Last month a seductive, shadowy new cocktail lounge opened on Ludlow Street, just south of Delancey. It's called Hotel Chantelle, but like Hotel Delmano and Hotel Griffou before it, there's no turn down service here, just drinking and, eventually, eating. Owner Benjamin Shih, who's succeeded with a slightly more rakish lounge aesthetic at Brooklyn bars Sweet Ups and Royal Oak, plans to expand the operation to serve French colonial cuisine on the ground floor and up on the roof, which will be open year-round. (The establishment is named after a French World War II safe house.) During a recent interview, Shih told us he's just waiting for the permit papers to clear before he can move forward with all that—hopefully the city will give him the green light before he gets shipped off to Afghanistan!
Part of Hotel Chantelle is open, but there's a lot more to come, right? We're waiting for inspections for the kitchen floor to open, as well as the roof deck.
Now you just have the ground floor bar? Correct. In the future, we'll open a large rooftop that's enclosed in a giant greenhouse which rolls open for the spring/summer, so we can do brunches and late night dinners out in the fresh air. In the fall/winter it will be sealed shut, so it's a heated rooftop, a heated jungle. So it's actually a 365-day-a-year rooftop with views of the Williamsburg Bridge.
What was the building before you moved in? It was a Chinese medical doctor's office.
What kind of food are you going to be serving? We're serving seasonal French colonial, which basically means we follow French ships where they put into port. Let's say it's a hot weather month or season, like the summer. For that quarter or three-month period we will be serving food inspired by where the French ships used to put into hot weather ports. For example: French Polynesia, Tahiti, Northern Africa, Nigeria, Tunisia etc. If it is a wet-weather month, we have a lot of choices: French Indochina, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and so on. Some of my favorites are the cold-weather months though, because I'm a big fan of French Montreal, French Canadian food as well as Shanghai.
It seems like you're kind of a history buff. Oh yeah, that was actually one of my majors when I was an undergraduate.
What else did you major in? I also have a degree in history of art, chemistry and I also have a J.D.
So, how did you get into this industry? When I was seventeen, an undergraduate, I got a scholarship to go to school. But it only covered tuition, your standards: room and board, books, etc. So I needed to work on campus to support myself. I found work/study jobs were both difficult to get and low-paying. So, before freshman year started I paid attention to what my brother said, because he had gone to the same school before, and I got there a week and a half early and just started canvassing around for jobs. Actually the first place I went to, I got a job, and it was as a bar back.
What college was this? It was the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. It was in Fall of '89 when I started my bar career.
The first place you opened was in Williamsburg, and that's Sweet Ups. There's a big jump from working at a bar to owning one, is this something you always wanted to do? Oh no, I always wanted to be president or go to the moon. [Laughs] After either growing up, as people call it, or sometimes I think creatively, "growing down" I gave up those shotless hopes. If you put me in a time machine now and took me back to when I was five years old and ask five-year-old-me "Well, what would you want to do with your life?" I'd say "Go to the moon!" or "Run for office!" but growing up in Detroit, or growing down, we get more practical with age and I had to face the necessity of having to help support my family in Detroit and make money. So no, restaurants and bars were not my first choice, but as far as choices go, it's one I love.
How long has Hotel Chantelle been in development? Well, we first signed the lease in 2008.
What's the significance of the name? One of the many jobs I've had, besides working at a bar, was working at the Graduate School library in the reference department. While there I came across this book about a member of the French Resistance in World War II. And it told the story—I remember, it was only a paragraph long, but it stuck in my head—and it talks about how the French Resistance would pick up downed pilots from the RAF and the allies. And they'd bring them to an underground railroad of safe houses to stay, where they'd get on British subs and go back to the U.K. These safe houses were codenamed after fictional hotels. "Hotel Chantelle" was one of them. That name always stuck in my head, probably because I loved the idea of the speakeasy, but a speakeasy plus because, it's speakeasy but also the French Resistance. As opposed to trying to steer clear of the taxman, IRS, and the Bureau of Alcohol and Tobacco in Prohibition, it was steering clear of the Germans. A lot of these safe houses, I guess they used to stow like little bars or little kitchens in them, so when the pilots came in they'd get a bottle of wine or some fine food. I loved that part of the story too. The French just did it with style.
Are you going to have a private club in the basement? Yeah, most of the stuff in the basement got scratched. We're going to expand the kitchen or make it larger. Originally we were going to invite people from the industry who worked in the neighborhood and lived in the neighborhood to have a floor you could just hang out in that was more on that private side. Not private as in a members club where you pay or private in that clipboard or a door guy who judges you. But private in a sense that you're from the surrounding neighborhood and maybe it's a little too nutty on the ground floor or upstairs. An extension of your living room. Unfortunately, word got out on that and our idea of giving our good friends, our co-workers, people in the industry keys and all that, it's been ditched.
Are you still going do some kind of partnership with the veterans? Yes. Instead we're going to stick with the original game plan, and we're going to keep that ground floor open for veterans. We've partnered up with a non-profit that brings back recent returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who are coming back to New York City and coming off the military. Servicemen and servicewomen. Or doing the remaining two years in their Reserve Component Unit. We'll provide civilian job skills at civilian market wages six, 12 and 18-month cycles. The harder the job, the longer the cycle. So we'll be bringing men and women through back-office activities, such as the event sales, event planning, event management, accounting, accounts payable, accounts receivable, we'll be bringing people through the kitchen, short order, prep, pastry, the full kit and caboodle. We'll be bringing people through the back bar, where all the service jobs are, and the floor jobs, floor management and service itself.
What's amazing about this program is that so many of the men and women that from Iraq and Afghanistan have a hard time assimilating into the civilian world. Jobs in the military are some of the most dangerous jobs you can have. If you work in a gun crew on the artillery beat, there's really no translation for that in the civilian world. So how do we take these men and women who have done such a great service to this country and find a way to get them up and running in the civilian world?
And you yourself have military experience? Yes, yes, in the reserve component. I'm a 13th box forward observer, with the 69th infantry.
Can I ask you what forward observer is? A forward observer team is comprised of two individuals, a forward observer and an RTO, his partner. RTO stands for radio telephone operator. When you're out on the field, the forward observers and RTO's are the people who are the direct eyes on the target. So you're the instrument to call in indirect fire, like as artillery and mortars and naval gunfire, and direct fire: helicopter gun shifts, munitions dropped from the air or fired from the air, either naval or air force. A lot of people don't realize that with newsreels they see on TV showing the technology we have, the smart weapons, etc., it still requires two people on the ground to find the target, lase it, and call it in.
When you say "lase," do you mean, point a laser at it? Yes, there are many tools, from naked eyeballs to hitting things with lasers. You can see a target with your naked eye and direct a call for fire in on that target. You can also use equipment, for example a laser designator. That paints the target with an invisible blinking dot that allows munitions to either fire from the ground or from the air to hone in on that target.
So are you going to be going into the field overseas? There is a deployment with Charlie company for my unit for 2011 in Afghanistan, but we don't know where in Afghanistan.
Does that mean you're definitely going? Until I get a warning order in my hand, no. The warning order is what gives you an idea of what's going to happen and then your activation order brings you to Title 10 status. Title 10 means no longer civilian, but full-time active. So until those pieces of paper are in your hand, it's never official.
Well, for now you're here. So let's talk about the cocktails at Hotel Chantelle. Let's see, the drink menu is split up into three parts, wine and beer, unique liquors, and variations on classics. Our actual cocktail-cocktail list. I believe strongly, John, that the cocktail Renaissance in New York has also had a big push-back. And I experienced that a lot in my Williamsburg venues. People are returning to classic cocktails and also to unique liquors, and that's what we try for here. The cocktails are variations on classics. And in keeping with the downtown New York City sensibility, our portions are very generous. All cocktails here are doubles and triples in size. So you actually get more.
Who did the cocktail menu? I did.
So you're someone who does a lot of experimenting with different cocktails? Yes. I've pulled from cocktails I know from living abroad, and also cocktails that I made on my own. This is my 22nd year behind the bar, so spirits, and beer are definitely areas I feel very comfortable with. I'm lucky that when I was in London I got a chance to work with Dick Bradsell, who is the godfather of modern cocktails in the UK. Really, he is an amazing, outstanding individual.
Do you have a favorite on this menu? Oh, hands down, it would be the Gibson. We have a take on the classic Gibson, but it's made with Russian Standard, which is amazing, amazing vodka from actual Russia. A lot of people go with Stoli, which isn't even made in Russia. The Russian Standard is the real deal. It's also made with carpano antica, which is amazing old-school vermouth. It's definitely the Cadillac of vermouth. It's the standard that all vermouths should be compared to. It's made with whole roasted peppercorns.
That sounds great right about now. [Laughs] I know!
