Where do you finally draw the line? Is there a request you simply won’t accommodate?
We ask ourselves that every night. You stop at the point where you simply can’t possibly run a restaurant and juggle all those things.
Last Saturday night, we had 65 different special dietary requests while serving a maximum of 100 people. Essentially every table had something. This requires at least one, sometimes two people just to handle the individual preferences.
Still, we’re in the business of hospitality. We have to make people happy.
And we now have our secondary restaurant, Patty O’s Café. If someone wants something that’s off our menu, chances are it might be on that menu, and we may be able to pull from it.
Critics have been declaring fine dining dead for decades, yet it survives. Why does fine dining still matter, and why does it matter to you?
It’s a cycle, a pendulum swing. If you’re in the trenches long enough, you see the cycles go around and repeat themselves. A magazine came out the other day with a headline saying, “Meat is back.” Well, nobody told me meat had gone away.
Our basic needs — to be cared for, to be given something delicious — are constant. And it has helped us enormously to be immune to trends and stay the course. When the first big recession hit, I think in the 1980s, tablecloths disappeared from Washington restaurants. Flowers disappeared. Service was cut, menus were cut, and everything suddenly felt like a diner.
I said to myself, “There’s a place for someone who goes in the opposite direction. Let’s make everything more luxurious, more wonderful.” So, we got napkins as big as tablecloths, increased the flowers, and made the place more luxurious. Everyone came in wondering, “What did they eliminate?” Instead, they found more of everything.
There will always be once-in-a-lifetime occasions, romantic occasions when you want to go somewhere extraordinary, somewhere that makes you feel like royalty. That need will always have to be satisfied somehow.
And I think it’s enormously important that a restaurant reflects the authentic beliefs and feelings of the person behind it. This restaurant always has, and always will, reflect my taste, my style, and what I would hope to find when I go out or travel.
At the same time, the definition of luxury is changing. It doesn’t necessarily mean foie gras or caviar anymore. How has that changed the way you think about luxury?
We’re as aware and concerned as anyone about sustainability. In fact, we recently received a rare award for our sustainability efforts.
But it has always been a natural component of living here. We have an 11-acre farm at the edge of town. So we focus first and foremost on what we’re producing and growing. We’re not dependent on imported luxury products.
For special occasions, people are still fond of caviar. We have a nice relationship with Petrossian, and we do fascinating things with caviar.
For me, it’s about finding the balance.
And how have your guests changed?
They’re more international than they’ve ever been. We have guests coming from countries I’ve never heard of. Yet everyone still has the same basic needs. They need to be seen, catered to, and appreciated.
I often remind the staff that what guests are really looking for is interaction, connection —something to take away beyond the food itself.
I tell my staff: You can make or break a guest’s experience. Once they understand that, they become keyed into their own power.
Where do you think fine dining and tasting menus go from here? What does the future look like?
There may be fewer tasting menus because people are discovering how labor-intensive they are. They often require a larger staff, and in the end perhaps you make less money because it takes longer to produce a longer menu.
But it will not go away. It will morph into different styles.
People are more interested in having an experience than they’ve ever been. They’re interested in more than simply getting a good plate of food.
Even though they’re cooking a little less at home, they’re savvier than ever. They eat out far more than they did in the past, and they’re more knowledgeable than they’ve ever been.
The American public may be the most jaded culinary audience in the world right now. They travel. They’ve been to Japan. They’ve been to France numerous times.
But they still want the experience to be fun. They want it to be exciting. And they want to learn something.
Dining and Cooking