You have to sell a lot of omelets to pay the rent in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District these days. And when Florent Morellet’s landlord jacked up the rent on his restaurant, Florent, by enough to keep up with its chichi new neighbors, Morellet decided to pull the plug on 23 years at 69 Gansevoort Street. (The closing date is June 29, the last day of New York’s Gay Pride weekend.)
For anyone who ever sat at Florent’s counter at four in the afternoon or slouched into a banquette at four in the morning, the news felt a little like a death in the family. So Morellet is offering a little comfort for grieving customers: Beginning two Mondays ago, and continuing until Florent’s final day, it is holding a series of themed events and performances, with each theme representing one of the Kübler-Ross stages of grief. (This week we’re in the bargaining stage.)
In 2003, I interviewed Morellet, who had turned 50 not long before, and we talked about life in the restaurant business, and just life—the things that make his notoriously devilish heart skip a beat. Here, some excerpts from that talk, over plates of boudin noir and a bottomless cup of coffee.—Nanette Maxim
Nanette Maxim: So what’s different now that you’re 50?
Florent Morellet: The worst part was when I was 49. I had a big crisis in my life. But it was over by the time I turned 50. Then I had a big party in the south of France, at my brother’s restaurant, and my friends came from all over the world.
NM: Was cooking an important part of family life for you, growing up?
FM: Obviously in France, eating and cooking are a big part of living. My family was very into being hosts, because we had a business: We were the largest manufacturer of baby carriages in France. We also made toy metal racing cars. [In the restaurant is a picture of Florent, at around age 6, wearing little leather driving gloves and holding one of the cars.] My great-grandfather started a business making harnesses for horses before World War I. And after the war he started making the baby carriages, as the horse business was over. We sold the business in 1975 and my father has been fully involved with his art ever since. Mom is not an artist but she’s a manager.
NM: When did you first come to New York?
FM: I moved to New York in ’78. But before that, of course, I had a restaurant in Paris, on the Left Bank, near Montparnasse. In some ways it was like Florent—it was funky, and it was considered the first cool, hip restaurant in Paris. [Laughs.] It was a great social success but a financial disaster.
I was cooking there, with an American partner, and we did everything. So I was waiting on tables. Parisians are just a pain in the butt to serve. They’re very difficult. It’s the restaurant culture; there’s a different relationship between waiters and customers than there is in America. In America there is no class differential. You know, here I am Florent, a restaurant owner, and the staff and the customers are on the same level. The customers treat my waiters as equals. But in Paris people treat waiters very much like a separate class. For example, I have an uncle who felt that my restaurant was an insult to him and to the family—what were people going to think that his nephew was in the restaurant business?
NM: How did you deal with that?
FM: Well, I didn’t, but my mother had to, and it was very painful for her. My father is an artist, an iconoclast. My parents were fine with [my career choice]. But for me, dealing with customers who treated me like shit, it was hard, very painful. A typical story: A table treated me so obnoxiously. At the end of the meal—and I mean, they were really, really obnoxious—I told them who I was. One of the women had a gallery that had shown my father’s work. Suddenly they were ashamed at what they’d done to me; they were excusing themselves…. But I felt I’d won, I’d kept my calm throughout the whole thing. It’s a game in Paris, but not a pleasant game.
Of course, on the opposite side I felt it when I would go to the produce markets in Paris—the equivalent of Hunt’s Point in the Bronx—to buy food for the restaurant, and the sellers didn’t respect me because I was not one of them. They would actually not answer me. I would try to buy at the wholesale market, and they would ignore me. I was not from their class. I was a bourgeois. And finally they would just give me the worst case of salad.
Eventually I had to close the restaurant because I was losing money. I hated Paris then, and I still don’t like it much. I love the provinces; they’re so friendly. But the culture of Paris is the culture of complaining! Typically, you’ll say “Oh, it’s a wonderful day today.” And the Parisian says, “Oh, you’ll see; we’re going to pay for it!” But New York is very positive, gung-ho.
NM: When was the moment in New York when you said, “I want to open a restaurant here?”
FM: I’ve loved America since I was a kid. I did a “grand tour” with my parents when I was 14, in 1967. We drove from New York, all over New England, to Montreal for the World’s Fair, to Chicago, Detroit, Louisiana, across Texas, the Grand Canyon, California. And I came back to live here in ’73. I worked for a year in a restaurant in San Francisco. That’s when I decided to go to Paris and open a restaurant. It was a mistake… I realized that I was made for America. So I moved to New York, and I knew I wanted to become American; it was my calling. I started working in a restaurant in SoHo called La Gamelle—managing the place. It later became Lucky Strike. And I got good lessons there. The owner was a Franco-Algerian guy who taught me a lot about the basics. This guy really came to America with nothing. It was interesting that I learned from an Algerian, a real immigrant, not a princess.
NM: What are some of the things that he taught you that have stuck by you for all these years?
FM: He was very hard on people, very tough. But I learned about the basic bistro menu with classics that we improved. Good food at a good value. You can have the hottest restaurant, but you have to maintain a balance.
NM: You’ve seen a lot of people walk through these doors over the years. How has the profile changed? How about the people who come to Florent every week, every night?
FM: People come once a month, every six months… they have their first date here and then come every year. They’re on vacation here for two weeks, and during that two weeks they come here like five times. There are multiple layers of regulars. This guy who has a pied à terre for weekends, he’s here every weekend.
NM: How about those late-night, four-in-the-morning people?
FM: Ha! As people age…well, their timing changes; they’re getting married, and they used to come at 4 in the morning and now they come at 6:30 at night with their kids—we have a children’s menu, too. It’s very cute. I’ve always made it so that we are available to everybody, because we’re open 24 hours, and I think our clientele is the broadest that you can find in this country. Because we still get some meatpackers, families with children, club kids, the drag queens…. All, all, all people.
Late afternoon and early evening, it takes some people 10 minutes to get in the door with their packages, some old people with their nurse—you know, we’ve had some that almost died here! One guy always came in with his wife, then she passed away, and for the last eight or nine years he kept coming here, sometimes at midnight. He’d come in, he’d fall asleep on the banquette, two times he collapsed here and we had to call EMS. There were points where we had to call his family and say, “It’s getting out of hand. He needs home care.”
We’d bring him back home. He knew he could always come here, and he did… in his PJs and his coat! We took care of him and one of the busboys would call a cab to take him a block away. That’s what we do.
NM: The manager, Harry, has been with you since the beginning?
FM: At La Gamelle! Harry and Denise (the general manager); it will be 26 years we’ve worked together. [Harry has since retired; Denise is still there.]
NM: So what’s the formula? I know a couple of the waiters have been with you a long time… What do you do to keep them?
FM: I delegate. And we’re family. You know, the three of us, we all got along with our ex-boss, who was pretty wild and crazy. And we were very united, we worked well together. When I decided to start this restaurant I went out and said to the staff right away that I wanted my freedom. After two weeks being open, I said to the staff, “On weekends I’m off.” And I didn’t want to count the money.
Early on, I remember, it was like a year after we were open, Dorinka called me at home at around midnight; she woke me up and said, “Florent, there’s a fire above the restaurant.” And I said, “Well, is everything okay downstairs? Do you need me?” She said, “Well, I guess not.” So I said, “Good. Take care.”
So then I tried to go back to sleep but of course I couldn’t [laughs], so I called her back: “Really, is everything ok?” And she was taken aback. But that was my attitude. She handled it, and it was beautiful.
NM: Have there been other nights at the restaurant when they called you?
FM: There was a night when I was away that a major incident … there was an overdose. Someone died in the bathroom. And it was lucky because the police who came into the restaurant that night at first wanted to close the restaurant. But it was 1 A.M. on a Saturday night; the place was jammed. And they wanted to close the restaurant to take the body out. But another cop helped us out. [He points to a picture on the wall that says “Support Your Local Police,” with a photograph of a police officer]. He was the president of the Gay Police Officers Action League. I had met him 22 years ago, introduced to him by the captain of the precinct when I was at a police function. I was talking to the captain, and he stopped and said, “Florent, you have to meet Edgar Rodriguez; he’s the president of the Gay Officers Action League.”
I thought, I’m meeting him at the right place at the right time. And it was incredible that the captain of the precinct was introducing me to the gay cop!
So we became best friends and he was the beat cop of the neighborhood, and he’d have dinner when he was on the beat. He’d come in early, sit at the counter in his uniform and everything. I’d come in, kiss him on the mouth, and everyone would go, “Ahhhh!” And we loved it; the two of us loved the show.
Well, that night when Edgar heard on his cruiser radio what was going on (and by that time he was a sergeant), he knew there was a trap door in front of the restaurant. He said, “No, we’re not closing the restaurant.” He got the body out through the basement. He was right there, stopping people from going to the bathroom as they took the body out. He’d say, to the customers, “Someone is not feeling very well. I’m sorry sir, but you can’t come down here now.”
So when I came in the next day, Harry said, “We had a problem. Something very bad happened. We had an overdose, and somebody died.” Finally, it happened. It could have happened before. But that it happened only once in 23 years is amazing.
NM: When did you start getting politically involved? That’s a big part of your life.
FM: Very big. I’ve always been a political person, since I was young. But early on it started because [designer and former Colors editor] Tibor Kalman, who did all my graphics, and I were political. Very quickly after we opened we started doing political messages with the menu boards, and when I started doing advertising, I didn’t want to do just that. I wanted to do political advertising. I realized that I had a bully pulpit with this restaurant and I should use it.
NM: And you opened in 1985… when HIV was at the beginning. People were dying.
FM: Tibor and I had a very close friend, the person who introduced us, who was one of the first ones to die. He died in ’87, in a way that we were not happy about. He got way too much treatment that was not needed. That’s when I started to be involved with the right-to-die movement. Tibor and I did those political ads together, and we had fun doing it. It just took off, and we realized that it created an aura for the restaurant. It became more than just a place to eat; it became a home; it was a community.
NM: Tell me about your involvement with the Compassion In Dying organization.
FLORENT: My grandmother was living with us when I was younger, and she was ill. And she died at home. When she [had a crisis] she was allowed to go, there in her own room. It was difficult to see this, especially for my mother, but this was the way she wanted it. And her family was there. I learned to be calm and accept death. When the AIDS crisis came in, I already had that in my experience. Compassion in Dying is about making choices, to die with dignity.
NM: [On the walls of the restaurant are many drawings done by Florent years ago.] Tell me about your drawings, your maps. It’s reminding me of that Italo Calvino novel, Invisible Cities.
FM: I started doing the maps even before I studied urban planning. Yes, I draw maps of imaginary cities and countries; I’ve done it since I was 10 or 12. And my parents said I should be doing urban planning, to turn a habit into something constructive.
NM: Is it that you just love maps?
FM: Yes, yes. I love maps, especially contemporary ones. The other day I went to the map store and bought the latest maps of China. I needed to see how China is building a whole network of motorways. North-south, east-west—it’s mind-boggling. I like to see countries getting into modernity, and one way to see that is the motorways and the railroads they’re building. When you see Canton, Macau, Hong Kong, the building is insane. You can see the eminence of China, what’s going on there by looking at a map. I like old maps, too.
This is one I did when I was 22; it’s a dense country. I call this one Lowlands, a little like Holland or Belgium. You have coal mines, you can see the heaps, where the dirt from the mines are, the seam of coal here, and the marshes.
NM: What is it about urban planning that appealed to you? Did you ever think, I’d like to be like [New York City’s “master builder”] Robert Moses?
FM: Absolutely. Part of me is the good guy, like the beginning of Robert Moses, and part is the monster. I’m fascinated by the monstrosity of the late Robert Moses, the ugliness. I love to see the falling of the megalopolis. When I hear what’s happening with certain cities, I love to get the map and see the superhighways go in and destroy them—I have a sick pleasure in seeing that happen. At the same time, reading about Portland and the very smart things they’ve done with roads, and it’s so wonderful to see. I was there not long ago. Portland is wonderful.
NM: What’s in your mind when you’re drawing the maps—a story?
FM: It grows organically. This one, I started with a city on top of a hill, and it was going to be the seat of the king and of the church. And then I created the side for the merchants. And they grew into one. The king was very powerful, and the new palace was like the Louvre with paintings inside. Eventually the [city] walls were demolished to make boulevards. It’s a takeoff on Paris.
See, then the emperor came and put his own arc of triumph there. There’s an awful revolution and they build an ugly church to redeem people, like in Montmartre. The king’s policies led him to build his own version of Versailles.
[We’re looking at another map now.] Here I built a whole new town with skyscrapers in the middle. It’s a takeoff on a town in the Netherlands, a Brave New World of public housing. You see these places on the outskirts of Paris as well.
[Urban planner and community activist] Jane Jacobs wrote a great book called The Death and Life of Great American Cities, where she talked about Robert Moses. And one of the things she talked about was the world of a tenement in New York, where you had shops on the street and apartments on the second level. You literally had eyes on the street, people who were looking at the kids who made trouble, and people always managed to say C’mon, what are you doing? But when people move to these projects you have no eyes on the street. It’s an empty environment.
NM: Your restaurant hasn’t really changed much at all, in all these years.
FM: It’s a design from 1949. This table is original. The Formica on the counters. What I added was the banquette, the mirror in back of the light. But the mirror on this wall was added during the shooting of a film; they asked if I wanted them to take it down, to bring it back to the original. And I said no.
See that map over there? It’s the map of Liechtenstein, in memoriam of Roy Lichtenstein. Only a few people know that. He used to come every day, and he sat in this booth, during the week for lunch, with a crew. I miss him.
NM: What do you think about for the future? Will you go on like this forever?
FM: We’re trying to work on a book. I hope it works out. The menu itself we’ve hardly changed. It’s huge, one of the largest menus. The difficulty to add something is that you have to subtract something; so we struggled. We looked at the numbers and said we’ll subtract the lentil salad. Then so many people said to me, “I love the lentil salad.” So… I can’t do it. I can’t add anything more.