Paul Del Favero: Nick And Toni's Departing Chef

Two days after resigning as the chef at East Hampton's celebrated Nick and Toni's restaurant Paul Del Favero explained, "I've been cooking for 16 years, and now I want to do it the right way for the first time. I want to be my own man."

The Star found him relaxing at home in East Hampton during the holidays, at ease with his family, and looking ahead. Considering the success he has already achieved in his profession, his quest - to open his own restaurant here - makes sense.

Mr. Del Favero, 36, is credited with bringing Nick and Toni's into the big leagues. During his six-year tenure, it became the "first and only" East End restaurant to be reviewed by Ruth Reichl at The New York Times (she gave it two stars). It also has received a Gold Dish award from GQ magazine and has been featured in Food & Wine, among other publications.

Keep It Simple

"I like to think it was the food, not just the celebrities" that made the place "really take off," Mr. Del Favero joked, adding that insofar as cuisine is concerned, he subscribes to the classic French theory that "less is more."

He likes "simple and rustic," he said, including whole rabbit, whole fish, and langoustines, the small European lobsters ("when we could get them") that were "finger-lickin' good - roasted in the brick oven with olive oil, garlic, and parsley, and accompanied by a great Tuscan bread."

Porterhouse steak for two with grilled vegetables and Balsamic vinegar was another favorite. "Fancy haute cuisine with a lot of waitstaff attention at the table makes me a little uncomfortable," he said. "I like the casually elegant, with an emphasis on the casual."

High-Season Clientele

"As long as the food was profitable," said the chef, the owners, Jeff Salaway and Toni Ross, imposed "no restrictions. If I wanted to use white truffles and foie gras, that was fine."

In the high season especially, though, when Nick and Toni's dining room is often frequented by the likes of Kathleen Turner, Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Steven Spielberg, and more, work, though "exciting," could also be "annoying."

Mr. Del Favero recalled one night when "they were all there - De Niro, the Baldwins, Ron Perelman - there was a buzz in the place you couldn't believe."

Star-Gazers

"From the kitchen point of view, timing and an even flow are important - it has to work like a well-oiled machine." The machine slowed considerably that night because the non-famous lingered at their tables, craning to see and perhaps hear what the celebrities were saying.

When no one wants to leave, said Mr. Del Favero, it "isn't great for the reservation system, especially when you have to put out 250 to 300 dinners."

"Celebrities are very low-key," he observed. It's the gazers who create the glitch.

The success of Nick and Toni's seemed to inspire the restaurant's owners to broaden their horizons.

Hands Off

In time, Mr. Del Favero became executive chef of their expanding food family, including the Honest Diner in Amagansett and its next-door bakery; Rowdy Hall, which moved into Parrish Mews in East Hampton Village when O'Mally's moved out, and their newest venture, Honest Food, a "Balducci's-style" takeout that opened last year in Manhattan.

"I found myself drifting from what I want to do - hands-on in the kitchen - to administration and traveling to and from the city," he said, adding that he would have preferred a "Nick and Toni's Two" in the city.

"It wasn't making me happy. It was time for me to go."

La Varenne

Mr. Del Favero's mother was the "driving force" early on behind his interest in things culinary, though he also spoke of an uncle who worked as a professional chef for entertainers, including Zero Mostel.

Growing up in Larchmont, N.Y., he finished Mamaroneck High School in 1979 and worked for a short time setting tile with his father, in Clifton, N.J.

Not long after, he joined his mother in a cooking class at Peter Kump's School of Culinary Arts in Manhattan. Mr. Kump "got me interested in Paris," he recalled, and in 1981 he enrolled at La Varenne, a noted cooking school there, emerging with a diploma nine months later.

Khashoggi's Daughter

From there it was into a classical French training regimen: Mr. Del Favero became a stagere, an apprentice, for three years, working essentially without pay at various restaurants - "They give you bed and board" - just for the experience.

He was ready to head home when a paying job came up, as personal chef to the daughter of the Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi.

Nabila Khashoggi lived in Mougin, near Cannes, on France's Cote d'Azur.

"It was a different way of life," said the chef. "There were no budgets to restrain you, but you tended to feel . . . well, they could summon you at 3 a.m. if they were hungry."

Every Night, Formal

"Nabila was a partyer - in her 20s - and she often came home late looking for something to eat. I was on call seven days a week."

He continued to deepen his knowledge of French cuisine on the job, as the family had "some old bourgeois-style French chefs" working for them.

"Food is a representation of wealth to the Arabs," Mr. Del Favero learned. Dinner was a formal event every night, staffed with "white-gloved maitre d's." Elegant dishes were served, on "a lot of big silver."

Manhattan Restaurants

During the mid-'80s, Mr. Del Favero moved around a lot. Returning to the United States in 1984, he worked for a year or so for Georges Briquet at Le Perigord in Manhattan, under Antoine Bouterin, whom he had met in Paris.

His next boss was Jonathan Waxman, who owned an Upper East Side bistro called Jams and Hulot's, and then he became a chef at Mezzaluna, an Italian restaurant, and at Island, in Manhattan's Carnegie Hill neighborhood.

But in 1987, he was hospitalized with viral pneumonia and tuberculosis. He lost more than 20 pounds during the year it took him to recuperate.

"I think I had worried myself sick," he said.

Six Years Later

When he was well again, a friend from La Varenne called with a job offer in London, as a partner in the Blueprint Cafe, a restaurant in the Tower Bridge Museum on the Thames. He spent two years there before returning to New York City to work for Bobby Flay at the Mesa Grille.

It was in the summer of 1990 that he came to East Hampton as a sous chef at Nick and Toni's.

After six years there, he said, leaving "has been sad for me. I have a lot of good friends at the restaurant and a great kitchen staff. The place is practically an institution."

"But I want to open my own place in East Hampton or Amagansett, and I'm looking for backers."

"I love it to death out here," Mr. Del Favero added. "The lifestyle is much more agreeable and healthy."

How do the prospects look?

"There are places to be had and deals to be made," he answered. "Everything is always basically for sale."