CHAPTER 12

RELATIONSHIPS ARE SIMPLE. SIMPLE IS HARD.

I love any excuse to wear a tuxedo.

So it was a thrill to put one on and walk down the red carpet at the James Beard Awards in May 2007 at Lincoln Center with chefs like Thomas Keller and Daniel Boulud.

We were there because Daniel had been nominated for the Rising Star Chef of the Year Award, which is given only to chefs under the age of thirty. He had just turned twenty-nine, and though he had been nominated for that award before, while he was chef at Campton Place, he hadn't won. This was his last chance, and I was convinced he was going to take it home.

Then they opened the envelope: 'And the 2007 award for Rising Star Chef goes to Momofuku's David Chang!'

After the Times review, we had started to feel our project might not be such a fool's errand. But on that night, Chang had won, and we'd lost.

Daniel was devastated. And while his name would have been the one on the award, we all felt like we'd lost. Chang's restaurants, you could argue, were a reaction to fine-dining restaurants; he believed you could have delicious food without pretention and stuffiness. But so did we! Daniel and I had been doing everything in our power to prove that fine dining was still relevant and that these hallowed traditions could be reimagined in a way that felt contemporary and fun. The difference was that Chang's restaurants were a rebuke to fine-dining restaurants, whereas we hoped ours represented their evolution.

It was a tough hit. So immediately after the awards were announced, I started inviting friends to come back to the restaurant with us. Even though I also felt the loss acutely, my responsibility that night was to take care of Daniel. It's easy to be someone's partner during the good times, but it's most important during the hard ones, and I wanted him to feel as loved and supported as he would have if he had won.

I have never been the kind of leader who brushes off bad feelings. After a setback, I'd tell the team to go ahead and wallow. 'Guys, this sucks. We're working so hard, and we care so much, and still-today didn't go our way. Let's allow ourselves to feel the disappointment; it's real and we don't need to pretend it's not.'

Later, we'd be known for the legendary, restaurant-destroying parties we threw when we were celebrating a win. But the first party we ever threw for ourselves was on a day that we lost. It reminded me of our wise guest's advice: drink your best bottle not on your best day but on your worst.

Fully feel your disappointment, sure-but there's no reason you should drink bad wine while you're doing it. So the night of the Beard Awards, Richard Coraine went to our cellar and emerged with some beautiful bottles. We filled the room with people who loved us and believed in us. Daniel Boulud came downtown and made scrambled eggs for everyone, as he had when I was in college. (I had a slightly better kitchen to offer him this time.)

That night was a hard one. But it wasn't devastating because making the choice to be together-to lift one another up-brought us even closer together.

The party wasn't an all-out rager, but it was a celebration: No James Beard committee could take away how much of himself Daniel had put into the pursuit of his goal or how much he'd accomplished. And even though we'd lost, the award ceremony itself had felt like an arrival of sorts. It had been electrifying to realize we were suddenly on the radar screens of people whose work we had followed our whole careers.

Turn Toward Tension

Working in a restaurant is challenging: a lot needs to be done, and quickly. There are stairs to climb, hot kitchens, and guests with competing desires and requests. People on the team from all walks of life have to learn to navigate relationships with one another.

And whatever friction those differing opinions might have caused between us was exacerbated by how badly we all wanted to succeed. I've seen this in other companies, where everyone cares so much about the mission, they forget to care about one another. Our collective passion-one of our greatest strengths-was in danger of becoming a dangerous weakness.

While we'd gotten to the point where everyone who worked at EMP was pushing for the same result-every single one of us wanted to make the restaurant the best it could be-we didn't always agree on the best way to achieve it.

Given everything we'd done to build a culture of collaboration, excellence, and leadership, we needed to learn how to embrace tension, too, or everything we'd built would be lost.

Don't Go to Bed Angry

We started with that old chestnut people tell honeymooners: Don't go to bed angry. (Now that I'm married, I'm not certain this is the best marital advice, but I stand by it as far as professional relationships are concerned.)

In the heat of service, a seemingly minor disagreement-for example, whether it's more important to get a check down on table 28 before clearing dessert plates from 24-could easily mushroom into a situation where two excellent people weren't communicating at all. But because we'd talked about this so much in pre-meal, all a manager would have to say to them at the end of the night were those five words: 'Don't go to bed angry.'

We went so far as to make this a rule, drilled over and over in pre-meal: don't leave work if you're harboring feelings of frustration or resentment toward a colleague or the job itself; make sure to talk things through before heading home.

Thirty minutes later, you'd see the two servers talking in the hallway-and the next night, they'd have a fantastic service together in the same section.

In my experience, people usually want to be heard more than they want to be agreed with. Even if neither of them managed to change the other's mind, at the very least they'd have shown each other respect by taking the time to listen. Even if they didn't achieve resolution, they'd both feel lighter when they headed off to bed.

Find the Third Option

I remember a battle Daniel and I had after our first big renovation.

I think they're dumb.

A charger is the decorative plate waiting at your place setting when you arrive at many fine-dining restaurants. You don't eat off these plates; in fact, they're generally removed before the first course arrives.

To me, the presence of a charger on the table is a textbook example of one of those unexamined fine-dining rules: if they exist only for show, add absolutely nothing to the guest's experience, and are taken away immediately, what's the point?

We went round and round like this for hours: I thought they were useless; he thought they were beautiful.

But Daniel, with his classic European background, was adamant that even a beautifully set table looked undressed without them.

To break a stalemate, we would sometimes try swapping sides. It's easy for passionate people to get entrenched in their respective positions. But you can't help but connect with a position when you're arguing for it, and swapping sides tends to jog you out of a stubborn focus on 'your' idea. You can stop worrying about winning and can start thinking about what's right for the organization.

I don't remember now who introduced the third option, but eventually one was put on the table-literally and figuratively: What if we kept the charger but made it useful?

Unfortunately, in this case, it didn't work.

We called our brilliant ceramics designer Jono Pandolfi-a friend of mine from high school-who worked with us to design chargers with a beautiful unglazed circle in the middle. That circle was precisely sized for the foot of the bowl of the amuse-bouche, the single-bite gift from the kitchen that opens a fine-dining meal.

To me, the symbolism was beautiful. If you were experienced with fine dining, you sat down expecting those chargers to be whisked away. Instead, they stayed on the table, ready to offer our guests a gift. Daniel got tables dressed with beautiful, custom-made ceramics, and I could rest easy knowing the charger wasn't superfluous, an empty nod to form, but graciously poised to receive the guest's first course.

Out of the engagement, the two of us had stumbled upon a more graceful and hospitable solution, one neither of us would ever have come up with on our own.

Concede the Win

For the winter menu one year, Daniel wanted to do three separate dessert courses after the cheese. I was worried about dragging out the meal and losing people's attention. The whey sorbet was utterly delicious, but does anyone really rave about a sorbet course? Couldn't we-shouldn't we-keep it moving?

Sometimes, the only way to proceed in pursuit of a good partnership is to decide that whoever cares more about the issue can have their way. It wasn't that I didn't care about how many desserts we served-when you're intense and detail-oriented, everything matters. But it was more important to Daniel than it was to me.

Daniel was adamant. He'd put a lot of work into each one of those dessert courses and had thought seriously about the guest's experience of the meal. Eventually, after a lot of back and forth, he said, 'It's important to me.' That was all he needed to say. I went back to the dining room team and told them we'd have to control the pace on our end by increasing how efficiently we served and bussed those courses.

There was an unwritten corollary to this rule, which is that neither of us could abuse the 'It's important to me' card by pulling it too many times. Mostly, though, we found that the willingness of the other person to relinquish their own position helped to build trust between us.

Sometimes, though, we had to duke it out.

Learn Their Tough-Love Language

One of my close friends is an even-tempered, laid-back guy, beloved by the people who work for him. Over dinner one night, he mentioned he was getting frustrated with one of his employees, who had a nasty habit of undermining new managers by talking smack about them with less senior staff.

'Have you tried yelling at him?' I asked.

'I keep telling him that he can't continue doing this,' my friend complained, exasperated. 'But I found out Friday that he's gone and done it again. I don't seem to be getting through to him.'

I've spent my career crusading against toxic workplace cultures. Certainly, if the last ten years has taught us anything, especially in the restaurant industry, it's that company cultures based on abuse and harassment and manipulation are not only awful and unethical, but unstable and inefficient as well.

Managing staff boils down to two things: how you praise people, and how you criticize them. Praise, I might argue, is the more important of the two. But you cannot establish any standard of excellence without criticism, so a thoughtful approach to how you correct people must be a part of your culture, too.

And yet that doesn't-in fact, it cannot-mean your culture should be 100 percent sweetness and light.

One of Richard Coraine's most often repeated sayings was 'One size fits one.' He was referring to the hospitality experience: some guests love it when you hang out at the table and schmooze, while others want you to take their order and disappear. It's your job to read the guest and to serve them how they want to be served.

Similarly, there's no one-size-fits-all rule for managing people.

Gary Chapman saved a lot of romantic relationships with his 1992 book, The Five Love Languages , which delineates the five general ways people show and prefer to experience love. (They are: acts of service, gift-giving, physical touch, quality time, and words of affirmation.)

Just as certain expressions of love work better for some people than others, so do different expressions of tough love. I'm not sure there are five tough-love languages, but there are people for whom a polite correction will not land; those people need a little fire.

Chapman noted that people tend to go wrong by showing love the way they want to receive it. If your partner's love language is acts of service, for instance, bringing them a cup of coffee prepared exactly how they like it is going to land better than surprising them with a kiss-even if that's what you'd most like.

I knew when we started to work together that Daniel's managerial style was different from mine. Of course it was! I'd come up in the lovey-dovey, uber-respectful world of Danny Meyer's Enlightened Hospitality. Daniel, on the other hand, had been working since the age of fourteen in the aggressive, militant kitchens of Europe's three-star Michelin restaurants, where screaming and humiliation-and often worse-were standard workplace conditions.

He'd always been on his best behavior when I was with him, but stories circulated among the staff about his temper, and I'd talked to him a number of times about what I'd heard. 'C'mon, man,' I'd say. 'You don't want to be one of those lunatic chefs.' He'd laugh and agree with me-then, a week later, I'd hear another story about him losing it on someone.

One day, I happened to be in the kitchen when a cook put up an incorrectly plated crab roulade with avocado. Daniel picked the food up with his hands and threw it right back into the cook's face.

My mouth fell open; I could not believe what I had just seen.

I dragged him down the hallway into our office, and, for the first time in my professional career, I screamed at someone I worked with.

It was absolutely unacceptable.

'If you're going to throw food into people's faces, I want nothing to do with you. You're incredible, and I love what we're doing here, but you need to decide right now what kind of leader you want to be. Because if that's how your kitchen is going to operate, then you're doing this without me. You can find somebody else to run this restaurant with.'

He never threw a roulade or anything else again. In fact, he tells this story himself in the limited-edition version of our book Eleven Madison Park: The Next Chapter , citing that incident and my response to it as a turning point.

I'm good at apologizing when, in the heat of a Friday-night service, my tone betrays any frustration I might be feeling, and there are people who have worked for me for fifteen years who have never heard me yell-but some have. And in this case, the only way I was going to get through to Daniel was with a confrontation this extreme, complete with raised voice and an ultimatum I was prepared to follow through on.

You have to know the people you're working with. Some people are totally pragmatic about criticism; correct them privately and without emotion, and they'll receive the reproach in exactly the spirit in which it's offered. Three minutes later, they'll have apologized for the mistake, taken the note, and the two of you will have moved on to chatting about last night's Mets game.

Then there are the people who can't or won't hear what you're saying unless it comes with a little thunder. If your reprimand is too mild and conversational, they won't believe you're serious. With these people, you're going to have to get into it a little bit, even if that's not your usual managerial style.

Other folks are sensitive to criticism. This isn't necessarily a negative characteristic-it's usually an indication they want to do a good job and feel deeply wounded at any suggestion that they haven't. But those people are going to react, no matter what you say or how gently and diplomatically you say it, so you'd better spend some time planning exactly how you're going to deliver the feedback. And you'd be wise to budget time to spend with them afterward, so you can sit with them and let them know that they're still loved.

My even-tempered friend reported that it had been uncomfortable for him to raise his voice with the problem employee. But he had, and I was pleased and not surprised to hear that when he did, he'd finally made real headway with the guy.

I should mention here there's one tough-love language that will never, ever work, and that's sarcasm. Managers, especially young ones, will sometimes try to shroud criticism in humor because they're insecure about delivering a rebuke. But sarcasm is always the wrong medium for a serious communication . It demeans the person who's receiving the criticism, the message you're delivering, and, frankly, you as well.

It's important to note that even this kind of reproach needs to be delivered, per Ken Blanchard, privately and without emotion. When I dragged Daniel into the office, my voice may have been loud, but my words were measured; I was emotional about the situation, but that didn't come through in my delivery. You're still criticizing the behavior, not the person, and a raised voice doesn't mean losing control and raging. (In fact, you absolutely cannot lose control and rage.) It's simply a different tough-love language, one that's louder and sterner than the one you naturally prefer.

Most of us have no difficulty at all in delivering praise; that's the fun part of being a boss. But it's hard to criticize someone. So I spend a lot of time with my managers talking about criticism-how to deliver it, how to receive it, and maybe most important, how to think about it. We all want to be liked, and when you give someone a note about what they could be doing differently and better, you run the risk of losing their goodwill. That's why I say there is no better way to show someone you care than by being willing to offer them a correction; it's the purest expression of putting someone else's needs above your own, which is what hospitality is all about. Praise is affirmation, but criticism is investment .

And this is why it's so important, no matter where you are in the hierarchy, to be able to graciously receive criticism, too. It's natural to bristle a little when you come up short, particularly if you're an A student who takes pride in your work. But if your response is consistently defensive, if you always push back or insist on justifying your mistakes, people are eventually going to stop coming to you with notes. You've made it too unpleasant for them to continue, and they're going to stop investing in you-and you're going to stop growing as a result.

Hire Slow, Fire Fast-But Not Too Fast

One night, a manager reported that he'd caught one of our best captains-I'll call him Ben-drinking during service. If a restaurant doesn't allow drinking on the job (and we did not; some do), this is grounds for immediate dismissal. But instead of immediately telling him to pack his bags, I asked him to sit down and talk to me.

'I'm going to ask you not to lie to me: Were you drinking last night during your shift?'

He hung his head. 'Yes. I'm sorry, and I completely understand if you fire me over it.'

I said, 'I'm not firing you yet, but I'm not happy. You didn't let me down-or, rather, you didn't just let me down; you disappointed your entire team. You're supposed to be a leader, but instead of leading, you got drunk.

'But if you want to stay, then take tomorrow off, come back the day after, and apologize to everybody you were working with last night. Tell them what you did, why you realize it's a mistake, and why you're sorry. Promise you'll never do it again-and know that if you do, I'm going to fire you on the spot.'

'So we can do this one of two ways. You can leave right now—we'll shake hands, I'll thank you for all the time you've given us and all the people you've made happy, and how much you've done to make this restaurant a better place. Then you can clean out your locker and go home.

It wasn't easy for Ben to have those conversations with his colleagues. He was a tough captain to work for because his standards were high; if you were in his station, he held you accountable. But there is tremendous power in vulnerability. Because Ben took responsibility, everyone who'd been furious with him forgave him.

A couple of months later, Ben drank again during a shift, and I fired him, as I'd said I would. (I'm happy to report it served as a wake-up call; he's in recovery now and has made a notable career for himself in hospitality.) But I have no regrets about giving him a second chance.

I do believe, as I've already said, in hiring slow. You need to be acutely aware in the first few months if someone joining the team is not the right fit, or if they're simply going to need a little extra support to succeed. And you can't drag your feet unnecessarily on firing someone who's toxic; you need to get them out before they poison the balance of the team.

The people you work with will never be your actual family. That doesn't mean that you can't work harder to treat them like family, which may mean tweaking one of the great management sayings out there, which is 'Hire slow and fire fast.'

At the same time, you would never kick a member of your family out of the house for making a single mistake, would you? So maybe we should amend that saying to 'Hire slow, fire fast-but not too fast.'

Create Your Own Traditions

In 2007, we opened for Thanksgiving for the first time.

But I wanted to serve Thanksgiving at Eleven Madison Park.

Danny's restaurants had never opened for any of the major holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, or New Year's Day. It was a gift from him to his employees, a financial sacrifice so the people who worked for him could spend time with their loved ones.

I talked to Paul Bolles-Beaven, one of Danny's partners, before I approached Danny. 'He's never going to go for it,' he told me. 'This is an important, well-established part of the company culture.'

But Danny is always open to being challenged, and if you come to him with a measured, thoughtful argument, he'll listen to what you have to say. So I made my case. On the one hand, yes: it's lovely to have Thanksgiving Day off to rest and celebrate with your family. But most people who work in New York City restaurants aren't from New York City, so most of them weren't able to use that day off to go home to celebrate anyway.

Danny agreed.

On the other hand, with the money we'd make from staying open and serving all day, we'd be able to afford to close the restaurant the first few days of January, giving people enough time to go home. We were still giving the staff a gift-but one they could really use.

Danny's willingness to reevaluate that holiday policy was a reminder to me that no aspect of your business should be offlimits to reevaluation . I told the staff this story whenever I was encouraging them to come forward with ideas. 'Don't be shy. Even if we're proud of the way we do something-even if it feels integral to the restaurant-that doesn't mean we couldn't be doing it better: more elegantly, more efficiently, more creatively. Nothing is sacred.'

It was also one of the best days to work, to the point where the team fought over that shift. I loved it and worked it myself every year; it wasn't until after I was married that I'd leave before the very end.

That first year, Thanksgiving reservations sold out as soon as they were released. It helped that there weren't that many great restaurants open for the holiday in New York. It has gone on to be one of the busiest days of the year for us, every year.

Daniel had little experience with this most American of holidays, so we worked with his sous-chefs to develop the menu. We'd hold one long service over the course of the day. And once we were finished serving the last guests, the entire staff would sit down for our own Thanksgiving dinner.

For the team, it would be a real Thanksgiving, as I grew up celebrating it, with delicious food, family gathered around a table, and words of thanks. We'd push the tables together to make a huge one in the center of that glorious dining room, load our plates, open some wine, and go around the entire table so everyone could share what they were thankful for.

Food for the staff was factored into the kitchen's preparations for the day. Our dinner wouldn't be an afterthought, reheated food that hadn't made it onto other people's plates. Instead, we'd enjoy exactly the same meal we'd spent the day giving to others, served buffet-style. Meanwhile, our wine director, John Ragan, had saved lots of unsolicited bottles that wine reps had dropped off to be sampled, so there would be plenty of good things to drink.

That first Thanksgiving, and every one after, I gave the first toast.

Every Labor Day, Floyd Cardoz and his brilliant wife, Barkha, threw a barbecue at their house in New Jersey for the employees at Tabla. There, Floyd would trade his crisp chef whites for a decidedly uncool suburban-dad outfit while he was manning the grill, but seeing him that way only made us respect him more. He showed me by example that I could be myself without losing any of my credibility as an authority figure and a boss-and that I should.

I spoke from the heart. I told them I was grateful to finally be in a place where I didn't need to hide my neuroses, or to be embarrassed about them. That got a laugh, not only because everyone there had been on the receiving end of my perfectionism, but also because everyone around that table had spent some portion of their working lives pretending they didn't care as much as they did, for fear of being mocked. At EMP, we all felt like we belonged. Every day, our colleagues challenged us to be better, instead of always-always-the other way around.

People who are gifted at hospitality tend to be sensitive. They notice everything, feel deeply, and care a lot. These are superpowers, though that tenderness can also make them a handful to manage. I've heard many frustrated managers complain about these employees: 'They're so needy! They need so much reinforcement! I have to walk them through every decision; I have to hold their hands through every change!'

Then we went around the table, and everyone took a turn. It didn't hurt that the wine was flowing; even those who ordinarily played their cards close to their chest started sharing. It was incredible to watch people seize the opportunity to be open and emotional with their peers.

But these tendencies are often what make these people so good at their work; they need to have delicate antennae. It takes compassion to know when a guest is intimidated by the room-and a light touch to dial back the formality so they don't feel condescended to. If a server's Spidey sense tells them a table is getting frustrated by how long the food is taking, they can check on the entrée and apologize before the guest has even complained. And a server who is preternaturally alert to other people will realize there's tension at a table as soon as they approach; they can then pace the courses so the guests can resolve the issue between them before moving on to enjoying the rest of their meal.

Establishing your own traditions, as we did with Thanksgiving, is part of a layered and nuanced culture. One of my dad's quotes I love the most is: 'The secret to happiness is always having something to look forward to.' This was one of the reasons, aside from the fear and grief, that people had such a hard time during the COVID lockdowns. With no theater or sports events or even a datenight dinner to look forward to, it was hard to keep your spirits up.

I knew these sensitive people needed extra time and love. But those Thanksgiving toasts created a space where the staff could be vulnerable with their peers, and they needed that, too. If you don't create room for the people who work for you to feel seen and heard in a team setting, they'll never be fully known by the people around them.

It's true within organizations, too, especially when you're hustling. We'd pushed hard for three stars, but it was nothing in comparison to how we'd push later. Every year, we needed something to look forward to, and Thanksgiving became one of the beautiful traditions we could count on.

These new-fashioned traditions are essential to a healthy culture, but-ugh, birthday cake in the break room-they tend not to stick unless people enjoy and look forward to them. New traditions work only if they're authentic-if they fill a real purpose and satisfy a real need. This was definitely key to our Thanksgiving success, as restaurant workers on major holidays tend to feel a little like the Lost Boys from Peter Pan -hungry and unloved.

The meals restaurant staff share together before service is called family meal, though it usually feels more like a bunch of colleagues hurriedly shoving calories into themselves before setting the dining room. That Thanksgiving, for the first time, we did feel like a family sitting down together to eat.