Restaurateurs, designers and architects like to say they scour the world for furnishings.
Neil Stein told me that he went to France for the chairs for Rouge and he spent $1,200 each for them, in 1998 dollars. (Stein also most likely had one heck of a time in France picking out the chairs.) Artist/entrepreneur J. Seward Johnson built the luxe restaurant Rat's in Hamilton Township, N.J., around the lumber from an old barn he bought in upstate New York.
Steven Cook and Michael Solomonov are playing with a total $700,000 budget, and so must stay close to home. And to reality.
Their 25 or so tables, chairs, bar stools and chef's table have all been sourced locally. They're also using Neil Inverso in Northeast Philly, whose specialty is custom banquettes.
This stuff will be delivered in March; remember that they're still insisting April for the opening. Not only April, but April 1.
We'll see... Ofer the construction dude is out of the country this week, and a crew of electricians is wiring the place.
So they're looking for a lighting fixture to hang over the bar, and maybe a faux window or two for decoration. And architect Elisabeth Knapp got this idea to stitch together Middle Eastern-style rugs to create one large "magic carpet" for Zahav's high-end dining room, which they've dubbed "The Quarter."
A field trip to Material Culture, a warehouse-size furnishings store off the Roosevelt Extension, was in order.
Much of Material Culture's product line is Far Eastern, Cook explained, Perhaps Knapp could find items that might look right.
Cook found a window outside that might do. No price tag.
Then he went up into Material Culture's rug showroom, which was in disarray as many of the rugs were in Atlanta for a trade show.
Cook estimated the floor space at 500 square feet -- not huge.
A saleswoman pointed Cook toward a back room off the rug showtoom, which was filled with smaller pieces of rugs that could be stitched together. She even knew of a craftsman in the western suburbs who could do the work.
Carpet-stitchers, banquette-makers. Telling you: There's no shortage of people in the region whose livelihoods are keyed to the restaurant business. Also, I haven't touched on the staff for Zahav. I have to quiz Cook and Solomonov on who will be in the kitchen and who will run the front of the house.
And I plan to discuss of the financing of the project in another installment. A crucial point in the restaurant's financing is about to come up: The "closing" of the loan. So far, many of the bills have come from the owners' pockets and their credit cards and the goodwill of vendors and suppliers.
Material Culture is at 4700 Wissahickon Ave., 215-849-8030.