SLMan Meets… The Team Behind NYC’s Hottest Restaurant
First up, how would you describe the Carbone experience to anyone who hasn't made it to the original?
Mario Carbone: “It's an innately New York experience. Our cooking is a style of cuisine that was born through Italian immigrants coming to New York. You can't really find this style of food in Italy. It's found here. The venue that Carbone inhabits in New York was the oldest first-generation Italian-American restaurant. You can see its old name beneath the neon signage outside.”
Jeff Zalaznick: “It's so authentically New York, both in terms of food and service style. We both grew up here, this was what food was for us in New York – this or Chinese food. Obviously, the food we grew up with wasn’t executed at the same level it is at Carbone, but that was our whole idea, to elevate this style of cuisine. There are five restaurants within the same block serving the exact same menu, but not at the same quality level, not at the same service level. But the menu is the same. It doesn't look the same, but it has the same items on it.”
Mario: “If you’ve never been to one of these types of restaurants, or even New York, you still might be familiar with the cultural touchpoints because of cinema.”
Jeff: “If you've watched The Sopranos or The Godfather, you’ll understand this food. It's food that everyone loves. We always say we're not trying to make anything that you haven't had before. We're trying to make the best version of it.”
Mario: “Carbone is an immersive experience. You're drawn in and it's very transportive. There's great drama in the restaurant that you’ll be hard pressed to find elsewhere. It's truly an experience, which is something we didn't realise we were creating when we launched. ‘Experiential’ became the buzzword after we opened. I do give us credit for starting experiential fine dining. Diners love the food of course, but some people love their interactions with the captains [head waiters]. Some people love the uniforms. Some people love the art. Some people love the music. It's a combination of all those things – consciously or subconsciously – that create this great evening.”
Why did you decide to launch in London?
Jeff: “Dining in the last decade has become your night out. Twenty years ago, you'd go to dinner then a show. A restaurant is now your night out. It’s your experience. Somewhat knowingly and unknowingly, when we launched Carbone 15 years ago, we created that paradigm, and we're so passionate about continuing that elsewhere. We're excited to do it in London, in London's style.
“The truth is, we don't do anything we don't like to do. The restaurants we create are all places we want to be. They're places we have fun at. We're performers and this is one of the great stages we've always wanted to perform on.”
And why Grosvenor Square?
Jeff: “Being in the American Embassy on the corner of Grosvenor Square is a dream come true. Mario and I always dreamed that our second Carbone location would be London. It’s ended up being the tenth, but it was always the most important city we wanted to open in after New York.
“We spent a lot of time looking at spaces and very quickly learned that we needed to be in Mayfair to have a restaurant of this calibre and price point. We looked and looked, and nothing was perfect. Then our CFO told us we were spending too much money visiting London, so we decided to be patient – which is not one of our virtues.
“We had one rule: if it's not a 10-minute walk from Claridge's, we don't want it. When we found the space, it was a magical moment. For us, as New Yorkers and Americans, to bring this American concept to the former US Embassy has great significance.”
How is this Carbone different from your other locations in Miami, LA, Hong Kong and the Middle East?
Mario: “Each one takes on the identity of the place they're in. I think this will settle in nicely. A restaurant's not a restaurant until it's finally inhabited by the people. It's going to take those people, the characters of the staff, the regulars that start coming in, the smell of the restaurant and the playlist playing to make it come alive.”
Talk us through the menu…
Mario: “In this day and age, with the speed of social media, everyone is fully aware of what we serve and the classic dishes. I'm not going to be the one to rob London of those. I will definitely be bringing the spicy rigatoni and the veal parm, the Caesar salads and the things that make us some of the most well-known dishes.”
Jeff: “Since we started serving spicy rigatoni, everyone serves it. But no one's is like ours, which is always reassuring to me.”
Mario: “Sustainability is not really part of the conversation when it comes to designing a menu. There’s just an understanding that we use great ingredients. We serve a dish of pork chop and vinegar peppers, which is a classic Italian-American dish. Now, the captains aren’t going to talk about the farm that pork came from with the diners. But of course, behind the scenes, the chefs are working on finding what is the most incredible, delicious heritage chop of pork that we can serve for that dish. We're allergic to the idea that so many new and young restaurateurs have of throwing the words around: ‘organic’, ‘farm-to-table’, ‘sustainable’. For us, that's a given.”
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Finally, give us a couple of tips for next time we’re in New York…
Mario: “Whenever you come in from out of town, there are always going to be the hot new places. But I prefer to only recommend restaurants that feel distinctly New York. Places like River Café steakhouse, because if you're having a meal there, you're also having a sense of the food of New York and a sense of some of the great old places in the city – because I know that’s what I’d want when I’m travelling. I’d also say you're hard pressed to find something that's more special and iconic than The Grill in the Seagram Building.”
Jeff: “I think New York has the best Chinese and Japanese food outside of their homelands. I’m a big sushi omakase fan and think Yoshino is the best in New York. I specifically love Szechuan food, and I think Cafe China does the best cumin lamb and dan dan noodles. Shun Lee is one of the oldest and is a great New York restaurant to go to.”
Mario: “And of course there’s pizza. It’s the one Italian food we don’t do as a company, but New York has by far and away the best pizza. It’s the greatest pizza city in the world.”
Carbone, 30 Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, W1K
Visit CarboneLondon.com
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