Hometown Bar-B-Que’s Founder Sets His Sights on Manhattan Fine Dining

Billy Durney, founder of the popular Brooklyn restaurants Hometown Bar-B-Que and Red Hook Tavern, is one of New York’s more unlikely restaurateurs.

In the 2000s, he was a regular at the city’s top restaurants — as a bodyguard for celebrities who were eating there. He had no particular expertise in food, Southern or otherwise, but he discovered a passion for barbecue, spent two years feeding it, and opened his own place in 2013.

After Hometown Bar-B-Que came Red Hook Tavern, Mr. Durney’s vision of an ideal local pub, in the waterfront neighborhood where his Irish immigrant family first found their feet in New York City. It, too, was a success, its dry-aged burger joining Keens Steakhouse’s and Minetta Tavern’s in the city’s pantheon.

But it’s a long way from Brooklyn to Billionaire’s Row.

Mr. Durney plans to open his first fine-dining restaurant next year at 9 West 57th Street, in the space that held the popular Brasserie 8½ from 2000 until March 2020, when it closed in the early days of the pandemic.

“It’s a big swing,” he said, inspired by the chefs he has befriended in his role as an international barbecue evangelist, like Massimo Bottura, Victor Arguinzoniz of Asador Etxebarri in Spain, and David Pynt of Burnt Ends in Singapore.

Mr. Durney was lured to this luxe stretch of Midtown by his friend Jamal James Kent, an influential chef who died suddenly of a heart attack in June at age 45. His funeral filled St. Bartholomew’s Church to the rafters, with hundreds of chefs wearing whites to honor his work and leadership.

Mr. Kent’s restaurant group had just begun to expand beyond the financial district, where he earned two Michelin stars for Saga and one for Crown Shy in the same building at 70 Pine Street.

Kent Hospitality Group has continued the projects he was developing, including Mr. Durney’s. And it has branched out in new directions, including becoming a major investor in Mr. Durney’s restaurant group.

In November, Kent Hospitality brought on a new chief executive, Preeti Sriratana, whose architecture firm, Modellus Novus, has designed some of the city’s most influential restaurants of the last decade: Tatiana, Cote, Nami Nori and Mr. Kent’s three Pine Street restaurants. Mr. Sriratana said his longtime professional relationship with Mr. Kent, and their shared values, persuaded him to move to a leading role in the hospitality business.

“He wanted to create spaces where everyone would feel welcome,” Mr. Sriratana said, while maintaining the high standards for food and service that he learned through grueling apprenticeships at Jean-Georges, Eleven Madison Park and other top kitchens.

Mr. Kent was determined to pull out some of the European roots of fine dining in New York City, hiring local talent instead of importing cooks from France and Switzerland. Since his death, Kent Hospitality has appointed his longtime deputies to head their own kitchens; Danny Garcia at Time and Tide, Jassimran Singh at Crown Shy, and Renata Ameni at Birdee, soon to open in the new Refinery at Domino building in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The group also hired Charlie Mitchell as top chef at Saga, Gregory Gourdet to run the five new restaurants at Printemps, the French department store opening this spring at 1 Wall Street, and now Mr. Durney.

Kent Hospitality helped Mr. Durney buy out his investors and brought his various projects — including Sag Harbor Tavern on Long Island and a Hometown Bar-B-Que in Miami’s Design District — under its umbrella. Mr. Durney has joined the Kent Hospitality board, alongside Mr. Sriratana, the real estate and restaurant consultant Keith Durst, and Kelly Kent, Mr. Kent’s widow.

Much of Kent Hospitality’s expansion has been fueled by investment from SC Holdings, a private equity firm that is also a major investor in LeBron James and Maverick Carter’s entertainment studio the SpringHill Company, and in high-profile brands like Athletic Greens and Supergoop.

Mr. Kent was a fan of Mr. Durney’s vision of New York hospitality — world-class food in unpretentious settings — and had already tapped him to operate the new restaurant on 57th Street.

Mr. Durney, 52, said the new restaurant, as yet unnamed, would be firmly in the category of fine dining, in keeping with its location steps from the Plaza hotel, Tiffany’s and Bergdorf Goodman.

The décor will be warm, cozy and sexy, he said, reflecting the live-fire grill and coal oven that will be the focal point of the dining room.

“It’s going to be a real New York restaurant,” he said. “I want the hip-hop people, and the readers and writers, and the ladies who lunch.”