At 4:30 on a recent Friday afternoon, Del Posto, the 10th Avenue behemoth of a restaurant owned by Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich, had a bustling and vaguely portentous feel. Servers in black and white scurried up and down the two grand staircases in the main dining room, which, multi-tiered and blandly opulent, has been compared to a hotel lobby. An imperious maître d’ in a suit and tie manned the phones from a desk in front of a massive dried flower arrangement, while a few bald, corporate-type older men, possibly holdovers from lunch, sipped wine at scattered tables. Mark Ladner, the restaurant’s Clark Kentish and taciturn executive chef, sat at the far end of the long granite bar in full chef regalia: white apron, designer jeans rolled at the ankle, white Crocs.

Mr. Ladner, 38, was finishing up a business meeting with a man in a suit. He is not in the habit of lurking around the dining room of his 26,000-square-foot, 400-seat, double-Michelin-starred restaurant, particularly when actual customers are present.  read more »