andrew: november 3rd, all of a sudden there was a tweet from the new york times saying something to the affect of, jeremiah tower announced as new chef at tavern on the green. florence: the story went up online on monday and all hell broke loose. nobody could believe it. this is so out of left field. man: people were buzzing about it and talking about it, and all the blogs were going crazy and twitter went kind of nuts. anthony: i mean, my first reaction was of course, holy [ bleep ]. second was, why? why would jeremiah tower come to new york to work in one of the biggest, most thankless operations going, one that has just had a high-profile opening that landed with a big, horrifying thud? andrew: here s a guy who s been basically out of the profession as a working chef for 15 years, never operated a restaurant in new york city. it just seemed incredible to me.
turning it around. jeremiah: it s a pleasure. all right. customers: thank you. anthony: the beast, the religion of any restaurant, is consistency. the food has to be the same every single time. it has to be as good. that requires eternal vigilance, meaning the ability to stand in that incredibly busy kitchen with hundreds of meals going out all around you, and you re aware of every plate. you re looking at eyes in the back of your head. i detect a lamb chop that s not right. tavern on the green? we re talking thousands of meals. it s impossible to make great food when you re doing the those kinds of numbers. it s a chef killer. jeremiah: you re burning
to bring it back to a place where everybody can enjoy it. andrew: so jeremiah has mentioned that back in the day when he was at stars, that he always thought of stars and tavern on the green as cousins, is the word he used, because they were both among the top grossing restaurants in the united states. they both places had sort of a grandeur to them. they were both very dramatic spaces. anthony: you know, back in its golden years, warner leroy owned tavern. he was this pt barnum-like, uh, impresario. florence: it was a hub for events, but it was certainly not a place new yorkers went for dining. andrew: it was reopened with two restaurateurs from philadelphia at the helm, who had done nothing of a comparable scale. they brought in katy sparks, who s been a chef in new york for decades. florence: the bottom line is, the reviews were devastating. andrew: so now, here we have him coming to tavern on the green, which is really rudderless without a chef at the helm the last tw
of not allowed to like tavern to start with. tavern will never be cool, ever. jeremiah: these look tired. they re horrible. look at that. anyone who read that review this morning will be looking at this dish and we re just producing the worst we ever have, so i m drawing a line in the sand here, gentlemen. we are not going to prove that the post was right. mark: i hope they give him some time, because, you know, you can t just go in there and save the world all at once. it doesn t happen that way. it s going to take months. it could take years. jeremiah: re-plate this. man 2: the biggest problem is when people start to not believe you, then you re screwed cause it s just one person after another starts falling away. jeremiah: you can t help hoping that jeremiah tower will rescue tavern on the green if you ve ever seen a movie about an aging rogue coming out of retirement for one last heist, con, caper, battle, boxing
soup in at the table. mark: you have to be able to create a team, pull together a group of people that, one, know how to cook, two, understand what it is you want, and three, are able to make that happen. jeremiah: everybody taste, please, so that we know what the standard is. so this is our benchmark. okay? clark: when you think about all the famous chefs ducasse or robuchon, thomas keller none of those famous people could do tavern on the green. it has to be an american. it has to be somebody who s schooled in the old ways, but not stuck in them. it has to be somebody who will command great respect. and who else has that all together, plus the ability to do volume and to put on a show? jeremiah. andrew: whether or not the owners want that influence from him beyond the kitchen, that relationship needs to be calibrated, you know, at every restaurant where the chef is not also the owner.