It is enough to credit Drew Nieporent with turning on the lights on the streets of New York’s Tribeca upon opening the modern French restaurant Montrachet in April 1985. Before that the only place to eat way downtown was the casual bistro Odéon at a time when the neighborhood was a wasteland of warehouses below Canal Street. The rent there was all Nieporent could afford, but its huge success allowed him to open more and more restaurants nearby, including Tribeca Grill and the ground-breaking Japanese restaurant Nobu, now with locations worldwide.
         Nieporent and his Myriad Restaurant Group won many awards along the way and had their share of flops and misfortunes, not least the destruction of much of Tribeca on 9/11. He has also been deeply involved in charity work, especially Madison Square Garden's Garden of Dreams Foundation, City Meals on Wheels, and DIFFA. Drew was named Humanitarian of the Year (2000) by both the James Beard Foundation and Distinguished Restaurants of North America.
    I recently interviewed Nieporent, 68, in New York.

Before you opened your first restaurant, where did you learn your trade?

I grew up in New York City, born 1955, and my father worked for the State Liquor Authority, in charge of granting liquor licenses, so by the sixties I was going with him to every type of restaurant imaginable—French, Chinese, Italian, German, diners, because he helped these people to get their licenses, and they were all very grateful and invited us to dine in their their restaurants. I learned on-the-job training by eating and being fascinated—and from very, very early age—so I knew that is what I wanted to do. My first job , when I went to Stuyvesant High School, was at McDonald’s in 1972; I was the opening Quarter Pound Grill Man. Then in 1974 I went to Cornell University and knew I’d have to supplement my education, so I worked on this 600-passenger cruise liner Vistafjord as  a waiter, breakfast, lunch, dinner, seven days a week.  I’d never worked as a waiter before, but I talked my way into the job, and did it 15 times. Then I had the experience to become a captain at New York’s top restaurants like La Réserve, Le Périgord, Le Régence and La Grenouille.

Were La Grenouille (right) and the other French places of the 1970s and 1980s as snobbish as they were reputed to be?

They really weren’t snobbish at all. But they could be intimidating to the guests because in most cases menus were all in French, which took some interpretation and very long descriptions. I got the job at La Grenouille because the owner, Charles Masson, belonged to the New York Athletic Club, as I did, and he saw my waiter’s tuxedo on the locker door, and hired me. I suppose there was some snobbism because Henri Soulé [who had opened Le Pavillon in the 1940s] had a caste system of where favorites would sit and he’d bury others in Siberia. I think that snobbism was actually related to their attitude towards Americans in general.

How daring was it to open Montrachet in TriBeCa when you did?

The idea was only a possibility based on the rent. The only space I could afford was way downtown: 1,500 square feet for $1,500 a month. I jogged down to look. It was only $18,000  a year, and [restaurant] Chanterelle was doing such great business in SoHo nearby. There was an L-shaped woodworking shop adjacent to our space, and I took on that additional 3,500-square-foot space for $3,500 a month. Back then the only place in Tribeca was Odéon,  opened in 1980 by Keith McNally. It was No Man’s Land, but I found a fantastic chef in David Bouley. Within seven weeks we got three stars from The New York Times.

Montrachet and then Tribeca Grill really threw light on the streets and made Tribeca a vibrant place. Did you anticipate this?

I think when you realize enormous success after just seven weeks that it was like winning the lottery without being able to collect the cash. The phone never stopped ringing. It was like “Storm the Bastille!” Robert DeNiro was a customer; he’d sit with his back to the room, and he had a sassy girlfriend  named Tookie Smith—her father was Willi Smith, who owned Williwear—and she tells me, “Bob wants to know if you wanna open another in Soho.” And that became Tribeca Gill up the street. The space was enormous—200 seats. We opened in 1990, and I did anticipate that would be a huge success. As partners we had DeNiro (below with Martin Scorsese and Tookie Smith), Sean Penn, Christopher Walken, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Lou Diamond Philips, Ed Harris—did I drop enough names? I made sure the food and service was up to snuff. 

How did you become involved with so many celebrities for investment in Nobu? How many Nobus do you now partner in?

The  celebs were really more involved in Tribeca Grill. DeNiro had a friendship with chef Nobu Matsuhisa in L.A. and thought he’d be a good match with the Grill. Bad casting!  But I recognized the bond he had with Bob, and I was inclined to make it happen, so I found a place right up the block—it was a bank space—and made it into an exciting sushi restaurant. That was 1994, the same year we opened Rubicon in San Francisco with DeNiro, Francis Ford Coppola and chef Traci Jardins. Now, I’m partner in the original Nobu in New York, and London as well. There are 56 around the world, including hotels. It was one of the most fantastic food ideas of the last thirty years.

You changed Montrachet three times in both name and stye and then closed it. Why?

When we opened Montrachet in 1985, David  Bouley was our chef for 13 months, then Debra Ponzek was there for five years and did a terrific job. After 22 years my partner decided he was no longer interested in running the restaurant and bailed. We closed for a short period, then rebooted as Corton with chef Paul Liebrandt and got three New York Times stars and two Michelin stars. We enlarged the kitchen and took out about 30 seats. It was a great restaurant, except the customers didn’t love it. We re-booted again and opened Bâtard in 2014 with chef Marcus Glocker,  and it was a raging success: Esquire’s Best New Restaurant in America, three stars from the Times and Michelin.  It ran for eight years and then I sold it to a husband-and-wife team who opened it as Eulalie.

The word among the present food media is that fine dining is dying? How do you feel about that?

We still have a number of fine dining places, like Daniel, Jean-Georges (below) and Le Bernardin retaining French fine dining, but I think that is not necessarily the mode most people want to eat at anymore. There is a resistance to formality, dressing up. I don’t think fine dining is dying, although it will not dominate as it once did. Keep in mind, Montrachet in 1985 was actually an answer to fine dining re-categorized as a place where you could eat well, drink fine wines and pay less. We did away with the trappings;  no dress codes; menus in English. All my restaurants are much more relaxed dining experiences.

Upscale restaurants prices have risen so that it’s tough not to spend $100 per person anywhere. Is there any price resistance at your restaurants?

The whole price thing is absolutely crazy! Any kind of restaurant is now charging $20-$30 for an appetizer and $50 and up for mains. An “inexpensive” wine is now $50  or $80 in many places. Prices are insane, but apparently people are paying. I see little resistance. I spent my entire career keeping prices at a reasonable level, even at the height of my success.  When we opened Nobu in 1994 we were thought of as high priced, but now it’s in the middle of the pack. The pandemic changed a lot of things, but people are paying the price to dine out.

Do you think the food media has very consciously avoided covering upscale restaurants? If so, why?

The food media is a bit of a jungle now. We’ve lost many of the important critics like Gael Greene [of New York magazine], and Zagat has gone away. The Times now has a food critic [Pete Welles] for 10 years who really doesn’t like upscale restaurants and has said so. He bombed Per Se and Eleven Madison Park. He’s been good to my restaurants, except Nobu, which he killed. There used to be a consensus what were the best in New York, but now there are so many new places and so many in Brooklyn. I don’t think the media are avoiding upscale restaurants, but just having a problem covering the endless number of new places that are opening. And this is my pet peeve: They cover pizza, tacos and banh mi places almost on the same level they used to cover our restaurants.

Has foreign tourism brought business back and do they eat downtown?

When I opened in 1985 the dirty word was “tourists” and “tourist trap,” so we changed it to “visitors” and embraced them.We need their money as much as any. New York is a mecca for restaurants, probably the capital of the world for finding every kind of food. It’s a major part of the city’s business and always has been. Now these visitors will eat  downtown, or any part of the city, if the food is good.

Did Brooklyn steal some of Manhattan's thunder as the place people wanted to try?

There was a moment of time when Brooklyn was riding a real high and probably did steal some of the business. Then it settled in with simpler smaller, restaurants, although Gage & Tollner and River Café are still busy.  Brooklyn is the hot spot for dining out in the New York area at the moment, but I wouldn’t say it’s stolen Manhattan’s thunder. Manhattan still had the best restaurants. 

You once said that landlords seem never to have noticed 9/11, recession and Covid, and just keep raising rents only a CVS pharmacy seems to be able to afford. Is this driving restaurateurs out of business?

Even before 9/11 and the recession and Covid the landlords really pissed me off because they created this idea of what market rent should be based on whatever the schmuck on the  block pays the highest. Rents were impossible and they didn’t relent, but are relenting now,  and that’s why there is a surge of new restaurants. Of course, a great number closed. Landlords are starting to get religion and ease up, especially in Manhattan. In Brooklyn the rents got a little silly but are now more manageable.

Has home delivery and work-at-home changed the restaurant scene in New York?

Food take-out has actually helped the biz by and large, and the pandemic created a new wave of people bringing home  food; even at Nobu we do a tremendous amount of take-out. It’s extraordinary, and with so many delivery services it’s hard not to get hit on the street by a delivery guy. That’s not to say I endorse, it because food should be  eaten at a restaurant when cooked with precision and served hot, but, without doubt, with the  add-on fees it has helped our bottom line.

You have a Nobu in London. How does that city’s restaurant scene differ from New York?

In London we have three Nobus—at the Metro hotel (right), Appointment Square Nobu hotel and Shoreditch. I absolutely adore London as a restaurant scene. I used to say it reminded me of New York—every kind of restaurant imaginable now, and lots of great British’s chefs.

You yourself have always chosen to live outside New York and commute.  Why?

It’s obvious I Ioved living in New York, growing up in Cooper Village, and Washington Square Park, but my wife and I moved to Ridgewood, New Jersey, and were there for 30 years; we’re now in Piermont, New York,, and it’s fantastic. The quality of life is much better, the views of Hudson River spectacular, and even if I’m in my car two and a half hours a day on the Palisades Parkway I can be home in twenty minutes.

I know you keep up with others’ restaurants. Where do you like to eat these days? 

I love going out to eat, but I’m cheap and don’t like to spend money. I love Aska, Ernestos, San Sabino.  I love Chinatown places for the soup dumplings and Joe’s Shanghai, and a slew of Chinese places in Flushing. 

Tell me about your charity causes.

I’ve been involved from beginning in City Meals on Wheels.  My grandmother received them, near and dear to my heart. We’ve donated to dozens of others. Make a Wish,  City Harvest. We don’t say no to a lot of things.

      At the former Magdalene Laundries site Sara Garrison said to Katie, “Awful looking place, isn’t it? Inside was very bare, beds in dormitories, the washrooms downstairs. No air conditionin’, of course, so it truly was a sweat shop. You’ve heard that Joni Mitchell song about the Laundries?”
         Katie said she had, and Garrison quoted the lines, “We're trying to get things white as snow/All of us woe-begotten daughters/In the steamin’ stains/Of the Magdalene laundries.”
         “You said this was once the biggest red light district in Europe? In a Catholic country?”
   Garrison’s face showed that she regarded Katie as naïve.
         “’Tis poverty that breeds prostitution, and religion only fuels it. Indeed, in a Catholic country like Ireland, where women are either a virgin or a whore, families felt justified in throwin’ their third or fourth or fifth or ninth daughter into the streets. One less mouth to feed. Good riddance. So these streets were teemin’ with whore houses and prossies.”
       Garrison said the area was then known as Monto, short for Montgomery Street, a block over from the Laundries.
         “The British army had a garrison there, which made for a ready trade among the prostitutes for more than a century.  There was quite a famous Madam here, name of Bella Cohen, who was said to be a brutal taskmaster with the girls. She took them when they were young teenagers, destroyed their lives, put them in debt and threw them out when they lost their looks and their health, or got pregnant. From there they either went into what they called ‘flash houses’—taverns where rich men came to carouse—or ‘shillin’ houses,’ where a girl cost a shillin’.  Last resort was on the streets and alleys by themselves.
         “You might be interested to know it was in Monto that James Joyce set what he called ‘nighttown’ in Ulysses, the ‘Circe’ chapter, and he made Bella Cohen (right) a character who forces poor Leopold Bloom to get on his hands and knees and rides him across the floor.”
         Katie had never read more than a few pages of Ulysses, but she knew a good story when she heard one and copied it down in her notes.
         “Aye, ‘twas, to one degree or another. In 1921 the British army pulled out of Dublin, so both the whorehouses and the Laundries lost a good deal of business as a result. A few years later the police raided what was left of the houses—aided, I might add, by the Legion of Mary relief agency. Most of the buildin’s were demolished and they put in a lot of cheap public housin’. The Laundries is one of the few buildin’s left, and now that’s up for sale, though I can’t imagine anyone buyin’ the fuckin’ thing, unless they mean to tear it down. I wish they’d burn it out of existence. But that might ruin the tour business in the neighborhood. Half of them come lookin’ for Leopold Bloom, the rest to gawk at the Laundries.”
         “And the Laundries stayed open through all that?”
         “Yes, but their control was weakened by the seventies. They still took in girls, but had to be a bit more secretive about the business. Still, the Church went along with that, and many of the priests continued to prey on those girls for years.”
         “Priests from the local parishes?”     
         “Not just them. I’ve spoken to women who said that priests and brothers from out of the country would be brought to the Laundries and have their way with the girls. And at the other Laundries around Ireland.”
         “You mean the priests had some sort of network giving access to the women at the Laundries?”
         Katie’s mind was racing. The story was growing tentacles. What was it that Richard Sipe had said? “There’s a Network of clergy bound to gather by their mutual knowledge of sexual activity either with others—both male and female—or with each other.”

 

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    Max Finger let David go through the official police reports on the murders and the interviews done thus far, which included with all the residents in the places where the murders took place and the Mother Superior of the Sisters of Charity Order, who was being cared for in a Dublin hospital.
         “She’s a very old lady,” said Finger, “and she gave up nothin’. Tight-lipped as a viper, with the same smile. Said that it would take some time—meanin’ forever—to get any basic information on the murdered nuns beyond their dates of birth, ordination and appointment to the Laundries. She as much as said she wouldn’t cooperate in any accusations made against the nuns by the women who’d been inside or any outside authorities.”
         “Do you have such records?” asked David.
         “Only if they were filed with the police, and, believe me, those are damn few and far between. What do you say in America, ‘What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas’? It’s the same with the Church in Ireland. They tell us, ‘Trust us to take care of our own,’ and the head of the department says, ‘O, yes, Father’ ‘Oh, of course, Your Holiness.’”
         “But there are some complaints in the files?”
         “Yeah, we’ve been lookin’ through what we can find. We’re not as automated as you are in the States, y’know.”
         “Believe me, Max, I spent years of my life in dusty old file rooms in New York. It’s only gotten better in the last few years."
         “Well, as yet, we haven’t been able to find any women who filed complaints who are still alive. There must be some, but it’ll take time.”
         “So what’s the schedule this afternoon?”
         “I do have an appointment with one of the women who had been in the Laundries in the eighties and must have known the murdered nuns. If your reporter friend wants to come along, invite her.”
     David called Katie immediately and gave her the address of the woman they would be meeting at three o’clock, which happened to be in one of the public housing buildings just a few blocks from the Laundries.
         When Katie arrived, David introduced her, and Finger glanced at David to indicate he was a lucky man to be traveling with such a fine-looking woman.
         “Now we’re two Italians and one Jew huntin’ down Irish Catholics,” said Finger. “The odds are gettin’ better.”