Phil Romano

Nation's Restaurant News, Jan, 2000 by Richard L. Papiernik

One of foodservice consummate showmen keeps 'em hungry for more

Don't expect Phil Romano to tell you which is the greatest restaurant concept he's ever created.

"My greatest concept," he asserts, "is still out there for me to do. All that remains is for me to do it."

Translate that into show biz talk, a language spoken fluently by Romano -- one of the most creative showmen in foodservice -- and you come up with the immortal words of 1920s entertainer Al Jolson: "You ain't seen nothin' yet!"

Romano picks out his own favorite motto from the entertainment sector: "Keep 'em hungry for more."

"The restaurant business," he asserts, "is show business, but instead of acting for people, you are interacting for people."

Industry insiders overwhelmingly agree that for the man who has stamped the Romano creative imprint on some two dozen restaurant concepts since 1965, there is no business like the restaurant business.

"When Phil Romano opens a new concept, it's as if he is producing a Broadway show. Everything has to be in exactly the right place," says David Swinghamer of New York's Tabla and Eleven Madison Park, who had a close-up look at Romano's enterprise while consulting on some Brinker International Rich Melman and Lettuce Entertain You concepts in Dallas.

"I'm a showman," Romano says in an autobiography now in the draft stages and scheduled for publication early next year.

"The restaurant building is the stage," he observes, "the customers and the staff are the cast, and the food is both the star of the story and its theme. If the audience likes the show, they'll be back."

It's the same kind of approach he uses with new restaurant concepts: When he has a winner, he will immediately start planning for another, and he promises that more are on the way.

No matter that Romano is 60 years old, an age when many of his colleagues already have started planning for retirement. No matter that he lives very comfortably with homes in Dallas; Palm Beach, Fla.; and the Finger Lakes area of upstate New York. No matter that he has amassed a multimillion-dollar personal fortune on the proceeds from the $7 billion in sales that he estimates has been generated by his restaurant concepts in the last 35 years.

No matter that he thinks his Eatzi's Market & Bakery concept, catering to busy consumers who want someone else to prepare their meals, truly embodies the future trend in foodservice.

"I am at a point in my life where I have a great reputation in this industry," Romano says. "I know what I'm doing, and it took me all this time to get here. And damn it, it would just be a crying shame if I just stopped!"

In addition to Eatzi's, Romano's other concepts that have drawn well-backed rollouts beyond their start-up territories include Fuddruckers, Romano's Macaroni Grill and Cozymel's.

Over the last year Romano also has partnered with others to come up with two more new concepts: Nick & Sam's and Wild About Harry's. And he's ready to start up Oui/We -- a French Eating Place, which he says will take the skimpiness out of French Food and offer large portions at inexpensive prices.

"I'm not the kind of guy who rests on my laurels," Romano says.

"One of the good things about being 60 s that you know what you're good at, and you do it," he says.

For Romano there's always that next concept ... and the next.

"He's certainly one of the most gifted restaurant people in the country," Swinghamer says. "He always seems to know what people will want before they know they want it."

Romano concedes that restaurants are so much a part of his life that he "can't stop."

"The common currents flowing through my previous creations -- the energy, passion, irreverent humor, vibrant colors and my dedication to a point-of-difference -- will be prevalent in whatever I do," he says.

"He has a real capacity to look at a restaurant from a customer's point of view, and there aren't too many owners who know how to do that," says Samir Dhurandhar, executive chef at Nick & Sam's, the new high-end Dallas restaurant that opened last year.

Dhurandhar made the move from chef at Sfuzzi at the behest of Sfuzzi co-founder Patrick Colombo, who has since been bought out of Nick & Sam's by Romano.

"I've been in this business 13 years, and I have never met such a visionary as Phil Romano," Dhurandhar says. "What he did for this restaurant is to give people who come in here for dinner a two- or three-hour vacation from the outside."

Diners at Nick & Sam's entrance walk past a seeming wall of wines enclosed in a glass room. A grand piano sits almost in the center of a display kitchen and free caviar is served.

Romano's son is Sam, and Colombo's son is named Nick. Romano will keep that name, he says, noting that Sam & Nick's once was considered, but it just didn't have the right rhythm to it.

About Colombo, Romano just says there was a disagreement over creative and operational issues and "who should be doing what."

Observers note that if there is any downside in Romano's style, it is his insistence on being free to pursue his own ideas of creativity and service excellence and his perception that associates may not have those same ideals and ideas.