Tribeca Grill

In an ever-changing restaurant world, New York City’s Tribeca Grill is something of an anomaly.

Drew Nieporent, president of The Myriad Restaurant Group which owns & operates the Tribeca Grill. The menu, which features artwork by the actor Robert De Niro's father, offers such dessert staples at the Tribeca chocolate torte & the banana tart

“It was built for the long haul,” says Drew Nieporent, president of The Myriad Restaurant Group, which owns and operates the restaurant. “We’re 10 years old, have the same chef, the same general manager and the same wine director.”

The point he’s making is that Tribeca’s MenuMasters Award for Best Independent Operator Menu is special “because we kind of get lost in the shuffle with all the new restaurants opening these days.”

According to executive chef Don Pintabona, “It’s very unusual to have your opening team still in place after all these years.” Along with Pintabona that team includes general manager Martin Shapiro and wine director David Gordon.

One reason for the cohesion is that Tribeca is a fun place that offers lots of variety. “It’s exciting because we do an enormous number of banquets, special events and charity benefits,” Pintabona says. “Some are celebrity driven, some food driven.”

One would be hard pressed to find someone who knows Tribeca’s menu the way Pintabona does. He released a Tribeca Grill cookbook about four months ago and in it cited between 10 and 15 items featured on the menu for years. They include appetizers like the arugula salad with bocconcini and basil oil and the rare seared tuna with sesame noodles and picked vegetables.

Tribeca customers quickly would recognize two desserts that have graced the menu practically since day one: the Tribeca chocolate torte and the banana tart.

According to Pintabona, the entrées tend to change more frequently. “We always have a rack of lamb, but it varies,” the chef says. “I don’t keep the entrées on all the time, although I bring back favorites periodically.”

Adds Nieporent: “We have a core group of signature dishes that, even if we wanted them to come off [the menu], our guests wouldn’t let us do it. The entrées are what have evolved most over the years. We used to do a barbecue duck. And we used to feature a lot of game dishes.”

One recent lamb dish was herb-roasted Colorado rack of lamb with tomato basil risotto and baby spinach.

As with most restaurants, Tribeca’s menu is a reflection of its chef’s experiences.

“We think of the Tribeca Grill as an ethnic restaurant, a melting-pot-kind of place,” Nieporent says. “When we first opened, everyone thought we were Italian because of our affiliation with the actor, Robert De Niro. We are certainly not Italian. There are world influences on this menu.”

Those influences are inspired primarily by Pintabona’s experiences in both France and Japan. “The foundation of the menu is French in approach, but through my years in Asia, I’ve broadened a bit in ingredients and certain techniques,” he says.

While in France, he worked at Georges Blanc, a restaurant in Vonnas. “I learned quite a bit from him and would claim him as a serious mentor,” he says. In Japan Pintabona was a sous chef in a small family restaurant.

Restaurants under The Myriad Restaurant Group’s umbrella are chef-driven, Nieporent says. “Even though he was sort of an unknown quantity in 1990, everyone in the industry now knows about Don Pintabona. It’s remarkable that he’s stayed here for the long haul, especially with our intense volume.”

Tribeca averages 300 or more covers a night. “Of course, the key is to do those 300 meals at a high-quality level, and our people do that,” Nieporent adds.

Like his chef, Nieporent frequently looks to France for inspiration. “I saw where some of their great chefs were opening more casual eateries,” he explains. “About 10 or 12 years ago, New York City didn’t have much sensibility about serving high- quality food in a casual atmosphere.”

When Tribeca opened, Nieporent promoted it as casual but with a high-quality tag. “You could come here without getting all dandied up and still have a really good meal.”

Ten years later Tribeca remains one of the city’s more popular restaurants. The 8,000-square-foot establishment occupies the first two floors of the Tribeca Film Center building, and the focal point of the main dining room is an old mahogany bar from what once was another New York City fixture: Maxwell’s Plum. Combine that with exposed brick walls and artwork by the late Robert DeNiro Sr., the actor’s father, and Tribeca has the look and feel of a converted industrial warehouse.

Atmosphere is a specialty of Nieporent. His father, an attorney, represented a number of restaurants, “so we’d eat out almost five nights a week — all at different restaurants, all with different ethnic menus.”

Nieporent took in everything, learning as he went. “It’s really like theater,” he says. “You have to take into account the stage, the lighting, the setting. All those things were part of that experience, plus the food was so masterful and interesting.”

For Nieporent, that focus on learning still continues. “It’s an endless process, a journey we take every day at our group to learn about food.