my favorite is #2
The problem with having to write an Intriguing People profile of New York restaurant magnate Drew Nieporent, a Ridgewood resident, is that everyone has a story about the guy. So where do you stop? Today, here's my Top Five Nieporent tales/tidbits I had to cut out of the story.
1. Drew Nieporent's Christmas dinners are not like your Christmas dinners. His wife, Ann, on the annual feast in Ridgewood, cooked by Nieporent himself: "Drew's not a big cleanup person. He uses every dish and every pot in the house. And then he collapses….We're not just having caviar, we're having blinis with the caviar. So he's cooking the blinis and he's, like, sweating in the kitchen… We're drinking great champagne… it's like a spread from Food and Wine, it's a gorgeous spread of hors d'oeurves. Then we're all full. Then we go sit down to dinner. We have these giant chafing dishes from Tribeca Grill because the food has to be hot. This year I demanded that we have a ham, an old traditional thing. But we also have miso cod."
2. Drew Nieporent's phone conversations are not like your phone conversations. His longtime friend from college, Scott Tremble, the owner of Esty Street in Park Ridge, recalls driving Nieporent somewhere (Nieporent can't drive.) "And he's talking to Francis Ford Coppola," who remains one of his business partners in his San Francisco restaurant, Rubicon. "Francis," as Nieporent was calling him, was concerned at the time that he "had to get out of Rubicon," because of some potential conflict with his winery. Tremble listened with amusement. "It would be Mr. Coppola, sir, to me. But it's Francis to him." The good news was, "Francis has somebody to take his place. George Lucas!" - none other than the director of Star Wars. Tremble says he heard Nieporent saying "George Lucas? Have you checked him out? Does he have money?" By now, Tremble says, "I'm driving up on the sidewalk."
3. The dumb things Drew Nieporent did as a kid are not like the dumb things you did as a kid. Tracy Nieporent, Drew's brother, who now does marketing for Nieporent's Myriad Restaurant Group, remembers a story from when the two brothers were about 9 and 11, passionate athletes growing up on 23rd Street. "We had this football called 'the float.' We threw it around to our friends. It started to get nicked up. We put tape on it. It started to become more oblong than spherical," but they loved it still. So "one night, Robert Kennedy was running for senator of New York. He was on 20th Street. We went running up to him and handed him 'the float' to sign." And they got Kennedy's autograph, though they were too young to really realize what that meant: "Then we went back to the playground and started playing with it...I thought maybe we should take the float out of circulation. But Drew was like, 'This is the float! We gotta play with it.' Within a week the signature was gone."
4. The circles Drew Nieporent runs in are a rather diverse lot. Scott Tremble again: "We're up in Albany together a couple years ago," at a concert. "And (former New York) Gov. (George) Pataki is backstage with us. And Drew introduced me to Pataki. He told Pataki, 'You must come to Esty Street.' Now, why is Esty Street being talked about by Gov. Pataki? But that's Drew. Drew will include you in. He doesn't forget his roots."
5. Drew Nieporent's evenings are....well, you know. It's a Tuesday night in late January, and the bash to celebrate the redesign of Gourmet.com is just ramping up inside a dim Bar Boulud, Daniel Boulud's new wine and charcuterie bar across from Lincoln Center. Nieporent doesn't own this restaurant - but he makes a business out of owning parties. "I gotta stand at the door," Nieporent says. "This is my new restaurant. I have to greet all my guests coming in." He schmoozes while moving smoothly down toward the food, before the rush. "It's the same way with, like, a U2 concert. I'm there early so I'm in the pit." While snacking on plates of coq au vin and boudin blanc, he takes compliments about how much weight he's lost. Meanwhile, photographers snap shots of Nieporent with other guests, and a small crowd begins to form around him near the exit to the restaurant kitchen. Behind Nieporent, Boulud stands in the doorway, repeatedly calling to an employee caught up in the Nieporent scrum. After several minutes, Boulud finally exclaims in exasperation: "Hey Drew! Tell me who you didn't have a picture with so I can..." He is drowned out by laughter.
1 comment:
I would strongly suggest to any of you who have not tried it, to prepare a simple dish of rice preferably using a rice steamer while utilizing rice from Louisianna c'est bon. Then with chop sticks eat one kernel at a time until the entire dish is complete, and continue this until you become quit adept with the sticks. This will help you all to FOCUS, simplicity, on what is important, period. No more no less, I don't want to hear about another ragamagtag five star dish until such is done. No one wants to know how smart you are or adept, just show me if your focused first, then complete your recipe and specialty.
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