MUSIC MANSION: The living room, with views of the woods, is home to a guitar collection. (CHRISTIAN JOHNSTON)
MARBLE MADNESS: The kitchen has a 13-foot-long island. (CHRISTIAN JOHNSTON)
If you dine out in New York a lot, you probably know Blue Ribbon. Nine restaurants in Manhattan and Brooklyn (along with a 10th opening at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas casino resort next month), serving up regional American, brasserie and Japanese food, require the full-time energy of founders Eric and Bruce Bromberg. And the Bromberg brothers’ eateries keep their kitchens open extremely late, even for NYC. It’s not uncommon to see an after-hours foodie crowd, including chefs from other restaurants, come in for dinner well after midnight.
Though he’s surrounded by food at work, sometimes all day and all night, Eric Bromberg still enjoys cooking at home. So, for his sprawling, 6,300-square-foot, three-story, Newtown, Conn., home, he designed a kitchen that met both his needs as a pro chef and those of his wife, Ellen, and their three children.
“The way a chef cooks in a restaurant is very different in where you need or don’t need space,” Bromberg says. “I have the kitchen set up into two sections, even though it’s one kitchen. I have a professional space and then a space where I can make the kids breakfast.”
The room is centered around a 13-foot-long marble island with dual refrigerators, plus dishwashers, garbage stations and food warmers. The kitchen’s storage is in drawers instead of cabinets; a long wall of windows look out onto the back yard. But the room’s piece de resistance, ensconced over a fireplace often used to hang pots for boiling, is Bromberg’s $12,500 rotisserie, made by the French company La Cornue.
“There aren’t too many of them [in homes],” says Bromberg, in the midst of roasting a turkey on the spit. “When Bruce and I were in France, there were shops or markets where they have these magnificent rotisseries, always roasting chickens. So, I had some crazy idea that I was gonna find one. I wanted access to every cooking option there was.”
With all of Bromberg’s industry contacts, he still couldn’t find anyone who knew how to install a rotisserie, and the company’s instructions came on a one-page handwritten sheet. After some trial and error — including one attempt that “burned this whole ceiling, turned it golden brown, and made it about 200 degrees in the house” — he finally got it right.
While the kitchen is that of a consummate professional, the rest of the five-bedroom home, about 80 miles from the city, was designed with relaxation in mind. A small room that serves as a simple music room — with pictures of musician friends and idols such as Stevie Ray Vaughan adorning the walls — is dominated by a Knabe piano, which was given to his grandparents in 1929 as a wedding gift.
“It was in my grandmother’s house throughout my childhood,” says Bromberg, who plays it almost daily. “My mother learned how to play piano on this, and my grandmother played it.”
Next to the music room is a 770-square-foot living room that looks out onto the woods. It’s where he keeps his more than 20 electric guitars, which, besides cooking, are his passion.
“When you’re in your dorm room in college, and you have your guitar and your bed, and nobody’s in your way, then you can be yourself. That’s what this room is for me,” he says. “It’s an inspiring spot.”
Bromberg, who prefers “acoustic singer/songwriter” type of music, counts among his guitars several that he received as gifts, including a Gibson Les Paul with the “Blue Ribbon” logo painted on it.
But if the guitars give the room a slight dormitory aura, the comparison stops there. Not many dorm rooms, for instance, have a hand-stitched Rwandan peace basket that was personally presented as a gift from Bill Clinton.
“He and his family have been visitors to Blue Ribbon over the years,” says Bromberg, who catered the rehearsal dinner for Chelsea Clinton’s July wedding. “We’ve gotten to know him and have been lucky enough to be invited to the inner-circle parties. This is just an object, but it really has a cool vibe.”
The room also houses items that demonstrate his preference for the hand-crafted and for an “Asian Zen feeling,” including a hand-carved mirror from Indonesia that hangs over his fireplace and two antique Chinese cabinets he found on Carmine Street.
Bromberg bought the then-4,700-square-foot Colonial home — which had been built in 1994 — in 2001 for under $600,000, and immediately put another $500,000 into renovations, turning it into what he calls “a country farmhouse/Colonial mix.”
With Edward Asfour and Peter Guzy of Asfour Guzy Architects, the garage became the spacious living room, the old living room became the kitchen, and the old kitchen became the new dining room, which houses a custom-made, 12½-foot-long dining table made of black walnut that comfortably seats 14. A set of doors leads outside to another “dining room” of sorts, where Bromberg keeps another custom-made dining table — made from California redwood.
The home gives Bromberg, who will be spending the holiday cooking with his mother, and enjoying the meal with his entire family, a necessary escape from the hustle and bustle of his life as a restaurateur. He and his brother have run an eatery empire since 1992, but they’re now really stepping into the spotlight.
In September, they unveiled their Blue Ribbon Classics menu at the Renaissance New York Times Square Hotel, as part of a deal that will eventually roll out the menu to 20 Renaissance properties nationwide. And Blue Ribbon Sushi catered the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas party at October’s New York Wine & Food Festival, the night before Blue Ribbon’s bone marrow and oxtail marmalade sandwich won the festival’s Sandwich Showdown.
“I get so much of New York working and having a constant presence in New York,” Bromberg says. “It’s really nice to get home and almost feel like I’m on vacation.”