How Eric Adams’s friends Robert and Zhan Petrosyants became two of the restaurant world’s least likely power players. aaronshortstory reports
Zhan Petrosyants, left, and his twin brother Robert. Photo-Illustration: Grub Street; Photo: WENN Rights Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo On a recent summer afternoon inside Osteria La Baia, a white-tablecloth bistro on West 52nd Street with an open kitchen and photographs of coastal Italy on the wall, executives from nearby offices noshed on $24 margherita pizzas and $19 “La Baia Cesare” salads.
In New York, they worked a variety of jobs until 2006, when Robert needed legal advice for a civil matter, and a mutual acquaintance introduced them to Akiva Ofshtein, a no-fault insurance attorney who represented doctors against insurance companies. The two became friends — Robert set Ofshtein up with his eventual wife — and soon went into business together. Ofshtein had once managed Tavern on the Green and wanted to get back into the restaurant business.
“The original idea was to cater to the local Park Slope clientele, but many local clients, mostly Caribbean American, kept asking for Caribbean additions to the menu and fun music,” the brothers said. “We tried it one Sunday as a closed private event and it was a huge hit. So it took off and became a regular daily thing.”
When Adams took office as borough president that year, he became a regular at Woodland, held campaign fundraisers there, and brought borough hall staffers there after work. Adams frequently held the final round of interviews for job applicants at a reserved table at Woodland well after 10 p.m., one person familiar with Adams’s hiring practices told me.
Ettlinger, the Park Slope neighbor, recalled, “The biggest issue we had wasn’t even noise as much as the drunken behavior of clients when they left the bar,” he said. “People were clearly drunk, throwing up, and then getting into a car and driving off.” Meanwhile, the brothers’ biggest project was coming together in Manhattan. Russian restaurateurs Evgeny Kuzin and Alexander Orlov, whose Bulldozer International Hospitality Group operated dozens of luxury restaurants in the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Eastern Europe, and Miami, wanted to make a splash in midtown.
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