Ramze Zakka - Westfair Communications

“I truly don”™t know how to cook,” Ramze Zakka confesses. “I”™m not a chef and never waited tables.” But that lack of skill and experience didn”™t stop him from opening a small chain of successful restaurants in Westchester and nearby Fairfield County, Conn. ”“ once he took the entrepreneurial leap from employee to employer. “I spent a great deal of time working for someone else,” he said. “I decided I didn”™t want to work for corporate America any longer.”

And while he knew he wanted to escape corporate America, he was uncertain about what would capture his imagination and incipient entrepreneurial abilities. It was 1989 and Zakka, then 39, had recently moved from New York City to Greenwich ”“ “to the country,” he said. “My son was turning 6 and I thought it was a good time to move to a nice environment. New York is a wonderful place to live, but Connecticut has a nicer environment to raise a family.”

Zakka had been controller of the United States/Arab Chamber of Commerce, which he joined when the joint venture between the federal government and the Arab world was a startup organization after “a barrel of oil went from $6 to $60,” he said. “We were very small, three or four people.” By the time he left in 1989, the quasi-governmental agency formed to promote American products in the Arab world had grown to seven offices scattered across the United States.

He had moved to the Big Apple in 1973 “with absolutely no plans” after he graduated from the University of Texas with a bachelor”™s degree in psychology and a minor in business. His older brother, Richard, was trying to be an actor in Manhattan and was in real estate to make a living, and the two became housemates until Zakka married in 1980. By then, he was working at the World Trade Center with the U.S./Arab chamber until he moved to Greenwich and “basically took a sabbatical for about six months to determine what I was going to do next.”

Sophisticated palates

What he did next was to begin scouting around Greenwich looking for a restaurant to buy. “Maybe my exposure to the culinary landscape in New York was my inspiration,” he said. Whatever the inspiration, his entrepreneur”™s eye spotted a niche in the town”™s restaurant landscape he thought he could fill. “In Greenwich there were really no New York-style bistros,” he said. The town had “very high-end, formal restaurants, or there were by-the-slice low-end restaurants, but there was really nothing in the middle.” That”™s where he decided to concentrate his efforts, and began looking for a restaurant to purchase and remake into a bistro.

“I looked at a number of sites and found a location on Greenwich Avenue that was a one-man show that did fried chicken,” he said. The restaurant”™s owner “was looking to get out, and it was an opportunity to get a location that would allow us to get a liquor license.”

Zakka hired an architect, gutted the business, advertised for a chef in the Culinary Institute of America”™s alumni journal, and “basically tried to eliminate all the possibilities of failure.” He decided on Italian cuisine because “Italian food is the most frequented in the country.” That October he opened Terra ”“ which means Earth in Italian ”“ that featured northern Italian cuisine, a traditional wood-fired oven behind the bar, an exposed kitchen and a professional staff. “It”™s as alive and well and bustling today as the day we opened 17 years ago,” he said.

Terra was followed by Mediterraneo five years later, Acqua in Westport, Conn., in 1997, SolÃ© in New Canaan, Conn., in 1998 and Aurora in Rye in 2003 ”“ three northern Italian, two Mediterranean cuisines. But the thread that tied them all together, Zakka said, was the quality of the various menus. “Our clientele is well traveled and has sophisticated palates,” he said. “They”™ve eaten in the finest restaurants in the world. You cannot not put out quality, or you won”™t stay in business very long.”

To help maintain quality, Zakka concentrates on two things ”“ the best ingredients and the best staff. “We used medium-sized vendors, not big institutional vendors, and buy the best product we can get our hands on. It”™s foolishness to nickel-and-dime your vendors,” he said.

“In the hospitality business, you are as good as your crew,” he said. “You treat them like family, embrace them, pay them well” and promote from within. “We have people who have been with us for 15 years who started as dishwashers and are now assistant chefs.”

Spiritual workout

When Zakka moved to Greenwich, he said, “I just wanted to live a simpler life in a small town.” And while overseeing five successful restaurants may not seem like the simple life, he has been able to delegate enough authority between an executive chef who is responsible for food production and training at each restaurant, and on-site chefs at each location to keep things simple for himself. And that gives him time to escape to the sea.

When he lived in Manhattan, he and his brother discovered sailing, “renting small boats for the day out of Port Washington,” he said. “If you live in the city, it”™s important to get out of it, and getting out on the water was like a sanity check.”

Zakka and his brother took no lessons, but rented little sail boats “so we couldn”™t get in too much trouble,” but gradually graduated to larger and more expensive craft, eventually buying a 45-foot sloop that “was like our country house,” he said. “We weekended on it and summered on it,” sailing to Newport and Nantucket and the Vineyard. It became, over time, “more than a sport,” he said. “It grew into a way of life.”

When he moved to Connecticut, Zakka bought a 40-foot racer and, more recently, another 40-foot craft he keeps at the Indian Harbor Yacht Club in Greenwich. “I sail it almost every day in the Sound,” he said, sometimes taking off “in the middle of the afternoon for two or three hours. It”™s like going to the gym. A lot of time I am solo, and it”™s a physical workout. And it”™s actually a bit of a workout spiritually, too. You”™re with one”™s self, and it”™s a big world, a big sea, and you feel so small, but more alive, on the water. It keeps you grounded.”

He skis and plays squash in the winter to keep fit, but spends the milder months on the Sound. “It”™s a wonderful sport,” he said. “You are reliant on yourself and the vessel. You can go out there and be responsible and enjoy yourself, or be a fool and kill yourself if you don”™t know what you”™re doing. Prudence is the word when you”™re sailing.”

Ultimately, Zakka said, “I will be retiring on one big boat, I hope.” That”™s a bit of a way off, though. “I”™m 56 and I still have a way to go” before he goes down to the sea in his retirement craft. In the meantime, however, he”™s concentrating on his restaurants. “I think we”™re just going to make what we have better, keep improving them, keeping them fresh and new,” he said. “My initial plan was to have one restaurant, but that”™s the glory of being in America. The sky”™s the limit.”