GOTHAM’S ROAD TO RETURN

Bringing Back Gotham
By Bret Csencsitz

The first time I walked into Gotham I felt I was definitely somewhere. It was early evening 2001. I sat at the bar with a friend. The light was low, the bartender friendly, and the food memorable. Six years later I found myself interviewing with founders Jerry Kretchmer, Rick Rathe, Robert Rathe, and Jeff Bliss to take over the operations and work with Chef Alfred Portale to reimagine the restaurant for another decade. 

Over those years as I journeyed from film to food, ultimately my work remained the same—make it happen. Working in film and theater, you learn to be a creative problem solver; you are constantly trouble-shooting. In restaurants it’s the same; not a day goes by without some issue or adaptation, but the doors must open, service must go on and dinner served, with hopefully a little bit of magic felt at every table.  

Thirteen years later Gotham’s run came to a sudden end that no one could have foreseen. Our doors closed after 36 years, nearly to the day. It was a practical decision driven by the forces of an invisible predator whose timing was ferocious. It was a difficult moment and one I immediately set about to reverse. Gotham had become my home, and I wasn’t done hosting there. We had many exciting partners and plans, much unfinished business, and any number of fruitful years ahead. 

Gotham is a testament to the city from which it took its name, a fictitious city full of grit and determination originally coined by Washington Irving in his satirical Salmagundi papers (think a 19th century Mad magazine) wherein Irving and cohorts mocked and celebrated the budding democratic culture of the 19th Century, when NYC was the urban epicenter of the American experiment, an experiment we continue today. In my 30+ years as a New Yorker, this city has been many cities in one and, despite setbacks, New York has always found a way forward: In 1993 as the city was rebounding, we faced the fear of the first World Trade Center bombing and forged on; in 2001 we were shell-shocked by 9/11 but screwed our courage to the sticking and, even as we mourned, watched our city return to new prominence; in 2008 New York was at the center of a financial crisis that threatened our resilience, but yet again the city snapped back to its place as the metropolis of America. And now as our global pandemic, which crippled the city last year and continues to “pump its breaks,” Gotham resilience rumbles again. 
 

And since 1984 Gotham the restaurant has ridden these waves, morphing with the times. In my tenure alone we refreshed the dining room twice, expanded to Miami and nearly to Vegas, but that David Rockwell vision fizzled with the financial meltdown. Then we received our fifth and sixth 3-star reviews, and celebrated 25th, 30th, and 35th Anniversaries with fundraising galas. We published a magazine, got digitally and socially savvy, wrote a Greenmarket vegetarian cookbook, launched Gotham Chocolates and Gotham Selections, made multiple vintages of Oregon Pinot Noir, and created memories for thousands of diners. 

It was 2011 when I became a partner and the restaurant became even more of an extension of me. Gotham was part of my identity, for better or worse. When the pandemic shut us down, an existential crisis ensued as my unemployed family escaped NYC. Like many, I was lost, the uncertainty close to unbearable as we found refuge in the Midwest, holed up on my in-laws’ second floor. Our two kids had the time of their lives. They Zoomed school and tumbled around a home bigger than anything they knew in New York, with grandparents ready to spoil at a moment’s notice. Meanwhile the family future was being debated between two New York City parents with no rug left under them and no beaten path to follow. At the same time I was wildly busy as I worked to close down the business for my partners and simultaneously dream of a way to revive it. And like many displaced New Yorkers last year, we faced great uncertainty around whether or not we would be able to return to New York. Perhaps most profoundly, would we choose to? 

It all came together slowly, a somewhat painful long shot as a new business partner emerged. A longtime friend, environmentalist Kevin Conrad, was also convinced Gotham was gone too soon. In Kevin I found a like mind in my longtime efforts to make Gotham even more sustainable, and together we set about bringing the restaurant back to life. Initially we had our sights on the fall of 2020, but the virus had other plans, delay upon delay stretching our timeline. To the rescue came Gotham Chocolates, a side hustle that longtime Gotham Pastry Chef Ron Paprocki and I founded in 2015, and Nordstrom 57th Street, who gave us a holiday home. This little lifeline gave us a reason to fire up Gotham’s kitchen once again, a place to go and something to make. But now we were a skeleton crew, Gotham’s once robust infrastructure reduced to myself and Ron plus one sous-chocolatier, our indefatigable facilities manager of nearly 30 years, and plenty of volunteer work from family and friends. 

While our fits and starts over opening have been painful, in the end I hope we’ve spent our sabbatical well, using the time to be creative and intentional in our soul-searching about Gotham’s next act. Here on the homestretch we aim to find the sweet spot between nostalgic and new, with the goal of returning Gotham to the world with just the right preservations and modernizations that will excite those who missed us as well as those crossing our threshold for the very first time. 

Now for our chef. At the heart of any restaurant discussion is the menu. Early in my dreaming about reopening Gotham it was Chef Paprocki who came to mind. He worked in the Gotham kitchen from one 3-star review to the next, and he knew what it would take to restart it. But he was a pastry guy, could he do it all? Knowing Ron’s ability to pivot, having seen him collaborate with our chefs and lead our teams for many years, and trusting not least of all his insatiable bent for perfection, he struck me as an inspired choice, a move toward solidarity that is just right for Gotham and our introspective times. In the spirit of Jonathan Saks’s Morality, a book that has been formative for me this year, together Ron and I will lead a team less about individual genius than collective intelligence, an ensemble more about “we” than “I” who are focused on genuine hospitality and bringing together a great experience at the table. 

Gotham’s Road to Return has been lined with countless friends who have come out of the woodwork to offer investment, labor, and advice, as well as many who simply responded to my phone calls, offering strength and support on this odyssey. When the doors reopen this fall, we will have many, many people to thank. They know who they are, and they are now part of our DNA. 

When legendary designer David Rockwell called Gotham “The Living Room of New York,” he struck a poignant chord for me, summing up my dream for Gotham 2.0. That it feel like a living room for New York. A living room: a place where one is restored, strengthened, and where new meaning can be found. 

For 14 years now I’ve worn a path down to 12th Street, first from Hell’s Kitchen, where my wife and I lived in a 5th-floor walkup until we welcomed our son William. Then for a spell I was coming from 96th Street, where we’d upgraded to two bedrooms and a doorman, welcoming our daughter Cordelia in 2015. Now the path starts in Harlem, but it still ends at 12 East 12, for just a bit longer at an eerily quiet Gotham that is waiting for its room to be filled with life again.  

We have a lot to consider and to get done as we reemerge in this city that is never supposed to sleep. But I for one used this brief slumber to ponder what we can be now. We have many, many challenges to tackle in our business: rising prices, food production and practices, the effects of climate change, the need for meaningful compensation, the need for long-term vision—including food that will cost more in some ways but far less in others. All these challenges and those to come are part of our daily conversation, and all of these challenges in some fashion or another are about sustainability. Sustainable, the word of our era and rightfully so. We need to embrace the idea that we are all part of, in the words of Carl Sagan, “the only home we’ve ever known,” and that it’s our responsibility, all of us, to sustain our planet’s viability if we are to achieve our greatest human potential and leave something for tomorrow. It is the beginning of a new era and a new journey but I am thrilled to be hosting again on 12th Street. I look forward to your joining me at a more meaningful Gotham this fall.