On the other hand, Levit is also more defiant. "Nobody is going to force me out of private practice. I like helping people with vision problems. I want to continue doing it," he says. "I'm going to pay close attention to the rules and learn to work within the system." Does he feel diminished by playing the game? "Of course I do," he snorts.
Bacall says that when his colleagues get together now, the talk focuses on discontents and often runs to retirement--remember, these are people in their 40s--but they feel boxed in. They can't retire gracefully, cutting back their patient load, because the fixed costs of running an office are so high--computers, regulatory compliance, malpractice insurance, and so forth. Bacall, who says he works, on average, 70 hours a week, feels he can't wind down his practice. "I have three children. So far not one of them wants to go into medicine and I'm not unhappy about that. In the last 20 years, there have been so many changes, there isn't the same level of career satisfaction," he says.
Granted, medical doctors are probably feeling unusually touchy these days and not all their complaints are with the government. Some are just reacting negatively to market forces that are reducing their fees and asking them to account for their services. But listen to two other people in what are more traditionally considered small businesses. Again, both are successful and not prone to pessimism and complaint. And, as with most small businesspeople, they are risk-takers who have built a business from the bottom up.
Charlie Palmer has just the kind of history that people are referring to when they talk about the United States as the land of opportunity, and he is just the kind of person that people admire when they talk about the rewards of hard work and talent. Palmer is the owner of one of New York City's best and most fashionable restaurants. He is also a chef with a reputation for innovative American cuisine. And he did it all himself.
Palmer was born in a small town in New York State called Smyrna. During summers and after school he worked in various restaurants, starting as--what else?--a dishwasher. He liked the work just fine, but didn't consider cooking as a career; he thought he would play pro football. (He's a big, fierce-looking guy, at 6 foot 3 inches, 250 pounds.) He didn't actually decide to be a chef until he graduated from high school. He then spent two years at the Culinary Institute in Hyde Park, New York, and came straight to New York City. He rented an apartment in Hell's Kitchen for $50 a month and had his car stolen.
Palmer spent the next several years working at some of New York City's nicer restaurants-- like Côte Basque, where he began as a butcher. He also had a bunch of second jobs--like making pastry at La Petite Marmite. By working two jobs, 16 hours a day, he gradually expanded his expertise. And he came to realize that the restaurant business was "strictly a business--the more you put into it, the more you get out of it."
When Palmer finally made his first trip to France, he went right to its gastronomical center, Lyons, and worked in a very famous three-star restaurant. He spent every cent he earned eating at good restaurants. "In France, I really realized what was going on--there, they live for food."
Back in New York City, there was no stopping him. After four years as head chef at The River Cafe, another important restaurant, he was confident that he could be successful as both a businessman and a chef. So, in 1988, along with two partners (whom he later bought out), Palmer started Aureole.
In a city where the experience of eating is as important as eating itself, restaurants are "designed" by professionals. Not for Palmer. "I wanted to choose the way it looked," he says. He chose the neighborhood (Upper East Side), the building (a brownstone), the ambiance (low-key), the place settings (simple), and the flower arrangements (spectacular). "I did sheetwork, I sanded floors, hey! I even did woodwork."
The restaurant, which seats 90-100 people, is open for lunch five days a week, dinner six days. It ain't cheap. The fixed price lunch is $32; dinner is $59. Palmer employs 68 people, including 21 cooks, maîtres d'hôtels, waiters, cashiers, bartenders, and bookkeepers. Some of them are part-time.
Palmer gives new meaning to the term "hands on," saying: "I am the manager and chef--and dishwasher when somebody doesn't show up." And he is also in the restaurant whenever food is served, taking vacations only when it is closed. During the first two years, Palmer worked from 7 a.m. to 1 a.m.
On the day I visited him, he was wrestling with "just another hassle" over a recently purchased creamery in Peekskill, New York. Palmer figured that since this country makes so much dairy produce, it shouldn't be all that difficult to make the best quality butter, cream, and cheese.
The creamery applied to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for all the necessary approvals, got most of them, and then started marketing its cream, butter, chocolate butter, and four types of cheeses to restaurants and specialty food stores. The cream is called "clabberd cream"--an old-fashioned term used by farmers. Three months after the creamery started distribution, the USDA decided to withhold its regulatory approval of the labeling, saying that the word "clabberd" implies the cream was made "in a home."
Palmer was trying to decide what to do, and he was vastly good humored about it. Perhaps that's because that was just the problem du jour--he has been hassled by government regulations from the start. Consider Palmer's most exasperating brush with government regulation: Several years ago, as he tells it, a guy came into the restaurant at 9 p.m., which was right in the middle of dinner service, and flashed a badge from the Environmental Protection Agency. He told Palmer that he would have to shut down his kitchen exhaust system because there was a complaint that its noise level was above the EPA standard. The restaurant was full.
Palmer explained that if he shut off the exhaust system while making 100 dinners, the temperature would rise so fast that the fire extinguishing system--38 jets which spew white fire retardant all over the kitchen--would be set off. The EPA agent said, "Shut it down or I'll arrest you," and called the police. Palmer shut it down, the heat in the kitchen skyrocketed, and the fire ex-tinguishing system went off and ruined everything in the kitchen.
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