photo: outside view of a trendy restaurant at night

Their Home Is Your Home

Ellen Kassoff, 41, has two 6-year-olds: her son, Harrison, and Equinox, the Washington, D.C., fine-dining restaurant she and her husband Todd Gray, also 41, started when she was pregnant. "I'm the mother of the restaurant," she says. "I consider the employees my kids, and our customers our family."

photo: a 5-year-old boy near a refrigerator in a kitchen

You may pick up the host at the Equinox bar, literally.

While other restaurants are busy expanding or franchising and have staffs that turn over practically weekly, Equinox is one of those rare American establishments that's taken a step in the other direction in an effort to make every meal served feel like a Sunday dinner among close friends. It evokes an earlier era - one where families lived close to where they worked and patrons got to know servers and salespeople by name, even if they weren't wearing name tags.

The food is all organic and usually procured from nearby farms. Why? Because that's how this family eats at home and they see no reason to treat their guests differently than they would their own kin.

Kassoff does much of the daily managing while Gray, a student of superstar chef Jean-Louis Palladin, does the cooking. Little Harrison has his role, too: He now greets customers at the door and will sometimes answer the phone. Regulars, including many Capitol Hill honchos, always ask for him when he's not upfront. They may, however, be able to find him in the kitchen with his dad (eating off the grill) or else at the bar (where you can literally pick him up).

"When he was in nursery school, the kids all had to bring in photos," Kassoff says. "I noticed that after this the other parents looked at me in really odd ways. Finally I realized it was because the photos I'd brought in were of him sleeping on a bar with liquor behind him."

But the odd looks didn't ruffle Kassoff, nor is she ever thrown for a loop when the restaurant has a problematic night. That's because she treats these situations just as she'd treat a similar occurrence at home.

"I take a holistic approach to running a restaurant. I just accept that there's going to be good and bad and the occasional conflict between home life and work life," she says. But, then again, it may take customers a moment to realize that sometimes the restaurant is more home than home itself.

Posted on March 27, 2006