While running a private dining room for an invalid executive in Manhattan, chef Roland Levi had an epiphany: Why not have his own intimate dining establishment where customers could eat gourmet cuisine in a luxurious but small setting?
He had already served haute cuisine in small settings for such prominent people as Brooke Astor, Lee Iacocca, Tip O’Neill and Margaret Thatcher, as well as for several former U.S. presidents and Princess Diana, when she was visiting the Hamptons on Long Island, N.Y. So why not open his own place doing the same thing and cater to discriminating people looking for superior cuisine?
His contemporaries told him he was nuts, it would never work. “Who would come?” they asked.
Sold on the idea, the Belgian-born and-trained Levi and his wife Gail opened their first Six Tables restaurant in Dunedin, Fla., in 1998.
The Pinellas County restaurant, in the Tampa Bay area, just east of Clearwater Beach on the Gulf of Mexico, opened with little fanfare and offered two seatings and a $39 tasting menu. The first few months people trickled in at a snail’s pace, Levi says.
And then the tides changed.
“The St. Petersburg Times critic Chris Sherman wrote about us,” Levi says. “The title of the review was ‘Six reasons to come to Six Tables.’ After that, we were packed nightly, and we’ve been so ever since.”
Today the Dunedin location offers one 7 p.m. seating for $90, not including tax, gratuity or wine. The restaurant generates between $300,000 and $400,000 annually, including beverages.
Following the Dunedin location’s success, other chefs licensed the reservations-only Six Tables and opened locations in the Florida cities of Largo, Tampa, Gulfport and Boca Raton, as well as in Charleston, S.C., and Kirkland, Wash. The Levis recently opened a location in Summerlin, Nev., 15 miles off the Las Vegas Strip, a location they own but plan to eventually sell.
Levi says his friends no longer doubt his vision.
Each Six Tables location features just six tables adorned by luxury linens and antique crystal and china surrounded by dark antique furniture, tapestries and local or fine art. If a small private party reserves the evening, all of the tables can be organized in whatever fashion the customer wants, but the setting remains small and intimate, Levi says, usually no more that 30 people.
Upon entering the restaurants, which are often situated in strip malls, he says guests receive a glass of champagne and hors d’ oeuvres to both unwind and to ready their palate for the delights to come. After a time the chef takes the order and spends a great deal of time tableside, adding to the intimacy and attention to detail.
The prix-fixe menus typically offer six courses starting off with lobster bisque or vichyssoise, followed by a salad and sorbet intermezzo. The rest of the menu, which Levi says is French with a touch of Belgian influence, includes a choice of Châteaubriand, rack of lamb, duck and fresh seafood. Desserts and additional offerings can change based on chefs’ preferences and availability. Levi suggests cheese and poached pears with a glass of port followed by Belgian cream puffs flambéed with orange liquor.
AT A GLANCE Cuisine: French with Belgian influencesFirst location opened: April 1998Price: varies by locationHeadquarters: Dunedin, Fla.Owners: Roland and Gail LeviInitial licensing fee: $400,000Return on investment: 20 percent annuallyLocations: 8Average square feet: 1,000Website:
“We never print a menu, our food is always fresh and we empty our freezer every night,” Levi says. “We don’t want to be McDonald’s and always offer the exact same thing. But some things have to stay the same and it has to be the best food—and we never serve things like chicken.”
Overhead is low: Each location typically has a chef, a server and a dishwasher. The restaurants are small—usually a little over 1,000 square feet—and food is purchased fresh daily.
Levi, who was trained at L’Ecole Culinaire des Arts et Metiers in Brussels, says he has a letter of intent to license another restaurant in Fredericksburg, Va., and is in talks with interested parties in Miami and Boston.
Levi requires that the licensees, who pay $400,000 for the turnkey operation, are trained, experienced restaurateurs, preferably with a strong culinary background. That fee also includes training, equipment and furnishings including china. Once an agreement is signed, Levi trains them for 90 days and helps get the new location up and running.
The concept is unique in that it allows each chef not only to showcase his talent, but to do so while owning a restaurant at a relatively low entry price.
“Where else is a young chef going to have the ability to have a six income figure the first year?” Levi says. “Young chefs usually cannot afford to finance their own restaurants, but Six Tables is a vehicle to start their own.”
Fifteen or 20 years ago it was tough to find chefs in the U.S., so they had to be imported. Now, he says, with all the great schools, there are lots of trained chefs out there who could own their own Six Tables.
Indeed, that availability says to Levi that he could see his dream of Six Tables locations in every city, but that requires a lot of capital.
“Despite what everyone else said, I expected to be this successful,” he says. “We are not imitated, and I am not sure why, but I love what I do, every day.”
Richard Bottini, a graduate of The Culinary Institute of America, became the chef at Six Tables Tampa in 2003, and purchased the restaurant from the Levis in 2005. Bottini, a former English literature major at Florida State University, spent his share of time cooking in country clubs and other restaurants, including shucking oysters. He says he, too, enjoys his work.
“Chefs and chef students only dream about this type of work,” Bottini says. “When you become a chef you think this is what you’ll do, but usually you end up in country club making BLTs or a corporate kitchen. This is not the real world, but it’s a dream come true for me.”
