Chris Schlesinger is a much admired restaurateur who helped shape our appreciation of grilling, seafood and spices. He runs East Coast Grill, his eclectic mad-house restaurant, without a single PDA or computer in sight.

During a recent interview with Charlie Perkins - the Alan Greenspan of New England's restaurant market - I asked him, "When it comes to restaurant management, who should a newbie restaurant owner model themselves on." He replied without a moment's pause, "Someone like Chris Schlesinger."

Chris is universally admired as an innovative chef owner, who takes the best things about backyard grilling and melds them with fine dining in his successful Cambridge restaurant -
East Coast Grill.

What impressed Charlie and many others in the know, is Chris' ability to weather the uncertainties of the restaurant industry and to continue year-in and year-out to run a financially successful restaurant that is beloved by diners from both Cambridge and further afield.

I sat down with Chris to find out more about him and his style. He is a relaxed but purposeful man. No longer possessing the unlimited supply of energy provided by youth, he focuses on what's important rather than sweating the details.

Chris started his career with a succession of restaurant kitchen jobs, some in less than salubrious establishments. "I worked in a restaurant in Florida that was seized by the FBI for tax evasion," he recalls. But there was something important to be learned from these varied, but not necessarily good examples, of running a kitchen.

"I consider myself a professional restaurant operator," Chris explains in answer to a question about why he is thought of as such a good example. "Having run kitchens and then an overall operation, I have an understanding of both the operational and financial aspects of a restaurant." He went on to stress that he also knows when to lean heavily on advisors including his accountant Saul Garlick.

When asked if he is a hands-on kind of manager, he chuckles deeply and replies, "No, I have the benefit of working with a lot of young and dedicated people." Chris describes how he has developed a set of organizational beliefs that he tries to instill in his staff. This allows them to get on with their jobs, without excessive management. Chris views the restaurant as a training ground for future restaurateurs where intensive on-the-job learning is exchanged for hard work and dedication. By way of example, there are numerous previous members of his staff who now either own their own restaurant or who have moved on to greater things and are on their way to restaurant ownership.

One of the biggest propellants in his career was his hit book "Thrill of the Grill" written with associate John Willoughby. It was a new kind of cookbook that broke new ground. Firstly dealing with a previously unappreciated area of American cooking - barbecue - and secondly raising it so far beyond the backyard cooking of that era that it started a whole new appreciation of the smell of smoke and the tang of spices and chillies in the American psyche.

Not everything in his restaurant career has been without trials and tribulations. The Blue Room, a fabulous restaurant in Kenmore Square was very innovative and successful, but pushed Chris beyond his sense of control and he retrenched to the East Coast Grill after selling The Blue Room.

He still lives in Cambridge and also has a house on the coast in the Southern part of the state. He loves seafood as well as grilling, so changing East Coast Grill to a seafood grill restaurant offered an intriguing challenge as part of a post Blue Room expansion plan. When asked why he stayed in Cambridge he replied, "My dad grew up here, my sister lives here." Inman Square remains affordable for a restaurant in his opinion.

On being asked why he's happy with one restaurant, he replied, "When I have one, I want two and when I have two, I want one." He believes in balance in life and the need to do things other than work in order to keep fresh and enthusiastic. He also thinks that he needs to be able to focus on one thing in order to run a restaurant effectively.

Some things are strangely traditional in his otherwise eclectic and high energy restaurant. His staff use paper "duplicates" of diners' orders. "Servers sometimes need a while to adjust," he said. No fancy POS systems here. Just plain old fashioned, tried and tested business systems. Chris is not a technophobe, just someone not caught up in the need for the latest and greatest gadgets for restaurant management.

After twenty minutes of talking to him, I found our conversation getting to the heart of his management philosophy. "There's service and then there's hospitality. We can sometimes do a better job of service, but I focus on encouraging natural and spontaneous hospitality, no false hospitality here," he mused. "I think it's wrong to force staff to conform to a certain approach to hospitality," he went on, "when they really believe in being hospitable and they are allowed to be themselves, that's when it really works."

I asked Chris what he would say to the hypothetical newbie restaurateur. He considered for a moment and replied, "Focus on the financial aspects of a new restaurant. I was fortunate when I started, to be busy enough to learn restaurant finance on the job." Unusual for a chef, he embraces financial understanding more passionately than great cooking or a great concept.

As I finished our conversation, I realized something profound. You rarely meet someone who is both successful and happy with who they are. Chris is a cool, relaxed restaurant owner who personifies the balance between the artistic soul and the cool headed business manager. He is, indeed, a rare animal and w"Focus on the financial aspects of a new restaurant. I was fortunate when I started, to be busy enough to learn restaurant finance on the job..." orthy of Charlie Perkin's trust as guide and mentor to the next generation of restaurant owners.