Union Square Café

New York City eatery continues to blaze new trails with new items and a style all its own

Union Square Cafe is proof that quality endures. From its East 16th Street location in New York City, the fine-dining-yet-casual restaurant has been packing them in since 1985.

“I think menu and hospitality are equal partners in what brings people back,” says Danny Meyer, president of Union Square Hospitality Group, which owns and operates Union Square Cafe and several other prominent restaurants. “Our portions are generous, and they’re cooked with love for your pleasure.”

Meyer, who was born in St. Louis, grew up loving to cook and dreaming of opening his own restaurant. During college he worked for his father as a tour guide in Rome. He also studied international politics, and, as his biography says, “minored in the study of trattorias.”

“The menu at Union Square Cafe was born out of the years I spent in France and Italy either as a student or cooking there,” Meyer says. “To this day I think the soul of our menu is Italian.”

It was also during Meyer’s time in Europe that he decided against a career as a chef. “I felt there were others who could cook better,” he explains. “I also saw that the amount of dedication required to be a chef was endless. I’m more of a generalist. I like to learn about wine and work with the guests.”

Three years after Meyer’s 1985 debut of Union Square Cafe, he hired Michael Romano, the chef de cuisine at La Caravelle restaurant in New York, as his executive chef. In 1993 Romano became a partner with Meyer at Union Square Cafe. “It was a wonderful privilege,” the chef said.

Romano describes Union Square Cafe’s menu as “inventive and fresh. Danny likes to be involved because food and cooking are his passions. It would be foolish not to take advantage of what he brings.”

The restaurant continually must walk a fine line between maintaining the huge menu repertoire and adding new items. “If you get too much one way or the other — adding new things, taking things off — it can alienate people,” Romano explains.

Since Union Square Cafe opened, it has been blazing new trails. A recent New York Times article said that Meyer had “demystified fine dining in New York City at Union Square Cafe by shunning snobbery and serving the best food and wine in an upbeat yet casual setting.”

That casual atmosphere was one of several firsts at the restaurant in its early days.

“There are a number of things I think our menu inspired,” Meyer says. “One was the use of weekly specials — the idea of providing something different every night of the week. We were also early pioneers in encouraging people to eat at the bar.”

Flavored mashed potatoes, now commonplace in restaurants, were a rarity when they first appeared on the Union Square Cafe menu. “The same was true when we introduced pasta as an appetizer,” Meyer adds. “That was almost considered heresy when we did it.” Another Union Square Cafe break from tradition was offering oysters on the half-shell. “At the time you typically did not find this outside of seafood restaurants,” Meyer recalls.

Union Square Cafe also serves a BLT, prompting Meyer to say, “I don’t know many three-star restaurants serving a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich on their lunch menu in the summer.”

That sandwich favorite supports the restaurant’s overall customer strategy of “We’d love to see you anytime — on your birthday, on Saturday with your shopping bags from the flea market. Anytime,” Meyer points out.

The MenuMasters Award, Romano observes, is special because “it’s specifically about the menu. Like poetry for a poet or a song for a songwriter, a menu is the chef’s expression.”

Romano blossomed as a cook at New York Technical College, graduating in 1975 after spending a semester at the Hotel School in Bournemouth, England. He then spent more than six years working in European restaurants.

“There is a more militaristic feel to the kitchen over there,” he says. “It was commonplace to get yelled at, but it also taught you hard work, dedication and technique. They have an ingrained respect for quality.”

That “respect for quality” is something Romano calls “the excellence reflex.”

“If someone tosses something at you, you instinctively duck,” he explains. “I want everyone in the kitchen to reflexively be focused on excellence, not because someone’s watching or you might get in trouble, but because you care so much about quality you would find anything else to be unsatisfactory.”

Not everyone has that reflex, Romano concedes. “That’s our job to find it,” he says. “While someone may be short on skill, if they’re long on this quality, you can teach the skill.”

As for the MenuMasters Award, Meyer says: “It’s special for us. Our restaurants are lauded for hospitality, but sometimes it seems that our chefs who are so extraordinary cook in the shadows of this warm hospitality. There’s no way you could be No. 1 for so many years if people didn’t love the food.”