05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
I Had No Chef, No Toilets and No Budget. But I Was Determined to Open Balthazar.
The idea for Balthazar came about while I was living in Paris seven years before I built the place. I was searching for vintage curtains at a flea market in 1990 when I suddenly spotted an old sepia photo of a turn-of-the-century bar. Behind the bar's zinc counter were hundreds of liquor bottles stacked 20 feet high, flanked by two towering statues of semi-naked women carved in the classical Greek style. I was so mesmerized by this image that I forgot about the curtains and bought the photo instead. For years I carried it in my back pocket, thinking that if I ever found a space with a sky-high ceiling, I'd build a bar just like the magnificent one in the photo. Stepping into Adar Tannery in the summer of 1995, I'd found that space. Five months later construction began.
Before I begin building, I always have a specific idea of a restaurant's design. But as the boxer Mike Tyson once said, 'Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.' My watertight floor plan usually starts leaking on the first day of construction. Unable to visualize an idea until it becomes tangible, I will often build things two or three times over until I feel it's right. The artist Robert Motherwell said he painted 'by correction.' I do everything by correction, especially restaurant design. That's why I always go over budget. And why I'd never invest in myself.
