We have been to a couple events at the Seelbach in the Rathskellar (which is such a great spot) and have gone to their bar, but that is it. My company has had meetings and Xmas parties at the Seelbach that were nicely done. October 13, 2008
Chef takes new course
Oakroom's Todd Richards is working his magic in Atlanta
By Larry Muhammad
lmuhammad@courier-journal.com
Todd Richards' cooking has been called "idiosyncratic," "philosophical" and "sensual."
A winning personality and such dishes as pan-crisped lamb sweetbreads with smoked banana made him the culinary toast of Louisville, a celebrity chef at the Seelbach Hilton's illustrious Oakroom restaurant.
And when Cat Cora narrowly defeated him in a carrot cook-off on the Food Channel's "Iron Chef America" last year, a blogger on velocityweekly.com complained, "Chef Todd Richards was ROBBED!"
"Todd built a very great reputation in a very short time," Peng Looi, chef at Asiatique and August Moon Chinese Bistro, said in a recent interview.
"He is a great chef, passionate about it," said Anoosh Shariat, former Park Place executive chef whose Anoosh Bistro opens in December.
High praise in a restaurant community that Bon Appetit magazine this month designated among America's top five small-town food capitals, behind Durham-Chapel Hill, N.C.; Eugene, Ore.; Paso Robles, Calif.; and Boulder, Colo. In 2006, Esquire magazine selected Proof on Main one of the 20 best new restaurants in America.
Yet, the 37-year-old Richards, after five years at the Oakroom, left Louisville this summer and went to Atlanta to open his own place, One Flew South, in the International Concourse of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
"It's been a long time coming," Richards wrote in his blog July 27. "Many moons ago, I set out on a mission to return to the vast and what I would call culinary unconquered city of Atlanta. It seems that illustrious day has arrived."
Richards took with him the Oakroom's chef de cuisine, Duane Nutter, and Jerry Slater, Seelbach's director of restaurants. The trio formed Lush Life Group, a management company that partnered with two Atlanta airport operators -- Jackmont Hospitality, a food-service firm that counts among its founders the daughter of former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson; and Global Concessions, which runs fast-food stores, including Ben & Jerry's, Arthur Treacher's Fish & Chips and Sojourner's Cafe, on various concourses.
Richards isn't the first chef to parlay Oakroom prestige into opening his own restaurant elsewhere. Jim Gerhardt and Michael Cunha, who earned for the Oakroom a Five Diamond rating -- a major claim to fame -- left in 2003 and opened Limestone restaurant in Louisville.
But why did Richards leave the Oakroom? And couldn't he have opened the restaurant of his dreams in Louisville, where he has many fans?
"In our business, you just have to go where the opportunity lies," Richards said in a telephone interview. "When we looked at this project in Atlanta, it was more about the opportunity to get into a larger market and a more diverse group of diners."
Despite his perceived popularity in Louisville, Richards said, "The city's dining community just never really supported us. Many times people would say, 'We love what you do down there.' And you ask when was the last time they ate at the Oakroom, it would be five or six years, before we were even there."
And the purchase of the Seelbach last fall by Interstate Hotels & Resorts, a Virginia-based hotel management firm, and Investcorp International, a real estate and investment company in New York, brought alterations in the Oakroom menu that rubbed the chef wrong.
"It changed from a tasting menu, where you have multiple courses decided by the chef, to a la carte, where guests would choose what they wanted," said Richards. "We really didn't want to be a part of this change and didn't think it was beneficial to the Oakroom and what it needed to accomplish."
Before heading south, Richards and his team explored other opportunities in Louisville, speaking with investors and bankers about opening his own place.
Slater said, "We looked at several spots, considered different rent options, and just really couldn't seem to make financial sense of it in a city that seemed to not want to come down and see us in the first place. I know it sounds negative. I liked Louisville. It's a great little city. But we're talking Atlanta, 5 million people versus 800,000."
Seelbach general manager Jon McFarland said he is excited for Richards and wishes him the best, adding, "I can't wait to do some international travel out of Atlanta to go see his place."
But Richards' move was no surprise.
"January last year, Todd told me he wanted to move to Atlanta, where he owned a home," McFarland said. "He made it very clear to us he wouldn't be staying in Louisville, and I believe his driving motivation was the happiness of his family, that they would feel more comfortable in Atlanta."
McFarland has replaced Slater and Nutter -- with Mark Butcher, now the Seelbach's director of food and beverage, and new Oakroom chef de cuisine Nicole Walker, who was groomed by Richards and who worked at the Maisonette, the now-closed Five Diamond restaurant in Cincinnati.
"The Oakroom will continue to be one of the finest restaurants in Kentucky," he said. "We're fully staffed, have phenomenal cooks in all positions, but we need a leader to be thinking ahead, months down the road. With Todd and Jim Gerhardt setting such a high bar, I've had to keep looking for the right person who can keep that fine balance of managing the restaurant operations and talking high dining to the cooks and chefs. I'm hoping in less than 30 days to select the new executive chef."
He acknowledges there were menu issues with Richards, who as Oakroom chef disregarded culinary boundaries and aspired to cooking that was emphatically personal high art.
One of his creations, the Deconstructed Taco, was described by Courier-Journal restaurant critic Marty Rosen in 2006 as "a soft, flickering disc of red-gold salsa gelee framed by tiny mounds of crème fraîche, delicate grains of succulent ground beef and a tiny, perfectly carved plank of intense Gouda. Every dish … had that same synchronized feel of perfectly engineered clockwork."
The rarefied eats came in prearranged sets with price tags to match -- three courses for $72, five courses for $95 and seven courses for $110.
Slater said, "I think everybody was sort of scared about the economy, but we were making the same amount of money, just doing it on fewer diners. Management didn't want to relinquish the Five Diamond rating, but I think they were concerned about the number of people coming in."
McFarland said, "I certainly challenged Todd, asked him how do we get more people into the restaurant to experience his food, and whether his chef-driven menu was creating a barrier to entry. And I will challenge the next executive chef to make incredible food at price points the customer can better afford."
Reporter Larry Muhammad can be reached at (502) 582-7091.