Knitting Factory tunes into food

Edited by Bob Krummert

You’d expect a company blessed with the hard-won street cred of Knitting Factory Entertainment would paste its powerful brand all over its new restaurant ventures. But this nationally known music club operator kept it low-key instead. Its first eatery, a gastropub called The Federal, opened in 2011. Now this 25-year-old company has unveiled a second concept, a Latin-themed tapas spot called Bow & Truss.

Ambiguous names aren’t the only unorthodox choices the Knitting Factory restaurant arm has made. The company’s choice of locations goes against conventional wisdom, too.

Knitting Factory Entertainment has a national reputation, thanks to the many irons in the fire it has with its concert business (it’s the 14th-largest promoter in the U.S., the 25th largest in the world) and related arts and music businesses. The company got its start as a hipster-driven jazz and experimental music club in New York City’s Lower East Side. Today the company’s flagship venue is in Brooklyn and it runs music clubs in several western U.S. markets including Boise, Spokane and Reno.

So did the company locate its fledgling restaurant ventures in one of these proven markets? Nope. Knitting Factory’s lone music hall failure has come in Los Angeles, where its venue ran out of steam in 2009 after a 10-year run. But Los Angeles is where c.e.o. Morgan Margolis decided to open its restaurants. Both Bow & Truss and The Federal are situated in the emerging NoHo Arts District of North Hollywood.

Forgetting these name and location issues, why would this well-regarded and well-connected company go into restaurants in the first place? Margolis told Venues Today in 2010 that from the point of view of someone in the concert business, the restaurant business is attractive. “I’m looking to drive cash flow, and cash flow in bars and restaurants is much stronger than the music venues,” he said.

Results from his first venture, The Federal, proved this instinct right. Knitting Factory Entertainment runs multiple businesses across the country, almost all of them music-related. Margolis tells the Los Angeles Daily News that their individual cash flows fluctuate significantly over time. “It’s rare that they all equalize and everything is in profit at once,” he says. “Except for The Federal: it’s always in profit.”

Building on that, Margolis opened Bow & Truss around the corner from The Federal late this spring. It’s a traditional Spanish tapas-themed restaurant. Chef Stefhanie Meyers prepares the food; the beverage program comes from craft cocktail consultants Tello Demarest Liquid Assets.

Bow & Truss—the name refers to the restaurant’s ceiling design— has a 3,000 sq. ft dining area and a 2,000 sq. ft patio. Its sharing-friendly menu starts with a six-item cheese section (three for $12). The eight-item appetizer list includes a Jamon Plate (sliced Jamon, salchicon, andouille, chorizo, served with toasted bread $10); Smelt Fries (Canadian smelt, cornmeal crusted, lemon & harissa salt, $7);  and empanadas (wild mushrooms, cotija, red peppers, $8). Four salads (roasted red beet, cabrales, harissa toasted walnuts, micro cilantro, pickled vegetables, finished with truffle oil, $11) and four savory tacos (pulled pork belly, $8; grilled sea bass, $9) provide other modestly priced options.

Paella comes in both single and sharable portions. Mushroom-centric earth paella (shiitake, button, hon, shimeji, oyster, $11/18) and shelled paella (clams, shrimp, mussels, scallops and chorizo, $13/21) lead this list. Main dishes, six in all, include standard protein items (i.e., pan-seared chicken, grilled sea bass or lamb chops) prepared with a Latin flair. At $25, the scallop offering, served with saffron polenta, corn & pepper salsa and roasted pepper sauce, is the most expensive item on the menu.

For the bar program, beverage whizzes Marcos Tello and Aidan Demarest crafted a signature cocktail list on which all drinks contain sherry. Each costs $12. There are 10 beers on tap, with 17 available in bottles. The 25-bottle wine list focuses on Spanish and South American vintages. If Margolis is counting on steady cash flow from the bar portion of this operation, he’s got the list to do it.

Are we looking at an emerging multiconcept restaurant operator in The Knitting Factory? The company has found early success by tapping into two of the hottest growth segments in foodservice: gastropubs and tapas/small plates. It also has lengthy experience in the nuts and bolts of venue selection, lease negotiations and marketing that many fledgling restaurateurs lack when they start out. Another plus: Knitting Factory knows how to build out a brand across the country. If Margolis and his company want to get bigger in the restaurant business, we’re betting they will.