Oct 9, 2024

Episode 141

John Meadow

john meadow ldv hospitality

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Raised in Connecticut before moving to New York as a teenager, John Meadow developed a love for hospitality at a young age. He got his start as a dishwasher and sandwich maker at fast-casual chain Au Bon Pain before attending Cornell’s hotel school. By 24, he opened his first restaurant, and in 2008, launched Scarpetta, which won accolades for its refined yet unpretentious take on Italian dining.

As president and founder of LDV Hospitality, Meadow has built an empire that spans multiple countries and cities. His portfolio now includes the forthcoming Barlume, slated to open next month in New York, and his first foray into hotels with LDV at the Maidstone, which opened this summer in the Hamptons.

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Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi, I’m here with John Meadow. John, thanks so much for joining us today. How are you?

John Meadow: I’m doing well. Thank you for having me, Stacy.

SSR: Yeah, of course. It’s so good to see you. All right, so we always start at the beginning. Where did you grow up?

JM: I grew up in Farmington, Connecticut, which is a suburb of Hartford, and then I moved to New York City when I was around 13 when I went to boarding school and been here ever since.

SSR: What were you like as a kid?

JM: I was a good kid. I clearly have lived with ADD my whole life. I finally got diagnosed two years ago at the ripe age of 42, but I think it propelled me to really be disciplined because I needed to about work, right? So I was very hardworking, studious, played tennis, pretty simple, clean-cut kid. Everything went awry in my 20s, I would say.

SSR: Well, we’ll get there in a second. What were your parents like? What did your parents do? Did you get any of your entrepreneurship from them?

JM: My parents were New Yorkers. In the 60s, they were full-on hippies. I was born on a commune in Napa Valley. In their little moment of seeing the sunshine, they had a complete reversion back to the world in which they’ve come from. But my father was a chiropractor. That was his business. Still is.

SSR: Love it. So what did you want to do? Did you have any idea as a kid?

JM: So it’s funny. My father, we all rebel, right? So his father was an architect in New York City, very serious, very ties on Sunday and the whole thing. Then he’s a hippie, and then my rebellion against my father was wanting to put on a suit and do fancy restaurants. So I always was smitten by this kind of old-world hospitality charm that you’d find in New York. And I remember at six years old going to the Plaza Hotel for an Easter brunch, and I told my mom, “I want to own the Plaza Hotel one day.” That was my first ambition and dream.

SSR: Did you work in restaurants as a kid then?

JM: My first job was a dishwasher at Au Bon Pain. And I loved it, but I always joke, this business chooses you. If you like being a dishwasher, and then I got promoted to sandwich maker and I got to speak with the guests and make the sandwich and pass it to them, then you’re screwed. You’ve been deemed you’re going into the restaurant business.

SSR: Yep, you’ve been bitten by the bug.

JM: But it really, it’s what I always want. And it wasn’t I love food, I love beverage. It was about the environment. It was always about creating the environment and that special feeling of walking into a New York City restaurant.

SSR: Were you a good sandwich maker?

JM: I was. I think so. Today I’m a decent cook. A little more rustic than what we do in the restaurants, but I love to cook.

Scarpetta Rome, located in the InterContinental Rome Ambasciatori Palace, boasts a sumptuous design by Anton Cristell; photo courtesy of LDV Hospitality

SSR: Okay, got it. All right. So then did you go to college?

JM: I went to Cornell Hotel School. And then I went and worked at the Plaza Hotel. So what kind of a kid? I was ambitious. I graduated college. I was only there for six semesters at Cornell and I graduated early. Stupid, leave college to go work for $29,500 a year and realize that the real world isn’t the charming dreams that when you watch the movie Casablanca. I wanted to be Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. I still do and I’m getting there, but it ain’t easy. It ain’t easy. And the Plaza Hotel was the first wake-up call. It’s a hundred-plus year old institution at the time. The reality of the union staffing dynamics and my inspiration, whether entitled reckless ambition or inspiration, it goes both ways. I wanted to create something and that was never going to happen for me in that environment. So after I did it for two years and then I left, and at 24 I partnered with the group and opened the bar by Madison Square Garden and started down an entrepreneurial path.

SSR: Right. What did you want to create with this bar?

JM: That first bar, I was fortunate enough to be the young buck operator, raise some money, and be it and run it. It wasn’t conceptually. It was very in the realm of the lessons of the balance of art and commerce, this was purely commerce. Location, location, location directly across the street from Madison Square Garden, roof deck bar, big pitchers of beer, take care of people, smile, make money. And it did. It was a great business. I wasn’t satiated because it wasn’t creative and I wasn’t passionate about it. It was just a transactional valid business. It was a great education in business, but I wanted to pursue more dreams. So I went on at 25 a year later, still kept my interest in the bar, and I signed a lease in the Meatpacking District on 14th and 9th for the space that was The Village Idiot that in high school, in the back room we used to play Beirut. And then because it was like an old carriage house, signed up to excavate a basement in New York City. That took an extra year. That doubled our budget. We opened in massive debt and I created my dream. It was a restaurant called Gin Lane. I’d never been more passionate. Zagat at the time gave us a 24 for design. It was a beautiful restaurant and we had no money and opened in debt, and we were broke in before the day we even opened. And it’s so funny how when I think back on my career, anytime I tell this story, I’ll focus 99% on those first five years in my 20s, which was this crazy rollercoaster of success, then debt. And then in that same space there was the Gin Lane failure, we opened the first Scarpetta, we were nominated by the James Beard Foundation, best restaurant in the country. And from there built a business. But those early lessons of the entrepreneurial path were robust.

SSR: Yes. Okay. So you open in debt. How long did Gin Lane last?

JM: I tell you, it was destined for ruin during friends and family.

SSR: Why?

JM: Because we had no money. We had every celebrity in New York came to this restaurant and it was fun. There’s still people like, “You did Gin Lane? That was fun.” And within less than a year, there was a plan that, how do you get out of it? The saving grace was the location, the under market rent as the whole Meatpacking boom. We signed the lease and then Apple signed their lease. I’m not saying we were before… We were before Apple, but I’m not saying we’re pioneers. We just got lucky because that’s where we used to go out to the nightclubs down there. Because of the under market lease, we were able to bring in new capital investment, payoff, all the debts, and had just enough money to open another restaurant. And that was Scarpetta.

SSR: So that’s how you got out of it.

JM: We got out of it with Scarpetta. At the same time I opened a clothing store in 2008, which is another passion of mine. Again, I said I have ambition, but I also had a little bit of a boyish reckless entitlement, I can do anything. I can try anything with no money, always finding money, always hustling and taking horrific pressure that comes with that.

SSR: So wait, what was this clothing store-

JM: My failure in that first restaurant, I didn’t want to be in restaurants anymore. I had sought out personal bankruptcy counsel. I mean, my life was ruined. I was 26, 27. So I said, “Okay, I have to do another restaurant to get out of my woes, but I would love to go in the clothing.” So I opened this men’s dress shirt focus. Back then everyone wore muumuus. And then we did this, not metro, but a classic form-fitting men’s dress shirt. And it’s funny, we got a ton of press. GQ put us top 100 stores in the country. Barneys came and said, “We want to buy your shirt.” And I said, “What do you want to pay for it?” They’re like, “We’ll pay you $70 a shirt.” I’m like, “But it costs me 85.” And at the same time, virtually the same week, we got a three-star review by the New York Times for Scarpetta. And I said, “Okay, maybe I should do the path that I put in my education and 10,000 hours of work and let’s stay down the route of restaurants.” I was joking. Neither worked out. I would’ve gone, got an MBA and had a real job and maybe a normal life. But your path is your path.

SSR: Your path is your path. You are destined. So tell me about Scarpetta. What was the concept? How did you come up with it?

JM: So the word, scarpetta, scarpa is shoe, scarpetta is little shoe, and it’s a figurative gesture where you take a piece of bread, break it, and you mop up down to the last bite. In Italy, you make scarpetta in the home, never in a fancy restaurant because cultural customs, if you will, and rules. I think that New York City at its core is always a place where this dichotomy of high-low defines us. Right? So Scarpetta got a 3-Star review in The New York Times. We didn’t have tablecloths. Now, nothing relevant has tablecloth. I shouldn’t say nothing. Now there’s a reversion back towards the formality of the tablecloth is this retro kind of thing. But for the most part, for the past 20 years, most sought-after destination restaurants don’t have tablecloths.

I think we were one of the first 3-Star reviews in The New York Times, not to have tablecloths just like the name Scarpetta, to have a formal, proper restaurant, but named after a gesture that’s of such comfort and familiarity that you only do it in the home as a gesture of reference to the chef, man make scarpetta and mop up down to the last bite. Again, that’s that high low balance. That’s New York. The intention of doing something at a high level, but still with the comfort and the lack of pretense, that grit meets glam. That’s what makes New York so special.

And I think maybe to a degree over the past 20 years, I think New York’s lost a little of that. That’s a whole other discourse. But I think that’s why Scarpetta worked, and especially in 2008, 2009, financial crisis and the pressure, the formalities of classic conventional fine dining, we were changing, evolving, and I think that’s why it was very much 16 years later, it’s our oldest concept, but I still think it’s the most contemporary thing we’ve ever done.

SSR: Interesting. I love that. And I think, like you said, because 2008 and 2009, everyone wanted to go back to basic, you know what I mean? 

JM: With every crisis, we want to go back to comfort. And you’ve seen it after COVID, and I think it’s part of maturing. Like Frank Bruni did this great thing. And when he was retiring from being a food critic and he said something to the extent of, in my 30s, I was intrigued by cerebrally stimulating cuisine in restaurants. In my 40s, I wanted a power scene. In my 50s, I just wanted a martini. The restaurateur derives from to restore one’s soul, right? Martini goes pretty far in that. And if you don’t drink, you can find it elsewhere, but … I think that the older I get, I’m certain that comfort means something and that should apply to the plate, the service style, and the design. But Scarpetta’s always had that.

SSR And had you been to Italy? I mean, talk to me about was it always an Italian idea that you wanted to bring to fruition.

JM: Well, the American restaurant failed? We called the company LDV for La Dolce Vita. This idea of, I always was smitten by my grandfather in that old world European continental approach to dress and style and restaurants and what does that mean on today’s terms.

SSR: Got it. Was he Italian?

JM: And I had lived there for a period of time and grew up going there a lot. And I think that the idea, and also back then, 2008, there’s been a hundred-year cultural ethnicity to the Italian American. It’s an ethos, it’s a cuisine, it’s away. And we all in New York love Frank Sinatra and love spaghetti and meatballs. I remember my grandfather was so picky and he said, “Oh, there’s three Italian restaurants in New York.” Because for him, that wasn’t his culture. And the reality of the classic by the rules Italian for Italian wasn’t readily found everywhere. At the same time Nonnos, I won’t say boring, but classic old world Italian, there’s a whole modern contemporary world of this kind of Alta Cucina, this more modern contemporary approach to Italian cuisine that’s neither Italian Italian nor Italian American and that was the language of Scarpetta. I think what’s interesting is fast-forward, thereafter you have all of these wonderful restaurants, Lilia, L’Artusi, and 100 others that are doing this modern American interpretation of not Italian American cuisine. And that approach has served as well. So much so that now we’ve opened in Rome. And we represent the point of differentiation again from the classic rustic, authentic Roman cuisine and a more nouvelle approach.

SSR: Got it. Okay. So you open, you get three stars from The New York Times, which is amazing. Who did you partner with the design or did you do it yourself?

JM: We had no money. We did that restaurant for $300,000. The first restaurant, we had spent millions of dollars in excavation, but when I tell you there was no money, there was, I got my general contractor’s license back then you could for $25,000 so as to be able to not have to pay someone to file permits. And we did all the work. So this was the undesigned, unplanned garage band restaurant. And with that hype, we were able to garner an audience with the Fountainebleau in Miami, the Casa Palatine in Las Vegas and from there go into a very different, more professional approach to growth and development, work with fancy designers like David Collins who did Fountainebleau. And then most recently they did Scarpetta in Doha for us two years ago. But the original was as mom-and-pop, garage band, unproduced as one could ever be.

SSR: But it was successful.

JM: It was.

Travertine and marble flooring create a sense of place at Scarpetta Rome; photo courtesy of LDV Hospitality

SSR: Yeah. All right, so was Vegas next?

JM: The Fontainebleau in Miami. We opened the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas in 2012. I brought in a family office partner who’s my capital partner today. And we really cleaned it up and got serious about running it as a business. And from there we started to really scale and do a variety of different projects, probably too wide, but we built the business to where it is today. Today we have about 20 bars and restaurants. We’re in nine cities, five countries, we’re in 14 hotels. And we have a pretty robust pipeline and intention to go forward.

And with that, just as it pertains to hospitality design, I feel the design and the ideation process is definitely the honeymoon phase and the most fun. At some point, the real work is running a restaurant day in and out. But one of the things I feel most fortunate about is to have been able to work with so many extraordinary wonderful designers. And we don’t do cookie cutter chain restaurants. Every one is fundamentally different. They’re different restaurants. The menus, the core DNA is there, but we like to work with different designers in a respective location and have an experience that’s this is Scarpetta Tokyo. It’s not just generic Scarpetta.

SSR: And what do you look for in a collaborator?

JM: They have to have a real sense of a local market. So Scarpetta Tokyo we did with Jun Aizaki of CRÈME design. Jun happens to be Japanese, but based in Brooklyn. And based in Brooklyn and therefore international New York perspective, but still understanding the world from which he came from, I couldn’t have thought of a better person to work with for that very specific precise market.

And Scarpetta Tokyo and Scarpetta, Rome share a name. They share our signature, spaghetti, tomato, basil, and the design ethos, there’s a consistency there about what we do and what we don’t do. That will always be the Scarpetta Bible, if you will, but it’s decidedly different with intention. And that’s the key to being a real restaurant and not just a chain. It’d be a lot easier if we just stamped it out. And probably a better business in certain regard, but that’s not our passion.

SSR: Yeah. How involved are you in the design?

JM: Less and less. But the reason is as you get older, you realize what you’re good at, you realize what other people are good at, and most of all, that micromanagement only goes so far. So the more we evolve, the more we want to give the poetic license to the designer to engage in their art form, because they can do it better than us otherwise, why would we need them? So now I’m more stringent than ever about this is the philosophy, but giving more leeway and more empowerment and more space to the creatives to interpret our philosophy on their terms. If we don’t like it, we don’t like it, but you have to find that balance. And if you don’t inspire the people around you and your team…

SSR: Why are you even doing this?

JM: Why are you even doing it? And I realize that I still haven’t found my talent, but I know that I’m blessed with wonderful people around me in every aspect of what I do. And especially the designers, even if they don’t work for us, they’re all independent professionals, and I really value those relationships.

SSR: Yeah. I’m sure you have many talents. What do you like as a leader for the company and especially as you’ve grown, how has that changed for you?

JM: At my core, I’m a salesman. Now, I can only sell that, that I’m truly passionate about. I’m passionate about LDV, I’m passionate about my team, I’m passionate about Scarpetta and our various other restaurants. So my day-to-day job is very much the growth of the company and focusing on development, making partnerships with the hotels and creating new opportunity to grow.

The value I bring… And with that, we’ve been able to scale and have a team of people around me. I took my four more senior people, my COO, head of development, director of operations, head chef, made them all partners in the business three years ago. And they’ve been with me for as little as 10 to as many as 16 years. So I think that we have a tenure amongst us that that team of professionals, I can’t do their job. The key of so many old school entrepreneurs, I can do your job better than you, the old school, the Greek diner. And I respect that mentality. I can proudly say that my corporate core team, I can’t do the job of one singular person, certainly not better than they can. And with that, that’s what allows for scale. So really I do my salesmanship to get the opportunity, and thereafter I just pump everybody up.

And I’m crazy and I’m particular and peculiar and I’m poking pride, I will. But overall, it’s all about empowering a team to want to do their thing and to feel ownership literally and figuratively over what they’re doing. No one chooses this industry, if not for passion. There’s a lot better, smarter ways to make a buck. So what are you here for, right? You want to be a part of it. So you have to encourage and empower people to be able to be a part of it on their terms.

SSR: Yeah. Besides the Meatpacking location, was there one project that you think really defined what you want Scarpetta to be?

JM: 2018, our lease was up in the Meatpacking District and we moved to the new location on 29th & Madison. And with that, that was the scariest opening in my life. It was the boldest. We had a restaurant that was there for 10 years doing seven meal periods of dinner, only very specific to a master lease for all the F&B in that hotel, opening a lounge, The Seville doing banquets. It was a totally different world and it was a risk. And 10 years later where between social media, and I think the nature of news in general, if it’s not new, it’s not news. When we opened, our culinary offering was unique. Now, you and I could write down 100 restaurants that don’t do Italian food and they don’t do Italian American food. They do this vernacular of a modern Americanized interpretation of Italian as we discussed. So now we’re not even culinarily unique. We’re good, but we’re not cerebral. We’re not a part of that cutting edge conversation.

So what do you do? Our effort was, okay, let’s focus on the comfort of the humanity, of the warmth of service. Obviously there’s still the love and the quality of the culinary offering, but let’s make this hot-blooded, beautiful modern Italian dinner party that’s quintessentially New York City. And it went from food darling to a New York institution in this new iteration. And I think that that served us very well. And with that we do four times the revenue of the original location.

Archways in the backbar mimic the windows at Scarpetta Rome; photo courtesy of LDV Hospitality

SSR: Oh, wow.

JM: Last year, 16 years later, was the highest grossing year we’ve ever had. Not that money’s a scorecard, but in terms of maintaining relevance to do the cover counts, to do the volume in spite of all the… And it’s funny, we used to be at the top of every list of the best Italian in New York. Now the media doesn’t care about us. When we open something new, they do. But what are you going to say about 16-year-old Scarpetta. And I’m okay with that. I’m at peace with that as long as I fill up the restaurant every night with New Yorkers, which we do.

SSR: Yeah. And how do you think you got that mix of people to keep coming back?

JM: Again, it goes back to the warmth of hospitality and the Frank Bruni’s comment about the martini, and look, our signature dish, the spaghetti, tomato and basil, that is the most basic humble cucina povera peasant dish there is. But we’ve put forth this effort to elevate it into something special. And that’s equal parts exciting, but also plays on the heartstrings. You eat our food with your heart and not with your head. If someone says, “Oh, that’s so interesting,” I’m completely, I’m disinterested. That’s not the experience we want to offer, “Oh, that’s so interesting. You’ll never believe what they did.” I want you to know exactly what you’re getting and love and that’s what you come back for, right? So I think the…

But the twist, again, in the design and the intention and the size of the space in the fact that we coupled it with the nightlife offering, we’re not a club, we’re always restaurant first. People that don’t know us, I think that we have this history in nightlife. We don’t. We’ve created bars adjacent to our restaurants because I love the opportunity of having our team take care of you for dinner at eight and then at 10:15 to go downstairs to the lounge to have that nightcap. And it’s all under one dolce vita lens.

SSR: Yeah. And during COVID, New York obviously got shut down as the world did, but then you also pivoted and you helped… We worked together on it, but you created that amazing outdoor area to keep it going. Talk a little bit about that.

JM: The challenge and the opportunity of COVID and crisis builds bond, right, the sole objective was to maintain connection? Connection to the guest and connection to our team first and foremost. So it was the first opportunity, if not the only that we’ll ever have in our business career where it was just about humanity and doing for the purpose of doing, right? There was no construct of financial. If you want to be financially… then just quit. Don’t go to the restaurant business in the first place. But during COVID just quit forever. Granted, in the end, the government pumped out a gazillion dollars, which is a whole separate discussion. So everyone had some financial capacity in the restaurant space to be able to engage and act.

And it was this very special time in my life that I’m in certain regard grateful for. I’m not grateful for the pandemic. I’m grateful that ironically, through that crisis, we saw who our team, who our LDV family truly was. And I think that those bonds that were forged in that crisis maintain and just the effort to do stuff like at American Cut steakhouse, we were doing delivery only because we had to do something. You have to keep the engine running. And every week, in addition to our menu, we would have someone from our team do their grandma’s ethnic recipe. And we called it Family Meal and we were selling it to the public.

So think about how many unsung immigrant heroes we have that do our Italian food, now they get to cook African food and sell it to our customer and Korean and Mexican and all. It was a fascinating experience. And to get the buy-in from the clientele was very special. We served fried chicken at Scarpetta and Jay-Z and Beyonce came and enjoyed it. We did all of these heartfelt gestures that really it’s not pulling on heartstrings for the purposes. When you just strip away all the noise, don’t think about money, because there is none, and just act in love, and it was a special time. And I think with that momentum, it carried us. That plus the boom plus the government assistance carried us to frankly the best place that we’ve been in our career.

SSR: And it’s all just about going back to humanity, which is amazing. Besides Scarpetta, are there other concepts that you’re looking to grow as well?

JM: We did a bid. I’m very grateful, this summer we took a huge step and we achieved something I always wanted to do, which was to actually for us to do the hotel. So we partnered with a group, Irwin Simon, Mike that bought The Maidstone hotel in East Hampton, which is the oldest ongoing business in the entire Hamptons. The name Maidstone, originally the town of East Hampton was Maidstone, and there’s two houses from approximately 200 plus years old that have been a hotel for over 135 years. So we reimagined the special place as LDV At The Maidstone, bringing a little bit of our dolce vita flair and vibe and sensuality to this aristocratic, Waspy Anglicized, Hamptons city center.

And it was really special. It’s special because when the guest experience is amorphous and everyone says, well, what’s the name of the restaurant? I said, “No, the whole place is LDV At The Maidstone. LDV is not the name of a restaurant. LDV is who we are as people. The Maidstone will always be, we are anointed for this moment in time as the steward of this special place. This is our gesture towards food. This is the Santa Maria Novella soap in the bathrooms. This is the Frette linens.” All of it was this one amorphous, our positioning and sensibility and our DNA. And to be able to express that in the bath soap and in what became our signature dish, the spaghetti alla nerano and zucchini based instead of the tomato, that was really fulfilling because it was 100%. And we got to go 100% all in on every detail and have a very cohesive experience. And therein lies OCD opportunity for me to really geek out on details. But really the passion of let’s create our offering with our language and our vernacular.

So many of the hotels that we’re going to, we’re grateful to go into them, this is the hotel, this is the restaurant. And often you can have a slightly different approach. It’s just the nature of the beast and often that can come with a disjointed guest experience, disjointed morale, et cetera. But when you strip it all away, when there’s only one and it’s all LDV, it’s very pure. And that was a very special experience for us.

We have a new opening, hopefully in the next, I can’t even lie to myself or you on this podcast, I say to myself, next month, realistically in November, in Flatiron on 20th and Broadway, that’s going to be called Barlume. Barlume means a glimmer. The premise there is Italian meets Mediterranean-based all day cafe. We’ll be open 7:00 AM until midnight, serving food the whole way through.

And then downstairs we have a lounge vibe. So I think that, again, New York is always in everything we do in whatever city we go to, New York is still protagonist number one. Ask a Parisian, what is pastis, what is balthazar? Or ask a New Yorker, what is pastis and balthazar? “Oh, that’s Keith McNally’s French restaurants. They’re awesome.” Ask anyone in Paris what’s pastis and balthazar, that’s New York City fully. No one has understood that better than him. That’s his absolute genius to me. In our humble way, doing the all day at its core, that brasserie, I understand the brasserie is a French vernacular, but the New York interpretation, the New York energy and the all day with still enough mood to want to have that martini in the evening and stay too long and then go downstairs to the lounge, it’s quintessentially in New York. I’m excited to do something frankly, at a lower price point than Scarpetta, more accessible, a little bit younger, fresher funkier. So that’s Barlume.

SSR: Was that always the idea to do something a little under Scarpetta and then the space opened up, or the space came to you and then you thought of this?

JM: For a long time we wanted to do this all day Mediterranean cafe, and this isn’t business strategy of okay, Scarpetta costs X amount and now… It’s just, let’s do something new and funky and fresh. My parallel is, I was born in 1980, so no matter what, there’s still a degree of looking back from nostalgia of the world that you came from. So I think anyone that’s born in 1980 thinks of a red Ferrari Testarossa is the car. I think my kids think a red Ferrari Testarossa is cheesy. My generation wants a Ferrari, that’s Scarpetta. New generation wants a Schwinn, a cool retro, funky Schwinn. Barlume is a funky, retro Schwinn. Equally, parts aspirational for a different generation, different time, et cetera.

SSR: What has been the process like creating this? Has it been inspirational? 

JM: Listen, when it’s done I’ll tell you it’s inspirational. Right now there’s a meeting going on that I should be at screaming and yelling and kicking and going nuts.

SSR: But instead you’re here.

JM: But thank God I’m here because hopefully it’s good for my blood pressure. It’s never easy. Constructions never cost more, it’s never been more complex. The bureaucracy in New York City… We used to negotiate three free months of rent to open a restaurant. We’ve been working on Barlume with, I will say and honest to God, a fantastic landlord, you don’t get to say that every day, Adam Justin, fantastic. Thank you. We’re a year later. We’re still not open.

We took the former, it was called Beecher’s Cheese, it was a cheese factory. So from a mechanical standpoint, I did what I promised myself I would never do, which is basically build a building. We’re investing in someone else’s building, what it costs to buy a building anywhere else, let alone build a new one, that’s New York City construction because of the mechanicals. Importing, doing all Italian lighting, all FF&E made in Italy, that’s just masochism.

SSR: That’s your own fault.

JM: Yeah. It’s interesting is that the pricing has actually come into order that made in Italy is no longer such a premium. I think that’s part of just the reality of the world economic dynamics in the past post-COVID. But the Italian time and the management of schedule and the tomorrow, tomorrow is always quite fun, as you can imagine. But we’ll get there. We always do. We’ve done this before.

SSR: Are you partnering with somebody you’ve worked with before on the design?

JM: Yes. The designer’s name is Anton Cristell. He has Cristell Studio in Rome. Anton was born in New York, moved to Rome, which is where his family’s from nearby, in high school. And he’s always lived between the two worlds. When we did Scarpetta, Rome, and Charlie’s is our nightclub at Scarpetta, Rome, a roof deck terrace, Anton was the designer for those two spaces. And again, New York’s always the protagonist. Everywhere we go, it’s still New York… Scarpetta is a New York restaurant with Italian ingredients, right? The New York restaurant part is still there. Anton really, really gets that. He did an exceptional job of our two projects in Rome. And with that, we were eager to do this with him. He also understands the nostalgic look. There’s no built for Instagram design with him. There’s no gimmick. It’s not this maximalist visual vomit of stuff to touch and texture just for the sake of it. He has a restraint. At the same time there’s content that’s interesting. So it’s been a real pleasure working with him, and he’s been able to source extraordinary artisanal Italian fabricators for everything that, apart from the BS of their shipping dates, it’s special.

SSR: Yeah. And it’s going to have that special feel.

JM: You know what? I said, “I can’t wait for two years from now when this restaurant feels the patina.” It doesn’t have to show it, but when you can feel it, what he builds can endure time. It’s up to us to make sure that our food is good enough in our service. But I know that we’re building something that built to become an institution.

Everyone right now is doing this whitewash, Mediterranean, Greek, Puglia thing. And that’s what I wanted with this concept. And you’ve seen, I won’t say any names, but there’s some restaurants that have nailed that formula. Like if it was Cornell Hotel School course, A plus plus, plus plus, right? But when it becomes formulaic again, seven years from now, that whitewash stucco thing. And I think that in the end, we got something that’s not as obviously this Mediterranean trend of the moment, but it’s quintessentially in New York and it’ll maintain relevance.

SSR: Yeah. Which is probably the hardest part of owning restaurants in New York.

JM: It is. And again, if you really… There’s been points in my career where you get caught up in food trend and the biz and the… there’s so much noise. The beauty is there is so much noise that at some point the only rational direction is, okay, this is what I fundamentally believe in, and I’m going to authentically act on that. And those are the restaurants that endure.

SSR: Yeah. And resonate.

JM: Everyone is, “Oh, what are your favorite restaurants in New York?” “Ah, if you can come to New York, you have to have a breakfast at Balthazar, you have to have a night out at Indochine. And oh, Raoul’s is just such a…” And then, wow, all three of those restaurants have been open for 30 years. And they’re honest. Not the next gimmick of the next thing that’s hot today and closed in two years.

SSR: Right. Which is hard to stay away from because you get wrapped up in it. You mentioned Keith McNally. Are there other restaurateurs that you look up to?

JM: There are so many. I think Jean-Georges is somebody that, as a human, the biggest guy in the city in this business, and he puts on his chef lights every single day, and he walks into those kitchens and he’s always a chef first. So many do a fancy restaurant, go on TV, get a deal, da, da, da and then all of a sudden they don’t even have restaurants and it’s a different path. Good for them. Jean-Georges, I respect as much as anyone in this business.

I think Stephen Starr is someone that, it’s just amazing that after so much success, his desire to continue to create and ideate and push an envelope and progress, it’s just talk about ambition. I think it’s extraordinary what he’s done.

SSR: Yeah. Those are two good ones.

JM: Those are great ones.

A 150-year-old hotel in the Hamptons was reimagined by Unionworks as LDV at the Maidstone; photo by Letizia Ciglutti

SSR: Is there one place that you’re dying to open a new Scarpetta or this new concept in?

JM: I’m very resolved and excited about New York City. Forgive the corny response. My dream was to open a business in Rome. We did. It was amazing. It was amazing. Now the honeymoon’s over, reality sets in, that’s life. But we’ve done, in one month right now, I go to Rome, London, Tokyo and get to go to these international restaurants. I feel very blessed to be able to do that. In all of my travel I finally realized, especially after going back to… that New York City is the most dynamic city in the world, and it’s of the world. And everyone that’s here deliberately chooses to be here, chooses to engage, we choose to live in shoeboxes. We’re here for a purpose. And that’s why the Met is the Met. And that’s why the opera is so special. And that’s why the restaurants are so great here is because the intention is palpable. So after all my world tour and all the travel, which is fun, and I’ll continue to do it, we’re doing Brazil, we’re doing Saudi, we’re doing Madrid, I mean, that’s part of the business and that’s fun. But we want New York. So we did The Maidstone in East Hampton, which I consider New York spiritually, even if separate town.

SSR: It’s very New York.

JM: We’re doing Flatiron and we have about three or four other projects in the next two years within New York City.

SSR: Oh, wow.

JM: I’m not ready to talk about all of it. But the point is, let’s focus on New York. We will continue to grow this international footprint for Scarpetta, but I want more in New York.

SSR: Well, I know you not ready to talk about them, but will they be different concepts then?

JM: We were doing some different concepts. I also, one of the things that I’m very eager to launch is a seafood version of Scarpetta. Therein lies a great opportunity for us to speak our core Scarpetta language, but apply it to Mediterranean seafood, which obviously yes, is very much on trend now. But Italian seafood restaurants have been around and will always be around. And the truth is, again, if we just stamp out Scarpetta, I don’t know if that satiates our team. I don’t know if it satiates my personal desire to create, yes, every Scarpetta is different, but it’s also really exciting to work with new people and to elevate our team.

If I look at Barlume, the managing partner is Avery Breton. He’s been with me for, he started as an intern at Gurney’s in Montauk in 2016, something like that. And now he’s a partner in that restaurant and he’s really going to lead that charge. So for me, I find great satisfaction in creating that opportunity for this individual who’s earned that. And we all evolve together. And then everyone gets to grow together. Just like the chef, Juan Sanchez was an executive sous for us at Scarpetta for years, and he helped open all the Scarpettas around the world, and now he gets to be chef de cuisine of his restaurant. That’s a good feeling.

SSR: Yeah. That’s amazing. Not every company can say that. Are there more hotels in your future, do you think?

JM: Yes. There better be. I say that with a smirk, because math is math. It’s beautifully black and white math. And I’ve looked at lots of hotel P&Ls and seen how much more productive rooms are than F&B. But only when you live it and it’s your payroll and it’s your margin and you realize that the reason that we are at Maidstone, the reason we were able to activate and get the press and the awareness and the whole thing, 99% of the people that come to Maidstone come to our restaurants because they have homes in that environment and/or the guest of, et cetera. We only have 19 keys. It’s just a much better business. So I don’t have a place in the hotel business at the airport, Hilton, who am I to compete with that, just like I know that they can’t do what I do? But to find unique treasure assets, where at its core, it’s a restaurant plus rooms is a very compelling business proposition. And I think that we can do it humbly.

And I think that, again, buzzwords in the corporate world are such a tricky thing. Everyone wants to talk about experience, and every big hotel company has their next brand lifestyle story. And I get it. It’s a business. We all participate in that, right? That’s my core business of hotel, food and beverage. But as a consumer, I travel a lot. And when it’s up to me to pick where I’m going, i.e., not a hotel where I have a restaurant, I don’t go on Amex Platinum to see what deal I can get upgrade at some big mega known brands application and XYZ. I go in Tablet Hotels, and I find this one-off unique, authentic, independent, by definition true boutique experience. That’s the little niche that I think that we can play in. And I think that that will give, it’s a good business and it’s good passion. And we were able to do that with Maidstone. I’m very grateful for that.

SSR: Yeah. And Maidstone, is it year round? Yeah.

JM: We’re staying open.

SSR: You’re staying open. Great. I know a lot of things close in The Hamptons, so it’s nice to stay open-

JM: Yeah, I think, look, I’m very scared of what January, February, and March, and April look like. Over the past 10 years of having been there at Gurney’s, we’ve seen a tremendous increase in off season weekend activity. We got a more reduced operating hours for the restaurant, but we’re smack in the middle of town. We’ve had such a warm welcome from the village of people that want to support it, the people that live there year round that… And I think it’s built for this cozy come in and have a hot toddy by the fire type environment. So we’re going to do it.

SSR: Yeah. I was just in Montauk last weekend and Gurney’s was packed. It was off season. So hopefully that continues. Okay. Tell us one thing that people might not know about you.

JM: One thing people don’t know about? I’m a pretty simple person. I’m diabetic. That’s the thing. I’m a type one diabetic in the restaurant business. So that’s tough. That’s a tough balance.

SSR: Has that been your whole life?

JM: I got it when I was 20. So I think what’s interesting about it is inherently I sell the drug of alcohol and the gluttonous food, but I need to find that balance, right? And I think if anything, you see restaurant pirates go off the deep end, sadly, right? This business is not all roses and smiles. And I think that there’s an aspect of, it’s interesting, whether it’s my personal diabetes or it’s an overall macro trend, people are drinking less, people are healthier now, et cetera. The point is intention, which is something I have to work on. But that’s a good reminder for it.

SSR: Yeah. What would you tell your younger self today?

JM: Slow down and act with intention and really engage in every step along the way. Everything for me was, I’m going to do this, to do this, to do this, do this and it was too transactional, too fast, too flippant. When you go slow with intention acting and that you believe in, then you can create a product, whatever it is, that resonates because it’s real. When you just use… The brain, it’s a dangerous… You can rationalize anything. And academia is academia. The place of academia and the reality of a hospitality business, yes, I’m grateful for the degree that I went to and I got a great education at the hotel school, but the gut is by far more powerful than my rationale on anything. And it takes a lifetime to accept and trust that gut. But that only really gets cultivated if you act with intention and you’re present in that moment. So it’s all, we’ll get there. We’ll get there.

SSR: I feel you are.

JM: We’ll get there.

SSR: All right. So I hate to end this conversation, but we always end the podcast with the title that is the podcast. So what has been your greatest lesson or lessons learned along the way?

JM: Stay true to yourself and surround yourself with wonderful people. You do those two things, it all comes.

SSR:  Well, thank you so much for spending the last 40 minutes or so with us. It’s been such a pleasure.

JM: Thank you for having me.