 They
don’t do breakfast, because it would be uncivilized to
get up so soon after calling it a night. For Michel Bittan
and Bruno Jamais—Englewood neighbors and pals, upscale
restaurateurs and world-class bon vivants—the day begins
over lunch. In winter, they meet at Solaia, one of three Englewood
restaurants Bittan owns. In summer, they lunch at one or the
other’s house, poolside.
In due course, they head into Manhattan, perhaps in Bittan’s chauffeured
blue Bentley. They may stop at an art auction at Christie’s or Sotheby’s
to mingle, possibly to bid. There will be parties in the art and fashion worlds
at which they need to wave the flag to be seen by friends and customers alike.
Then it’s on to dinner at Jamais’ haute boite—Bruno Jamais
Restaurant and Club on East 81st Street—or at restaurants most people go
to only on rare occasions, if they can get in. Bittan and Jamais (who for ten
years was the celebrated maitre d’ of Restaurant Daniel) merely call ahead
or just drop in. “Working ten years at Daniel gives you a kind of passport,” says
Bittan. After dinner, they surf the top tier of New York nightlife.
“We go from lunchtime to club time, and in between we have drinks,” says
Bittan, 57, in an accent that sounds French but is actually Moroccan and Israeli. “We
usually hit four or five places a night. We hang around the bar, with a glass
of rosé. Always you have an opportunity to meet attractive women.”
“To keep up with us, you have to have a passion for eating, drinking, and
socializing,” adds Jamais, 47, a native Parisian whose accent is as thick
as pâté de foie gras. “Some people would just want to rest.”
Bittan and Jamais follow this ritual almost every day of the year—whether
they wake up in Englewood or in St. Tropez, St. Bart’s, Costa Rica, the
Bahamas, Paris, Tel Aviv, or other watering holes of the wealthy. Each destination
has its jet-set season—St. Bart’s between Thanksgiving and Christmas,
St. Tropez in summer, Tel Aviv in August.
“The Hilton is the only place to stay in Tel Aviv,” says Bittan,
who also goes for Passover in the spring. “In the lobby you run into half
of Wall Street and the New York real estate business.” Paris, the friends
say, is always in season.
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Even in August, when all the Parisians leave town on vacation?
“Especially August,” replies Jamais. “We want to see the people
who visit Paris, not the ones who live there.”
They make eight trips a year—for no more than five days at a time, so they
can keep an eye on their restaurants. Although they fly first-class, they take
commercial airliners rather than NetJets or private planes.
“In some respects, we’re semi-normal,” says Bittan.
If all this sounds like the ne plus ultra of hedonism, it isn’t, quite. “We
are working all the time, even in St. Bart’s, even at lunch,” says
Jamais, iPhone in hand. To court a very high-end clientele, he explains, “people
need to see you. People on that level like to be with people who live in the
same world. If they see you in St. Bart’s or St. Tropez, they know that
part of the routine is to stop at your place. If you’re only staying in
your [place of] business, you’re going to die.” Luckily for Bittan,
New Jerseyans tend to make dinner reservations earlier than Manhattan people
do.
“The average reservation in New Jersey is 7 pm; in New York it’s
9:30,” he explains. “So I can get done saying ’Hi’ to
everyone in New Jersey and still get to New York for dinner.” By New Jersey
he means his three restaurants—201, a supper club, Ruthie Mae’s,
a barbecue joint, and Solaia, which is Italian.
Restaurants represent just the tip of Bittan’s financial iceberg. He owns
a fair amount of commercial real estate in Bergen and Essex Counties as well
as four hotels and twelve medical centers in North Carolina.
How did a nice Jewish boy from Morocco wind up a developer in North Carolina?
It’s quite a saga: Bittan grew up in a poor orthodox family in Casablanca.
His father, a heavy smoker, died of lung cancer at age 39, when he was thirteen.
Bittan found himself looking after three brothers, two sisters, and their mother.
The family moved to Marseille, and from there set sail for Tel Aviv. Bittan’s
mother, 85, still lives in Tel Aviv.
Bittan became a busboy in the then-new Tel Aviv Hilton, which paid for his schooling
in hotel management. He served as a tank commander in the Israeli Army during
the Six-Day War in 1967, later opened a discotheque in Tel Aviv, and moved to
New York in 1973. “I came with $700 in my pocket,” he says.
He ran Mister Laff’s, an East Side disco which (partly because Bittan spoke
French) proved popular with Parisians in the clothing business. This led him
to become an importer of French clothing, and later a manufacturer of knitwear.
He teamed up with the Marciano brothers of Guess? Jeans fame to run their knitwear
division. Looking ahead, he started buying real estate in North Carolina, where
most of his knitting mills were located.
After leaving “the hustle and bustle of the clothing business” for
the relative calm of real estate, Bittan decided to open a restaurant near his
home in Englewood, “so I would have a place where I could always get a
table.” Solaia opened two weeks after the terrorist attacks of September
11, 2001. To his surprise, “We were packed right away. New Jersey people
stopped going to New York.”
Jamais’ story is more straightforward. He grew up in Paris, where he began
working in his father’s restaurants at fifteen. He gained experience at
the Michelin three-star Lucas Carton and in the dining rooms of other Paris temples
of haute cuisine, then moved to New York, where he was hired by chef Daniel Boulud,
whom he credits with teaching him English.
As the attentive and charming maitre d’ of one of America’s top restaurants,
Jamais pulled down $300,000 to $400,000 a year (much of it in tips), says Bittan.
The clothier and the maitre d’ became friendly in the early ’90s,
when Bittan would bring friends and partners like the Marcianos to Daniel.
Jamais (who is divorced and has a 23-year-old daughter who lives in Paris) moved
to Englewood in 2002. “I used to date a girl who lived here,” he
explains, “so I came here a lot. I found it a very peaceful and convenient
place to live." He was a frequent guest at the thirteen-bedroom mansion
where Bittan lived with his wife and three children (twelve, fourteen, and sixteen).
The century-old house stands on one of the last undivided five-acre lots in Englewood.
The buddy era began after Bittan’s 2003 divorce. “In five years we’ve
never had an argument about anything,” says Bittan. “We may disagree
about something, but we don’t have arguments.” One reason, Bittan
suggests, is that “We don’t compete on any level.”
That includes women. With a ten-year gap in age, a five-inch gap in height (Jamais
is 6 feet 2 inches, Bittan 5 feet 9 inches), and different temperaments (Jamais
more live-for-today, Bittan more conservative), they go for different types. “He
likes women who are a constant challenge, more complex in personality,” says
Bittan. “I like more sweet and subtle, but interesting. They are usually
in their late 20s, early 30s, secure financially and personally, and not in a
rush to get married. You can’t fool yourself. Sometimes it’s for
the fun, sometimes for the money. You can be interested in a woman, but at the
end of the day, they make the decision who they want. You make plans and God
is laughing.”
American women, especially from the Carolinas and Texas, “are the most
beautiful,” in Bittan’s opinion. “Most California women are
dizzy, like their mind is just searching for the next movie. New York and New
Jersey women are sophisticated, but New Jersey women are much nicer and less
demanding than the New Yorkers.
“Parisian women are difficult. Also, in France, you don’t socialize
the way you do in the United States. French culture is more by introduction.
There are no singles bars in Paris. If you see two women in a Paris restaurant,
they’re speaking to each other and it’s almost rude to try to start
a conversation.”
Wine, women, and song are not the friends’ only interests. Bittan collects
art and is a skilled poker player who competed in the 2006 World Series of Poker
and, a few years before that, finished eighth in the Tournament of Champions
on the World Poker Tour. For recreation, he plays seven-card stud high-only,
with chips in denominations of $300 and $600. He also plays no-limit Texas Hold-Em
for fun. “In a normal game, each person would have $25,000 to $50,000 in
front of them,” he says. “I once played for 36 hours straight at
the Taj in Atlantic City. Most poker was at the Taj until the Borgata opened.”
Both men collect fast cars. Jamais adores his 1953 red Buick convertible for
its “charm” and workmanship and the feel of cruising in a plush 6,000-pound
car. He treasures his 1954 XK-120 Jaguar V-12 for its mind-bending speed and
handling. But then there are Ferraris and Aston-Martins, and Maseratis, which
are pretty nice too. Can he say he really has a favorite among them all?
A dreamy look comes over Jamais’ face as he ponders the question, gazing
upward. “I love all of them,” he says, smiling. “But there
is no way to have all of them.”
Is he talking about automobiles, or women?
He laughs. “Either one,” he says.
When the friends go to Las Vegas, Jamais rents sports cars to race on closed
tracks while Bittan plays high-stakes poker. Bittan is not into speed. “I’m
a Jewish guy,” he says. “I like to drive safe.”
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