The weekday lunch patrons had gone back to their jobs in downtown White Plains when Anthony Goncalves stopped at the bar at his Peniche Tapas Restaurant to tend to one more business detail in what would be another 18-hour workday for the driven chef and restaurateur. A small scale sat on the marble bar beside a cardboard box bearing precious foreign cargo.
Angelo Totaro, an Italian food importer from Moonachie, N.J., unwrapped paper towels that held a mound of white truffles from Croatia, priced at $3,000 to $4,500 a pound. Goncalves picked up a large brown knotted tuber and leaned close to sniff it. He nodded in approval; Totaro watching him smiled. The truffles”™ distinctively pungent aroma drew a curious hostess from the adjoining dining room.
“He has all the best truffles in New York,” said Goncalves, whose keen eye and nose for the best local and international food products and purchasing savvy now serve three restaurants in Westchester County, in two of which he is an owning partner. (At the third, Mulino”™s of Westchester in White Plains, he has been consulting and executive chef for about one year.) “When he gets them at the airport, he comes right to me. I”™m the first stop.”
This month, the 37-year-old chef expects to make his second restaurant venture in downtown White Plains, 42, the first stop for patrons of fine dining in Westchester. Judging from the early calls for reservations, the 21,000-square-foot, 200-seat restaurant on the 42nd floor of the Ritz-Carlton, Westchester, should prove profitable for its partners when it opens Dec. 29.
That ownership team includes the Trotters NY Restaurant Group partnership of Goncalves and two Westchester businessmen, Mark Avallone and J.R. Tesone, “that have a passion for the hospitality business,” Goncalves said. Tesone, the owner of Breezemont Day Camp in Armonk, runs the group”™s business office in the renovated cellar of Peniche. Since partnering with Louis R. Cappelli, developer of the Ritz-Carlton hotel that is scheduled to open Dec. 19 and its flanking condominium towers on Renaissance Square, The Residences at the Ritz-Carlton, the Trotters NY Restaurant Group has become the food and beverage division of Cappelli Enterprises Inc., Goncalves said. Cappelli and the Trotters trio plan to open more restaurants.
Goncalves said about 1,800 phone calls a week from reservation-seekers at 42 come in to their office in Peniche at 175 Main St. Three receptionists field the calls. “Last week we got like a thousand phone calls on Friday and Saturday because people heard we were going to open then,” he said. “There”™s an understanding that we”™re probably about five months out” on bookings at 42.
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Rise to success
From Main Street tavern keeper to the top of the Ritz in 11 years: that has been Goncalves”™s successful rise as chef and proprietor in the hospitality industry. His restaurant business has grown from 20 employees at the start to 73 at Peniche; he will open 42 with another 65 employees.
Goncalves and his parents, both natives of Portugal, opened Trotters Tavern in November 1996. His father, also named Anthony, a plumbing and general contractor, built the bar and restaurant and functions as general manager at Peniche, which Goncalves named after a Portuguese fishing village near his father”™s hometown. The large photo portrait that hangs on a wall of the rustically modern restaurant”™s 70-seat front dining room, apparently that of a Portuguese fisherman, is in fact the senior Goncalves.
About six years ago, Goncalves renovated the establishment and shortened its name to Trotters “to make it more of a restaurant,” he said. He had planned to preside as host in the upscale restaurant, “but I couldn”™t find a chef” after trying a few. “They didn”™t see my vision,” he said. “Without knowing anything about how a kitchen worked, I jumped in there.”
At the start, while learning the techniques and working system of a kitchen and the “different proteins” served to diners, “Basically, I was trying anything,” he said. “I was all over the place. That”™s not a good thing, I learned.”
He decided “to stick with the things that I grew up with, what I grew up eating.” He drew upon the Portuguese and Sicilian fare from his summer stays with relatives in Portugal and his travels through Europe. Experimenting with familiar flavors, “I”™m always reaching to give the person sitting in the seat something they won”™t forget, a dish they”™ll always remember and want to come back and have again,” he said.
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”˜Where I belong”™
The self-taught chef in 2004 was cited by an Esquire Magazine food critic as “one of five chefs in this country to keep an eye on.” Goncalves has since turned down an offer to take over a new restaurant, Gilt, that opened in the luxurious New York Palace Hotel in Manhattan.
As his business and reputation grew at Trotters, his cuisine evolved from Mediterranean to new American. He plans to continue that at 42.
“We were very successful at Trotters and building to be one of the serious restaurants,” he said. But the opportunity to partner with Cappelli in the Ritz setting persuaded to him remake Trotters into Peniche, a more casual, less pricey eatery that offers a tapas tasting menu in its 60-seat back dining room and whose fully open kitchen invites customers to interact with chefs.
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“His vision for the area has inspired me,” he said of Cappelli, whose wife, Kylie, helped design 42. “I can”™t wait to start cooking. It”™s great to have somebody by your side who believes in what you”™re doing.”
Goncalves said the Trotters NY partners and Cappelli plan to open several more Peniche restaurants, including one in Stamford, Conn., “that will be exactly like this one.” Among several other opportunities, the partners are considering a location in Orlando, Fla., he said.
Goncalves said the partners will not franchise the tapas restaurants. “We need control, complete control,” he said. “I would never want my name on anything I didn”™t have complete control over.”
At 42, “I will be in the kitchen where I belong,” he said. “I”™ll be cheffing that restaurant. Every day it”™s open, I”™ll be there, because that is my kitchen.”
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