Stephen Starr isn’t a chef, he doesn’t like to cook, and he readily confesses, “I’m sick of restaurant food. I’d rather have a can of tuna fish and a Diet Coke.” Hey, that’s his prerogative, but it is jarring to hear those words from the mouth of a bona fide dining magnate.
Starr owns sixteen upscale restaurants, twelve of them in his native Philadelphia (where he still lives, in Center City). The 50-year-old entrepreneur has shown an unerring knack for creating compelling dining experiences in a variety of themes. The food is reliably tasty and attractively presented, but the buzz comes from the lavish and imaginative interiors, conducive to a bustling, and profitable, bar scene.
“He’s almost solely responsible for pushing the design of restaurants to a much more cutting-edge, and expensive, level in Philadelphia,” says architect Elizabeth Knapp, who has designed several small independent restaurants in Center City. “He does develop unique characters for each place. He does interesting things with lighting. You don’t walk into a Stephen Starr restaurant and think it’s a chain.”
Last year, Starr branched out. He wowed Manhattan with an over-the-top incarnation of Buddakan, his Asian-themed Philadelphia flagship, and also opened Morimoto, featuring Iron Chef star Masaharu Morimoto. In Atlantic City, he opened two restaurants on the luxe new Pier at Caesars, a $175-million project built on the bones of the old Ocean One Pier. Buddakan and Continental (a “global tapas” place that is his second most profitable Philly brand) are—are his first ventures in New Jersey. But he says they won’t be his last.
After opening 12 theme restaurants in Philadelphia and two in New York, what brought you to Atlantic City?
Like a lot of people in Philadelphia, I grew up spending summers in Atlantic City. I used to work on the Boardwalk. I liked it better then. It had the Steel Pier and the Million Dollar Pier, it was schlocky but in a cool kind of way, more like Coney Island. There were old delis, like Lou’s in Ventnor. It had character. Then the casinos came in and it lost all its charm, I think.
So what changed your mind?
A Connecticut developer named Sheldon Gordon came to me. He was building the Pier at Caesars. This was right after the Borgata opened. The boardwalk was rundown, but the Borgata was away from all that. The sold themselves as the anti-Atlantic City. We actually had negotiated with the Borgata before they opened, but we couldn’t make a deal. Sheldon had done the very successful Forum Shops at Caesars in Las Vegas, and he convinced me this project was going to be world-class. So he sold me on Atlantic City.
Had you considered opening elsewhere in New Jersey?
I really don’t want to go into the suburbs. It’s bad for the brand. In other words, I have to be true to who I am. Which is a hip, urban, cutting-edge restaurant group. When you go into the suburbs you become a chain. Which I really don’t want to be. I mean, there’s nothing bad about being a chain. But it’s not who I am.
You see the suburbs as unhip?
It’s not that. But I’ve established myself in Philadelphia and New York and now Atlantic City, and New Jersey is an extension of those markets. Now, could I open, say, in Chevy Chase, Maryland, a non-Buddakan restaurant? Yeah. Or in the suburbs of Atlanta? Sure. But not in our home market.
We pondered Cherry Hill, at the mall, but we decided against it for the reasons I mentioned. It would be fun to be somewhere like Long Beach Island. I think if I opened a restaurant on Long Beach Island, everyone on Long Beach Island will go. For two months. Then what would I do the rest of the year?
You mentioned you used to work on the Atlantic City boardwalk. What did you do?
I was a salesman. Summers during high school and college, I used to rent a house with my friends. We worked in these stores that sold watches, jewelry, stereo equipment and these high-end but ugly statues and figurines. The stores were all over then. In those days they were largely Sephardic-owned, Israeli, Syrian. I worked like an animal—14-to-16-hour days. Low salary, commission on the amount of profit you made on each item. I sound like an old guy, but it’s why it amazes me now that young people—and I admire then and I also feel jealous—they put it 40 hours a week, or 35, and they’re exhausted. I mean, we worked seven days a week.
What did you get out of it?
I probably learned more about life on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City than I did anywhere else. It was an incredible experience. It totally changed me.
How?
I learned human nature. I learned how to sell. Some of it wasn’t that good—trying to sell people things they didn’t want to buy. But you got to talk to grownups. And when you’re that young, you really learn and you mature. So we discovered things, and basically made up the prices.
You made up the prices?
Well, there was a price tag on each item, but the tag also had a code that told you what it cost wholesale. So you could go down almost to that point—ten, twenty dollars above it. People were on vacation, just schmoozing. So you literally had to go up to them and give them a reason they should buy this ring. ‘It’s a beautiful ring, it’s normally $280, I can give it to you today for $250.’ And they enjoyed the bartering.
See, the problem with the consumer [protection] people is that people like to haggle. They think they’re getting a bargain. It was fun, and it doesn’t really happen anymore. ‘How much?’ ‘Two-fifty.’ ‘I’ll give you two hundred.’ ‘Two twenty five.’ At the end, people thought they won. And that was the key to selling on the Boardwalk. They won. They thought they got you down to a price where you really didn’t want to go.
Meanwhile, you had the codes.
Right. You knew. In the end, I learned not to trust anybody for mercy on the Boardwalk. Because everybody’s out to sell you.
How did the Boardwalk experience help you later in business?
I learned to speak in front of people. And that was very important. After all that, I went into film and television production for awhile. I literally went to NBC, ABC, CBS, and I had tremendous confidence speaking in front of people that I should have been totally intimidated by. And I attribute it to that experience of schmoozing and convincing on the Boardwalk.
Did you sell things to the networks?
I never really sold them. I was young. To get into see the vice-president of programming at NBC when I was 19, to get them to listen, I felt like that was a huge accomplishment. I was pitching two shows. One was a game show featuring the Amazing Kreskin, the mentalist, as the host. The other was the Lee Harvey Oswald story. I had gotten the rights to his story from his mother. And I was so excited—I thought, ‘I’ve got these rights, I’m going to get the money, I’ll make the movie.’ So I finally got to some guy, and he said, ‘There’s only one problem. You don’t need the rights. Anybody can make a movie about him.’ At the end of the day, my production company ended up doing concert videos for Warner Brothers Records.
And that led to your first career as a concert promoter?
Yes. Back in the ‘80s I used to book Clarence Clemons at a club in Red Bank called Big Man’s. I had to sell myself to the performers’ agents and personal managers. I had to sell myself to Madonna’s manager. Why I’m the guy she should go with. You have to be charming and you have to be convincing. [did he land Madonna?]
I’ve wondered whether the name of your flagship restaurant, Buddakan, is a reference to the famous Budokan concert hall in Tokyo.
Absolutely. I couldn’t think of a name for the restaurant. One of the first concerts I booked, or the first in an arena, was Cheap Trick at the Trenton War Memorial. And Cheap Trick’s big album was Live at Budokan. And Dylan also recorded at Budokan, and Clapton, and others. I’ve never been there. It just had a flow to it. I changed the spelling.
You have a huge statue of a Buddha dominating the dining room at the Buddakans in Philadelphia and Atlantic City[ck]. Does that represent some spiritual statement?
It would be a good hook to say that, but no. I was looking for something that would tie the whole thing together. There’s always something spiritual about a Buddha, but you don’t have to be of that religion to appreciate it. You wouldn’t feel as comfortable sitting in a restaurant in front of a crucifix or a Star of David or an Islamic symbol.
How is the Atlantic City Buddakan different from the ones in Philadelphia and New York?
Atlantic City is very much like Philadelphia in terms of menu, and that’s partly because the markets are similar, only an hour away, and a huge percentage of the people who go to Atlantic City are from Philadelphia. The food is Asian fusion—a mix of Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, with some Indian influences. New York is very different. There’s no single Buddhist element there, and the menu emphasizes Chinese.
Why the change?
After Buddakan opened in Philadelphia in 1996[7?], a restaurant called Tao, which became very successful, opened in New York and copied Buddakan. For us to go into New York and do the original Buddakan would look like we’re copying them. I would have faced harsh criticism. I wanted to do something in New York that they’d never seen before.
You felt Chinese was underrepresented?
There’s plenty of Chinese restaurants in Chinatown, but to get something with better ingredients, with a little more refinement in presentation, that did not exist.
Was there any question which of your dozen or so existing concepts you would put in the Pier at Caesars?
They wanted Buddakan desperately. Buddakan is by far the best known restaurant from Philadelphia in the country. And it’s our most profitable restaurant. Asian food right now is, in my opinion, the broadest appealing food in the country. The second most popular concept is some form of casual. And Continental, the other restaurant we opened on the Pier, is casual, with a huge bar component. It’s our second most successful brand.
If I were guess why Asian is so popular I would say the price is reasonable, it’s easy to share, easy to understand, it comes out of the kitchen fairly quickly, the service needn’t be elaborate, but what would you say?
It’s the flavor. You feel like you’re exotic, but you’re really not. Everyone likes Chinese food. And what else is there? French? Intimidating, too high end. Italian? Been there, done that. You can get ravioli and spaghetti anywhere, and there’s all that carbs. I wish there was something else new.
What about Latin?
We have a Latin restaurant. It’s done very well. Alma de Cuba. We have the best chef in the world for Latin food, Douglas Rodriguez. But you can’t do 800 covers [individual customers] a night.
Eight hundred covers a night?
Buddakan New York does 800 to a thousand a night, with 290 seats. In New York people are still having dinner at 11:30 pm. Buddakan Philadelphia has 180 seats, Buddakan Atlantic City #TK.
Do you have a new concept up your sleeve?
We’re definitely working on new ideas. One is a burger idea. My idea is not expensive things like Kobe burgers, but regular burgers cooked different ways, maybe in different sizes. We’d have one turkey burger, one veggie burger, but mainly beef. Like a backyard charcoal grilled burger on a Kaiser roll. I remember as a kid I thought that was the best. But then as I’ve become a culinary guy I realized that the best tasting burger is one that has a decent amount of fat. And I like one cooked on a flat grill because it cooks in its own fat. That concept might work well in Atlantic city?
You would do more in Atlantic City?
Though I said initially I didn’t want to go there, my belief now after being there is that there is a market that’s untapped. The big guys that you assume are smart, like the big casino companies, are not that smart. They underestimate the customers. They give them buffets and dated Italian and Chinese restaurants. I think they’re starting to recognize they can’t get away with that. I believe with our products we can shake things up. I think we could create our own restaurant world there—not on the Pier, but there are new things coming in. I think we can do 10, 12 restaurants in Atlantic City, and not necessarily the brands we already have.
How do Philadelphians regard New Jersey, if you can generalize?
I think New Jersey is seen as fine. New Jersey, if you think about, and I’m being a Northeast snob, is a very progressive state. I mean, look at Pennsylvania. There’s Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and in between is Alabama.
You can’t say that about South Jersey. Plus, you guys have Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi, Danny DeVito, The Sopranos.
Do you think The Sopranos has been good for New Jersey?
Yeah, in a comical way. I don’t think anybody takes it seriously as a reflection of life in the state. It’s very fun to watch. You know what? Listen to the song “Jersey Girl,” that Tom Waits wrote and Springsteen covered. That song is New Jersey. There’s a grittiness to Jersey that’s cool.