''I'd literally crisscross the city block by block, from Columbus Avenue down to TriBeCa,'' recalls Mr. He had spent well over a year combing Manhattan for a site suitable for the restaurant he had in mind, one combining a bistro's casual atmosphere and moderate prices with innovative cuisine. Houle has been here since January, held up for much of that time by cash flow troubles. Sawdust and wood scraps litter the floor, the windowless front of his 800-square-foot space at 241 Smith Street in Carroll Gardens is boarded up, and the kitchen is an obstacle course of unconnected appliances. 2, has been pushed back another week, and judging by the restaurant's condition, that's not a bad thing. You never know when you might hit a warm spell, he says, so he's on his cell phone, dickering over costs and schedules. It's a brisk day in October, an odd time to be thinking of air-conditioning, but Dan Houle is taking no chances. Not to mention a sense of humor and a deft hand with a screw gun. The undertaking required not only slavish attention to detail, but also an inexhaustible supply of time, patience and energy. Houle, who by the time he served his first customer had invested countless hours doing everything from scouting a location and planning a menu to varnishing tables and choosing napkins. ''If you look around a restaurant, everything represents a choice: the kind of salt shaker that's on the table, the art on the walls, the uniforms on the waiters.'' ''A restaurant is a compendium of choices that the owner has made,'' says Danny Meyer, owner of the top-rated Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern. If each new restaurant represents a considerable risk of time and capital, it is also an act of creation involving a thousand small decisions about food, decor and atmosphere. If industry averages hold true, at least two-thirds of those will close or change hands within two years. The 2000 Zagat Survey, which tracks only a small fraction of the city's restaurants, noted 274 openings in 1999, more than 5 a week. With the city's economy humming, more hopefuls than ever are throwing their hats into the ring.
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This dream prompts hundreds of people to try their luck each year in New York City's high-stakes restaurant marketplace, braving staunch competition, Herculean labor demands and daunting odds.
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Houle inched closer to the realization of a dream he has had since his teens, to run his own restaurant. Gannascoli was the first customer on Banania's opening day, and in serving him, Mr. It was also a milestone for Danforth Houle, the bistro's chef and owner. If it was the most mundane of transactions between eater and eatery, one played out millions of times each day. They were placed in front of the man, Joseph Gannascoli, who ate them and pronounced them ''sublime.'' Ten minutes later, the oysters, fried in cornmeal, arranged on a bed of celery root puree and dappled with a tomato-seed vinaigrette, arrived from the kitchen. 9, a diner walked into Banania Cafe on Smith Street in Brooklyn, sat at a corner table and ordered oysters.