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The Chair Man
Everybody needs to sit down
Thanks for stopping by. Any questions or comments would be greatly appreciated. Visit our showroom, call us at Select Seating Co. 1 516 470 1960 for selling on ebay for you, we are official ebay resellers and currently running reseller auctions under netauctions_r_us. Please read below on a newspaper article that was written by Pascale Le DraoulecHere's a little something about me
Paul Vetrano, supplies the chairs for about 30 percent of Manhattan & Long Island restaurants, in the showroom of his business, The Select Seating Co. in Hicksville, NY. ................................................... Whatever the cuisine, restaurant supplier Paul Vetrano has the seat to match. Everyone opening a restaurant these days hopes to emulate the runway success if the perpetually packed Balthazar in Soho, right down to the retro brasserie's signature stool: a clubby wine colored padded vinyl cushion with brass nailheads astride a mahogany frame. It the hot new trendsetter stool. "Everybody wants it", says Paul Vetrano. He should know Vetrano sells chairs and stools to 30 percent of New York City's 12,000 eateries and many outside of the city, from dumpy diners and Asian noodle houses to sleek coffee bars and posh French brasserie's. While a chair may not be the focal point of the restaurant, says Vetrano, it's rolled in the overall dinning experience cannot be under estimated. No matter how great your meal is, if your squirming in your chair, your not going to be concentrating on the food. Vetrano who sold the popular stools to Batlhazar, as well as the fetching faux zebra soho stools at the trendy midtown Divine Bar, says ten new restaurants open up in Manhattan every day, and one thing they all need - is chairs. Day after day, restaurant owners, designers, architects, regular retail customers and even chefs file into Vetrano's Hicksville warehouse Select Seating Co. looking for the chair that will match their decor, personality and cuisine of their establishment and homes.--------------------------------- How important is chair selection for the restaurants? Consider this Waldy Malouf, the former executive chef at the now-defunct Rainbow Room, has spent the last six months searching for the perfect chair for his new restaurant, Waldy's, slated to open in May on 56th Street. He and his tam of designers and architects recently settled on a $400 dollar chair made with two different types of exotic woods and upholstered with a chic, black-and-white Donghia wool. Of course Vetrano's customers don't go to such lengths and usually find their fancy among the stock styles he carries: caned bistro, classic bentwood, or the Soho aluminum, which range in price from $60 to $260. From where he sits ... in a classic America wooden swivel chair with a high back and leather seat, beneath a sign that reads, The butt stops here Vetrano says he's in a good position to witness the sweeping changes in New York's capricious culinary industry.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ten years ago, every restaurant was french and Italian, and they all wanted the classic European style chair with rich fabric seats ays Vetrano, noting that Arrigo Cipriani, head of the Cipriani restaurant clan, is a stickler for these classic standbys. Now, the trend is toward Asian restaurants and Is selling many more metal chairs, all with rounded backs. With all the cigar bars lighting up, club style chairs are flying out the door, too. Vetrano is known to inspect the make of the chair he's sitting in at restaurants, even if it requires hoisting it above his head or flipping it upside down. Whether it's one of his or not, should his posterior experience the slightest discomfort during the meal, he will slip his business card in the maitre does palm before dessert. Some restaurateurs, he says, are clearly more interested in rapid turnover than in customer comfort and purposely selected uncomfortable chairs to discourage dawdling, Vetrano says. Everyone knows, for example, that a chair with wooden seat will make you antsy within 45 minutes., he says. yet people buy them all the time. (An industry rumor claims that the plastic chairs in fast-food restaurants are designed to make a diner uncomfortable after only 16 seconds!) Michael Bauer, restaurant critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and president of the national Association of Food Journalists, says he tends to notice restaurant chairs only when they are uncomfortable. Iove had situations where Iove had to move from cheek to cheek throughout the meal, he says, but a chair has never been so dreadfully uncomfortable that it has affected a review or forced him to leave before dessert.--------------------------------------------------------- Vetrano says people usually buy chairs the same way they buy tires. People come in and feel they have to kick them before taking a seat. Of course Vetrano says he has his own foolproof method of testing the comfort level of his chairs. He points to rusty, and 18 pound orange tabby who wandered into the shop one day two years ago figuring this place has lots of good places to sleep. It sounds silly, but he really does sit in every new chair that comes in here, says Vetrano and if Rusty doesn't approve, you can forget about it. John Nikci, of Fuffi Grill in Irvington, is still patting himself on the back for spending a relatively steep $120 per mahogany chair with a dense padded seat for his tiny 48 seat restaurant. Customers comment on how comfortable they are all the time, he says. Having a comfortable chair can make the difference between a $30 per person check and a $50 per person check, says Nikci, who has been entrusting Vetrano with his chair selection for years. Nick Vuli, owner of Flame's Steakhouse in Brircliff Manor, bought his chairs from the Select Seating Co. after they were used in the film "Scent of a Woman" Malouf can't help but smile at the notion that he's spending so much time picking out chair fabric, a skill he was definitely not taught a the Culinary Institute of America i Hyde Park, where he went to school. It used to be that chef's stayed in the kitchen, says Malouf, who lives in Pound Ridge. But in the 90's, they are involved in every detail of the restaurant, from the shape of the doorknobs, to how the silverware should feel in your hands, to what stain is on the wood of the chair. That level of involvement makes for a much more cohesive restaurant experience. Malouf says he was right there when the team tested the snag and lint factor of each chair prototype by having women in nylons and short skirts and men in dark business suits slip in and out of them. Such attention to detail may seem excessive, but it is crucial, he says, at a time when people spend so much time and money in restaurants. Whereas dining out used to be part of an evening's entertainment, it has become the evening's entertainment, says Malouf, people expect to linger. Even more so now that dessert wines and cheese courses have become popular and desserts are undergoing a national revival. If I go to the restaurant and see that the owner has bought an inexpensive chair, it tells me that he's not paying attention to detail, and the food probably is not going to be great, he adds. "The chair is an important detail that lets a diner know you care"---- Daniel Boulud must adore his customers. The fastidious French chef ordered several chair prototypes over several months before settling on a wide, plush velvet Cadillac design for his new restaurant, already being touted as the next best restaurant in America. Boulud worked intimately with French designer Patrick Nagar to come up with a chair evocative of a Venetian theatre that would compliment his dramatic, four-star farmhouse French cuisine, says Georgette Farkas, Boulud's spokeswoman. The chairs were picked for their creamy softness and comfort, of course, but also for their slightly scooped back which shows of a woman coiffure.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Even in the snow, work continues at the bustling Select Seating Co.. Chairs delivered from manufacturers are piled on the sidewalk, waiting for workers to move them into storage. A restaurant on Mulberry Street could get away with stone chairs because they cater to tourists, says Nikci. But in the suburbs, people want space and comfort if they're going to come back. Nick Vuli, who owns flames a Briarcliff Manor steakhouse, agrees. A comfortable chair makes the difference whether the customer will order dessert or an extra bottle of wine or not, he says. He bought handsome top-of-the-line chairs from Vetrano at a significant discount because they were secondhand, having been used in the famous tango scene in the Al Pacino movie Scent of a Woman, which was filmed in the Cotillian Room of the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan. Vuli likes telling customers they might be sitting in Pacino's chair. When Vetrano isn't selling chairs to restaurants, he works with theater and movie producers who, he says, are just as finicky as chefs about the chairs they use in their productions. (He used to rent the chairs until stools used on the set of Goodfellas were returned caked in gooey fake blood.)-------------------------------------------------------------------- Ten new restaurants may open every day in the city, but ten more close their doors, and Vetrano is usually there to pounce on their chairs. When the Russian Tea Room closed he bought the entire lot of chairs and then sold them, piecemeal, to the devotees of the Manhattan Institution. When Lespinasse revamped its dining room , Vetrano bought the chairs and then sold the swank seats to Baci in Larchmont. Vetrano who lived in a Greenwich Village loft (Mr. Vetrano currently resides in Long Island) with his wife, daughter and lots of chairs, also, on occasion, provides custom stools for Barbara walters television interviews. When Walters interviewed Andrew Lloyd Webber, for instance, she wanted a certain stool that would fit in a crook of a stage piano. Vetrano came to the rescue within hours with one of his very own designs.-------------------------------------------------------- "He really knows his stools," says Nola Safro, a producer at "20/20." Will Vetrano's expertise be tapped for Walters' upcoming interview with Monica Lewinsky? Safro says," I really doubt Monica will be sitting on a stool." Rusty the cat tries out every chair that comes into Select Seating Co. If Rusty rejects it,"forget About it" says Rusty the cat and company owner Paul Vetrano.Rusty Retired to Long Island where he passed away last year. (2003)
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