ADVERTISEMENT

    Behind The Scenes at Third and Hollywood

    What started a year ago with rumors of a new Northstar location in Grandview has recently come full circle to reveal that Northstar-owners Kevin and Katy Malhame were opening a new venture called Third and Hollywood. After a quiet soft opening, they were met with a pretty critical eye both from food reviewers who had ventured in, as well as many who had not yet tried the place.

    ADVERTISEMENT

    I recently sat down with Kevin to discuss their new restaurant, and give him a chance to share his thoughts on their menu, ingredients, location, and prices.

    Walker Evans: Thanks for taking the time to sit down and chat with us today. Originally, this location started with rumors of a new Grandview Northstar Cafe. Can you tell us a bit about the leadup to Third and Hollywood?

    Kevin Malhame: Well, before we opened the first Northstar, my wife and I were both restaurant managers and we were making a comfortable combined income. But it’s very physically exhausting work. We started to think that it was a little strange that we could both work so hard, so often, and not really be proud of what we’re contributing to our community.

    Thankfully, we were naive enough when we strarted Northstar to think that we could very easily create a restaurant where we could manage the mechanics and simple stuff well enough for it to be successful, and also shape a system of values, and be very a values-oriented company and accomplish some other good things. Such as making relatively nutriotious food with great available ingredents, and trying to be great environmental stewards. Since the very beginning we’ve been really involved with the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association. It’s an organization that I really believe in. It’s at the very core of sustainable farming and local foods, and this organization teaches family farmers how to transition into a method of farming that might enable them to be more successful while using organic practices.

    Originally, my wife and I used to live in Grandview about two blocks from here for five or six years and we still love this neighborhood. The landlord for this building recognized that the business that was previously here wasn’t going to last too much longer. They approached us and asked if we’d be interested in opening a Northstar Cafe.

    Once we started evaluating this space, we realized that it was a little small for the Northstar format. The space has always felt good as a bar and grill. It was Gibby’s for about 13 years. So I didn’t feel great about turning it into a Northstar. After awhile we started to get the idea that we could open something up a little more formal and satisfy our red meat cravings. Sort of our take on a classic American bar and grill. In the end, the real lynchpin for us was the neighborhood being Grandview.

    WE: It sounds like you’re carrying the same values over from your Northstar operations, but the menu looks completely different. Can you tell us about some of the featured items and where they come from.

    KM: Sure. I think our mussels are a good place to start. They have the potential to be a really fun casual bar food, but it ultimately depends on the quality of the mussels. Where they came from, and how long they’ve been handled. Most restaurants serve PEI mussels, which used to have a reputation for being good high-end mussels, but they’re totally industrialized and raised on mussel farms. So we usually end up paying twice as much for our mussels and get them FedExed from a place up in the Pacific Northwest. They’re usually really good, but they can sometimes be a little inconsistent this time of year. So on Friday we’re getting our first shipment from a fishmonger who is going to be shipping them to us direct from this small farm off the coast of Maine. For these mussels we’re paying another 25% more, so it starts to make a little more sense when you look at this price and think “$14 or a pound of mussels?” I’m sure the price might enrage some of the people reading this, but I think many will appreciate the quality.

    WE: Yeah, a lot of the harsher criticism I’ve read so far comes directly from the prices.

    KM: Well, the thing that really gets me excited and makes me want to talk is related to local foods and what can be argued as a fair price for those foods. Conventionally produced industrial foods are not cheap foods. They’re inexpensive to purchase, and as a restaurant we could buy them and it would be less expensive for us, but for society they’re incredibly expensive. There are longer-term health problems and environmental problems that go with those types of foods. Society basically absorbs the cost of an industrial food system, and that is not at all good for any of us. As a business we’re making the decision to support as many food producers as we can that are doing things responsibly and actually not contributing to the problems related to industrial agriculture,

    We actually separate on our profit and loss statements how much money we spend on foods that are really consistent with our values and the foods that more mainstream. Even in that mainstream category, we have things like olive oil that we use instead of chemically extracted corn oil. They’re still expensive high-quality ingredients. We use all olive oils in our salad dressings, which is remarkable. There’s few restaurants in town who don’t use like a 90/10 blend and mix just a small bit of olive oil in with some bland vegetable oil because it’s much cheaper. It still ends up tasting fine, but I just don’t want to put that in my body every day.

    So when you look at our salad prices and say “Wow, can there really be such a thing as a $19 salad?” all you can do is try it and decide for yourself. But the perception that we are wildly overcharging for food and enjoying markups that are greater than industry norms is actually quite the opposite. We really suffer because of the values-oriented ingredient purchasing. Our food costs typically hover around 35 to 40 percent, which is typically not a healthy range for a restaurant. Normally you want your food costs to be around 30 percent or below.

    It’s also worth noting that there’s a lot of extra time that goes into our purchasing. To purchase for a normal restaurant, you’re calling one meat purveyor, one produce company,  and maybe one grocery company like Sysco. Instead, we work with 20-30 purveyors on a weekly basis. We get our beef from one guy, one guy who brings us herbs, one guy who brings us salad greens, and so forth. With some of those produce relationships, you’re having a conversation with the grower in January about the seeds they need to buy from their seed catalog so that in June they can harvest it and sell it to us. It’s a lot different that just calling the produce company at 11 o’clock at night and just getting whatever you want the next morning.

    At the end of the day, I just want people to come check the place out and eat the food and give it a chance.

    WE: Fair enough. Personally, I think it does help to explain the prices when more of these types of details are provided with some of the ingedients and procedures that go on behind the scenes.

    Well, I get more and more uncomfortable with saying anything about the ingredients because I feel like it makes us look like every other grocery store container that tries to tell you how great they are and how good for you they are. For the first four years at Northstar we never had the words “local” or “organic” anywhere on our menu. Eventually we added them because some people didn’t know, and some people were missing that, and we figure that it was probably hurting us to not let people know. Especially since our prices have risen. Since we’ve opened, organic foods have really outpaced inflation dramatically.

    WE: I have to say that I was actually surprised to hear that you were starting another restaurant concept. I can easily see Northstar becoming a huge chain concept that spreads like wildfire all across the US.

    KM: Well, it would be nice to have the $100 million dollars that would go along with that, but I don’t like the compromises that companies like that have to make along the way to grow at that speed. Growth for us at this point is mostly about attracting and retaining the talented people who come to the company who want to make more money next year than they did this year and want more opportunities and responsibility. Those types of people create enormous pressure for me to keep things moving forward responsibly. I don’t want them to get bored or tired with the business.

    WE: So that means we won’t be seeing a Northstar Polaris location opening up anytime soon?

    KM: We kind of have this unwritten guideline that if there’s not a sidewalk that leads to the front door that lets you get from home to the restaurant, then it’s probably not a good site for us. I say that now and will probably jinx myself… but that’s really the idea. We want to be a part of real neighborhoods. It makes business sense too, because who knows what the heck is going to happen at Polaris 10 years from now.

    When we undertake a project like this, our hope is to be a genuinely loved restaurant 10 years from now. That’s why our tabletops are 2 1/2 inch thick butcher blocks, and our booths are Italian full-grain leather that’s going to last. The idea is to build a place that will last and be warm and cozy for a long time to come.

    WE: Any final thoughts that you want to leave the readers of Columbus Underground with?

    KM: I would strongly recommend anyone interested in the subject of sustainable food to read either of Michael Pollan’s two most recent books, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food. He does a much better job of breaking it down than anyone else could, and in a real enjoyable readable way.

    WE: Great. Thanks for taking the time to talk with us today.

    KM: No problem.

    More information can be found online at ThirdAndHollywood.com.

    ADVERTISEMENT

    Subscribe

    More to Explore:

    The Thurman Cafe: Truly the Tastiest Burgers in Columbus?

    The Thurman Cafe is a Columbus staple. It’s hard...

    The “Liz Lessner” Restaurant Era Has Officially Come to An End

    There's no denying the impact that Elizabeth Lessner has...

    New Owner of Ho-Toy Building Plans for 3 Restaurants, Office Space

    Four new businesses will find their homes inside a...

    Cheap Eats: 5 Happy Hours for $5 and Under

    Columbus is good at a lot of things, but...

    New Dining, Entertainment Options Opening at Easton

    A pair of newcomers are filling in some vacant...
    Walker Evans
    Walker Evanshttps://columbusunderground.com
    Walker Evans is the co-founder of Columbus Underground, along with his wife and business partner Anne Evans. Walker has turned local media into a full time career over the past decade and serves on multiple boards and committees throughout the community.
    ADVERTISEMENT