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Michael Wild and Larry Goldman |
From Michael Wild, founding owner:
Little things make a large difference in a small restaurant. We agonize about small details and play with them endlessly, tweaking as we go, discussing the niceties of the particulars inherent in "getting it right". It's essential that the entrance be spotless, inviting and have a warm glow to it. Equally essential is that the bar person is smiling and everyone on the staff says hello to everyone who walks in.
We aren't a deep pocket restaurant, we weren't made perfectly at birth. The restaurant looks nothing today like it did 20 years ago. The level of style and sophistication has grown with age and relative prosperity, as we've gotten older and learned to value these things more. We have more resources to more keenly mirror our sensibilities, to enhance the ease and pleasure of dining here, to refine the look and the service. We want our restaurant to be our own first restaurant of choice for its spirited, elegant ambiance, its imaginative, tasty food, and its flawlessly friendly, entirely professional service.
Restaurant staffs with the greatest longevity are motivated by something other than money. They value the family thing, the quality thing and feeling good about their workplace. In the beginning, we were four partners. Three of us, myself,  Larry Goldman and Michael Phelps have stayed the course for 30 years. This fact brings stability and focus to the restaurant, a committed family with a common interest in maintaining standards of excellence, vitality and credibility.
We have long been under the spell of the sensibility articulated by Elizabeth David. Her books are pressed on every one of our kitchen staff. We expect them to embrace her injunction to cook "with care and skill, regard for the quality of the materials, without extravagance or pretension." We have few traditions at BayWolf but we bring to our endeavor due regard for quality, joy for the labor and respect for the traditions we find most felicitous.
We're delighted that our restaurant has grown into a meeting place for friends and strangers, a hangout for artists, a festive space in which to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, New Year's Eve and Christmas Eve, a home away from home. We want to provide some mortar of soulfulness between the courses. If we don't have uncompromisingly high standards, it's just a job and we've misjudged our calling.
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