It”™s easy to walk right by Elephant, a tapas bar in uptown Kingston that hides its identity behind a stark, black-painted facade with a narrow window that seems designed for secrecy. But this stripped-down eatery, which is often blaring punk music and lacks a proper kitchen, is packed on many Friday and Saturday nights, bringing a dash of panache to neighborhood”™s quiet night streets.
Rich Reeve, who owns Elephant with his wife Maya Karrol, admitted the idea of opening a restaurant serving small servings of unusual fare, such as blood sausage and pig”™s cheeks, in an urban backwater where retailers perpetually struggle was risky. He also wanted it to be a late-night place, even though not so much as a mouse is usually stirring on Wall Street after 7 p.m. After years of working in restaurants, he was eager to open his own place, something that would break the mold. “My plan was to do something utterly different,” said Reeve. “This is the anti-restaurant restaurant.”
Reeve, a big man with tattooed arms in a black T-shirt, sits at the bar and it is with some timidity that one asks if the loud music could be turned down a notch. (It isnӪt a problem.) The space has burnished wood floors and a high tin ceiling painted black, from which descend dimmed Italian bistro style lights, each casting a bright aura over a caf̩ table. The wooden countertop of the bar has a striated design of painted chocolate lines and is perched atop a milky translucent base with a copper mesh grid. Tall shelves behind the bar have a Japanese flavor, and the textured plaster walls are hiply retro, circa 1910.
Elephant opened last April, following four months of renovation. Amazingly, Reeve and Karrol invested only $50,000 in the startup. They put in $12,000 of their own money, obtained $20,000 from investors and borrowed the rest. Contractor and interior designer Brian Early, a former fashion designer from New York City who resides in Kingston, applied his artistic wizardry to plywood and other common materials, many of them recycled or found. Reeve contributed his own labor and relied on the skills and inspiration of other artistic friends. Building owner Joe Concra, for example, plastered and buffed the walls, while his wife Denise stenciled the bathrooms.
Reeve whips up the tapas, Panini, salads, cured meat dishes and plates of cheese in a space in the back using minimal equipment, consisting of a freezer, a couple of refrigerators, two toaster ovens, a hot plate and a sandwich grill. He uses artisan ingredients obtained from regional farm cooperatives and local suppliers or imported from France, Spain or Italy. Everything is made to order from scratch, which sometimes takes a little time. “There”™s nothing between the customer and me,” Reeve said.
The plates are priced an average of $8, encouraging customers to try something new, like the roasted pork belly with brussels sprouts or homemade duck confit. “For $36, you can sample five different flavors,” said Reeve. “It”™s a more communal style of eating.” He also specializes in “head to tail cuisine,” inspired by his culinary field trips to lower Manhattan and motivated by conscience. “You”™re using the whole animal, which leaves a smaller footprint. It”™s also cost effective,” Reeve says. Sometimes, before discarding bones, he roasts them and scrapes out the marrow for a spread.
The wines are priced from $6 to $10 a glass. “I don”™t want the wines to be a precious thing,” Reeve said. “They”™re not expensive, but they”™re not cheap either. Part of the concept is to have food that looks, tastes, smells and feels different.” Elephant also has a menu of beers from microbreweries located within a few hundred miles of Kingston.
Reeve acknowledges the more exotic items on the menu may not be everyone”™s cup of tea. And sometimes he gets complaints about the music. But that”™s OK. “I wanted people to take notice,” he says, noting that the concept has worked. “I”™m surprised how well we”™ve been received. We have a pretty good group of regulars, and we get a lot of people from Rhinebeck and Woodstock.”
While Reeve estimates it will probably take four or five years to make back his investment, so far he”™s taking in more money than he”™s spending. In part he attributes his success to keeping inventories low and working within a strict budget, which is generally about $3,300 a week, covering all salaries, debt service and purchase of supplies.
Reeve is also careful to stick to his original plan. Some customers have suggested he add more tables, but Reeve said the business will “have to grow exponentially” before he takes that step. With just him in the kitchen, he can”™t manage more capacity, and hiring a chef would cost an extra $600 a week. Keeping his overhead low is key to his business model.
Over a decade ago, Reeve owned a café and then a pub in Poughkeepsie, but after plans to buy the pub building fell through, he left to work at restaurant jobs in Vermont and Maine. The experience in New England was valuable in that he worked for large corporate owners, which customarily keep tight tabs on the numbers. He applied that fiscal discipline in drawing up his own business plans.
He and Karrol, who are natives of the area, returned to the mid-Hudson Valley five years ago to be closer to family. Reeve got a job as a chef at 23 Broadway, in Kingston”™s Rondout, which served tapas, while Karrol was employed as a food services coordinator at a nursing home. Meanwhile, Reeve furthered his culinary education, supplementing the couple”™s frequent trips to the city to sample the latest and most creative downtown restaurants via reading and The Food Network.
One day, he was inspired by a sandwich shop in downtown Manhattan that used high-end ingredients and the simplest of cooking implements. Reeve went home and experimented with a toaster oven, panini grill and hot plate, ultimately coming up with 444 concoctions. “I figured I could make enough stuff to be interesting” without having to invest $35,000 in a fully outfitted kitchen, he said.
His opportunity came when Concra called asking him if he was interested in renting a storefront that had become vacant in the building Concra owned in Uptown Kingston. The rent was reasonable: Concra, an artist who lives and paints upstairs, “cares about the community and wanted to put something good there,” Reeve said. “He didn”™t want another breakfast and lunch counter that closes at 4 in the afternoon.”
