New York state of mind

Carbone is prepared for a hurricane. That’s why its vast front doors open outwards, not inwards, I am told at the threshold of the restaurant's sparkling new Grosvenor Square digs. They learned that in Miami, no doubt, at another outpost of the sprawling empire. Not that there are many sub-tropical storms in Mayfair, of course. But a deluge is coming nonetheless. Not thirty seconds after I’ve arrived — as I stand on the chequerboard floor admiring a hand-painted Ginori plate that would look wonderful in the Tuscan palazzo that I do not happen to own — a navy-suited figure from the adjoining Rosewood Hotel pops their head in to explain that there has been a misunderstanding. The booking link for Carbone London has accidentally gone live on a reservations website, and the hotel concierges are desperately parrying off pleas for tables. This is a neat vignette on the power of the Carbone brand. (And I use the word almost literally, viscerally: a piping hot piece of block capital iconography, seared into the side of a very handsome beast.) You can’t even book a table, and already you can’t even book a table.

Beneath us, down the sort of swooping subterranean staircase that would make Henry Hill weep, the storm metaphor continues. As in: the calm before one. A pair of swinging doors, big enough to steer a Cadillac through, open into a dining room humming with maybe 100 people in 50 shades of chefs’ whites. There is a first day of term atmosphere. Excited, apprehensive; new shoes, new friends. In another section of the vast lair, above ox-blood tiles and past a wall that has been Julian Schabel-ed, a round table of six or so very senior and very serious looking chefs discusses tactics, strategies, lessons hard-earned.

Carbone London dining room

A prototype Carbone menu, blank on its inside, lounges on a bar. Its sheer heft — its vast, off-white acreage — does the talking. Your mind populates it with the classics you’ve heard about from Carbone in New York. The spicy rigatoni. The lobster fra diavola. The veal parm. On the outside of the prototype menu there’s a handsome, mid-century pencil sketch of the original site, in SoHo and/or 1958, with its rugged neon sign in green and red and white. In the sketch, three friends stand on the sidewalk, greeting each other. These figures represent the three founders of Carbone: Mario Carbone, Jeff Zalaznick, and Rich Torrisi. When they originally opened that very first site, back in 2013, they were seen as rank outsiders in the New York restaurant game; uppish new kids on the block whose chief desire was to go against the chef-led, minimalist, obscure-ingredient tasting menus that were the fashion back then. They wanted to make hospitality that was actually hospitable; to craft a big, inviting, living homage to the ‘red sauce’ Italian-American joints that New York was once famous for. Food to share, food you actually want to eat, food to celebrate over. Their style has since gone on to be described by some as ‘experiential fine dining’, which is a funny way to pronounce ‘a restaurant that truly looks after you’. Now, gratifyingly, you see it everywhere, at a time when people want fun, escapism, and warmth in their dining experiences — not clinical, name-droppy, experimental chef-led perfectionism. (You can’t eat an ego.) But Carbone has a very good claim (along with the entire sovereign nation of Italy) to resurrecting and maintaining this old school form of hospitality. London deserves it now more than ever. It is highly apt that the Rosewood Chancery, where the new Carbone is based, was formerly London’s American Embassy. This is true soft power.

Carbone London bar

In the inner sanctum that is the private dining room, on a vast round table that seemed at that moment the calm eye of the storm, I sat down to speak with Jeff and Mario about the imminent London opening from their Major Food Group — a name they came up with, rather charmingly, when they own just a single site. Not major; not even a group. But the recipe was a winning one. The food. The attitude. Yes, a hearty sprinkling of celebrity. And at the centre of it all those ‘captains’, in Carbone parlance — those highly-experienced waiters who lead the night’s festivities from the front, like slick-backed mariners with foglight grins.They will have some swells to navigate here. As I leave, an hour or so later, a tradesman is studiously tightening something on the vast double doors with a screwdriver. What is that distant rumble that I vaguely hear?

____

Jeff Zalaznick: This is the restaurant that Mario and I have wanted to open since we opened the first Carbone. London was always our dream. We just love London. And I think we have made a great career out of doing and creating things that we love.

So when this opportunity presented itself, it was a no-brainer in terms of its location — and especially with its history as the American Embassy.

JB: Will you tweak things for the London palate at all?

Mario Carbone: We don't buy into that. I think the last thing that a Londoner would want is to hear that we've started to tweak the menu based on our preconceived notions about what they might want. That doesn't make any sense.

No. We’re coming to do what we do. And we're confident that people will embrace it.

"London was always our dream."

JB: One of the things that strikes me about Carbone is the level of experience of the waiters. They’ve been doing this for decades, many of them. It seems to me that that’s a very New York thing; and definitely a very Italian thing, too…

JZ: A lot of them are already sitting in the dining room out there right now. They've been with us for a decade or more. They've started as captains. We call them captains because they truly lead you on your journey throughout your meal.

They'll be here training the people — the next generation of people that will be here in Carbone London. It’s been like that since day one. That was one of the critical things that we always wanted — that people looked at this as a career. Not as a stopgap while they're doing six other things and acting in a movie. This is what they love. This is what they're passionate about. This is what they take pride in and this is what they love to do. And that's what makes it all happen at Carbone.

The famous spicy rigatoni

The raw bar

JB: I’m fascinated by the idea of the ‘moves’ that these captains have. Small things that diners might not even be conscious of, but which are unique and transformative…

MC: It's like the culinary equivalent of the concept of sprezzatura. These are studied moves that seem to happen effortlessly. They seem unprompted, although it's all very much thought-out.

JZ: We made it almost like a science. Like: these are our moves.

MC: For example, how quickly you receive food on your table from the time you sit down. That’s a move to us, right? Bread, cheese, salami, pickles. They hit your table almost instantaneously from your ass hitting the seat. You’ve just got your menu, and you've already got a full table of food. Or the way the captains describe certain parts of the meal. We could easily write these things on the menu — but we prefer that they speak them out loud. It becomes a verbal menu, which is something entirely different.

JZ: One of the biggest north stars when we created the original Carbone was the ability to do things that might not be written on the menu, but that of course we can make for you. At the time, over a decade ago, most restaurants were doing the total opposite to that. The chef was in charge, and the sense was: we can't switch this, we can't sub this, we can't look after this allergy. But we think: ‘of course we can.’ If we're great at what we do, and we have the ingredients, then of course we can make it for you this way.

Carbone London private dining room

JB: Has the physical size of the menus always been a very conscious thing, too?

JZ: Right from the start, I declared I wanted the biggest menu that we could possibly have — the biggest menu in New York. To me, it was about two things. One: I like big things. And I was excited by that. But two: it said that we're here to serve you. We have a big menu with lots of things on it. And right at the top, in big letters, it says: ‘E Piacere.’ Which means: we'll make you whatever you want. It’s just doubling down on that idea of what true hospitality is, as we see it. What’s really hard is to have a big menu with seventy dishes on it — and another fifty dishes we can make for you if we decide you want them.

"There’s an almost Fellini-like atmosphere that makes a Carbone night a Carbone night."

JB: How do you conjure atmosphere in a dining room?

MC: There's no magic you can work outside of a bustling dining room. There’s nothing better than that. And that sound and that feeling is what warms our hearts. Those people having fun, enjoying themselves — they create the atmosphere. We just give them a box to do it right.

There’s a sound to a good time, though. It's not just noise. The sound of glasses clinking in the air. You feel it. You know instantly.

And then you need excited, supportive, fun people to be the characters in this movie every night. The captain has to be more boisterous to meet the decibel level, because it's bumping in here. And you’ll feel that here as you come down the stairs here and you get to the bar and you walk through it. And as you do, some waiter's gonna be coming by with an entire tray of cakes held aloft: ‘excuse me, excuse me.’ There’s an almost Fellini-like atmosphere that makes a Carbone night a Carbone night.

JB: What advice would you have for anyone in London or inNew York who wants to get into the restaurant game?

MC: ‘Don't do it.’ I’m serious. Because the reaction that advice creates in people says everything.

JZ: There are only two possibilities that are gonna happen when he says that to somebody. It's either: ‘fuck you. I'm gonna do it.’ In which case, you've just proven yourself immediately, and you have a chance here.

But if, at the first sign of an obstacle, your instinct it to fold — then I just saved you some time and money, probably, right away. It’s a good test.

The dessert tray

JB: Are you still able to eat at your restaurants and enjoy yourself?

MC: It’s critically important to do that. You can't get the full perspective without sitting down. You have to be a customer.

JZ: I eat at one of our restaurants five out of seven nights a week. Not only because I actually like them the best, but because it allows you to see the things or the dishes that might be a little off. And it’s probably something that a customer wouldn't even notice, but you're constantly finding it. This is the thing about restaurants. It's not like making an album and it's printed and it’s done. This is constantly changing and evolving. And we’re putting our bodies through an incredible test to eat and taste these dishes every day and every night to make sure it does. [Laughs].

MC: It also keeps the team really sharp, if they see that Jeff is writing a note about the doneness of the octopus tonight, for example. That's the level of knowing that we're still actively working on, and sweating the small stuff.

JB: Have you always had grand ambitions? You now have more than seventy sites. But I like the fact that you called yourself the Major Food Group right from the start, when you only had one site. You were not major, and you were not a group…

JZ: I think it’s a case of dream big and manifest your destiny. We always believed in our ability. We believed in our work ethic. We believed in our partnership. We believed in our skill. And we don't use whiteboards. We really, truly just do the things we know; do the things that we're actually excited and passionate about.

But this — London specifically — was always our biggest goal. We started by spending a lot of time making ourselves significant in our hometown. And as soon as we did, we realised we had something that could move; that was in demand. And London was always our number one. We thought: ‘wow: imagine if we could do this in London?’ We were patient. It took us 70 restaurants to get here. But now we’re here.

For more from the world of London restaurants, read Jesse Burgess' review of Cinder...