On Wednesday night, the well known book agent and former magazine editor David Kuhn made his entrance into practically the only business as precarious as his own.
Working alongside his life partner, Kevin Thompson, a production designer whose last film was “Maestro,” the Oscar-nominated biopic about Leonard Bernstein, he opened his first restaurant.
Perhaps Mr. Kuhn and Mr. Thompson were unfazed by the low margins associated with attempting to lure media executives, because their new French brasserie, Chez Nous, is opening just above street level at the Marlton Hotel, on Eighth Street in the West Village.
That, said Mr. Thompson, made the whole thing less expensive than acquiring a lease and creating something from scratch. (He estimated that the full renovation cost under $1 million.)
They invested in the venture with Sean MacPherson, a man who in the 1980s operated the fabled nightclub Area on Varick Street and in the 1990s, as Mayor Rudolph Giuliani transformed New York City, transitioned into the hotel business.
Today, Mr. MacPherson has stakes in a string of properties — the Bowery Hotel, the Chelsea Hotel, the Ludlow, the Maritime and the Marlton — all of which got their credibility by appealing less to tourists and more to spectacularly connected locals who aged out of after-hours nightclubs, wear Raf Simons and Phoebe Philo, and have little issue paying $8.75 for cappuccinos.
The idea to partner on Chez Nous dates back to 2019, when Mr. MacPherson and his wife, Rachelle Hruska MacPherson, had dinner at Mr. Thompson and Mr. Kuhn’s home on West 9th Street. There, the quartet engaged in the kind of chatter successful Gen X New Yorkers regularly have with one another. Which is to say they lamented how the clubhouse restaurants they used to frequent either closed or stayed open by appealing to those who were not up to par with their exacting standards.
They reminisced about Elaine’s on the Upper East Side. They expressed their admiration for Indochine, the East Village Vietnamese mainstay where Grace Jones may no longer dance on tables but where the seats continue to be filled with models like her.
They talked, as well, about how they were not so young anymore.
“We found everything too noisy and too trendy and too hysterical,” said Mr. Kuhn, who then shared that having his own restaurant had been high up on his bucket list.
Soon enough, he and Mr. MacPherson were mulling how to make that happen.
A location wasn’t clear at first. The idea then got sidelined by the pandemic, as well as Mr. MacPherson’s efforts to fix up the Chelsea Hotel, which he bought with his partners, Ira Drukier and Richard Born, in 2016, after which they spent years completing. Mr. Kuhn remained busy with clients such as Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Senator Charles Schumer, and Mr. Thompson worked on the television series “Scenes From A Marriage” and the movie “The King of Staten Island.”
Then, Mr. MacPherson suggested, “why not the Marlton,” which has been open since 2013 but had gotten a little dusty of late. In January, a renovation of the space began. A new chef, Flossie Gilles, previously of Le Bilboquet, was selected to oversee the menu.
The artist Cecily Brown, a good friend of Mr. Kuhn and Mr. Thompson’s, and a West Village resident, holed up in the back room, painting a signature mural that covered the entire 30-foot wall.
Trucks arrived with Paul Frankel-inspired sconces and velvety wine colored banquettes. In homage to Mr. Kuhn’s time at The New Yorker (he worked there in the 1990s when it was edited by Tina Brown), picture frames were filled with reproductions of old Saul Steinberg drawings. Mr. Thompson remains uncertain if they’re supposed to pay licensing fees for these, but if so, “we’ll just take them down.”
Now, Mr. Kuhn was walking up to the hotel at 5:40 p.m. on Wednesday awaiting the arrival of about a hundred people he’d invited to come for a cocktail party to celebrate the restaurant’s opening.
Mr. Kuhn wore a beige Tom Ford suit (from his Gucci era), along with a white oxford shirt, and brown Chelsea boots. On his face was a pair of clear glasses that have long been something of a signature.
Agents tend to come in two types. The first are Shamans whose soothsaying skills serve them with fragile creative types and impatient executives. The second are nearly manic go-getters, who smack their clients into shape and firmly, but politely, extract more money from publishers than anyone could have predicted.
Mr. Kuhn, who falls more into the latter category, has a great deal of charm, but more limited patience. His gait is brisk, his fidgeting is frequent.
He darted through the bar area and quickly determined it was too bright. He darted through the restaurant area and determined much the same thing, making it clear to a sharply dressed staffer that the lighting needs of people in “our age bracket” superseded the ability to clearly make out the color of the carpet. (It is blue, black and charcoal).
By 6:15, guests began arriving.
Among the first was Ira Sachs, who last year received a slew of nominations for his film, “Passages,” a comedy about a filmmaker whose bisexuality seems to be less about genetic predisposition and more about a need to acquire the attention of every human being within reach.
Mr. Sachs peppered Mr. Kuhn with questions about his motivations for opening the restaurant. Mr. Kuhn replied that he couldn’t imagine a person who wouldn’t at least have some fantasy about having a space to entertain his friends. “I won’t be quitting my day job,” he added.
Soon after, Jeff Klein walked in. He is the owner of the members-only San Vicente Bungalows, which recently opened a West Village outlet. He gave the compliment of an admiring, if slightly saucy competitor.
“It’s perfect,” he said. “It’s like a petite bijou in Paris. Even if the food and service is terrible, it’s going to do so well because it’s gorgeous.”
As it happened, the San Vicente Bungalows’ maitre d, Gabe Doppelt was only a few feet away.
She got into the restaurant business after spending more than three decades in publishing, during which time she worked at a number of the same magazines as Mr. Kuhn. Her date for the evening was Kevin West, a former writer from W magazine, whose upcoming book, “The Cook’s Garden” was sold by Mr. Kuhn to Knopf.
Asked why so many publishing types have been getting into the restaurant business, Ms. Doppelt barely flinched: “At the end of the day, you’re curating which is exactly what you’re doing in a magazine,” she said.
Waiters ambled by with cheese puffs and endive with blue cheese. The designer Calvin Klein stood by the bar, close to the artist Jack Pierson and Brian Sawyer, an interior designer whose clients include Julianne Moore and Madonna.
The actress Julianna Margulies arrived with her husband, Keith Lieberthal.
Would there be breakfast served at Chez Nous, she asked Mr. Kuhn.
Indeed there would. “365 days a year,” he said.
Was there a special number they could call for a reservation?
He removed a card containing that number from his pocket and handed it to her.
“That’s off the record,” he said to a hovering reporter.
In the end, Ms. Margulies settled into one of the wine colored banquettes with the actress Gina Gershon, the actor Griffin Dunne, Mr. Macpherson and his fellow hotelier André Balazs.
When others began to depart around 8:30, a person at their table asked about staying for dinner. Naturally, they could, said Mr. Kuhn. “I’ll tell you what to order.”
Jacob Bernstein reports on power and privilege for the Style section.
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