NATION’S RESTAURANT NEWS

Richard Binder, third-generation family owner of Philippe The Original in Los Angeles, says that while having family members involved in the business was important to the restaurant’s long tenure, some oft-cited industry qualities were equally crucial.

“We have fair pricing, great service, high quality and good employees,” he says, “and our customers recognize and appreciate that.”

With a check average of about $7, Philippe does not actually fall into the full-service, casual-dining category. It’s a counter-service restaurant that is basically renowned for the signature dish it is said to have invented: the French-dip sandwich.

However, the restaurant has a nationally recognized wine cellar and has won several awards for that collection and its modest price points.

According to legend, Binder’s grandfather, Philippe Mathieu, then an employee of the restaurant, accidentally invented the French-dip sandwich in 1918, 10 years after the place opened, when he dropped a French roll in a roasting pan filled with hot meat juice. He served the sandwich to a cop, who returned the next day, asking for the sandwich to be prepared in the same way.

Today, that hot meat juice has taken on a fancier French appellation and is known as jus.

“The drippings from the meat we roast, that’s the real secret,” Binder says. “We reduce the [drippings] by boiling it for 48 hours, and you end up with a real heavy au jus. That’s where the flavor is, and that is what brings them back.”

The 350-seat restaurant serves about 3,500 guests a day.

Binder’s grandfather bought the place for $5,000 and moved it in 1951 to its current location on North Alameda Street, near downtown Los Angeles’ old Chinatown district and just blocks from historic Olvera Street and the Union Station.

“But we’ve been here now going on 50 years, and do you know we still have guests who refer to this as our ‘new’ place?” Binder says. “It shows that our customers are spanning the generations, too.”

In the heartland city of Kansas City, Mo., 66-year-old Stroud’s restaurant also is catering to multigenerational customers on a premise of serving recognizable comfort foods, says Jim Hogan, an owner.

“Pan-fried chicken, real mashed potatoes, steaks and pork chops—comfort food, that’s what we do best, “ says Hogan, “and that’s why our customers come back.”

Opened in 1933 on 85th Street, then the outskirts of Kansas City, Stroud’s is serving grand-grandchildren of regulars as the booming city now counts its city limits in streets numbered above 300.

“We often see people who dated here and then got married. Now their kids’ kids are coming here,” Hogan says, beaming.

In New York the famed Oyster Bar also is playing to a new generation of customers. Another recipient of the James Beard regional Classic Award, the Oyster Bar—in the landmark Grand Central Station train terminal—turned 86 years old this year.

Jerry Brody, who ran Restaurant Associates from 1947 to 1963, bought the Oyster Bar and Gallagher’s Steakhouse after leaving RA. He recently sold the businesses to management through an employee stock-ownership program.

Brody says he intends to stay modestly active in the business, but the day-today operations will fall to Mike Garvey, president and general manager, who notes that nothing will change.

The Oyster Bar has more than 25,000 square feet, 450 seats, a $40 check average and annual sales between $8 million and $9 million, and Garvey says the only thing he worries about is maintaining the restaurant’s reputation for serving the broadest selection of oysters and clams possible in an era of continuing seafood depletion and environmental difficulties. On any given day the restaurant markets 25 to 30 kinds of oysters, sometimes boasting two size-based price points within the same species.

Garvey says that Brody, a New York City recipient of the James Beard regional Classic Award, will be hard to replace.

“The thing about Jerry Brody was that he know how to get performance out of people,” he says. “I mean, the guy is a legend, and he knew this business. It was his goal that every day we opened the door, the Oyster Bar sold the freshest fish and oysters in the city of New York. And most days, I’m glad to say, we do just that.”

One of the “new kids on the block,” also a Regional Classic Award winner, is the 35-year-old Doris & Ed’s, in Highland, N.J. The restaurant occupies a building that opened originally in the early 1900s as a hotel.

The current owner Jim Filip, a former Mid-west regional manager for the Steak & Ale chain, bought Doris & Ed’s 22 years ago. He says the seafood restaurant’s proximity to the fine-dining legends of New York City forces him continually to refine his menu and upgrade product quality, both of which he believes are responsible for the establishment’s popularity and prosperity.

A recipient of a Wine Spectator magazine award, the restaurant generates a $50 check average.

“When I got that award from the James Beard Foundation, it was like winning an Oscar,” Filip says. “It reaffirmed that what you are doing is the right thing. But more importantly, your peers recognize, too, that they thing your business is a classic.”.