montyfraley
Lexington, KY - The sign on the corner of Short and Broadway reads “Coming Soon: Shakespeare and Co.” It begs the question: When is soon? Monty Fraley, U.S. director of operations for Shakespeare and Co., said the wait is almost over, and the restaurant is expected to open within the month, but as poet and playwright William Shakespeare himself is quoted, “Time is very slow for those who wait.”
The restaurant chain began in Dubai in 2001. Edward T. Saad, owner of Lexington’s restaurant and 13 more outlets in Dubai, chose Lexington as home to Shakespeare and Co.’s initial American location. After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Saad performed his doctoral work at the University of Kentucky in chemical engineering and worked for Ashland Oil.
Lexington is a natural choice for this first restaurant, as well as serving as homebase for Saad’s family, because as his wife, Alyne Saad, said, he has a fondness for the area and believes Lexington is a good size city for Shakespeare and Co.
Fraley added that they wanted to locate downtown, “in the center of city,” because “we have a heartbeat in downtown Lexington; we are starting to get a vibe and culture downtown now.”
As the final touches were being made on the restaurant’s interior, Alyne Saad stood on a ladder with a good bit of paint on her clothes and a drop of turquoise on her forehead. She is responsible for the atmosphere and design of the restaurants in the chain. While they now have a design team, she personally designed the interior and created the look of space for the Lexington restaurant. The Shakespeare and Co. workshop in Dubai manufactured the tables and chairs, the custom woodwork and molding and fabrics from her textile line.
During the final weeks of preparation, the restaurant brought Lewis Carroll to mind even more than its famous namesake bard, with its gilded Victorian accents and chandeliers amid plenty of Middle Eastern flair, including custom-made moldings and arched glass-front cabinet doors.
It isn’t minimalist, but it is sophisticated — think shabby chic meets your Turkish great aunt’s parlor.
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When asked why a cafe in Dubai bears the name Shakespeare and Co., Alyne Saad explained that as students in Paris, she and her friends would go late at night to the famed Left Bank English language bookstore called Shakespeare and Company. In that store, velvet club chairs are tucked into corners and books line the walls all the way up to the beamed ceilings. She remembers it as cozy and welcoming, and she wanted the restaurants to have that same atmosphere.
Time Out Dubai described the original restaurants in the Dubai chain in this way: “If you’ve lived in Dubai for any amount of time you’ve probably spotted a branch of Shakespeare and Co.: an eatery chain named after the English playwright that seems extremely popular with Arabic diners who like shisha, coffee and cake. Oh, and chintz.”
Fraley, who previously worked for the local micro-chain Bluegrass Hospitality Group for seven years before being recruited by an acquaintance of the Saads, said he saw that Shakespeare and Co. would fulfill a new niche for Lexington and he wanted to be a part of it. He described the restaurant as “old Victorian chic ambiance, upscale fine-dining atmosphere. And the presentations are like fine-dining presentations, but the price point is lower.” Fraley said the dinner entrees will be priced between $7 and $22.
“There is a price point for everyone,” Fraley said. “The atmosphere and the service are very upscale in feeling.”
The menu, which is 28 pages long and features more than a hundred items, contains everything from spring rolls to cobb salad to lamb skewers to creme brulee in a shortbread pastry with vanilla ice cream. “It [ the menu] is like Cheesecake Factory-big,” Fraley said with a laugh. He added that the menu will be the same here as it is in the Dubai locations, “except for the things we can’t get here,” such as local fish.
The Dubai menu was developed to match the dining preferences of people from all over the world with different multicultural backgrounds. The extensive variety is designed to offer a wide selection of “international comfort food.” Diners will find familiar food from home, but they can also try diverse dishes from other cultures.
Fraley continued by saying that Shakespeare and Co. restaurants were designed to compete with “the amazing hotels” of Dubai in atmosphere, service and quality of food while offering a more reasonable price. He described it as “a hybrid between a coffee house and a cafe.”
At the Short Street location, the management team plans to serve breakfast all day as well as lunch and dinner, which means the restaurant will be open from 8 a.m. to 2:30 a.m.
During the down time between lunch and dinner, the restaurant is designed to harbor a coffeehouse appeal that will invite patrons to linger and socialize, Fraley said.
“We are trying to give that relaxed, elegant environment,” Fraley said. “The couches are comfy; you want to sit back for a while and have pastries.”
Edward Saad and Fraley want the Lexington Shakespeare and Co. to be the first of many in the United States.
“We want to grow from South Beach to Canada,” Fraley said. “We want to be in Louisville, Cincinnati and Nashville in the very near future.”
Using the chain in Dubai as a template, Fraley believes they will be successful. He visited the branches and headquarters and was “amazed.”
“It is like Disneyland,” Fraley said, referring to the massive size and scale of everything the company does. For instance, he said the Shakespeare and Co. candy manufacturing factory produced more than one-and-half tons of hand-rolled chocolate candy last year.
Fraley glowingly attributed the company’s success to its owner.
“When people hear Dubai, they think about tons of oil money and you think about sheiks, but [Edward Saad] is a businessman who grew up in Lebanon,” Fraley said. “When he came to the U.S. [for school], he didn’t speak English. He is a self-made man, so we have to run a smart business, and we have to run it on a budget.”
To get a taste for what is coming soon to the corner of Short and Broadway, check out Saad’s other local restaurant, Georgia’s Kitchen, recently opened in the former Flag Fork Farm on N. Broadway.