Mr. Mills told the magazine why he thought there was a big market for caviar in Harlem:
I started doing [caviar] tastings in midtown and found that many people that attended were from Harlem. They've been holding private tastings in brownstones and apartments for years. They call them 'salons,' and they'll try different [high-end] wines, cheeses and things of that nature....TONY 2/16-22/06, p. 33. Apparently, the salons filled a desire for luxury foods that was unmet by the local marketplace. (Not to mention that it is also really fun to get people together for a common purpose not necessarily shared by the rank and file.)
2 comments:
Why is it so unlikely that a caviar bar be in Harlem?
Have you seen the property values in Harlem lately?
It really makes sense if you look at the big picture.
From all I've heard, I believe that Harlem is continuing to reclaim its former glory.
I didn't mean to imply that it is shockingly unexpected for someone to start up a caviar bar in Harlem. (In fact, given Mr. Mills' comments about the Harlem salons, it's even a little surprising that he is the very first person to open a caviar place in Harlem.)
I'm not familiar with any caviar bars in the rest of NYC (if there are any), but Mr. Mills' place seems pretty ambitious on its own terms: 1,300 square feet is about 1.4 times bigger than my apartment.
I suppose I'm used to luxury food entrepreneurs who start more modestly in high-rent distrcts (e.g., Kee's Chocolates on Thompson St. is tiny, maybe 200 square feet, and she makes the chocolate by hand right there in the store).
As for Time Out New York, I think they were suprised more by the timing of the new business than anything else (since a recent ban on the importation of wild caviar will prevent Mr. Mills from fully satisfying his customers' cravings). That aspect didn't strike me as particularly significant, though. Presumably Mr. Mills has been working on this for a while, so it would be silly for him to give up when everything is finally ready to go, just because some kinds of caviar cannot currently be sold.
So that's my current thinking. But now that I think about it, Dr. Strangejazz, you were right to suspect me of bias -- however, it is a bias against caviar, rather than a bias against Harlem. I don't eat fish or seafood if I can avoid it, and so I've only had caviar once. (It was on an oyster, so I quickly swallowed down the whole thing down without tasting it. This was a business development dinner where we didn't get to choose our own food.) So the bottom line is, I can't imagine wanting to eat caviar, and it thus to me it sounds pretty risky to open up a store/reastaurant 100% devoted to the stuff.
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