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| Chef's Showcase |
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| Building Your Own Business In Salt Lake City
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 Greg Neville sets high standards for service and food at Lugano
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Chef-owner: Gregory Neville
Open since: July 2000
Previous executive experience: Il Fornaio, Corte Madera, Calif.; Spectrum Foods, San Francisco; Gastronomy Inc., Salt Lake City
Lugano concept: High-quality Italian food with good value, in a comfortable setting
Number of seats: 85, plus 50 in the private dining room
Daypart: Dinner only
Check average: $28
Menu features: Beet salad with avocado, shaved fennel, baby greens, blue cheese, balsamic vinaigrette, $9.50; spaghetti with napa cabbage, pancetta, cauliflower, toasted garlic and ricotta salata, $11.50; wood-burning oven "clay pot" mussels, white wine, garlic, basil, olive oil, pesto and grilled garlic toast, $13.95; braised lamb shank with soft polenta, garlic bread crumbs, and black- olive-and-caramelized onion relish, $18.75.
Green Room menu features: Gewürztraminer-poached foie gras with fennel and orange salad and green peppercorn-caramel sauce, $12.95; shrimp mousse and crabmeat cake with champagne-mustard sauce, $11.00; grilled porter house steak with Merlot-chili preserves, $31.00
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What do you bring to your own restaurant from years of corporate foodservice experience?
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How did you - a Californian with loads of corporate expertise - end up with a cozy Italian restaurant in Salt Lake City?
I first moved here back in 1992 for a job with Gastronomy Inc., the biggest independent restaurant group in the area. And when I decided a few years later to open my own business, this seemed like the best place to do it.
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Was there much competition for the kind of Italian restaurant you envisioned?
There are several Italian places in Salt Lake City but none like the exact type I had in mind. My plan was to offer high-quality food and a variety of dining experiences in the same location.
Our customers can come in and enjoy a family dinner with the kids or a pizza and pasta for light supper. Or they can celebrate a special occasion with a multicourse meal and good wine. And then with the new private dining room, Lugano is also a place for larger business or personal entertaining.
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What does the restaurant look like?
We bought an existing restaurant. Well, actually, it was originally an ice-cream shop from the early 1950s. There were fantastic architectural details like double-glass transoms and good natural light. It's beautifully quaint.
So we kept a lot of those things and just blew out the walls and made it all more open and in compliance with health and handicap codes. Instead of tablecloths, the tables are topped with really nice hearty wood, and we use cloth napkins. The lighting is great, and the kitchen for the most part is exposed to the dining room.
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What are some of the kitchen features?
The big wood-burning pizza oven is in the middle, which we use for both pizzas and other main dishes. The grill is L-shaped toward the pasta station.
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After so many years spent in opening both corporate and single-unit restaurants, you must have developed a clear vision of what works and what doesn't.
Working for big corporations was a good training ground, even though what we're doing now is so different. The systems still apply whether you're running your own small place or several restaurants in a multiple context, because all in all it's still a business.
One thing I've learned is the importance of benchmarks. We have state-of-the art POS touch screen machines. You've got to be able to watch the numbers. They're what tells you where you need to be.
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What about your marketing strategy?
It's hands-on. I'm fortunate to have a very good staff running the kitchen, so I can focus on the dining room, service and marketing. We don't do much advertising but rather spend our resources trying to get to know our customers and get our name out there directly in the community.
I try to cover the usual things like the hotels and the convention and visitors' centers. We also bring chefs to the big fund-raisers and smaller events, too.
In the restaurant I do cooking classes that cover every region in Italy. Usually, they span a couple of months and draw 16 to 18 people each. I'm also invited to do cooking demonstrations at local culinary shops. My goal is always to increase visibility, notoriety and our reputation.
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How have those efforts been paying off in terms of Lugano's growth?
That's something else I learned from all those years in large companies: It's a constant push to improve. In terms of training, that means raising the level of service and then maintaining it.
Another push is always to reinvest in the business. We had no liquor license for three weeks; but when we got it, we were stocking only 30 wines on our list. Now the inventory is more than 90. Ingredients are getting better and more specialized. This fall we expanded into a 50-seat private dining room, and we had our best month ever in December.
When we first opened our doors, that first night, only 12 people came. By the weekend there were 45, and by the second week there were 85. It could have gone the other way, but we've been lucky.
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It sounds as if you also have high expectations and clear goals.
It's true. In that way I'm different now from the way I was when I worked for other people. You have to set the bar, stay true to your philosophy and then keep working at it all the time. Success is never a given.
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