A day in the life of Tavern on the Green

At about 5 AM the trucks start rolling up. In the cool of a November morning, they negotiate their way around a massive tent that shields the famous entrance. Just a few days before, Tavern on the Green had hosted the biggest pasta party in the city -- 17,000 people, runners all, crowding the tent, spilling out onto the driveway, and lining up along Central Park West, loading up on carbs ion the eve of the New York City marathon. It was a big party, yes, but the restaurant took it all in stride, bringing in specially equipped trucks to cook the three kinds of macaroni, calling on reserves of volunteers to help dish out the food.

Even as the trucks maneuver their way around the driveway, workmen are breaking down one of the tents, the one that runs along the side of the restaurant, to clear up the parking-lot and open up a way for the trucks: Peter's Fruits, Gotham Seafood, Balter Sales, just a few of the hundreds of suppliers the restaurant calls upon to bring in the cases of fish, meat, produce, and dairy it goes through in the course of a normal day.

Tavern on the Green is the oldest of the two restaurants in Central Park, the country's second highest-grossing restaurant, with annual revenues of more than $38 million. Every year it serves close to 700,000 diners. It takes up to 525 people to run it from the time its doors open to when the last workers leave. It's a complicated place to manage -- and even more complicated to change. Now, as the restaurant evolves, with a new menu, under the direction of a new chef, we go behind the scenes, haunting the kitchens, the back rooms, and the gardens to take a close-up look at how a restaurant this size works, to follow a day in its life.

THE MORNING

QUALITY CONTROL
The glamour is all in the front of the house; here, where the deliveries are coming in, there's canvas instead of brick over our heads, concrete instead of carpet under our feet. This is a landmark building, after all, and when the Tavern outgrew its space, it couldn't just slap on an addition. So, we're in a freezing "temporary" space, watching as Johnny D'Antonio, the restaurant's purchasing director, starts opening up boxes of fish.

If there's a front line in any restaurant's battle for cost control and first-rate supplies, it's the point at which the deliveries are made. When they come in, the supplies are checked for freshness and also for weight – if a supplier is going to try and pass off a 7 ½-ounce steak as an 8-ouncer, it's going to get caught right here.

If there were beauty pageants for salmon, the specimens we're looking at would probably win: sleek and silvery on one side, rosy pink on the other. "Produce, meat, and fish, we're looking at color and aroma," D'Antonio says, sniffing a filet. His gloved hand slides over the fish as he talks. "We're checking the fibers, to see was it frozen. A frozen piece of fish will break apart a little easier. This fish was probably harvested Monday." It's now Wednesday morning, and D'Antonio is satisfied with what he sees. He shoves the box aside, onto a cart loaded with shaved ice, and breaks open another.

"We get deliveries six days," he says. "We go through a case each of walnuts, pecans, pistachios a week, 20 cases of chocolate. We use a lot of scallops, little necks, shrimp. Lobster is checked one by one, to make sure they're alive."

THE SOUL OF A NEW MENU
At 10 in the morning, the kitchen is about as quiet as it gets all day. A team of cooks are laying out sea bass filets, prepping them for an afternoon party; another group assembles rings of shrimp. Elsewhere, a waiter is filling salt and pepper shakers, and someone is stacking plates on carts, getting ready for the lunch service, which begins at noon.

"We're not a fancy, frou-frou restaurant, with all kinds of design on the plate," says William Zambrotto, Tavern's general manager. "We have good food -- and we have good service." That mantra resonates with Tavern's new executive chef, Brian Young. Since the spring, when he took over the kitchen, Young has been developing a new menu, tweaking some of the classic dishes while adding new ones. Young, says the restaurant's owner, Jennifer LeRoy, wants to take the food up a notch. But as the chef himself says, "If you come into an existing restaurant, you have to respect its style. There's nothing wrong with respecting what works."

So he holds onto some classic dishes – the crab cakes, prime rib, and the lobster bisque. "Some stuff was a little heavy,' Young says. "So we worked on reconstructing the sauces, bringing in a brighter flavor."

Forecasting of a dish -- figuring out how much a given dish will sell -- has to be dead on. "To get it right is important," says Young. "To get it wrong will hurt you." One of his favorite innovations is the beet terrine, a dense, beety concoction sparked with pomegranate juice, a recipe that was developed through the combined efforts of the staff. "A kitchen is a little like a rock band," Young says. "You riff ideas back and forth: 'I saw something interesting on TV, on the internet.' It's a free-flowing exchange."

NOON

TAKE A SEAT
The Crystal Room -- the one with the big windows facing the garden -- is starting to fill up for lunch: A group of women of a certain age, each clutching a Bendel's bag, are led to a table near the window. A few tables of business types settle in; another table of women; and a table for two: a young man and woman, probably tourists. Tourists, in fact, make up a lot of Tavern's business. Partly because of its location in Central Park, it's as well-known in, say, London or Tokyo as it is in Manhattan.

But its stellar location can cut both ways. The downside is that it really isn't near anything else; this isn't a place you're going to simply drop in on for lunch or, for that matter, cocktails or dinner. While the restaurant's bottom line is in no danger -- all those banquets keep its financing purring along nicely, Ezra Eichelberger, a professor at the Culinary Institute of America, points out that such isolation can be deadly for many restaurants. "If a restaurant isn't near a movie theater or theater, it's tough to turn a table more than twice a night," he says.

So, since this is New York, even a restaurant story turns out to be about real estate. Because whenever you sit down at a table, you are, in effect, renting your place. And you'll pay a rent that management has calculated -- the business being what it is -- down to the last nickel. Food costs, salaries, rent, electricity, all are figured into that $35 price tag on your steak. And, if you're eating in a restaurant that requires a $35 main course to turn a profit, don't expect a bargain, even if you're eating macaroni.

How long does a restaurant expect you to occupy your space? Generally restaurants allow and hour and a half to two hours: At Tavern they budget two hours. "If people have a show to get to, " says William Zambrotto, "It could be an hour and a half. Each seat has to perform. We don't want the reputation that we're a factory, rushing people in and out, but we do have to make a profit. There has to be a balance."

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