You’re not in Kansas anymore!

[cpnews]

Lucky Cheng’s will move to Times Square.

I get a few calls a week from people who want a fun place to have a birthday party or a engagement fete, or something similar to this. Some seek the table in the hot club with a bottle of Goose near some hotties, while others seek a “fun†spot. I often recommend either Lucky Cheng’s or once in awhile Sammy’s Romanian. I learned a great deal about clubs from watching old movies. I’ve always wanted to run a club like they had back in my grandfathers’ day when the men wore tuxedos and the women gowns. I was always fascinated by the acts, singers, trumpet players or dancing girls, and the dynamic of swells leading dames on circular dance floors in between numbers. The box seems to have upgraded this game to its’ modern conclusion, but it’s take on it is every bit the perversion it wants to be and loses me with a yawn and an “I’ve seen enoughâ€.

Lucky Cheng’s is not about the food, although heaven knows from time to time it’s been pretty good. It’s about hanging with real live drag queens and telling the gals back in Kansas you actually saw one. Birthdays and bachelorettes have a great time because they can get plastered and loud and they know that no matter what they do or say, the drag queens will always be forgiving as they’ve seen it all before and snicker probably worse. Hayne Suthon is getting ready for a move. She will abandon her East Village destination performance dance habitat and migrate north to Times Square, cause that’s where the action is. The East Village will lose a savvy operator who long before Micros or Aloha was using a computer to help define and identify the things owners need to know to be successful. Will the theatre crowd and guests of New York embrace the bodacious broads of Hayne’s extended family? I’m sure if packaged just right the girls will give the yokels everything they ever wanted and maybe a little bit more.

Steve Lewis: I’m sitting here with Hayne Suthon. Hayne is an old friend of mine. I’ve known Hayne for many many years. I’d say fifteen or sixteen years, maybe longer than that…

Hayne Suthon: No, further!

SL: How far back do we go?

HS: I think it was back in the World days, which was 1987.

SL: Yeah, so that’s twenty-one years ago. Back then you had a space, what was the name?

HS: Cave Canum.

SL: Which was a Roman Style restaurant on 1st Avenue between 1st and 2nd Street. I remember eating a pheasant that was stuffed with mushrooms or something…

HS: Actually, I believe it was a pheasant stuffed with a hen, stuffed with a quail, and then stuffed with a quail egg; and all of the recipes came from an ancient Roman cookbook.

SL: Yeah, and it’s pretty amazing actually. I don’t remember what the reason was exactly but I went online a couple of months ago and Googled Roman food, and they had some pretty weird foods. Fish oil was the main thing they used. Ah, I remember why. I was hosting a dinner party for the final episode of HBO’s Rome and I went authentic. Hard to do.

HS: We had a version of that; it would be focaccia with the olives that were sautéed in rosemary and then we had the seasoned olive oil, and the fish pickle. It was something comparable and it was called Garem.

SL: It’s just amazing when you see what they ate. They were genius; food was very important to them. I liked Cave Canum, it was a gimmicky restaurant. And then I guess you turned that into what?

HS: I opened a restaurant with Claudia Cardinale’s son Patricio Cristaldi called El Salon Verde right in the beginning of ‘91. It was a Spanish tapas restaurant, and we had gotten the chef from Eldorado Petit. That was short lived because Patricio could not get a lung. So then I partnered with my old busboy Mr. Cheng and my new boyfriend Robert Jason, who then became my husband was the director at MTV.

SL: He was the director?

HS: He was like the one that did all the on-air promos. He was actually the one that started the really flashy animation.

SL: Cool, so what was his name, Robert?

HS: Robert Jason.

SL: And you guys opened up Lucky Cheng’s.

HS: First we called the restaurant Stella’s which was a joke because my canine at the time was Stella. So we called it Stella’s for a while, ran it as a neighborhood bar, and generated enough money to start developing it as a restaurant. My first idea was to name it something Cal/Asian like Chin Chin’s in Los Angeles. I thought I don’t wanna do another destination restaurant, let’s do something for the neighborhood.

SL: Right.

HS: So we interviewed some Asian staff and I interviewed Paris, whom you remember…

SL: Paris! Who would do the door at many of the nightclubs in New York, and now is one of the owners of Q models.

HS: Right. And she was transitioning at the time - she interviewed as a guy and I thought, oh my god, we’ll have Paris as an Asian drag queen and everyone will come to sit down, but all of the normal people will think - oh that’s just a beautiful Asian woman. So, then I thought to draw in some Asian drag queens for the opening party which made me think, ‘Where do I find Asian drag queens?’ And then I remembered this guy from Save the Robots who lived across the street and ran a bar called Star Sapphire. So I asked him to send me some Asian drag queens and he sent me an onslaught of them; some of them are still with me. Once they started waiting on everybody, they loved it. It was so amazing that that just became the gimmick. It didn’t start specifically as a gimmick, but it became the gimmick. People came specifically for the drag queens.

SL: That was the birth of Lucky Cheng’s, and it is all about the drag queens. I was talking to the owner of Joonbug about interviewing you and he was saying how fantastic it is, because everybody’s been to Lucky Cheng’s. And that’s the truth, everyone has been there. They say it’s the greatest place to have a birthday party or a bachelorette party and that became your mainstay, the basis of your business.

HS: Yes, that and the tourists because it’s sort of an institution. However, as you know, it really belongs in Times Square at this point.

SL: Right, as a hospitality designer, I’m helping you find a space in Times Square for Lucky Cheng’s. I’m pretty sure we have one right now so yes - we might be announcing it on this blog in the months to come. You’ll be moving this to Times Square which will be a true tourist space. It will definitely be more fun than ever.

HS: Exactly.

SL: Ok, now you are from New Orleans originally, but you used to have a heavier accent, you don’t so much anymore.

HS: When I go down there and speak to my father it comes back.

SL: Ok, and you’re a lawyer right?

HS: Yes.

SL: Are you licensed in New York?

HS: Well, I went to Tulane Law School and studied Civil Law. I was engaged, and I guess I should have known that this was doomed because the guy’s last name was Payne with the same spelling as Hayne, H-A-Y-N-E.

SL: Oh my god.

HS: So, P-A-Y-N-E. And I did extremely well in my tax classes, in fact I made the highest grade in my Corporate Tax Class. So I thought, why don’t I try the NYU tax program? So I was still engaged to Bill Payne, interviewed with firms in New Orleans, taken the bar in Louisiana, passed the bar in Louisiana, and when I got to New York I found out that he’d moved in with my best friend.

SL: Oh my goodness.

HS: So I thought, hmm - maybe I should just stay up here. So I took a job on Wall Street and passed the bar in New York, but then I soon realized that I did not want to be on Wall Street, did not even want to be in the legal business.

SL: Well, the point is that you have a legal background, you’re a lawyer, you passed the bar in Louisiana and New York, and you chose to run a restaurant and found that this was your calling. It’s almost like an addiction when you get into this business. Your background is in business as well, and I do believe that you were the first person who was running computer programs for the back of the house for your restaurant.

HS: Probably so. Yes, I have an aptitude for that. Everything was on Excel spreadsheets before anybody else knew how to do it. It really was not user friendly.

SL: At one point I think you were trying to export it to other restaurants; you actually approached me once when you were at Cave Canum and said that you had this incredible program. I just want to let people know that even though you see something like Lucky Cheng’s that’s incredible fun with all these crazy drag queens and chaos… how long has it been now?

HS: Fifteen years.

SL: Right, for you to last fifteen years, there might chaos in the front, maybe even chaos in your hairdo, but behind everything there’s stability - there has to be.

HS: Well one thing that I’ve found is that you have to be so stringent. You have to almost think like a lawyer in order to deal with all the new rules. That’s the reason for the Nightlife Association. The fire department has all these new rules, the police department are in all the time, the police department and the health department has all of these crazy rules, so you have to be so on top of every single detail. But sometimes you might have a really complicated issue, and at that point you need to think like an architect and a lawyer and like fire department guy. So as you know, it’s a whole new ball game. It’s not like it was back in the ‘80s.

SL: Yeah, the ‘80s were really fun. There was a story that right in the middle of an inspection by the buildings department, the inspector was walking down my staircase, he stepped on a stair and his leg went through the physical stair up to his knee. He pulled his leg out and said to me, ‘You know, you’re going to have to fix that.’ We passed the inspection. But it’s like, today, if you have just something an inch and a half off, you fail. So it’s a much different world right now.

HS: I was told that I was violating - not operating with a public assembly permit. It was during the day, there was no one in the restaurant, because we do our reservations on premise and have an exit door that opens onto a hallway that’s common with other spaces, which is actually an office, not even another restaurant. And our maintenance guy had it propped open because he was getting supplies from the basement and there was no one else in the building. This argument went on for probably a year and a half; it cost me thousands of dollars.

SL: Right, and you don’t find this climate in Miami or Los Angeles, and you certainly do not find this climate in Las Vegas. But in New York it is not business friendly for the hospitality business, and it’s a shame. Unfortunately, with most manufacturing having deserted the city, we are a tourist based, service based city. That’s where our industry is, and yet it’s almost impossible to operate. There are so many special interest groups, and this mayor seems to cater to that crowd rather than the poor restaurateur. It’s very difficult to stay in business.

HS: I agree, although sometimes I also think that it’s a bit of a hangover from Giuliani. I think it’s sort of a mine set that sort of permeated all of the government agencies, regardless of whether Bloomberg says yes or no. It’s because so much was given to the community boards that it’s almost difficult to take that back. They scream and they yell, I mean you’ll see at the community boards the women with the gray bobs, the red square glasses trying to be stylish, with hand knit sweaters and the socks with the Birkenstocks, and I’m like, ‘Oh my god, if they’re there for me I’m dead.’

SL: Well I have always compared you to Pat Fields, who owns Patricia Field, and she’s become very famous in the last few years because of Sex and the City, which she was the stylist for, and for the Devil Wears Prada, which she was the costume designer and was nominated for an Academy Award for that. Pat has always been the mother hen of the House of Field and her people, which a large part of them are drag queens and the like that have always been supported by her. It’s a family. It’s the house of Field, and you are very similar to her in that way; your people have turned to you and so many of them have been with you for many years and see you as the mother of the house, the house of Suthon, or the house of Lucky Cheng’s. I’d like to hear about some of the people you have worked with over the fifteen years of Lucky Cheng’s, some of which have stayed and some which are gone. Who are the notable people that have passed through the door and been employed by you. Or, fed by you?

HS: That’s funny that you would mention that because there’s so much cross-pollination between Pat Field’s staff, or her crowd, and my crowd. You know, because I just opened up a salon with Codie.

SL: Codie Ravioli.

HS: She was like basically Patricia’s daughter.

SL: I heard Codie Ravioli has now straightened up her act and she’s doing very well. I mean, Codie Ravioli is a club kid, she’s one of the original club kids, the originator. I go back many years with Codie Ravioli, as I have, and as you have, been a mess at times and Codie Ravioli is not a mess right now at all. We should be proud of her that she’s such a success story, she’s survived and is now thriving. And you did mention to me about the salon, what is the name?

HS: Salon Bordello. That’s on East 2nd Street.

SL: Salon Bordello. That’s an incredible name, it’s very cute. It’s based on the comedy of sex that pervades Pat and her crowd, and you and your crowd. It’s always an underlying force, it’s very important in the confused sexuality of a salon.

HS: Oh yeah, I could write a book about transsexuals, and the transgendered…

SL: You should!

HS: I mean, I’ve called transsexuals, and the guys who love them, that’s just a wife with a strap-on.

SL: A wife with a strap-on.

HS: Yeah, that’s what I call them. I’m like, ‘You’re just a wife with a strap-on.’ A lot of straight guys love them more than me, although it doesn’t appeal to everybody.

SL: Well, we’re gonna do a reader’s survey on this, hopefully, we’ll find out. So who else, besides Codie Ravioli?

HS: Well my eighty-two year old dad was visiting from New Orleans, because my mother died of a stroke, and he’s up in town not to see me, but to see his lady friend who resides in New York. So he was hanging out with me for about a half an hour before his lady friend was done watering the plants or whatever she does, and one of the waitresses was setting up and he was sort of standing around with everybody. One of my girls walked over and said, ‘Well hello Mr. Suthon, it’s been a while,’ and he’s like, ‘Oh, nice to see you again.’ I said, dad, Tora has worked with me since I was pregnant with my daughter, when I first opened the restaurant fifteen years ago. Tora’s been the longest employee, she’s the only one who was working with me when I pregnant with my teenage daughter. A lot of them have been there since ’94 or ’95.

SL: Okay, so let’s hear the names.

HS: Brie, who was one of the club kids, Ruby, who was also one of the club kids, and Princess Diandra who of course you know.

SL: Princess Diandra is working for you?

HS: Yes, she’s still working for me.

SL: You know, that’s really good because I wondered Princess Diandra the other day. I was going to visit Michael Alig in prison this Sunday, and I was going through some old stuff and came across Princess Diandra’s name, and I had no idea where she was. What a great person Princess Diandra is; I can’t believe she’s working for you.

HS: Well, she gets suspended sometimes for like a year. She does things like she throws apple martinis in David LaChapelle’s face.

SL: Well maybe she should be rewarded for that…

HS: And then she did something to Jimmy Fallon, so I had to send him a bottle of champagne and some roses. I met him at some Comedy Central event and I apologized, and he was like, ‘No, no, no, that was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had, when’s the next party?’

SL: Well she is a princess. Princess Diandra was always one of the leaders, I remember back in the day when her word meant everything. First of all, she had an incredible singing voice, she was just an incredible person, incredible performer, and of course, had intelligence and personality. She was a leader of the pack, a diva, and divas have to act out. So who else was there?

HS: Mostly Asian girls, most of our girls are transgendered because I think that if they are drag queens or whatever they grow out of it and they have other types of jobs. Especially for Asian girls in the transgendered community, this is a great place for them to work because some of them just don’t want to be prostitutes. That’s something that a lot of them are almost forced into. So Lucky Cheng’s gives them a place to work, and a sense of self-sufficiency, other than some sugar daddy or some transsexual pick-up bar.

SL: So you’ve become a mother hen to them and they latch on, and they work really hard because Lucky Cheng’s is a team effort. Many people come into a restaurant and they want to satisfy their appetites, but I guess in a place like yours they really want to smile, it’s a good time. People are leaving with big smiles on their faces and laughing. So Lucky Cheng’s is a gimmick, and you mentioned to me that at one point you had this big name chef…

HS: Well when I opened I hired Peter Kline, who I think was the opening chef at China Grill, so he was big name. He’s now at Chow Bar, but we were getting rave reviews on the food. What happened was that it became hard to find a chef that could handle the volume and then also attach his name to a place like Lucky Cheng’s. I had a marvelous chef for years and years and years, and he died of stomach cancer about two years ago. I am really happy with the chef I have now, he’s Asian, he’s gay, he’s from San Francisco, and he’s completely talented - he fits in there. He’s a hard worker; he’s bringing the food back up to where it needs to be.

SL: Well, unlike most restaurants, you’re not feeding a lot of two’s and four’s, you’re seating eight’s and ten’s and twelve’s and even twenty’s, and it’s always difficult for a restaurant to serve large groups.

HS: That actually makes it easier.

SL: Tell me how.

HS: With the large parties, we want to make sure that the food goes out properly and we just have them on a family style menu. They could be there with twelve people to watch a drag show, and it’s not necessary that each person order their own individual entrée.

SL: Right, so it’s a pre-set thing. It’s a set menu of choices, so you get like one or two choices.

HS: It’s a large choice. There are several different menu options, it’s just that you can only choose four or five in each category.

SL: Now, I’m involved with this move with you to Times Square and I guess in Times Square you can take it to a different level. It will become bigger and more extravagant. We have a space and we are trying to get a deal for you, and that’d be fantastic. There are some people that would say there are disclosure rules, they would like to say that I’m working with someone so I’m giving you a plug. But I’m not, I would say nothing but great things about you whether I was working with you or not. What can you do in Times Square in terms of the show?

HS: One thing that’s happened with Times Square is that it’s become its’ own bubble city. The tourists go there and want to see Wicked and all of the shows, and the one’s that wanted to see Lucky Cheng’s no longer want to venture outside the bubble. I used to get all kinds of concierge referrals and a lot of tourists, but they don’t come here anymore even though they know where we are. So I think that once I’m in Times Square that we will start up again with the concierge referrals and I can get to do all the marketing that I used to do. We could do the pre-theatre stuff, the after dinner stuff, and do our dinner main show.

SL: You’re telling me you’re going to do three shows a night, three sittings.

HS: Absolutely.

SL: So now that your in Times Square, is it going to be bigger costumes, bigger show?

HS: We do a really great show right now, and we have a girl from Singapore who just makes costumes all day long, and does amazing traditional dance. Then I have a Japanese one with the feathers and all that kind of stuff who is a live singer, and there are some other great performers. So the show is really fantastic already but what I think I would be able to do is get more performers, someone like Jackie Beat, who would do the main show for two months and we’d have the early show and the late show using our regular performers. Maybe I’d have a headliner for Tuesday through Saturday.

SL: Certainly, you know you’ve figured that you’re in Times Square, you have admissions prices and the prices that you charge for food will be bigger.

HS: Exactly.

SL: Plus the crowd is motivated to get out fast cause they’ve got to get to their shows. They’re coming out at six on time, and bang, they gotta get out.

HS: 5:30 seating.

SL: Amazing.

Good Night,

Mr. Lewis

Interview conducted and written by Steve Lewis.

Interview has been edited and condensed by Jessica Tocko.

Check back on Friday for day two of Steve's conversation with Lucky Cheng’s owner Hayne Suthon as they chat about their point of view on a long time friend Michael Alig, her up coming reality show Cougars, and how she manages the craziness that goes on in her long standing establishment.

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