EAT THIS NEW YORK
Reviewed by: Harvey S. Karten
Grade: B+
Organic Pictures
Directed by: Andrew Rossi, Kate Novack
Written by: Kate Novack
Cast: Daniel Boulud Siro Maccioni, John McCormick, Keith
McNally, Danny Meyer, Drew Nieporent, Billy Phelps, Ruth
Reichl, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Tim Zagar
Opened: Cinema Village, NYC, 1/30/04
When President Bush pushed through his ill-advised tax-cut,
erasing the nice surplus built up by his predecessor, he not only
put our country's treasury into a deficit but even worse, he
allowed the richest five percent of our citizens to garner the
lion's share of the new law. The President's excuse? These
guys, he stated more or less, are the nation's entrepreneurs and
they're the ones who will set up new businesses and employ
lots of people, thereby actually raising the total revenues that
the government collects by stimulating the economy.
If you doubt the rationale, you'll rest easily know that Andrew
Rossi and Kate Novack's doc, "Eat This New York," shows that
the heroes of our economy are the little guys, the entrepreneurs
who set up thousands, even millions of small businesses,
employing people particularly in the neighborhoods they live in,
people who'd not likely find employment or feel comfortable in
high finance.
Rossi and Novack populate their documentary with people
who are entrepreneurs who despite their being in the grand
scheme of things unknown nationwide are major players among
the gourmets and cognoscenti of the greatest city in the world.
We get sound bites from some of the major, successful chefs
and restaurateurs, including Le Cirque's Sirio Maccioni (who
Monday-morning quarterbacks by stating that running his major
establishment had been too consuming of his time and energy)
and also Daniel Boulud, Keith McNally, Drew Nieporent, Danny
Meyer and Jean-Georges Vongerichten). The focus, though, is
on two newcomers to the biz, a couple of guys who without
much knowledge of the food and restaurant game took the
plunge and set up a place called Moto's in the Williamsburg
area of Brooklyn. Williamsburg, in part a run-down section of
Brooklyn looked down upon by the transit system's J and M
trains and in part undergoing a renaissance as an art colony,
now becomes a potentially profitable location for the venture
which not only had an opening delayed by some eight months
but which has been automatically entered in a Damoclean
lottery: four out of five new restaurants in New York are no
longer there five years from now.
They borrowed from the Williamsburg Savings Bank, got
$5,000 investment from friends, and even the therapist that
John McCormick, a partner in the new establishment together
with his friend Billy Phelps, contributed encouragement and
some money, thereby recycling the fees that McCormick was
dishing out for his emotional health.
"Eat This New York" takes us from the birth of the project
through the signing of a most reasonably-priced lease, the
construction, and the opening of an eatery whose look and
ambiance could match those of many a first-class New York
habitat. Of the members of the picture's Greek chorus, those
who tell us in the audience about the restaurant business from
the standpoint of people who know the score and have been
through the battles, Tim Zagat comes across as the most down-
to-earth and informative guy by informing us in no uncertain
terms of the risks these young fellows are taking.
For entertainment value, don't expect a movie on the level of,
say, Stanley Tucci's "The Big Night," about Italian immigrant
brothers trying to survive as restaurateurs in 1950s America:
one as an artist in the kitchen, the other a would-be
businessman. But this is, after all, a nonfiction piece populated
by not a single celebrity actor, and as such will serve as an
inspiration not only to people who want to open up yet another
eatery in this 10,000-strong restaurant city but to anyone
contemplating being his or her own boss and making the kind of
entrepreneurial move that has made America the prosperous
country that it is today.
Not Rated. 85 minutes.(c) 2004 by Harvey Karten at
Harveycritic@cs.com
========== X-RAMR-ID: 37559 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1271281 X-RT-TitleID: 1129332 X-RT-SourceID: 570 X-RT-AuthorID: 1123 X-RT-RatingText: B+
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