Coincidently, they both found serving jobs on the Upper East Side. Daniel answering a Craigslist ad for a small bistro “Le Charlot.” Derek landed a server position at “Le Bilboquet.”
“We learned from the bottom up, running plates, taking orders, and bussing tables. We did whatever we had to do to establish ourselves,” Daniel recollects.
“We had been given an opportunity to work with such great restaurateurs. I felt privileged to be in this bubble that not everyone can just walk into. We were shown how to eat, speak, and wait on people properly, things that are rooted deep in the European culture. It was inspiring to me."
[Photo: Derek Koch, Michael Wainstein, Daniel Koch]
Their crash course in European hospitality seems to have given them a foundation that most party promoters lack. Being mentored by established restaurateurs Phillipe Delgrange and Thierry Gelormini, who vouched for them and showed them the ins and outs of running a successful restaurant. Maitre d’s like Aymeric Clemente and Patrick Cabido gave them training on how to run the floor and share their endless knowledge of fine wines and French cuisine.
After a few years of working separately Daniel left “Le Charlot” and joined Derek at “Le Bilboquet” to work under Aymeric. This marked the early days of their Saturday brunch concept, as they filled a space that fit fifty people with close to two hundred on a weekly basis. One of their regulars was a man named Michael Wainstein, the president of the merchant back “Private Capital Group.”
“He’d come in you’d pull out the table and do whatever he wanted. We’d give him ten pushups and make it happen for him,” Daniel remembers.
As their reputation grew in the restaurant industry, they were offered an opportunity to work as marketing directors for a nightlife promotional company called “In the Buzz," where they essentially brought good looking girls to the club.
“We’d be out at the club until 4am, then work a double shift from 10am until 1am, then we be right back to the nightclub when it was over. We pulled it off, but some nights it could get ugly,” Derek recalls.
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