Jeremiah Tower, one of the originators of California cuisine, is best known for creating the restaurant Stars, a big, bright celebrity magnet in San Francisco that pulsed with energy and grossed millions from the mid-1980s to the late ’90s.
Now Mr. Tower, who has been living out of the culinary limelight for more than a decade, has landed in New York, where he is the executive chef at Tavern on the Green, which reopened last spring after an expensive face-lift.
Mr. Tower’s Stars was showy and popular — guests were often handed a glass of champagne as soon as they walked in. But it was also respected for its inventive food.
Tavern is beloved and popular, too, but a few weeks into its rebirth, it was battered by stinging criticism for its mediocre food.
Jim Caiola, one of Tavern’s owners, said that they heard from Mr. Tower a couple of months ago while they were searching for a replacement for Katy Sparks, the original chef who quit in September, a victim of the bad reviews.
“Out of the blue, he came to us with this real passion for this restaurant,” Mr. Caiola said. “Jeremiah Tower contacts you, and you understand what he represents. An icon meets an icon.”
Mr. Tower arrived in New York on Friday evening armed with a list of 250 dishes that he is proposing. On Monday, he was already at work in his new chef’s jacket emblazoned with the Tavern logo. He’s plunging right in.
“The food has to be delicious, colorful and affordable,” he had said in a phone conversation last week from the Yucatán in Mexico, where he has been renovating old houses and happily scuba diving. “Katy didn’t want to do fries or pasta. That leaves me speechless.”
Anyone can put fries on a menu. But why would Mr. Tower, 71, who never cooked in New York (although he said he was once asked to be the top chef at Windows on the World) and seemed to be enjoying retirement, take on a troubled 400-seat restaurant?
He said a friend suggested it as a wild idea. “It took about a day for me to think seriously about it,” he said. “I was always fascinated by Tavern.”
It is a high-volume place, but so was Stars. He said that years ago, when Nation’s Restaurant News, a trade publication, listed the top-grossing restaurants in the country, Tavern was often No. 1. For many years, Mr. Tower’s Stars was never far behind. The restaurant suffered hard times after the 1989 earthquake; Mr. Tower sold his interest in 1998, and it closed in 2001.
Mr. Tower, a self-taught chef, made his name at Alice Waters’s Chez Panisse and the Santa Fe Bar and Grill in Berkeley, Calif., always refining his technique with fresh ingredients. Stars was the first of a generous style that could be called American brasserie, and it prepared the ground for places like Gotham Bar & Grill and Bar Americain in New York. But while Stars was a culinary trailblazer, Tavern was always more about the dazzle of its setting. “I loved going there, but I don’t remember the food,” Mr. Tower said.
He expects to add more salads and lunch items like a lobster roll. But his plans go beyond the food. “The place is beautiful now, but it has to be loosened up, more flowers, more fun,” he said.
Clark Wolf, a food consultant from California, said: “The idea that Jeremiah would do something in New York is kind of fabulous. There’ll be a lot of delicious food. It won’t be boring. He’ll know how to give the place that sizzle it needs.”
Mr. Caiola and his partner, David Salama, believe that they have bagged a trophy. “The 26-year-olds out there have no idea,” Mr. Caiola said. The partners are hoping that customers who were disappointed in the beginning may return, and that Tavern may attract those who have yet to try it. They refuse to think that it may not work out.
But considering that interlopers take on New York at their peril, suppose it doesn’t? “I’ll have an open ticket to Shanghai,” Mr. Tower said.