Richard Riordan grows his restaurant empire

FOR THE RECORD:
Riordan's restaurants: In Wednesday's Food section, a photo caption with an article about Richard Riordan identified one of Riordan's restaurants as the Village Pantry. The restaurant that was pictured is the Oak Room. —

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And in the last year he's opened three more, Riordan's Tavern, next door to the Original Pantry in downtown Los Angeles, and the Oak Room and its adjoining Village Pantry in the Pacific Palisades.

None of those restaurants is what you might expect, though. Usually, when a really rich guy opens a new place, it's loaded with swank -- a symbol of his success where he can wow his friends and business associates.

Instead, Riordan's restaurant empire is built around a beloved, if somewhat scruffy, downtown landmark and a seaside cash machine, neither of which comes within a couple of miles of gourmet while doing spectacular business.

Indeed, the Original Pantry is probably Riordan's dream restaurant -- an 84-year-old diner where nothing costs more than $20 and where a waiter once kicked him out for not eating fast enough. He liked it so much he bought it.

"When I fell in love with the Pantry, I was at breakfast, drinking coffee and I had a book I was reading," he says. "I was very relaxed and the waiter came over and said, 'If you want to read, the library's at 5th and Hope.' I fell in love with it right then."

The story's funny, but it's also telling. Riordan's restaurant appreciation runs more to businesslike efficiency than fine-dining glamour.

"The bottom line is: I'm an entrepreneur, a venture capitalist," Riordan says. "I've been investing in companies since 1962 or so, and I've invested a lot of capital, and I've done very, very well.

"When it comes to restaurants, I would say I can't paint a painting, but I can tell when it's good. I can walk the restaurant, and I can feel when things aren't going right. I may not be able to design it from the first, but when it's done, I know what's not working and what is working, and I know it when I see customers are not happy."

What seems to attract Riordan to a restaurant more than anything else -- besides a chance to make money -- is a sense of connection to a community. The Original Pantry and Gladstone's have longtime devoted customers, and his most recent acquisitions were originally Mort's Deli, a Palisades institution for more than 30 years.

In fact, he's played with the idea of putting together a group of landmark Los Angeles restaurants for a special co-operative marketing push. Besides the Pantry, he'd include Philippe, Musso and Frank, the Apple Pan, Pacific Dining Car and maybe Nate'n Al, "but their food is terrible. I guess I'd probably pick Langer's before Nate'n Al's."

At dinner with him at his newest restaurant, the Oak Room, a clubby bar and grill, Riordan comes across as a restaurateur version of an inveterate tinkerer -- one of those guys who can't stop himself from taking things apart and trying to improve them. Except rather than mess with machinery, his métier is businesses.

Lose the bacon?

NO DETAIL is too small. At one point, he calls over Oak Room chef Douglas Silberberg -- a talented cook who is a veteran of both Michael's in Santa Monica and Water Grill downtown -- and suggests cutting costs by trimming the bacon from some of the sandwiches.

Silberberg ponders the suggestion, then points out that there are only three sandwiches with bacon -- a BLT, a pork sandwich and a hamburger.

"Well, I'm not sure you need the bacon with the hamburger," Riordan says. "What do you think?"

"I do think [we need it]," Silberberg counters. "We get more compliments on our hamburger than almost anything else."