GASLIGHT BEGINS to fill slowly, first the bar stools, then some of the booths at the back. And then the show begins, as young men and women - many straight from the gym next door, their hair still wet and gym bags stuffed under their chairs - take over the room. As Edith Piaf wails on the sound system, the energy level begins to rise. Servers bustle through the dining room carrying trays of white bistro china: the classic footed onion-soup bowl, the steel cradle for the platter of chilled seafood. This place is working. The execution is perfect. The Gallic/brasserie touches are clever, a suggestion of urban and French, but slick enough not to feel slavish: bare tables, dish towels as napkins, a line of wine glasses set mid-table. It's boisterous and bright, high concept and low prices. At 8 p.m. on a weeknight, with every table filled, it's evident that Gaslight is going gangbusters. Score another win for the ownership group that is Seth Woods, Jeff Gates, and Matt Burns.
In fact, this trio now owns and operates a quintet of Boston's most consistently busy dining spots - in addition to Gaslight, they've got Metropolis, Aquitaine, Union Bar and Grille, and Aquitaine Bis - yet they mostly fly under the media's radar. They don't get the ink, the splashy profiles, and the first-name recognition of some of Boston's other restaurant operators. I wondered why.
Woods thinks it's simple. "We are passionate about the product, passionate about the business," he says, "but we are a concept-driven company, not a personality-driven company." At all of his restaurants, he stresses, the cuisine is consistently excellent, but it's not the whole kernel of the dining-out experience. Ambiance is important; service is snappy, not snooty, hospitable but professional; and most important, price point matters. "We always work very hard to sharpen our pencil to give the best value to the customer, and be in the low-to-middle range," Woods says. He sets his prices to keep the neighbors coming in, whether there's a real-estate boom or bust, a stock-market sizzle, or a new competitor in the neighborhood. At Gaslight, the most expensive entrée is $19.50; specialty cocktails run from $5.50 to $8.50.
And what about the team? Woods explains that while he's the executive chef, he's not the chef in any of his restaurants. "It would be hypocritical for me to walk into one of our restaurants and tour the dining room in chef's whites," he says. "I'm not involved in getting one dish to a customer; I'm responsible for the issues involved with getting 1500 dishes to 1500 customers a night, and I have to depend on my very talented chefs to make that happen."
As we're talking, Gates wanders by with a power drill. He's re-engineering the lighting at one of Gaslight's booths. Then Burns joins us, still panting from helping the beverage manager carry in cases of wine. These three young men, each with more than 20 years in the restaurant business, take the opportunity to reflect on why what they do works. "This is the only thing any of us have ever done," says Burns. "We didn't come to it from another career. This is our complete career. You have to trust your instincts. About food, about service - you need to go with your gut. I've been working in restaurants since I was a 16-year-old scooper at Friendly's."
Woods agrees. "It's all about experience," he says. "Walking into a new space and knowing what it will take to make it a successful restaurant, where to put the bar and the communal table. How to be vigilant and look at every restaurant on a daily basis, see what's wrong, get it corrected, and have the skills to keep people working sharp but wanting to be on your team." As they tick through their senior personnel, they realize that every member of their professional staff has been promoted from within. "We give our people a career path," Woods says. The chefs de cuisine who now have an ownership stake, the GMs who were hosts. Even Gates and Burns were once staff rather than principals. It's a tight group, and a hard-working one. Even more impressive: they have no outside investors with an ownership interest. Every new restaurant and all growth is financed internally.
The team runs fast. They're in constant motion, roving from one location to another. They work well as a group, with a sort of shared brain. A good example is how they test menu items. "If we taste something and all think it's terrific, it is, and it means that 99 percent of the people who come in to our restaurant will think the same thing," Burns says. "We don't change a dish or a recipe because someone complains."
"It would take a state decree for us to change a dish we knew was excellent," Woods agrees.
"If we know it's good," Burns adds, "it's good."
The group plans to continue expanding its reach, adding new locations and continually refining the affordable French concept of Aquitaine and Gaslight. (Next up is a new cafeteria/takeout concept, Green Light, right next to Gaslight and modeled on Pret a Manger, the upscale English chain.) But they aren't guys with an appetite for grandeur; they have no plans to franchise the concept and march it across the country. "Right now, every single one of our restaurants makes money, and we still get to keep our lives," Woods says. "After 20 years in the restaurant business, what could be better than that?" @
[Photo by Mitch Weiss]
