kong, and that threaten to leave America and Europe in the dust? Guess what you'll find in those cities? Malls. Lots and lots and lots of malls. If the Time Warner Center is to be derided for dragging luddite New Yorkers into the future by giving us our first truly modern Asian-style urban mall, so be it. There are always plenty of New Yorkers willing to speak out against progress, so it's no surprise to see a regurgitation of that bad old habit.

I'm glad you mentioned East Asia. I was thinking of the great restaurant I ate at in a mall in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, while reading this thread.

But as for that building, one of the reasons it has such good views is that it's probably one of the few high places where you can't see the Time Warner Building. So my objections go beyond ambivalent feelings toward malls vs. individual stores.

[oakapple]

I thought I'd leverage this thread, rather than starting a new one.

In today's New York Post, Steve Cuozzo reports mixed success for the Time-Warner food court. Among the highlights:

Per Se, of course, is full every evening, but it's only sixteen tables. "Tiny Masa, with a handful of seats, hardly draws throngs," and you can't get out of there without spending $350 a head (before beverages). There's nowhere for tourists and patrons at the mall's mid-market stores to grab a quick bite.

Café Gray is a big hit at dinner (it's grossing $1 million a month), but traffic has been slow at lunch. The restaurant is adding sandwiches and salads to its menu next week. According to Ken Himmel, who runs the food court, this will allow patrons "to get in and out faster to broaden the lunch audience."

In an adjoining article the Post's Braden Keil reports that Gray Kunz has signed a contract to open a new restaurant in the former Aquavit space. No word yet what type of restaurant it will be.

Back at the mall, Cuozzo says that V Steakhouse is "sparsely populated" and is almost certain to close next year. Himmel will only say that he can't comment "until after the first of the year," which doesn't sound optimistic. (On the other hand, to have three out of four restaurants successful—and Michelin starred—sure ain't bad.)

Himmel concedes the space needs work. "I want to bring a different and new audience into the building, willing to spend $50 a person on dinner, but not $100." Plans to add a more informal café in a the space adjoining Café Gray have been abandoned, as has the Charlie Trotter restaurant. Thomas Keller's Bouchon Bakery has been much delayed, but is still expected to open next year.

Edited November 9, 2005 by oakapple (log)

[akwa]

i may be one of the few people who enjoyed V

but either way

per se at 3 stars

masa at 2

gray at 1

volume for gray, $ for masa, and both for tk

explain to me who is the loser?

maybe jg

but for a mall food court, pretty amazing results imho

[rich]

Six stars for a complex that cost more than $1 billion - that's more than $167 million a star. Not bad by today's standards.

How did New York survive so long without the Michelin stars? I ashamed to live in such a hick town.

[BryanZ]

Cuozzo brings up some good, albeit, obvious points. The TWC obviously brings in the people, Whole Foods is packed at lunch, but doesn't have much in the mid-priced range. Especially at lunch, when shoppers might want a quick but satisfying lunch in the $30 range, there's not a lot there. I often walked past Cafe Gray but always found the lunch menu to be too expensive for an everyday meal. BarMasa isn't bad but it's menu is rather limited and expensive if you get into the sushi. V Steakhouse offers economical lunch offerings but is, as Cuozzo says, depressingly quiet.

Venues like Bouchon Bakery are what the TWC needs. If a version of Bouchon like in Las Vegas would open in the TWC, it would make a killing serving large volumes high quality food from a big name chef at a reasonable price.

[oakapple]

volume for gray, $ for masa, and both for tk

explain to me who is the loser?

maybe jg

←

It appears that Café Gray and Pe Se are financial successes. Masa is a critical success; reports have varied as to whether it's actually making money.

V Steakhouse is the one clear loser. It was never clear how much time or money Vongerichten put into the place, but as it is named for him, he can't escape at least part of the blame. Vongerichten has never had a restaurant fail in New York, and with the number of places he had, it was a winning streak that was sure to come to an end eventually.

I haven't looked at a V Steakhouse menu lately, but when I was there they were charging a significant premium over typical steakhouse prices. It was a gutsy gamble to do that in a restaurant genre that's so plentiful in Manhattan. Meanwhile, they don't have a website, they aren't on OpenTable, and they aren't on MenuPages. (There's a separate thread on JGV's poor web presence.) This is a restaurant that cetainly could have used all the publicity it could get.

[akwa]

Six stars for a complex that cost more than $1 billion - that's more than $167 million a star. Not bad by today's standards.

How did New York survive so long without the Michelin stars? I ashamed to live in such a hick town.

←

does anyone have the amount spent on the restaurants?

i believe per se was the most expensive construction

at 16 million?

5 million per star is actually fairly good value

the real question is how michelin survived the modern era without new york

[leviathan]

Since the last post, anybody have any other comments about how the mall is performing for the non-new yorkers reading this thread.

To the contrary, most malls are extraordinarily successful, which is why developers keep building them. Quite simply, they work.

I don't know about that. The sterotypical suburban mall's popularity has been waning for the past decade. Traditional anchor stores like Sears are trying to decouple themselves from malls, and build stand alone stores. Developers are coming up with different types and variations on the mall to revitalize the format.

[oakapple]

Since the last post, anybody have any other comments about how the mall is performing for the non-new yorkers reading this thread.

←

I don't know about the whole mall, but the restaurants have settled down. Per Se, of course, was a hit from the beginning. V Steakhouse failed, but its replacement, Porter House, appears to be thriving. Café Gray discontinued lunch, but as far as I can tell, is regularly full at dinner. I don't know about Masa. A new outpost of Landmarc is opening later this year, in what was to have been the Charlie Trotter space.

[Fat Guy]

The Stone Rose bar also seems to be thriving, as well as Bouchon. And if you count it as a restaurant, the dining area at Whole Foods is a zoo. The Dean & DeLuca outpost in Borders also seems to sell a ton of stuff.