Welcome to One Year In, a feature in which Eater sits down for a chat with the chefs and owners of restaurants celebrating their one year anniversary.
[Elise Rosenberg, Tamer Hamawi, and Emelie Kihlstrom by Krieger]
Last year, Brooklyn...
Welcome to One Year In, a feature in which Eater sits down for a chat with the chefs and owners of restaurants celebrating their one year anniversary.
[Elise Rosenberg, Tamer Hamawi, and Emelie Kihlstrom by Krieger]
Last year, Brooklyn restaurateurs Tamer Hamawi, Elise Rosenberg, and Emelie Kihlstrom opened Gran Electrica, a casual Mexican restaurant, and Governor, a chef-driven New American restaurant. Gran Electrica is still going strong, but sadly, the team had to say goodbye to Governor after Hurricane Sandy. Eater recently chatted with Elise, Tamer, and Emelie about how Gran Electrica has grown over the last year, and how their restaurant group has changed since the storm.
What was your original idea for this restaurant?
Tamer Hamawi: Well first of all, we had a great experience with Colonie and really discovered that there was a big market in this neighborhood that was relatively untapped. So after the success of Colonie, some of our investors were very eager to do another project. With [chef] Brad [McDonald] and Elise living in Dumbo, they confirmed that there was kind of a serious need for more places in the neighborhood. They were pleading with us to do a thing in Dumbo. There seemed to be a kind of general...lament of the loss of Hecho en Dumbo, and we thought that there was an extra reason to do a Mexican joint in Dumbo and give them back something that they missed.
Elise Rosenberg: We were also excited to take a greenmarket Mexican concept and make it really seasonal. We really wanted to take that Colonie philosophy with Mexican and combine it.
Tamer: Yeah, and so a couple of our investors at Colonie were really spear-heading this. They had a huge passion for food and wine and a huge passion, in particular, for Mexican things — they were most definitely pushing for a Mexican spot as well. A few years back, I had also personally been thinking about doing a Mexican restaurant in Melbourne, Australia, which is where I'm from. Although Melbourne is the food and wine capital of Australia, they never really had any quality Mexican. Their idea of Mexican was one step above Taco Bell.
Elise: And it was actually called Taco Bill.
Tamer: It was called Taco Bill. So, I sort of had this vision of building a Mexican restaurant empire in Australia, and I actually went back to do it. I wrote a plan, and was all sort of ready to take it on and moved from New York, and I really couldn't stand being back in Australia. I lived a few months there, and then came back to New York. So, I already had a business plan in hand, and I was ready to roll out this project. So with all of those things combined, it was kind of an obvious choice.
Did you always plan to open Governor and Gran Electrica at the same time?
Emelie Kihlstrom: Yes, by accident. It was Governor when we partnered up with Brad, almost two years ago. He had already started the Governor project. So we thought the timing would be completely perfect.
Elise: Little did we know that Governor was going to take a year and a half and Gran Electrica was going to take two months.
Tamer: Governor was already in motion when we took Brad on way back in May of 2011, and so we were already kind of rolling with that and the idea to do a Mexican spot kind of came in the middle there. And we thought Governor would be open well into the time that Gran Electrica was ready to start up.
Elise: With Governor, we had to build from the ground up, whereas here, it was a functioning restaurant when we took it over. It had a kitchen in place, and the bar was here. All we really had to do was a cosmetic makeover, and we re-did the kitchen and we just made it pretty.
[Krieger, 03/27/11]
What was this restaurant before you took it over?
Tamer: It's been five different restaurants. Most recently it was called Pub 1, and it was very much a pub-like atmosphere. We actually pulled down 23 TV sets.
Emelie: Yeah, one in every single corner. Plus, this is one of the oldest