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| Co-owners and partners, Paul Kovi, left with Tom Margittai. Kovi: “We experiment, we change because change is the most refreshing factor in one’s life. Our guests crave something new. If you go with steady food, a static menu, you become old in a hurry.” |
The Four Seasons Restaurant (NYC) has managed to distill every aspect of restaurateuring into a spirit so solid and substantial that it has yet to be surpassed or outshone by anybody, any place, anywhere. It combines a genuine timelessness of design (a simply impressive and impressively simple collaboration between Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson) with a kitchen equally timeless, but with the sense to change periodically (figuratively and literally—hence its name) to cater to the impulses and tastes of patrons who become fed up quickly with the ordinary.
Owners Tom Margittai and Paul Kovi—dubbed The Two of Us by T4S’s ad agency—manage the restaurant superbly ever since they bought it from New York-based Restaurant Associates, regarded then as it is now as one of the finest foodservice management companies in the country. By the way, to sweeten the deal, RA threw in The Forum of the XII Caesars, a lagniappe, as it were, probably because it could no longer figure out what to do with it and so dumped it into the laps of Tom and Paul. They, in turn, figured out what to do with it: they dumped it into the laps of entrepreneurs who transformed what was, arguably, the first themed restaurant ever, into Raja, an Indian restaurant.
T4S has become a requisite hangout for many of New York’s power people and the powerless who, nonetheless, fancy themselves inclusive within that circle who eat power lunches there and chatter endlessly, but happily, about the uses and abuses of power. However, it is a fine fact of ownership that Mssrs. Margittai and Kovi bestow upon irregulars the same sort of grace and hospitality bestowed upon regulars who, whenever they enter T4S, carry with them, not only cash and clout, but a panache that whispers “look at me.”
There is no restaurant anywhere quite like it.
“This is the only restaurant in New York that is constantly on the move,” says Margittai. “You cannot come to The Four Seasons once and say you’ve experienced the restaurant. Impossible. We are constantly changing,”
Its size overwhelms as does its design and décor from its solid rosewood panels to its center-of-the-dining-room white marble pool, incessantly bubbling. If that were all, the place would intimidate, but that which overpowers is controlled and neutralized by the warmth of its owners who greet everybody as they would close and old friends to their homes. Its food, changing with the seasons, is predictably unpredictable. It is that because its executive chef, Seppi Renggli, given nearly absolute freedom to let his imagination soar, never quite tires of fooling around. There is something strangely mysterious about the changing of the equinox and, apparently, it affects Seppi.
There is no restaurant anywhere quite like it.
“We experiment, we change because change is the most refreshing factor in one’s life,” says Kovi. “Our guests crave something new. If you go with steady food, a static menu, you become old in a hurry.”
It is not a dodge to quote from my story about T4S published eight years ago. Rather, the quote serves to underscore the consistency of the product: the behavior of its management and the attitude of its kitchen as strong today—perhaps stronger—than it was back then.
“What Margittai and Kovi share is honesty—to themselves, between each other, to the restaurant and its employees and customers. What they share is a sense of giving, of providing to those who visit The Four Seasons, great food and service . . . It has gained a life force and a spirit from the heart and soul, blood and energy of its owners. . . And so, the restaurant sings and soars, and the fragrance it gives off, to owners and customers alike, is a sweet smell of success.”
Afterthoughts: The Four Seasons: The Legacy of Restaurant Associates…click here to read more.
