Beef Wellington on a Mahogany Plank Spongebob
The Wall Street Dining Rooms
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August 5, 1979
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THE best restaurants on Wall Street have no signs. They are the executive dining rooms of the brokerage houses, banks and other institutions that line the canyons of New York City's financial district.
And even though they are very exclusive — brokers, analysts and traders may sometimes entertain clients there, but only if advance arrangements have been made — these private dining rooms are expanding their business hours nowadays to meet a new demand for dinners and sometimes even breakfasts.
It is there, amid the woody, traditional English decor, the panoramic views of the city's skyline, the beef Wellington, the waiters in tuxedos and the Havana cigars, that the deals are made, the groundwork laid, and the closings celebrated, regular patrons
Jeffrey p. Bogart is an attorney and writer based in New York. say. Then something really important may transpire? "You betcha," says Richard Smith, partner in charge of syndications at L.F. Rothschild, Unterberg, Towbin. "The only thing that really justifies this style of dining is the business that is originated, consummated or nurtured in this environment." •
Executives offer three main reasons why the dining facilities are worth the millions spent on them each year: privacy, convenience and prestige.
"Private dining rooms exist in part because you don't want to be seen in commercial restaurants with all your clients," explains Maurits E. Edersheim, deputy chairman of the board of Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. "And foreign clients are much more willing to come for a meeting if they know it will be conducted in private." An executive at Donaldson, Lufkin, Jenrette adds, "It's much more cost‐effective to have a dining room. It costs a fortune to go out to lunch in New York City.,"
Most brokerage executives would just as soon keep their dining facilities closed to public view. "We're a publicly held company, and many shareholders may not like knowing that we entertain this way," says one E.F. Hutton vice president. "All they see is a bunch of guys having lunch; they don't realize it's business."
Mr. Smith of Unterberg Towbin takes care to distinguish modern business lunches from those of a more freewheeling era.
"The days of captains of industry when everyone looked like William Howard Taft with a big gut and owned fancy limousines — have passed on Wall Street," he says. "The good living associated with that image now is reflected in the life style of public figures. I used to measure my own earnings against those of professional athletes, bui I stopped a long time ago. I'm just butnping along. Wall Street is not a very special privileged class or environment."
One reason there is a demand for expanded hours at the private dining rooms, perhaps, is the decline in the number of restaurants and clubs with dining rooms in the financial district. Mr. Edersheim of Drexel Burnham, 40‐year veteran of Wall Street, can reel off a long list of establishments that have closed over the years — Eberlin's, the Banker's Club, Mazzoletti's and Schwarz's, among others.
Clubs Were Predecessors
"Clubs were popular," Mr. Edersheim says, "because restaurants weren't all that good; the clubs were the predecessors of the private dining rooms. They were aristocratic and nice.
"But then people didn't want to be seen at all, and so private dining rooms sprang up and have proliferated in the last 15 to 20 years. The number of rooms per firm being used for dining also has increased."
What do guests encounter at some of the Street's finest restaurants? Beyond the subdued, elegant decor, the private dining rooms feature freshly prepared food, usually served on reproduction antique tables decked out with china, crystal and linen. The service is efficient, friendly and unobtrusive. Noise is at a minimum. Wine and liquor are generally available, though not served unless requested.
All in all, as Carl M. Mueller, former managing partner at Loeb, Rhoades & Company, said several years ago, lunching in Wall Street dining rooms is just "like coming to somebody's home."
Salomon Brothers, housed in a modern building at One New York Plaza, is
Amid luxurious settings, financial executives originate, conclude business.
often cited by executives as having one of Wall Street's best dining rooms. They usually mention its "exquisite" traditional English decor, designed by McMillen Inc., and its view of the East River, Brooklyn Heights and Upper New York Harbor.
A visitor to the 42d floor, where the seven Salomon dining rooms are located, enters a wood‐paneled reception area with an oak floor covered with Spanish patterned area rugs. Off to one side, a private lounge overlooks the company's trading area.
In the main dining room, executives sit down to lunch in red leather, goldstudded Chippendale chairs around large, rectangular mahogany table that seats 24. The setting is crystal, copies of blue-and-orange Imari china, and Queen Anne silver atop snowy linen. The room's walls are papered with a handpainted mural of the Wall Street area. There is also a marble fireplace, sconces on the walls, a large area rug laid over plank flooring, and red silk curtains. (No chandeliers, though; the ceilings are too low.)
Unlike Salomon, Lehman Brothers, Kuhn Loeb, several blocks away at One William Street, has no panoramic view. Yet perhaps nowhere on Wall Street is the food as good and Old World dining carried on with the same care and flair.
Lehman once boasted of having hired the chef of Le Pavillon. Today the firm seeks to continue its reputation for high cuisine. The food operations are managed by William S. Proops (pronounced Propes), a graduate of the Ecole Hoteliere in Lausanne, Switzerland, and Cordon Bleu. Mr. Proops, who runs catering business on the side, dresses in pin‐striped suits and shirts with rounded collars and a collar pin. He wears small, round‐framed glasses and looks more like an investment banker than the head of a kitchen.
"It's really like theater," he says about running Lehman's dining facilities. "You're putting on a show every day. And there's always been an aura of mystery about what goes on in Wall Street dining rooms."
Simple Fare
Lunching at Lehman is still a formal affair, but less so than when Robert Lehman presided a decade ago. In those days, there was only one sitting for some 20 partners. Now, the firm's roster of officers has swelled to about 100, seats turn over, and anyone can occupy the head of the table.
The menus at Lehman, like those of other brokerage firms, tend to be simple and avoid heavy sauces. A recent meal consisted of a cold watercress vichyssoise, veal chop cordon bleu, stuffed tomato with ratatouille, sautéed snow peas, and a selection of fresh blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and cherries for dessert. There are also pastries from Bonte and Dumas (at $7 a pound, Mr. Proops notes).
What does it cost to feed the group here? "It's not cheap," he says.
About 75 meals are prepared daily by Pierre Colin, formerly a chef at La Seine, a fashionable restaurant now defunct. Mr. Proops cooks on special occasions and at dinners.
"The dinners," he says, "are much more elegant than eating at a midtown restaurant for the executives and their wives."
Usually black tie, the dinners begin with hors d'oeuvres served in the Partners' Room on the third floor. Then the party moves upstairs, via Lehman's attended elevators, to the. eighth floor and the Partners' Dining Room, with its large mahogany Sheraton table and Hepplewhite chairs.
The table has been laid with silver, linen napkins and Stewart crystal — all monogrammed — and Spode Fitzhugh china. The room's windows let in a partial view of lights across the East River. Spot lighting on the oil paintings by minor impressionist and post-impressionists add to the warmth of the setting, as the dinner guests sit down to a five‐course meal.
Lehman's eating facilities were last decorated in 1971 by the society design firm of Parish‐Hadley. When Lehman moves the remainder of its offices to 55 Water Street next year, according to Mr. Proops, the traditional decor will be kept.
At Donaldson Lufkin Jenrette, the dining rooms have a commanding view of the New York Harbor, including the Statue of Liberty and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. They have been almost completely furnished with English and American antiques of the Revolutionary War period. The job was personally supervised by Richard Jenrette, chairman, who not only is an antiqueS collector himself but also heads the United States Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. "Antiques seem to be my best investments," he says. Another of his best investments may be the chef, Mrs. Angel Veiga, a short, peppery, gray‐haired woman from Les Ardennes, Belgium, who has spent the last 12 years at D.L.J. Her
change's daily but is not printed. "They eat what I cook," the chef declares with a French accent. She prepares 36 to 40 meals on the average, Mrs. Viega says. In addition, she may be asked to serve breakfasts about once a week, for special meetings. And she also cooks for Mr. Jenrette's parties at his home.
"Mr. Jenrette is a very easy person to feed," she says. "His favorite dish is blanquette de veau." That just happens to be her specialty.
Uptown at Smith, Barney, three modern dining Moms squarely overlook Central Park through large, unobstructed windows. One room also has a view of the Hudson River and New Jersey. The kitchen serves about 150 persons a week and consumes an annual budget of about $300,000. The meals, while catered by Stouffers, are prepared by the chef Rodney Madden, who studied at the Cordon Bleu in Paris.
By comparison with the brokerage houses, the banks are "large producers" when it comes to feeding executives, and one of the largest is Morgan Guaranty. Its executive dining facility at 15 Broad Street serves up meals for about 650 persons, including about 45 guests, every day.
Morgan prides itself on offering free lunches to all its 10,000 employees around the world. To handle the heavy traffic in its executive dining rooms,
The dining facilities offer 3 advantages: privacy, convenience - and prestige.
the bank employs 61 persons, including 41 waitresses.
"The bank has increased its entertaining," says to Salvatore Petrolino, assistant food services officer. Mr. Petrolino, a former chef at the Carlyle Hotel, also notes that during the last 12 years the number of executives fed has doubled.
Morgan does not serve breakfasts, but it does serve dinners — last year some 100 were served for the firm's guests.
Still other brokerage firms have noteworthy features. Bache, which seeks to avoid elaborate decoration, employs an outside caterer, Mrs. Eva Mills. She says she formerly spent two years at the United States mission to the United Nations. At Rothschild, the chef is Josef Turkalj, a Yugoslav whose specialties include lobster soufflé and fish pate. The decor at Drexel Burnham is sleek, modern and sophisticated in minimalist style, with rosewood tables and plain black swivel armchairs.
Wide‐Angle View
As for Morgan Stanley, which has expanded from four floors to eight in less than six years at the Exxon Building, there are eight elegant traditional English dining rooms on the 30th floor, with an excellent wide‐angle view of the Hudson River. The largest room, which seats 16, includes handpainted blue Chinese‐patterned wallpaper and a blue and beige copy of Persian rug for floor covering.
Morgan Stanley not only serves meals during the day but, according to one Wall Street executive, also entertains after the theater. From
until late evening then, as The Street wheels and deals, it also brews and stews. For the executives and their clients, it's all very gracious, comfortable and genteel. And it may be a tough act for many to follow when at night they return to plainer surroundings and meals on the Upper East Side and in Scarsdale, Roslyn and Rye.
The New York Times/ Fred R. Conrad
Maurits Edersheim of Drexel Burnham, left, and Maury Kaplan, investment adviser, in the firm's dining room.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1979/08/05/archives/the-wall-street-dining-rooms-the-wall-street-dining-rooms.html
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