Catering to a trendy crowd

The paninis arranged in squishy mounds in the display case of Sant Ambroeus on Madison Avenue are pretty oozing. There’s the tuna, decadently topped with marinated artichokes; the padded frittata; the turkey piled high with mozzarella and tomato and topped with Dijon mustard, all as flavorful as it was seductive.

As it should be, said Gherardo Guarducci, a partner at SA Hospitality Group who, with Dimitri Pauli, owns the Sant Ambroeus restaurants dotted throughout Manhattan and in affluent enclaves across the country.

“Food has given me some of the best moments of pleasure and prayer of my life,” said Mr. Guarducci, who is the company’s most public face. “It can provide a feeling of care, silence, spirituality, and a satisfaction much like sex. I can never have enough.”

You could say it overcompensates. He and Mr. Pauli have embarked on an expansion of late, their empire now stretching to encompass new outposts of Sant Ambroeus in East Hampton, N.Y., which opened in November, and Aspen, Colo., due to open this week. . Among other recent projects is a two-story Sant Ambroeus on Brookfield Place that opened in November 2020. It is a short walk from the World Trade Center, home of Condé Nast.

The partners are considering a location on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. There’s also the more casual Felice, with 11 locations in New York and Florida.

But the jewel in the members’ crown is the recently restored Lever House, the former Lever House restaurant, owned and operated since 2009 by the SA Group, and located on the ground floor of the totem Lever House on Park Avenue. His most lavishly exclusive venture to date, the restaurant, which reopened last week after a month-long hiatus, has been revamped with a $3 million investment, financing shared between SA Hospitality Group, Brookfield Properties and the group of Waterman Clark investment.

Like Sant Ambroeus, it has long been a magnet for personalities at the top of their professions, especially those in the notoriously whimsical world of style. Now, as in its debut, you enter via a tunnel-like ramp that opens into a long, heated dining room with wood-slat walls, black leather banquettes, and understated pumpkin accents. Niches along one wall promise a touch of seclusion.

The setting is paradoxically cozy and theatrical, true to Marc Newson’s original design but without the feverishly colorful portraits of Andy Warhol that once enlivened the room. (Silk-printed works, belong to real estate mogul Aby Rosen, who sold Lever House in 2020.) Instead, there will be a selection of Damien Hirst’s butterfly canvases and other world-class works. Towering sculptures by Ellsworth Kelly shield the garden from prying eyes.

The setting is critical, as Mr. Guarducci subscribes to the conventional wisdom that good food is like show business, an attraction for onlookers of all stripes. At Casa Lever, as at Sant Ambroeus, “people watching is very important,” he said. “You come to be in the company of the titans of finance, real estate or the art world, because these people are powerful or famous, or because they are your class.” Either way, the experience confers “a sense of belonging,” he said.

As the scenes progress, Sant Ambroeus initially provided the template. “It’s very clubby in a slightly snobbish European style,” said Ed Burstell, a beauty and retail brand consultant. The crowd, dense at breakfast time, gathers strength later in the day, Burstell said. “There will always be a ‘someone,’” he said. “It’s a guaranteed sighting.”

The restaurant’s diners, who at various times have included Tom Ford, Carine Roitfeld, Thom Browne and Grace Coddington, provide a look of glamor and pizzazz. “Fashion people create a lot of ideas, I don’t want to say trends, for the community,” Guarducci said. “You experience the restaurant differently when the fashion world is behind it. You approach it with a more open mind.”

Fashion, however, can also give off an unpleasant air of elitism, as noted in a 2010 New York Times two-star review of Casa Lever. An old-school Manhattan restaurant, Casa Lever, the reviewer noted, “is built for the ton and their bankrollers, staffed by dapper, rakish men with huge wristwatches.”

Mr. Guarducci brushed that long-ago slight down like fluff. “It was what you would expect,” he said. “It highlighted the fact that we are not for everyone.”

Speaking like a haughty businessman. With his patrician features, springy gray hair and slim 6-foot-4 frame, Guarducci, 56, looks the part. But he seems to go out of his way to counteract that image.

“I spent some time thinking about how formal I should be for this interview,” he said. “These are the clothes I normally wear,” she said of her dark blue Zegna jacket, Aspesi ribbed trousers and brown suede Tom Ford shoes.

That dull look, he suggested, is well in line with his Tuscan-bred reserve. “I’m not a particularly social being,” she said. And while his career has allowed him access to the highest echelons of society — “I’ve met and had moments with everyone from Bloomberg to the president,” he said — he describes himself, outside of work, as a kind of recluse.

To ease the inherent pressures of work, he spends a lot of time at home with his wife, Samantha Tannehill, a model-turned-interior designer. He also receives visits from his four children from a previous marriage, whose ages range from 22 to 30. Most mornings he seeks balance through a form of Vedic meditation. “And then I pray,” he said.

The son of a textile entrepreneur, Guarducci hoped to enter the family trade in the manufacturing city of Prato, but when that business failed in the early 1990s, he went to live in New York. He has rarely looked back.

For a time, he sold focaccia sandwiches in Bryant Park, where the fashion week shows were held. “I came to depend on Fern Mallis,” she said of the executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America at the time. “She would decide when the fashion week tents went up, if my kiosk would become part of the show. I stayed and served focaccia to fashion people.”

In the early 2000s, he approached the Pauli family, then owners of Sant Ambroeus, with the idea of ​​reopening Sant Ambroeus in Madison (the original canvas tent had closed in 2001). He and Mr. Pauli founded a series of sister restaurants in the city.

The company prospered despite setbacks. “Covid has reached the pinnacle of our success,” Guarducci said. “The time was physically, mentally and emotionally so difficult that it really made me old.”

Persist, though challenges remain. “We are the only company that must be excellent at managing all of your senses: what you see, smell, hear and taste,” Guarducci said. “If the bread is stale or the room is noisy, if any of those things are wrong, you will feel that the food is not so good.”

He knows that dining tends to be an immersive experience. “As in any form of theatre,” he said, “you’re only as good as your last performance.”