When I started cooking in the early '70s, nobody wanted to be a chef.
Food wasn't important for us.
It wasn't important for us really until Jackie Kennedy brought Rene Verdon into the White House.
It’s interesting to think about a vertical neighborhood, and certainly establishing a
brand new community and a brand new neighborhood in New York.
But you think about New York, and that's been part of the evolution of New York.
New neighborhoods or revivals of neighborhoods.
When I first moved to New York City, in the early '80s, it was the Upper West Side, which
was just coming back to life again.
I mean, Columbus Avenue was the place to be.
Whether you were dining, whether you were shopping, or whether you were just strolling
and people watching.
That was the place to be.
So the resurgence of the Upper West Side, and you kind of watch that migration of resurgency
around New York City.
The Lower East Side, SoHo back in the day.
You think about that, Tribeca.
When I first moved to Tribeca, Tribeca was a wasteland.
Look at it today.
This was certainly a very ambitious project to cover the railway yards behind Penn Station.
Communities are about people and making sure that there is the infrastructure to support
that, and certainly the restaurants are a big part of that, and making sure that there
is that diversity in restaurants, in any community, this one being a very large one, where people
have the opportunity to dine, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, snacks in between, at any price range,
where people have the opportunity to really come in and relax.
Restaurants shouldn't be about politics.
It really should be about a place of refuge, where we can actually find that solace and
comfort, and nourish ourselves.
TAK Room is really casual dining, we have to remember that time in American history.
These were casual dining restaurants.
We want to make sure that people are comfortable in this restaurant, and there's no presumption
of any kind of rules or regulations, or things like that.
This should be a restaurant where people can come anytime during the day.
I've been thinking about this restaurant since 1996, '97.
I grew up in this kind of restaurant.
My mother ran this kind of restaurant.
This was a restaurant from a period in American history where we were the most respected,
the most glamorous, the most progressive, the wealthiest, most sharing nation on earth,
after World War II.
You think about some of the food that has become recognizable as American, things like Dover Sole.
Well that's, Dover Sole Meuniere is actually French.
We have a prime beef from England, you have lobster thermidor from France, we have chicken
kiev from Russia.
So you think about these dishes which are very recognizable in America.
And there's a sense of comfort with them, because we have reference points to them,
we've had them before.
So those are the things that we really focus on, in establishing a true nod to history.
And that's what we want to be.
We live in now an age of social media.
You know, how long will this continue to go on?
What's going to be the evolution of social media?
Anybody can be a blogger, or anybody can be on Yelp.
But these things, you come to a restaurant, you take a picture, you post it.
You go on Yelp, you leave a review.
When I first got into the profession, and moved to New York City, and became aware of
food criticism, you had basically 2 individuals here in the city who were extremely influential.
One was Gael Greene, and one was Mimi Sheraton.
And they wrote reviews about restaurants, and always, they were thoughtful.
They were talking about what their experience was in the restaurant with the food and service.
And that was very helpful for young chefs, and certainly for the people that they were
broadcasting that to.
I became a professional cook because my mentor, the gentleman who became my mentor, asked
me that question.
'Thomas, why do cooks cook?'
And I said, 'Chef, I don't know.'
I was flabbergasted.
He said, 'We cook to nurture people.'
At the end of the day, that's what we do, nurture people.