John Fraser Q&A

John Fraser JF Restaurants
John Fraser, President & CEO, JF Restaurants (Photo by Liz Clayman)
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President & CEO, JF Restaurants


Restaurateur & Michelin-starred Chef John Fraser is a culinary trailblazer, best known for redefining the role of vegetables in American cuisine from imaginative fine dining restaurants to nostalgic neighborhood brasseries.

John Fraser’s restaurant group, JF Restaurants, is behind some of America’s most exciting new restaurants, including Times Square’s first & only fine dining restaurant, 701West, America’s only Michelin-starred vegetarian restaurant, Nix, Ardor in West Hollywood, and his signature neighborhood brasserie, The Loyal in the West Village.

Someone forgot to tell John about the Pandemic as his team continued to open restaurants including Iris in Midtown-Manhattan and the North Fork Inn on Long Island’s North Fork.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, John still draws inspiration from the nostalgia of neighborhood bars and comfort food he grew up around in California. He refined his fine dining expertise under the mentorship of Thomas Keller at The French Laundry in the Napa Valley, before moving abroad to Paris to work at the revered fine dining restaurants Taillevent and Maison Blanche. After moving to New York City, he delved into his Greek heritage while working at Snack Taverna in West Village, before becoming Executive Chef at Compass which was awarded two Michelin stars.

A dream to create the entire guest experience, from food, to wine, to service and ambience, led John to move beyond the kitchen and into creating entire restaurants. JF Restaurants is a collaborative, creative hospitality group with a mission to create moments that move people through food, beverage, service & design.

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Total Food Service caught up with John Fraser, one of the most reluctant ever Q&A interviewees and the reward was an in-depth look at one of the industry’s more complex portfolios of eateries.


Who spurred you in cooking and where are you from?

I am originally from Los Angeles and what spurred me into cooking was my time working in restaurants during college. I went to college at the University of California San Diego and while I was there, I worked in a variety of positions including a bartender, a cook and a general restaurant worker. That’s when I started cooking and I’ve stayed cooking and working in restaurants ever since.

North Fork Table and Inn
North Fork Table & Inn is an East End institution, celebrating the bounty of Long Island’s farm, vineyards & waterways. The restaurant is housed in a carefully preserved, historic countryside home in Southold, Long Island. Restaurateur & Michelin-starred Chef John Fraser and his team have revitalized the historic property and reimagined the dining experience, while staying true to the ethos he shares with founding owners. As a longstanding champion of farm-to-table philosophy, it has been John’s dream to open a restaurant on the North Fork, surrounded by farms, vineyards and fisheries.

Any formal culinary education? Who are some of the key mentors that have had any impact on your career?

I attended The French Laundry where I was able to learn the art of cooking for fine dining from Thomas Keller. I already understood the operational side of being a chef, but what I really learned at The French Laundry, especially from Thomas, was how to use the creative muscles when it came to creating and expressing an idea through my cooking.

Can you walk us through your career path?

I began my culinary career at The French Laundry. After my time there I worked briefly in Paris before coming to New York in the early 2000s and I haven’t left.  When I first moved to New York I opened Snack Taverna, a small Greek restaurant in the West Village which was really the first time putting myself out there in addition to my first time being reviewed. After my time at Snack Taverna, I worked at Compass Restaurant in the Upper West Side. It had gone through a number of chefs at that point, and through lots of hard work, I was able to stabilize that restaurant. From there I worked towards saving money and in 2007 I was able to open Dovetail, my first fine dining restaurant. In 2014 while still a partner in Dovetail I opened Narcissa, a contemporary American restaurant inside The Standard, East Village hotel. I also opened Nix in 2016, which was a vegetarian restaurant in Greenwich Village that unfortunately did not make it through COVID. Finally, in 2017 I opened The Loyal in the West Village.

What insight did your Narcissa and Nix experiences give you in opening The Loyal?

I feel that those experiences were of great benefit in moving forward. Not many chefs enjoy operating a restaurant inside of a hotel but my past experiences of working in hotels have definitely helped me in shaping our ability to work inside of a hotel. I personally love the idea of different meal periods that is open 24 hours a day creates. Additionally, I love staying in hotels, I love the feeling of room service and I think my past experiences have helped me to become creative in these kinds of spaces.

John Fraser JF Restaurants
John Fraser, President & CEO, JF Restaurants (Photo by Liz Clayman)

What was your approach over the last year?

My posture towards life is let’s fight, not let’s take a break, and over the course of the past year, I had a staff around me that helped me to fight. We were able to open both Iris and the North Fork Table & Inn, because of the dedicated staff that I am able to work with.

Lots of your contemporaries focus themselves on building a brand that is dependent on media, books and now TV shows. You have taken a different approach by focusing on several collaborative deals. Can you take us inside that strategy?

I am not a fan of writing books or doing TV shows. I got into this business selfishly. I came in wanting to have the career I have now, and I feel that writing books or doing TV shows distract me from what I am doing now. Which is what I am good at and what I enjoy doing.

How did the deal come together with Ian Schrager?

While I was living in Los Angles I worked as a cook at the Mondrian Hotel and I was able to see the magic, the aesthetic, the point of view of an Ian Schrager hotel. Working in an environment like the Mondrian which incorporated the food, the culture the vibe of the hotel, all that made me want to work with Ian Schrager. When I heard about the Times Square addition, I bid on it. I thought that New York deserved a good restaurant in Times Square, and I felt very excited to serve New Yorkers in Times Square. It was a major risk for him to take me on and I think that once we started working with one another, going through the weeds with one another we recognized that we are working for the same side and our goal is to produce the best experience we can.

What led to the opportunity in Southold? What are your goals for the space?

Presently we have the café, four inn rooms and coming online sometime this year we will have 20 hotel rooms and 20 boat slips. The hotel space is something that I am interested in and this felt like the perfect opportunity to try and see what we can do. It was dilapidated section 8 housing that we have turned into a space that you can come in, pull your boat up and stay.

North Fork Table and Inn
North Fork Table & Inn is an East End institution, celebrating the bounty of Long Island’s farm, vineyards & waterways. The restaurant is housed in a carefully preserved, historic countryside home in Southold, Long Island. Restaurateur & Michelin-starred Chef John Fraser and his team have revitalized the historic property and reimagined the dining experience, while staying true to the ethos he shares with founding owners. As a longstanding champion of farm-to-table philosophy, it has been John’s dream to open a restaurant on the North Fork, surrounded by farms, vineyards and fisheries.

Why the North Fork and not the Hamptons?

It’s a funny story actually, back when I was in college, I had a friend who was from Montauk and told me that every summer he would go back to Montauk and in a couple of weeks of working he would make enough for tuition. Now being from Los Angeles I had never been to Montauk but, I started going out in the summer working as a bartender and cook. Now fast forward and after 17 years of living in New York, I find the South Fork to be very similar to the city. I go out there to try and escape. About 10 years ago I started to go to the wineries in the North Fork and I realized that this is what it looks like to leave the city. This little world of the North Fork is more like New England than it is a city, and it was just a place that I wanted to be.

What’s your approach to building a team across your various ventures?

My approach for the various ventures is to be decentralized when it comes to creativity and centralized when it comes to finances, human resources, and other business operations. The blessing and the curse of running a business driven by creativity, compared to running a business based on profits, is that I was much more interested in creating a brand that stood for things than I was in the bottom line. We are now in a place where we have a brand and we have options when it comes to where we want to work, with whom we work and who our partners are.

Centralize menu planning?

We do not have a centralized menu, but I do write all of the menus with the executive chef. Doing this I feel provides them the foundation to be creative and one of the lead actors when it comes to the menu of the restaurant that they are working in.

Crystal Ball. What do you see five years out?

One of my goals specifically with The Loyal, is to expand it to where people have moved because of COVID. What I would like to do, based on the idea that people have moved outside of cities and city centers towards suburbs, is to take The Loyal to those suburbs. The Loyal offers an incredible point of view, in addition to its commitment to consistency, there is a vibe to it. What I would like to do is to put a team around The Loyal that will support it being expanded to suburbs, to bring a New York City-style restaurant to the people who have moved out of New York City.


All photos courtesy of JF Restaurants. To learn more, visit their website.

Article contributions by Brian O’Regan

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