But it seemed that once again an irresistible opportunity was presenting itself to the Splichals. RA was an attractive partner. "We didn't want someone to put a gun to our throat and say, 'Do five Pinots a year,' " Christine says. Valenti promised that that would not happen, although that stipulation is not in the written agreement. The Splichals also liked the fact that RA was based in New York. "It was not like they were on our turf and were going to bulldoze everything and say, 'This is how to do things,' " Christine says. "We would be their subsidiary on the West Coast."
Valenti was sympathetic to the Splichals' position because of his own company's history. Founded in 1959, RA for a time owned the Four Seasons, as well as other upscale restaurants. From restaurants it had moved into catering for big investment-banking and law firms, and for prestigious sporting events like the U.S. Open. In 1998, RA merged with the much bigger Compass Group, which is the largest catering and food-services contractor in the world. RA was now part of Compass Group USA, a $2.3-billion company, but was operating as an independent subsidiary -- the same kind of arrangement that it was offering to the Splichals.
Over the years RA's luster as a restaurant operation had dimmed slightly, so the attraction of a star chef like Splichal was apparent. "It's good for the company," Puck observes. "Now they have a famous chef." Valenti could count on Splichal, whom he signed to a five-year management contract, to oversee the Patina Group. "He focused on the basis of the business," Valenti says. "After all the splash and dash and excitement, meals have to be cooked and served, and it has to be done profitably. He chose to take a more conservative, prudent approach to building his business."
Splichal agonized over whether to sell. "After certain nights I would wake up in the morning and say, 'Maybe I shouldn't do it,' " he admits. Christine never wavered. "I was all along, 'Do it,' " she says. "This is America. This is what people do. I am French. People in France don't do it. Your work is your life, and this is what you do, and you pass it on to your children. You have your business and your house for life." (Her parents are fourth-generation bakers on both sides, and they are passing on their bakery to Christine's younger sister.)
On December 9, almost a year after Valenti's initial approach, the Splichals signed the agreement. They had cashed out. They had sold the company, of which they had owned nearly three quarters -- and which employed 700 people and grossed $35 million annually -- in a complicated deal worth about $40 million. Splichal had demonstrated that big-time chefs today can be up-to-date businesspeople. He had achieved the final stage of modern American entrepreneurship: building equity in a brand that a bigger company values highly enough to pay big bucks for.
What's more, he had done it his way. Without creating a celebrity persona, he had constructed a business. He had proved that he could not only create cutting-edge dishes in the kitchen but also develop restaurant concepts that took on lives of their own, supervised by personnel that he had chosen and trained. He had also demonstrated that the restaurants could coexist despite their divergent identities. Because his empire never depended on his public personality, he was able to restrict his visible appearances to Patina, which retained a rarefied reputation above that of its Pinot siblings.
Meanwhile, Puck, who with four Las Vegas restaurants is still the dining king of that town, has nevertheless failed to reach the end point of the entrepreneurial game -- cashing out. He and Lazaroff considered taking all their businesses public back in 1995 but decided they wanted to hold on to the white-tablecloth restaurants. Instead, they groomed the Wolfgang Puck Food Co. to be a spin-off. However, the food company has suffered some setbacks recently, including the departure of the company president, Frank Guidara, after a difficult tenure. In addition, the company's ambitious but ill-defined, and now-closed, ObaChine pan-Asian restaurants -- there's one each in Seattle, Phoenix, and Beverly Hills -- suffered from bad real estate deals, high menu prices, and a formula (unlike the Pinots') that was too upscale to be easily replicated. It may be that the food company's octopuslike character undermined its salability. "With Joachim, his brand is more defined than our brand," Puck says. "A restaurant company wants to buy restaurants. We also have frozen foods, canned foods."
Although he has cashed out, Splichal, for the moment anyway, follows a schedule as grueling as Puck's. In the wake of the merger, he hops regularly to Las Vegas, where the Pinot Brasserie grossed close to $6 million last year (compared with $3.7 million at Patina), and to the East Coast, where in September he will be opening two Nick & Stef's steak houses, in New York and Washington, D.C. Before the buyout, he was already doing a Mediterranean tapas restaurant in the Disney Downtown development in Anaheim; now he is also opening a Neapolitan trattoria that he inherited from RA. He has taken over the management of the food service at the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles and the San Francisco War Memorial Opera. "We are going very fast," he says. "I feel like the bullet train."
Back in 1997, Splichal had said in an interview, "I don't see myself at 60 standing behind a stove and cooking for a few regulars. At that point I want to be sitting out on the terrace on the Cô te d'Azur with a pastis in my hand." He has since revised his ambition slightly. Last spring Splichal, who turned 46 in July, was in the south of France scouting out a vineyard to buy. He knows himself well enough to realize that his entrepreneurial spark will never flicker out. In his "retirement" years, he wants the glass in his hand to be filled with a wine that he has produced himself.
Arthur Lubow is a freelance writer based in New York City.
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