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NEW YORK -- A dramatic series of ownership changes at several of the city's most elite restaurants is eliciting mixed reviews from operators and longtime restaurant watchers about the fate of those establishments.
What becomes a legend most in the world of fine dining has tended to be the longevity and involvement of the ownership, the old formula used to go.
Pick out any three- or four-star temple of fine dining, and underneath the glowing reviews and armies of fans are usually longtime owners -- often founders -- whose blood, sweat and souls are as much a part of the restaurant as the food, service and ambience.
But in the past year in New York that formula has been challenged seriously as new owners have acquired four of the most famous destination restaurants in the world-Lutece, the '21' Club, The Russian Tea Room and The Four Seasons.
Although it was the retirement of the operators in all but one of the four transactions that opened the door for new ownership, the changing of the guard at such venerable institutions is reverberating throughout New York's fine-dining circles.
"My impression is that these are very good deals and bode well for the city in general and restaurantgoers in particular," said Tim Zagat, co-publisher and co-editor of the popular Zagat Surveys, the multicity directories of consumer-written restaurant reviews. "It's a win for everybody: the city, the dining public, the old owners and the new owners.
"But the mistake so many people are making when talking about these deals is to treat this like a food story when in fact this is a business story. In every case there was a sound economic and financial reason the deal took place."
Bryan Miller, The New York Times former fine-dining restaurant reviewer whose critiques enraged as many owners as they enraptured over his 13-year career, warned that sound business deals do not necessarily translate into better restaurants.
"The fact that these institutions changed hands is not as important as whose hands they changed into," said Miller, who recently resigned from The York Times to begin a new career as an author and scriptwriter. "I think for some of them it's going to be very difficult to duplicate the past, let alone...