WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. -- Like a Toyota built in Kentucky, the new Cafe La Boheme is a Japanese import that finds itself right at home in America.
Cardenas, who has closely studied the service practices and standards at the Ritz-Carlton and Four Seasons hotel chains, pointed out that he reviewed 200 applications and conducted 100 interviews before hiring an 18-person service staff that has since been reduced to 10 servers -- half of whom previously worked either at a Ritz-Carlton or Four Seasons property.And, with the fortunes then being made in banking, who would be satisfied with that? Hodges had a more ambitious plan: "If we cleaned it up, instituted standard loan procedures, built a good international loan department and real estate department, we could sell NBW to a big international bank, a Madrid bank, a London bank, a Japanese or Arab bank. And I was convinced that Washington would be an international financial center. Everyone was." Hodges drew up a timetable, with 1992 as the target date, for making NBW appealing to an international buyer.With the launch here of the first U.S. branch of his nine-unit Cafe La Boheme chain, Tokyo restaurateur Kozo Hasegawa and chef Koh Kikuchi have made strong bids to join the sizable roster of their countrymen who have made names for themselves at such worldly Los Angeles restaurants as Chaya Brasserie, Chinois on Main, Matsuhisa, Spago, Cafe Katsu and Symphonie.Hodges had his work cut out for him. NBW's unionized workforce, creaky computer system, and Palookaville real estate portfolio looked like liabilities to potential buyers. In 1980, the bank, which had been perhaps too conservative in its lending, had assets of $859 million, and about half its loans were at fixed rates to small borrowers. But more money and more aggressive management could change all that. Hodges set about recruiting directors who could wire him into elite Washington society--because, of course, that's where the money is.The photograph shows a room with a silver chandelier and a gilded ceiling, pale light filtering through high windows, and balconies festooned with flowers. At the bottom of the photo, five thin, elderly men in frayed suits cluster together like a poorly dressed choir. One man is missing a leg, another has a scar running from his nose to his chin. In the background one can discern a laughing crowd and a banner reading "Bank of the Working Man."Because the city in question was Washington, these investors weren't the faceless Kiwanis types you're used to seeing assailed in banking stories, but people with national influence and reputations, men like Brent Scowcroft and Thomas Boggs. These investors knew little about banking but a lot about doing favors for their friends--local developers like Conrad Cafritz and politicians like Gary Hart.Among Cafe La Boheme's signatures are spaghettini dishes, one with taraco caviar and seaweed, $9, and another with baby clams and Shimeji mushrooms, $10. In addition to a standard three-cheese pizza with basil and tomato, $9, the restaurant features a "roast drunken chicken" pizza with an herb-and-nut base and Middle Eastern spices, $11.50.Nevertheless, the current climate of Japan-bashing in this country has managed to dampen slightly the enthusiastic reception accorded Cafe La Boheme and its staff. Explains general manager Cardenas: "I'm a little hesitant to say" who owns the restaurant, when patrons or prospective customers ask. After he does tell, "maybe one out of 20 walks out" never to return, Cardenas fears. "I think there is that possibility."NBW did survive plenty, from the Depression to union corruption to the Latin American debt crisis. What it didn't survive was a takeover by Washington's self-dealing power-brokers. As bank failures go, the $330 million that NBW's 1990 collapse will cost the shaky taxpayer-backed FDIC insurance fund isn't grand. Given the grim state of the economy, even the fact that 900 NBM employees lost their jobs and pensions seems to merit barely a footnote. But the story behind the NBW failure is important, because it encapsultates all that went wrong with so many banks and S&Ls during the Reagan years: From serving as a reliable, if troubled, lender to small city business, NBW was transformed into a cash cow for investors drawn from the ranks of the city elite.The men are survivors of the Battle of Blair Mountain, a two-day war in which hundreds of poorly armed miners fought the Kentucky mineowners' private militia, which was equipped with machine guns, mortars, and even a bomber. The miners lost. But in 1949, their union, the United Mineworkers of America (UMW), was rich enough to buy the National Bank of Washington (NBW), the bank that rebuilt Washington after the War of 1812 and erected the Washington Monument a few years later. John L. Lewis, the UMV president, had the Blair Mountain survivors shipped in for good luck, to show that the bank could survive anything.Per-person checks are averaging a relatively modest $30 at dinner and $12.50 at lunch, with wine and bar items accounting for about 25 percent of the cafe's business. Food costs are budgeted at 27 percent of sales."We thought service in L.A. was a lost art," said general manager Cardenas, who regards customer satisfaction as the restaurant's top priority. "We trained service," he stressed.Hodge's podgeSince its debut on Santa Monica Boulevard late last year -- in a high-ceilinged, gable-roofed structure suggestive of a Tuscan villa -- Cafe La Boheme has become a high-traffic haunt of chic, young gourmets and entertainment celebrities.A restaurant with crystal chandeliers and lace tablecloths. The pate is excellent. But why do all the waiters have heads like insects and voices like kotos? They must be playing Julie Frith's Music for Restaurants, mood music for the slightly deranged.Entrees range from grilled salmon with thyme and citrus sauce and tortilla salad, $16, to roast rack of lamb with apple-horseadish sauce and eggplant gratin, $18.50, and pork "Kakuni" with julienne vegetables, $14.Once the menu's ethnic premise is stated, however, the kitchen ventures off on globe-trotting tangents to showcase its versatility.Chef Kikuchi -- a veteran of French restaurants in Tokyo and Kyoto and, in Los Angeles, of such places as Katsu, Chaya Brasserie and Maple Drive -- reveals more of his repertoire on the new lunch menu, which offers such appetizers as a Thai glass noodle salad, $5.75, and stuffed chicken with oregano and tomato, $6.As NBW's early history demonstrates, getting a major loan from an American bank has always been as much a matter of who you know as how balanced your books are. But the Reaganauts injected two new elements into this insider culture: an almost messianic faith in growth and a disregard for oversight. NBW became one of the more than 500 banks in the past three years to overdose on this lethal mix of old and new banking attitudes, of country-club chumminess and free-market fever."When you look for a board of directors," he explains, "you look for statute, reliability, character, and connections. You need men who are part of the fabric of local business activity. In Houston, you pick men who drill oil, in Detroit, men who make cars, in Milwaukee, it would be beer. Here in Washington, it's not men who build or make things, it's lawyers and real estate developers. Even though they don't know much about banking, they can bring business to the bank through their place in the world."Among lunch entree choices are a fried mahi- mahi sandwich with pomme frites, $9.50; a precisely composed salmon-and-spinach lasagna with a tomato beurre blanc sauce, $11.50; and a grilled minute steak with Japanese wafu sauce, $15. A daily prix-fixe lunch men is $18.Hasegawa's dramatic newcomer springs from the city's more recent crop of Euro-Californian dining spots with Japanese chefs and Pacific Rim accents, including such places as Shiro, Carrots, Cafe del Rey and Cafe Gale.Appetizer choices include calamari fritti with a Neapolitan sauce, $7.50, and several starters with Asian inflections: a quick-smoked tuna dish, $10, is garnished with daikon strands and horseradish sauce, while a "melange of seaweed," $7.50, has a Dijon-sesame dressing.
"There are no young kids here or guys in a ponytail who say, 'Hi, I'm so and so,'" Cardenas remarked, adding that his elite service cadre is nonetheless inspected before each shift. "We check every fingernail, every shoe shine," he explained, citing elements of Cafe La Boheme's "guest-first" policy, "and people are coming back because of this."
Author: Richard Martin
No comments:
Post a Comment