CHAPTER 16

EARNING INFORMALITY

The four-star review changed everything.

With the increased business came a host of new challenges. We needed to hire and train about twenty-five new employees between the kitchen and the dining room. We even had to reprogram our phone system to handle the increased traffic.

Our dining room was full every night. The team was floating on air. I never stopped being mindful about spending, but we did stop cutting the kitchen's paper towels in half, and the cooks went back to wearing proper paper toques.

The biggest challenge took the form of shifting expectations. Guests coming to dine at a three-star restaurant have very different hopes for that meal than guests coming to dine at a place that has recently earned its fourth star.

We were thrilled to have a fourth star, but we'd gotten there by focusing on creating a meaningful connection with our guests, and we couldn't let the accolade erode what had gotten us there in the first place. We had not abandoned our notion of being the first fourstar restaurant for our generation. We still wanted to bring a comfort and informality and sense of fun to fine dining. Bruni himself supported this. In the Diner's Journal , he wrote: 'I realized that I'd been recommending Eleven Madison to people more often than I did its four-star betters (then), because it came close to their intensity of coddling without a tariff quite as high, a code of conduct quite as rigid, a set of airs quite as intimidating. It found a hugely appealing compromise in this regard.'

Some members of our team internalized that shift, convincing themselves that we needed to take ourselves more seriously. It's like the first time you buy an expensive suit; you feel you need to dress up for the suit, instead of remembering that the point of the suit is to dress you up.

So we were faced with a conundrum: the very feature that had won us this accolade-our ease and informality in the dining room -had suddenly become less appropriate in the wake of it.

Bruni had recognized that we were bringing a more casual approach to fine dining-all the excellence, with less of that uncomfortable starch. Our informality had helped us earn that fourth star. Still, people were reserving tables months in advance; for many, this meal would be one of the most expensive ones of their lives. Given the hype and the price, they wanted a little ceremony.

This was especially true because we all looked so young. At the time, the average age of a person working in the dining room at EMP was twenty-six. Daniel was a baby-faced thirty-two-year-old when we got four stars; I was twenty-nine, still getting carded in bars. Even before our four-star review (and for sure after it), this was a shock to people: they weren't expecting a restaurant like EMP to be run by a bunch of kids. But we didn't want to change who we were, especially because an overly formal environment would get in the way of the connection we were trying to make.

Similarly, we had to earn the respect of guests alarmed by how young we were by amping up the formality at the beginning of their meal. Over the course of the evening, though, we'd earn their trust enough to shift their expectations, so we could encourage them to come along with us for the ride. Our approach to service couldn't happen to them, it had to happen for them; we had to invite them, not force them.

The approach we used to combat this was what we called earning informality. When I started dating my wife, I called her dad Mr. Tosi; I knew I'd earned his trust when he finally told me to call him Gino. Informality is something you earn.

Being Present

The summer after my first year at Cornell, I worked at Tribeca Grill.

I'd been hired as a management intern, but when a few servers quit, I found myself waiting tables for the first time-which meant a trial by fire at one of the busiest restaurants in New York City. I had no idea what I was doing, and I knew it.

But something didn't add up. Every night, I'd calculate the tip sheet, and I noticed that another group of servers, who turned far fewer tables, had higher check averages and earned more in tips. Let me say that again: they served fewer people but made more money. That's as good a measure of the guests' satisfaction as anything, so I started to study this second group instead.

My strategy in situations like that is always to figure out who the highest performers are, study their approach, and try to emulate it. I was first interested in a group of servers who were like Keanu Reeves manipulating the Matrix; they saw everything and were always one step ahead. Those servers always knew exactly who was ready for another bottle of wine and who was about to ask for the check; as a result, they turned tables with ruthless efficiency.

I quickly realized that this was the real A team. In many ways, these servers were less excellent than their more proficient colleagues-their tables waited longer to order, and for dessert menus, and for their checks. But when these less efficient servers were at the tables, connecting with their guests, they were so focused on the interaction that the bonds they created were much stronger. Even if the service was slightly less perfect, the guests liked the experience more.

I often describe 'being present' as caring so much about what you're doing that you stop caring about everything you need to do next. That second group of servers embodied that beautifully. When they were talking to guests, they were fully present with them. They were being rewarded for their hospitality, not their excellence.

The first group was attentive; the second paid attention.

After EMP earned four stars, my entire focus shifted to hospitality. We had excellence on lock; it was time to double down on relationships. And so, for the next year, being present was our main focus. When we were with a guest, we were with that guest. We had trained for years to provide all the starch that people expected from a restaurant of our caliber. Now our focus was on

giving those same people more warmth and connection than they expected from a restaurant of our caliber.

And apparently, the world was noticing. Because one morning in early 2010, after I'd checked in with the morning team and made myself a latte, I opened the mail. Bill, junk mail, bill, bill, bill. One envelope piqued my interest, though, and when I ripped it open, I discovered that EMP had been nominated as one of the World's 50 Best Restaurants for 2010.

We were no longer in the business of running an extraordinary restaurant; we were now in the business of human connection.