Drew Nieporent on navigating restaurateur life

0:00From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

0:13it's the treatment i'm elvis mitchell you can also hear the show at kcrw.com what is it that makes a star well i think it's the kind of person who when you're talking to them you feel like they're the only person they're talking to in the case of my guest restaurateur bon vivant and very healthy human being juni perant he is all those things the introduction to his book alone does that thing that you want a memoir to do, which is to say it makes you feel like you're listening to the conversation. And not only that, it has the same flow, the same conversational cadences that talking to him does.

0:45The book is called I'm Not Trying to Be Difficult, Story from the Restaurant Trenches. I'm so happy to be talking to you, Drew. I'm so thrilled. Thank you so much for doing this, first of all. Thanks, Elvis. Good to be with you today. This must be the only book about a restaurateur that has both Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in it. Well, I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what, you know, like as a kid, Ali, you know, he was, I mean, he was a hero to a lot of people. But for me, it was just to hear him talk. He was so articulate. And he was always fighting, you know, because he's a boxer, but he was fighting everybody, you know, the government.

1:25if you look back on his life, it was magical. So I kind of like, you know, he was a major inspiration. And Joe Frazier, totally different kind of cat. But when I opened Harley-Davidson Cafe, this is 100 years ago, today they show pictures of Trump with Epstein at the opening of Harley-Davidson Cafe. And they used to show OJ and his wife, who obviously, he was at the opening of Harley-Davidson, But reading Joe Frazier at the Harley Davidson and then, what do you call it, Nelson Mandela. Well, that's what I'm going to say, because the book starts off, your introduction talks about how big an impact Ali had on you personally.

2:07And, you know, it's funny, too. In reading, I thought, well, of course, because the way he knew how to hold the conversation and look at the person who he was talking to, that's the thing I get from you. And then there's a kind of an almost bookend when you get to finally meet Ali. I want you to talk about that because I'm going to tell you, Drew, when I read that, I teared up. Well, you know, I don't know if you remember, but they're on the Internet. Like when Ali is being interviewed by Don Rickles and he looks at me, he goes, you know, Howard Cosell gets paid for being an idiot. What's your excuse?

2:42He was like, I used to tape, you know, I had a cassette recorder. I used to tape all the Ali stuff. I got it somewhere because, you know, he was just he was a poet. I mean, he was amazing. He really was. But when you met him, when he came to the restaurant, you had a chance to meet him. First of all, the excitement you mentioned from just getting that call that he was coming in, because he wasn't able to speak so much. he was no he had he was on he had Parkinson's he couldn't say he didn't say a word to me uh Howard Bingham was his lifelong friend of a photographer and he goes champ uh this is Drew Drew owns an Obo he's he's the owner of the restaurant and you know Ali's like shaking he puts his hand down sits down at a table takes a napkin unfurls the napkin pulls out a sharpie and he starts like scribbling and after the first five minutes of going scribbling on this thing I'm looking at Howard like you know you should make him stop because it's you know what the hell is he doing you know and then he shifts in the napkin to the other side and another five minutes he's scribbling you know Elvis he drew a painting of a boat with a plume of smoke two mountain ranges signed it and handed it to me after about a half an hour and it's like one of my prized possessions it's like you know I have a Muhammad Ali original I mean it's like it was unbelievable unbelievable but it's it's so interesting too because where you grew up uh in in in those apartments in uh in the lower east yeah i lived in alphabet city so i live right across from there uh it's funny how that basically that impacts your entire life because all your life is about being below 14th street really yeah no it's very downtown and you know the projects that i grew up in had playgrounds so it was all very self-contained with the kids and everything like that you know people we grew up with i could walk to my ps40 junior high school 104 and then i got into stuyvesant high school which was on 16th street so that was just a couple blocks down the street so i was a real city kid you know it's just a fantastic but a very very middle class you know mother was an actress her father worked for the state of new york as a liquor authority but it was a it was a charming uh lifestyle we loved it i have one brother tracy you know we had a great lifestyle.

4:57It's interesting because what your father did, you basically say in the book that he really helped to build kind of an establishment of restaurants for first-generation immigrants who really didn't know how to navigate the liquor board system, and he would help them out. Yeah, my father was a great guy. I joke, but he had a way of taking the application from the bottom and putting it on the top of the pile. These people were so grateful to him that they would invite us to their restaurants. And I'm not talking about a dozen. I'm talking about like a hundred. I mean, I wrote it down one time. It was remarkable how many places we went.

5:35And, you know, I was exposed to this like incredible food in the 60s, early 70s before I went to college. You know, like these were immigrants right off the boat. So this food was very authentic. And it was magical to me. It was my mother being an actress, you know, So everything was theater and theatricality. So the restaurant business for me was very much a stage. I mean, it was like I saw this, I was exposed to it, and I just decided at a very early age, I'm going to make it a career. And you referred to yourself a number of times as both kind of a producer and a director. But also I think that really that integral, that important experience of being around all those kinds of restaurants with your dad showed you there could be a sense of community among restaurateurs.

6:19And that's what we really get from the book. and you're really interested in that and you want to keep that community alive. Oh, that's 100%. In fact, when my father would take me around, most of the respiratory, because my father would say to the respiratory, he'd say, my son wants to go in the restaurant business. And most of them would look at me like nuts. You know, it's like, and then they would talk about how difficult it was and, you know, all the problems. And their bitching moaning made me more resolved. In other words, the more they bitch and moan, the more I wanted to do it. So nobody's going to talk me out of it.

6:55And then, you know, I say this and I mean it. There are so many industries, whether it be fashion or movies or whatever, you know, politics, obviously. And most of it is cutthroat. I mean, really bad. I saw it a little bit. I love music. I was going to go into music if, you know, Bill Graham was a huge inspiration for me as a young person. but the restaurant business and i mean this we help each other you know there's no beefs and if there is a beef it's stupid you know because it there shouldn't be and then when i was a young man and and i was getting into maybe with the chefs a little bit you know that upset me to be honest because i i didn't you know the name of the book is i'm not trying to be difficult but the reality is they were difficult but they saw me as the difficult one and i'm not trying to be difficult.

7:46I'm just, I'm the owner. You know, it's like, I want to get my way. You know what I'm saying? It's the treatment, in case you missed the name of the book, is I'm Not Trying to Be Difficult, Stories from the Restaurant Trenches. If you've been to any of the no-boos around the world, or if you had a chance to go to Mont Rocher or Tribeca Grill, or my guest restaurateur, Impresario, Drew Newpere, is also one of the few people who's had a restaurant get three stars from the New York Times in the same location. Right. Three different restaurants, three times and and the funny thing is i sold that restaurant about two years ago oh you did and they got three stars okay so it's four restaurants in the same little cushion and then ironically i was right next door is frenchette and they got three stars literally next door so it's like it's there's just something about 239 west broadway that little patch of west broadway but literally there for almost 38 and a half years uh montrachet for 22 years Cortone and then Bittard.

8:45And, you know, the pandemic was very tough, by the way, on our industry. Most people don't talk much about it. But if the government hadn't given us the PPP loans, so many people would have been out of business. As it is, a lot of people were out of business. You know what I'm saying? Oh, absolutely. So PPP loans were instrumental in keeping us in business. I have the sense from just knowing you were reading the book really sort of helped me to understand this, but how important it is to keep relationships alive. Even when I did not own restaurants, I'd reach out to Joe Baum or George Lang or Siria Maccioni, Jacques Pepin, all these people because, you know, their track record and their experiences that I wanted to somehow draft on.

9:28I wanted to, you know, know what made them tick. And now this generation, they have no interest in us. It's kind of crazy. But, you know, Danny Meyer and myself, we kind of came up together. There's a couple of Valtacacas that's still out there, like Buzzy O 'Keefe and Shelley Fireman, but they're great. Alan Stillman comes into Nobu ever so often. And they're all different. Restaurateurs are not like me. Most restaurateurs came from another industry and somehow got involved in the restaurant business or had money and got involved in the restaurant business. I really came up in the restaurant business.

10:00I had no money, but the little bit of money I had, I scratched together to open my first restaurant. And then, of course, I met Robert De Niro, who came to the first restaurant, and he had a little bit of money back then. He didn't have a tremendous amount of money. You could open restaurants, and you could create this community because it really wasn't that expensive to get into business. It cost money, but not a tremendous amount. Today, it's a different story. There's a circular quality to the book for me, Drew, that you start a relationship, and then you end up finishing that, again, from dreaming about Ali and seeing him on TV to recording him and having all this stuff suffused into your system to then meeting him.

10:39And then when you were first opening Tribeca Grills, having this huge success, but they're also, that whole section about Tribeca fascinates me because first of all, that you were able to ID the New York Times food critic by the pseudonym he called it under. But then there was a big, as successful as the restaurant was, and that review meant the world, and you reprinted in the book, you were also having a big sort of like kitchen fight with your chef David Boulay, weren't you? Yeah. This is the part of my story that I bemoan the most because I was able to really understand the talent. And when you want to make music with somebody, you know, you have to listen.

11:16You know, they're going to play and you're going to play and you're making music and you have to really listen. I just thought I was like the best collaborator. And I had given him, you know, a great stage from which to display his wares. And the second we got the three stars, it was like, you know, he started negotiating in the dining room. You know, I had friends that would be sitting next to a table that he might be sitting at. It really hurt me to such an effect that on one occasion I pulled, you know, one of the sous chefs in the kitchen. It was his dear friend. Very nice guy. I pulled him out and I pointed.

11:53And I said, you see that? You see, if anything ever happens here, that's the reason why I'm basically saying, you know, because like I had created this thing, three stars from the New York Times is like winning the lottery without being able to collect the cash. You got to go to work. And he didn't. He just wanted to put the three stars in his bag and walk across the street. And this just hurt me. But the reality, Elvis, and you learn this because I opened 40 restaurants is it's a very, very temporary business. Most of the chefs, they have to prove to themselves that they got the three stars. You didn't get the three stars or we didn't get the three stars.

12:31I got the three stars. Look, I'm outspoken and I speak my mind. And, you know, whether it was in the early days or, you know, even towards the latter part. I mean, you know, I got along pretty much with everybody. But I have this theory that they look at you and they go, you know, nobody picks a fight with somebody that they're going to lose to. You only pick a fight with somebody you think you're going to win, right? Sure. So when it was like that, it was like, well, first of all, I don't want to fight. That's one thing. But I'm not going to lose because I'm not wrong about this. So, you know, the whole thing is that out of all that tumult still came great creativity, great restaurants, and restaurants that lasted, you know, a long time, a long time.

13:16Well, it's interesting, too, because you were talking a bit earlier about, you know, having survived some things. And the thing that brought you and David back together was going back to this thing I brought up at the beginning of the show, community. When a community that you helped to start that was feeding first responders during 9-11 and David was doing a similar thing. And that hardship, that assault on the city brought you guys back together. Yeah, that was a cool thing. That was a very cool thing. Although he got a little bit of a – he got some bad press because I think Red Cross actually paid him.

13:49and then there was something to do where he wasn't paying his staff, but I didn't get involved with that. What I saw was he was down there, and we were down there, and a lot of people chipped in. I mean, my chef at the time in Tribeca Grill Dump in De Bona had a connection with the Spirit Cruise Line, and so they set up these cruise ships, which was incredible, and so people would come off the pile and go to One World Trade Center where the cruise ship was moored. It's not a cruise ship, but it was a ship, and Greg Coons was serving him food or Daniel Ballou was serving him food. And even, you know, Elvis, even Rudy Giuliani as our mayor, this was an incredible moment for him.

14:28I don't know what happened to him, but the whole city was just so, you know, banded so much together. It was so much, you know, good vibe then. And, you know, it's a shame. But you're right. I think even now, I think the food community, like I'm going to LA next week for a charity, Alex's Lemonade Stand. It's a huge charity. And then there's a chef conference in Los Angeles that helped to maybe sell a book or two. So I'm going to be out in your neck of the woods. How about that? Sounds good to me. Let's help my friend sell a few of his books. The book is I'm Not Trying to Be Difficult. Stories in the Restaurant Trenches.

15:05Its author is my friend, Drew Nieperent. We're going to take a break this morning. It's the treatment. Stay with us. I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm not describing myself. I'm telling you the name of Drew Nieperent's book. stories from the restaurant trenches. It's The Treatment, which you can also go at kcrw.com slash the treatment. But those opening chapters of the book sort of outline who you became and how all those building blocks make you into the person you were, including learning how to sort of like deal with people who you disagree with. Because I think about that story you tell at the beginning about your brother who was different from you in terms of cuisine he wanted and politics.

15:39And eventually he ended up persuading you to campaign for Nixon because you got cool buttons out of it. Yeah, well, we used to collect that political memorabilia, so that was part of the shtick. But honestly, he loved Richard Nixon. I mean, in a way, he's crazy. He's a little smarter now, but Nixon, compared to what we got now, he's a statesman. Oh my God, he gave us the EPA for God's sake. But I was going to say that, again, just sort of navigating that. And when you had some rough times, like there was a time when Nobu was about to open in London and there was a big falling out you had with your partner, with Robert De Niro.

16:17Again, all these building blocks from the beginning of the book, like how you learn how to stand up for yourself, but also how to talk to people and listen to people. That's why I think the book is so much you, because there are sections. It sort of keeps reminding us who you are and how each chapter is about how you've learned something. And so by the time we get to you and know Boone, what could be this thing, you could just sort of like fight in the same way you fought with David Belay a couple of years earlier. So you kind of go, no. Wow. And I think that's what I like about the book so much, that it's really you and about the lessons that you've learned.

16:47The book was written, obviously, I had a ghostwriter, but really, she did an amazing job finding my voice. Her name is Jamie Feldmar. She was terrific. And the first draft, you know, a couple of pages, I was cursing on every page. I mean, like a drunken sailor. You mean like you normally talk? I guess. And I said, no, Jamie, what's that? I don't curse like that. She said, no, no, you do. You curse like that. I said, let me explain something. If I say, and then I, you know, if I express something verbally, curses are more powerful verbally on a written page, it's, it just looks like you have no education.

17:23So she cleaned that up and then she did something remarkable, which I guess is what a ghostwriter, a good ghostwriter. And by the way, she had never written a book before. She had, she had done cookbooks, the Don Angie cookbook, Naomi Pomeroy from Portland's cookbook, but she found my voice. So the trajectory of my life, and she formed the story. She formed it from this to this to this to this, such that I swear to you, I called her up. She lives in Los Angeles. I live in New York. And I said, when are we going to get together, go over the book? And she goes, oh, no, I'm done. And I'm like, what do you mean?

17:56I've written 250 pages. And I swear to you, Elvis, this book covers my life, but it doesn't cover a lot of things. So the thing that's ridiculous now is people come over to me. In fact, a very prominent journalist yesterday, and she said to me, am I in your book? And I was like, oh, I don't think so. I mean, I didn't know how to answer. And she says, because you're in my book. And she apparently wrote a memoir where she includes me. But I'm like, you know, so you write a book in collaboration and you feel like, you know, that you have a lot more to tell. But that's why I'm talking to you, because, you know, even sometimes things that didn't get into the book, I can I can talk about.

18:41I think that she recognized that it was important to get who you are in the book, because the thing is, as much as you're kind of measured and you're speaking, there's also a real excitement about people that you have. and every description of a contact or an incident in the book has that same kind of excitement about people that you have that we get from talking to you in person. I agree with that. You know, for me, every day is a learning experience. I'm not saying that for the sake of saying it. Especially when you get older, you know, you realize that there's so many different perspectives and your life takes on a certain, you know, if you were like me and you're gluing yourself up to something that as you get older, you realize, you know, it's like, this is it, you know, like where you used to get invited to this, that, and the other, like the invitations start to peed out a little bit.

19:30And I always saw my life cinematically, but, um, I was also a partner with, you know, the guy who got into more trouble than you could speak of with women, uh, Harvey Weinstein, you know, he was, he was at Tribeca grill for 22 years. So, uh, I'm going to London. I have a a dinner date with Steven Soderbergh and his wife, Jules. I might need some pointers because I still want to make a book. I wrote this book, and I think the book's pretty good, but I see my life very cinematically, like the cruise ships. The whole part of my life where I went to an Episcopalian church camp for 11 years, that's not even in the book.

20:13The book, yeah. And I'm Jewish. I mean, so it's like, and that's where, you know, you saw sadisms and all kinds of crazy stuff. And then, you know, 40 restaurants is a lot. So I hear, especially to have the number of successes that you have. My guest, who apparently has a whole other book to write about the Episcopal Church and the scamps, is Juni Parent. His book is I'm Not Trying to Be Difficult, Stories from the Restaurant Trenches. You can also hear the show at KCRW.com slash the treatment. I mean, this could be a documentary, you sitting in front of a camera and telling these stories. And again, because each section of the book is kind of about a personal evolution for you.

20:51And these moments of crisis, moments that you weathered in ways that really changed you for the better. But you still saw interesting things. Like you talk about, you just mentioned your driver and you mentioned in the book how you realized he was the guy to have because he navigated that really tricky time in lower Manhattan after 9-11. And you realize he's a good guy. You want to keep him around. And fortunately, he did, since you're that rare New Yorker who does not have a driver's license. But also, there's a section, a moment, a beat in that section where you mentioned how an inadvertent response that George W.

21:28Bush had to something basically sort of formed who he was after 9-11. Talk about it. His greatest moment as president was an accident. I mean, it's like nobody talks about that. But I was there, man. I was there. You know, that was the most amazing thing. Honestly, it was like unbelievable. It's so funny because I had a stroke. So, you know, when sometimes when, you know, I've been interviewed a lot. Elvis and some people I can tell they didn't read the book. But now you bring up, obviously, the things that are in the book. And I'm like forgetting that I put that in the book. You know, it's like, you know, it's a little strange.

22:01But, you know, listen, I'm all right. I'm feeling good. That's the whole point. Well, I want to talk to you about that. Because the last section of the book, which is about sort of like the shutting down the Bataar, but also you had two health crises. I had a stroke where I killed over. I probably should have died because— No, it starts off with the cancer on your nose. Then you had a stroke. I've had cancer on my—you know, most surgery, right? You know, skin cancer. But then I had—I guess my appendix was acting up. and they gave me one of those MRIs where you go through the tube and they saw that I had a tumor on my kidney.

22:36So I had like a seven-hour operation where on one side they took out the appendix, on the other side they took out the kidney. So I have one kidney now. I had kidney cancer. But, I mean, listen, everybody has their own vishigas, you know, everybody. You have these sort of three things happen in succession, you know, First the skin cancer, then the stroke, and then the cancer. It's like, it's crazy, but that doesn't slow you down. I mean, the same kind of energy that there is at the beginning of the book, even though you're winding the book down, that same energy exists. And I wonder if you're still feeling the same amount of kind of initiative and ambition, because it sounds like you do.

23:17Yeah, but, you know, the great thing about getting older is you have nothing to prove to anybody anymore. you know if you're a director and you make a movie you have something you want people to see the movie look at look at francis coppola megalopolis you mean you mean your friend francis coppola yeah my partner and you know he's brilliant but it's like the one lesson i've learned and i say it all the time is that nobody taps you on the shoulder and says to you uh drew you have just reached the pinnacle of your career in other words like and when you reach the pinnacle of your career guess what it's downhill from there it might not you might do amazing stuff but you know the headline will be this uh drew's new vietnamese restaurant my house is very good but it doesn't quite reach the heights of nobu or you know something like that so so in other words the pinnacle nobody lets you know so i but at this stage of my life i am so content i think is the word.

24:19I have two grown children who are wonderful. I have a wife I've been with almost 40 years. I live on the Hudson River. I love it. I go to work once in the blue moon. I do the hamburgers at Madison Square Garden. I have a wine store on 57th Street. It's not like I have all my eggs in one basket. And I have no boo. New York, London. I mean, you know, life is good. You know, I'm talking to you right now. It's beautiful. I'm not worried about you so much. I do want to bring up something that's in the book that because you're talking about things winding down for you and i think you're reckoning with uh about the fact as a director you should know you have to do your third act and i think you're just starting your third act uh but i want to remind you of something that you say de niro said in the book that i think is something that's a real lesson for everybody which is what you have is the power of choice that's right well i mean that was like i attributed it in the book to Bob because I do believe I heard him say it, but it could have been Paul Newman for all I know.

25:16But back then, look at De Niro's career. I mean, when I met him, he had made like a dozen of the greatest movies that we've ever seen, Deer Hunter and... Raging Bull and Taxi Driver. Yeah. Actually, what was funny is I've been going through my archive because I never throw out anything. So I closed the restaurant. The place where I stored everything, my office, the landlord died. They sold the building for like$20 million. So I brought everything over, and I'm going through it. And I come across De Niro's are going to be honored in 1991. I became his partner in 1990. And I swear to God, he had 12 movies up to that point.

26:00But he was like being honored. You probably were at the dinner for that matter. And I looked at it, and I was like, I couldn't believe it. It was like 12 movies. The guy's made like 80 movies. You know, so part of my motivation to do restaurants was seeing him being so active. Now, you know, Rocky and Bullwinkle is not going to become a classic or, you know, maybe the fan. It wasn't that bad. But, you know, a lot of the De Niro stuff. Only compared to Rocky and Bullwinkle, was it not that bad? Yeah, no. But, you know, I mean, I love Midnight Run and I love, you know, so it's just been a terrific experience.

26:36experience and yes like i said no along the way to many projects and a lot of people said no to me about things that i wanted to do that became very successful like uh ramen for instance or you know but um i said no to a lot of things that thank goodness i said no to because you do have the power of decision and you have to exercise that power i can't thank you enough for doing this i hope i see you when you're in la my guest who apparently has written a book in addition to having 40 restaurants and being an extremely successful restaurateur and close personal friend of Steven Soderbergh, apparently.

27:11The book is, I'm not trying to be difficult. He's a good customer, that's all. He's a good guy, too. I'm not trying to be difficult. Stories from the restaurant trenches. My guest is Drew Lipperman, who should have done this show years ago. I'm glad I finally got him here. I miss you. I hope I see you soon. Okay, this was great. I appreciate it. I look forward to seeing you soon.