The rest, as they say, is history. Luma got a quick two stars from Ruth
Reichl at the New York Times and lots of buzz. Restaurants that change
their entire approach midstream never succeed—remember I told you
that? Wrong! Restaurants owned by guys in the fuel business don't
succeed. I might have said something like that, too. Wrong! Operations
that expand into multi-units often dilute the qualities that made them
good in the first place. Not this time!
Time passed, Luma did well, and Gino and Scott opened Indigo, on West
10th Street, in a spot so poisonous, so reeking of failure that eight or
nine restaurants had come and gone in my memory alone. Remember all
that yammer about cancerous locations? Sites so cursed that any and all
who seek to follow are doomed? Wrong again, jerk.
Indigo was located only a few blocks away from One Five. I'd been
hearing quite enough about Scott Bryan, so when the place opened, I
remember trudging over in the middle of a blizzard, sitting at the bar and
scarfing up free tastings. I thought it was mind-bogglingly good and I
told people so. I dragged my crew over, one by one, to try the mushroom
strudel, the Manilla clams. We marvelled at Scott's menu, the perfect
my-way-or-the-highway document. All the things that conventional
wisdom tells a chef he has to do, all those must-have crowd pleasers that
eat up half your menu before you can sneak in the selections you actually
love,—they weren't there! There was no soup. No vegetarian plate. No
steak! The chicken was not some generic roasted bird with non-
threatening seasonings; it was a weird, ballsy, spicy concoction,
involving red curry, for chrissakes! And good. The only beef was braised
shoulder—a daube provençale so good that my whole crew at One Five
now ran over to Indigo after work. Our two kitchens closed at the same
time, so we'd phone ahead to say we were coming over, and start cooking
that daube—just put it on the bar, for God's sake! Let it get cold, it's
okay! The Indigo seafood selections were admirably unpopular fishes—
cod and mackerel—and exciting. This was food for cooks. This was food
that we got. Simple, straightforward and absolutely pretense-free. Like