Taking the leap

Jason Soloway and his quest for a culinary community

By David Silverberg

It’s now or never. That’s what a little voice inside his head said to Jason Soloway, BA’95, MA’99, approaching his 40th birthday. It’s now or never to move on from being a vice-president at New York’s Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies and to dive headfirst into running restaurants, something Soloway wanted to accomplish before it was too late.

“I had kicked around the idea for a couple of years, and I wasn’t sure how to make the leap,” he said.

Soloway, now 43, decided to make the transition at age 39 by enrolling in New York’s Institute of Culinary Education (ICE), focusing on culinary management. “I saw it as a way to build relationships and strengthen my connections in the industry,” he remembered. “And there was a sense of relief of not having this internal conversation anymore of will I, won’t I. I just went for it.”

Going for it has given Soloway the kind of success he was striving to achieve. He owns two restaurants in New York, Wallflower in the West Village and The Eddy in the East Village. While at ICE, he became a partner in a neighbourhood bar, called Mother’s Ruin, in which he is still partner today. To say Soloway is immensely busy with his ‘restos’ is an understatement.

Responsible for overseeing how each restaurant operates and markets itself, Soloway stressed the importance of consistency at his venues. “Especially for our kinds of places with regular customers, where we change menus and drinks at both places, we have to maintain a consistent quality level.” And that comes down to hiring the best staff, he added.

“It’s an alchemy of their resume, interview, references and observing them in action. If they pass the first three, I invite them in for a ‘trial’ shift,” he said. He also tends to question applicants with ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’

Soloway said, “If they respond, ‘I want to own a restaurant one day’ with a sparkle in their eye, and start to describe it in painstaking detail, that tells me they have the fire in their belly and are a little mad. These are all qualities I consider desirable in the restaurant industry.”

His restaurants have received highly favourable reviews from critics for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker and The New York Michelin Guide and other leading industry publications, as well as on sites like Yelp and OpenTable, but Soloway feels the shiniest glow of pride when industry folks keep coming back. “To get a nice following of chefs and cocktail industry insiders – that’s when you know you’re doing something right.”