BLT ( Busy Laurent Tourondel)
A BLT here, a BLT there, a BLT everywhere. Jeffrey Schwarz chronicles the building of a brand.
Posted: May 22, 2008
Earlier this year, Laurent Tourondel was busily making his daily rounds among his various New York City restaurants, when he made his last stop of the evening at the kitchen of BLT Steak. The restaurant was full, and the long galley-like kitchen was thumping along to the backbeat of pans landing on stove burners and the muted chatter of cooks keeping track of their orders. Tourondel shook hands with a dishwasher, conferred for a few minutes with his chef de cuisine about an inconsistent duck pâté recipe, and then made his way down the cooking line, where, as he passed the popular oversized popovers sent out before the meal, he picked one up.
Tourondel looked at the popover for what seemed like a long 10 seconds, poked at it a bit, and then tasted the top. He nodded approvingly to the cook responsible for making it and then continued on toward the walk-in refrigerator box. Once he'd stepped out of earshot, the cook turned to his fellow linesman and whispered happily, "Those just came out of the oven!" They grinned as they soaked in their moment of fortuitous timing. A minute later Tourondel emerged from the walk-in with duck pâté ingredients in hand. (It was past 9 p.m. and Tourondel had been going since 7 a.m., but he was determined to get the pâté right.) The cooks turned from each other and got back to work. Tourondel began prepping the pâté.
Within 10 minutes Tourondel was thoroughly hooked into the vibe of his kitchen. On the surface, nothing he did that evening appeared remarkable. He worked long hours, tasted his restaurant's food, cooked a little, and managed his staff. Most notable, perhaps, was his ability to make everything look playful, so full of sprezzatura. But watching Tourondel for 10 minutes or even 10 seconds, you get the idea that behind the disarming smile, the boyish good looks, and the funny one-liners, there is an intense desire to succeed, a single-minded focus to get exactly what he wants. Marc Sarrazin of DeBragga and Spitler, a premium meat wholesaler, tells the story of how his company was behind on the 28 day dry-aged meat he usually sends to BLT Steak and had to deliver lesser aged steaks so that the restaurant could have meat for service. "He caught it right away," says Sarrazin of Tourondel. "If something is aged a week less than it should be, he knows it."
Right now, apparently, Tourondel wants to open a lot of BLTs (which stands for Bistro Laurent Tourondel). In the past four years Tourondel and his partners, Jimmy Haber and Keith Treyball, have become a branding machine. There are BLT Steaks from Los Angeles to New York City (and also San Juan, Puerto Rico). Then there's BLT Fish, BLT Burger, BLT Prime, and BLT Market (11 restaurants and counting). If humans were able to colonize space, there would probably, in short order, be a BLT Moon. Along with Mario Batali and Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Tourondel is one of only three chefs to have been awarded at least three stars by the New York Times (BLT Fish) while having a roster of more than 10 restaurants. His places are big, his food is casual but borders on fine dining, and, amazingly, five years ago BLT was nothing but a concept and Tourondel was out of a job.
Like many French chefs, Tourondel started cooking when he was very young and worked his way up. He worked at small restaurants in Paris and for a large hotel in Moscow, but his job offers kept taking him to New York City. His first stint in New York City was with Bruno Tison at Restaurant Beau Geste. He returned to France to work for Jacques Maximin and then at the famed Troisgros. Soon thereafter, Tourondel came to New York City to help open Claude Troisgros' debut restaurant C.T. Tourondel's experiences and talents seemed to culminate in May 1999 when he opened Cello in an Upper East Side town house.
Awarded three stars by the Times, Tourondel was cooking at the top of his game. "It was an amazing experience," says Tourondel. "It was a 60 seat restaurant where I was asked to make the best food I could." Among the foodie cognoscenti in New York City, Cello, which focused mainly on fish, was considered one for the ages. "Cello was an outstanding restaurant," remembers Adam Platt, restaurant reviewer for New York magazine. "It was second only to Le Bernardin for fish preparation, which is saying quite a bit." As the summer of 2002 took hold, Tourondel was in Caracas, Venezuela, on vacation and promoting Cello when he received a phone call from Florence Fabricant of the Times. She asked him to comment on the closing of Cello. He asked her what she was talking about.
Cello's majority owner, Rick Adams, known for founding UUNet, one of the first internet providers, had decided to dissolve the business while Tourondel was away. Seventy-two workers were out of a job, including Tourondel, whose position was payed $250,000 a year. "It was a good lesson," he says. "I had a partner who wouldn't talk to me. Who had no heart. I'm still very bitter about how it ended."
Afterward, Tourondel spent time traveling through parts of South America and Asia, considering whether he wanted to continue in fine dining restaurants or if he wanted to dial the expectations down a notch or two. When he returned, Jennifer Baum of the food PR firm Bullfrog & Baum, introduced Tourondel to Haber. A feeling out process began. Haber, a corporate financier by day, had experience investing in restaurants but was having trouble with Pazo, an Italian restaurant on 57th Street in Manhattan, which reportedly was losing $100,000 a month. After some back and forth negotiations, an idea was settled upon.
On March 9, 2004, BLT Steak opened in the former Pazo space. "We had a common view for a restaurant that was going to be casual and customer driven." Haber says. The critics swooned over the refined touch Tourondel brought to the formulaic steakhouse scene, business soared, and Haber started talking to Tourondel about another struggling restaurant of his down in the Flatiron District. Within a year BLT Fish opened, and a brand was born.
Tourondel's march from his first BLT Steak to the latest, which recently opened in Los Angeles, hasn't been without consequences though. When I asked him how many BLTs are too many, he said the second one is always too many. "After I opened the second BLT, it's done," he says. "I can't be in two places at once. Managing my team became the most important part of my job." Now, with close to 1,000 employees, Tourondel is attached to his Blackberry, which fills up with more than 600 e-mails and messages a day (e.g. Bill Gates is at BLT Steak in Washington, D.C., right now!). His full-time assistant, Lisa Tatelbaum, is never far from his side, as they block out time every day to go over his incessant travel plans, his guest appearances on radio and TV, and the endless scheduling of meetings.
Perhaps the most frustrating part of growing fast (next up: deals in China, Japan, Dubai, and Qatar he's mulling over) is that when Tourondel opens a restaurant such as his BLT Market in The Ritz-Carlton New York, Central Park hotel, which is a seasonal restaurant manned by Daniel Boulud–trained David Malbequi, complete with a small market selling artisanal goods, critics consider it part of a chain. Frank Bruni of the Times has yet to review it, and in his dining brief he derided Tourondel's ambitious rollout of restaurants. "BLT Market takes me five times the amount of work as one BLT Steak," Tourondel says. "If I had named the restaurant anything else but BLT, it would have been a different story."
But isn't that the Faustian bargain of the American dream? The Hollywood story? A young chef leaves a small village in France to find fame and fortune. He pays his dues and makes it to the top of the haute cuisine restaurant world only to have it snatched away. He returns and achieves goals previously unimaginable. Along the way, he takes some hits from critics for abandoning the world of haute cuisine and focusing on a profoundly better business model. He writes successful cookbooks. He buys a house in the Hamptons on Long Island. He becomes an American citizen. The only thing missing is the part when the prodigal son returns to France and opens a BLT on the Champs-Élysées. The devil only knows.
