Jim Filip is shown in the restaurant he
has owned since 1978, Doris & Ed's in Highlands. With his passion for providing
the highest quality seafood, the restaurant has won high praise.
Here's to you, Jim!
Published in the Asbury Park Press 11/20/04
Jim Filip, owner of Doris & Ed's seafood restaurant in Highlands, is named
Restaurateur of the Year by the New Jersey Restaurant Association.
By SHANNON MULLENSTAFF
WRITER
Jim
Filip has three things he likes to do to let off steam when the pressure-cooker
of running one of the most acclaimed restaurants on the Northeast gets a bit too
intense.
They are: 1. fly fishing; 2. tending to his orchids and 3. enjoying a night of
fine dining at someone else's top-flight restaurant.
Good for him, you say. Everyone needs an escape.
Not so fast.
There's something fishy about Filip's list.
The first tip-off is that it flies in the face of the cardinal rule of owning
a restaurant, which is, there are no escapes. You never really own a restaurant
as fine-tuned as Doris & Ed's, which earned the James Beard Foundation's coveted
designation as an "America's Regional Classic" in 1998. It owns you.
Now
look at the list again. Fly fishing? It might look Zen-like on TV, but mastering
the complex casting and fly tying techniques is so mentally taxing it makes a
golf look as easy as Go Fish. And orchids? "They don't take as much work
as you think," Filip insists. Right -- unless you have 40 of them, like he
does. Besides, everyone knows the only thing easy about orchids is killing them.
Then there's eating out. Sounds innocent enough, except you only have to meet
Filip once to figure out that it's impossible for him to nourish himself like
a normal person. A normal person can eat or drink something good and think, "Oh,
that's delicious!" whereas Filip thinks, "Oh, that's delicious! I wonder
what kind of olive oil they're using? And where'd they get these capers? And this
wine -- I'm going to need a couple of cases of this. No, wait, I better get three
. . . "
So there you have it. Filip, who lives above his restaurant in Highlands, isn't
escaping anything after all. He's honing the skills his all consuming job demands
-- patience, precision, attention to detail -- and feeding his brain at every
meal.
These attributes explain Doris & Ed's remarkable trajectory from run-of-the-mill
Jersey Shore fish house to the toast of the food world. Those qualities also make
Filip a natural choice for the New Jersey Restaurant Association's "Restaurateur
of the Year" Award, which he'll receive for the first time at a black-tie
affair at Mayfair Farms in West Orange on Nov. 29.
Filip's award from the New Jersey Restaurant Association also is partly in recognition
of the community work he does outside Doris & Ed's. In addition to being an
adviser of the Culinary Education Center of Monmouth County in Asbury Park, where
students from Shore high schools and Brookdale Community College are trained for
careers in the food industry, Filip is on the board of trustees of the FoodBank
of Monmouth and Ocean Counties and co-chairs the group's annual Humanitarian Gala.
"When he sees a need he doesn't hesitate. He jumps to the fore," says
FoodBank executive director Susan Kelly. "He gives us a lot of good ideas
and he's a wonderful spokesman for us because he speaks from the heart."
Filip, 63, grew up in Johnson City, N.Y., an upstate industrial town on the banks
of the Susquehanna River. His father was a fireman, his mother a housewife who
kept the family afloat waitressing at a local steakhouse while her husband was
serving in World War II.
Filip,
who has a younger brother who is a dentist, says he always wanted to be in the
restaurant business. After graduating from Oklahoma State University with a degree
in hotel and restaurant management, he had management stints with the Steak n'
Ale chain based in Kansas City, Mo. and a chain of crepe eateries owned by operators
of the Jack Baker Lobster Shanty restaurants. When the company changed hands,
Filip found himself out of a job.
The experience made him determined to go into business for himself. At a cocktail
party, a real estate agent encouraged Filip to take a look at Doris & Ed's,
a fried fish and lobster joint located in a century-old hotel in Highlands overlooking
Sandy Hook Bay. Filip bought the restaurant in May 1978. He kept the name, but
quickly concluded he couldn't make it as a garden variety seafood restaurant.
He needed a niche and he found it in gourmet seafood.
Filip didn't create the
concept -- he was the first at the Shore to import it and adapt it to a local
audience. There was a steep learning curve involved -- both for Filip, who began
personally shopping for top-grade seafood at the Fulton Street fish market in
lower Manhattan, and for his customers, who needed to be educated about then-unfamiliar
dishes like herb-encrusted sea bass and raw tuna. He did the same thing with wine
-- deep-sixing popular staples like Blue Nun and Lancers in favor of more boutique
wines from the likes of Robert Mondavi.
"It was a long process
and I won't say it was not without setbacks," Filip says. "My head knew
what I wanted, but I didn't know how to do it."
At the Fulton Street
fish market, Filip was the eager student, arriving well before dawn to learn the
ropes from a core group of veteran fishmongers who appreciated his passion for
excellence. They taught him what the truly best seafood looked like and tasted
like and they showed him the right way to prepare it.
"They were rough,
tough people but they were good teachers," says Filip. More than 20 years
later he still travels to the market once a week, rising at 1:45 a.m. in order
to be there at 3 a.m. The relationships he's forged there have proven even more
durable than the '87 Dodge Dakota pick-up he drives into the city each week. The
list includes Sandy the tuna man and Ricky the shrimp guy and Dan, who gets Filip
his Alaskan king crabs and lets him know when the first Copper River salmon comes
in. Some, like Anthony, his oyster supplier, are the sons of the men who first
took Filip under wing all those years ago.
Shea Langella, sales manager for Dairyland -- The Chef's Warehouse, a specialty
food importer and distributor based at the Hunts Point Cooperative Market in the
Bronx, first met Filip in the late 1990s. Typically, Langella says, restaurateurs
want to talk about prices, but Filip was more interested in quality. Langella
recalls an early sales call when he brought some high-fat butter and French cheeses
to Doris & Ed's for Filip to sample. He says Filip broke out a bottle of wine
and sat down with him for a leisurely repast. Filip did the same thing when Langella
brought him some $60-an-ounce caviar direct from Russia. "That's something
not every client would do," Langella says. "To have a guy like Jim around
is refreshing."
As much as Filip values longstanding business relationships -- he's had the same
plumber since the day he opened Doris & Ed's and Russell Dare has been his
executive chef for more than 14 years -- he says change is a key ingredient to
Doris & Ed's recipe for success. After devoting so many years to raising the
bar for seafood at the Shore, Filip has to work just as hard, if not harder, to
meet his now sophisticated customers' ever-rising expectations. So when he hears
there's a state-of-the-art steamer in trial tests in North Carolina, he flies
down to meet the company's engineer and see the $10,000 piece of equipment in
action. (He purchased one, much to his kitchen staff's delight.) And when he learns
there's a heirloom rice supplier in South Carolina resurrecting old strains on
Civil War-era plantations, he places an order.
He's proud of the fact that the Doris & Ed's reputation will bring customers
to his door. But Filip says his real passion is doing everything he can to make
sure they come back a second time.
It's the same with his orchids. Keeping them alive is one thing. Getting them
to bloom repeatedly -- as he's been able to do -- is another art entirely.
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