The Aquarium

The Aquarium

Aquarium can only be described as a dining attraction. The word restaurant is inadequate to capture the glamorous and complex underwater grotto setting.

“Good, basic seafood with great flavor is what it is about. That’s why people come. And why they come back. The entertainment value comes second”

Tilman Fertitta

Fertitta estimates that Aquarium’s 1999 sales will reach $8 million. But food costs of 36 percent must be factored into the profit equation, which is the price of Fertitta’s focus on food quality. This is a considerably higher cost for food and ingredients than the

restaurant industry average.

The Aquarium restaurant at Kemah has only been open for six months, but Tilman Fertitta’s newest dining concept is such a success that customers line up and wait for up to three hours to be seated.

Aquarium can only be described as a dining attraction. The word restaurant is inadequate to capture the glamorous and complex underwater grotto environment of the place, which boasts the world’s tallest fish tank, a 15,000-gallon, 35-foot cylindrical aquarium. Aquarium is most probably the only restaurant in the world that has marine biologists on permanent staff. Nevertheless. “Aquarium restaurant is not successful because it is a theme restaurant,” Fertitta told E.S.P. in an exclusive interview.

“It doesn’t really matter whether we call it a theme restaurant, or not,” Fertitta says. “It’s a seafood restaurant. Good, basic seafood with great flavor is what it is about. That’s why people are coming. And why they come back. The entertainment value comes second.

“Do you know anyone that’s ever gone back to a theme restaurant for the food?” asks the man who created the five-brand, 120-unit (and growing) Landry’s Seafood Restaurants. “Of course not.” And if Fertitta has one recurring theme to which he attributes his success, it can be summed up in two words the food.

Not that the entertainment value isn’t important to the Aquarium concept. Aquarium is huge on theme. This is Texas, after all, and the restaurant is a Texas-sized Aquarium. We’re not talking about a few fish tanks here. The Aquarium only starts with the world’s tallest fish tank as an attraction. The second floor of Aquarium is a circular, 200-seat dining room immersed in 36,000 gallons of water contained in floor-to-ceiling tanks.

The whole facility is alive with thousands of sea creatures representing more than 100 species of tropical fish from the Caribbean, South Pacific, Indian Ocean and Hawaiian waters. Some fish are more than six feet long. The dining room features two additional tanks in the center of the room, home to poisonous lionfish and a living coral reef. Twice a day, guests stop eating to watch as marine biologists swim, mingle and hand-feed the fish.

Tilman Fertitta Goes Fishing in the Troubled Waters

of Theme Restaurants and Catches a Prize-Winner

At first Fertitta didn’t even want to admit that Aquarium was a theme restaurant. The reason? The recent troubles of major theme restaurant chains. Even at the height of their successes, Fertitta notes that few would ever call theme restaurants like Rainforest Cafe and the troubled Planet Hollywood “great.” Tilman Fertitta wants Aquarium to be known as a great restaurant. He wants all of his Landry’s Seafood dining concepts to be remembered as great dining experiences. And he takes the time and effort on the menu and on the environment at each restaurant chain he has developed to ensure consistently memorable meals that keep patrons coming back for more.

Fertitta tells E.S.P. that he even held up the opening of Aquarium for three months after the facility’s completion because the food wasn’t quite up to snuff. Fertitta is known as a detail-minded and demanding leader. Based on E.S.P.’s contacts with his organization while researching this story, not a move seems to be made at Landry’s Seafood Restaurants central in Houston without Fertitta’s approval. So he took his time with the Aquarium menu, fine-tuning the food offerings until he got them just where he wanted.

“Good, basic seafood with great flavor is what it is about. That’s why people come. And why they come back. The entertainment value comes second”

In Fertitta’s opinion, theme restaurants in particular (and restaurant chains generally) rely too heavily on corporate chefs. This tends to create two very different kinds of problems. According to Fertitta, if you give a corporate chef his or her way, you often end up with food too heavily spiced and fancied up -- chefs like to, well, act like chefs. And in the opposite direction of the problem, corporate thinking tends to demand a bland and unimaginative menu because that kind of food is easily duplicated.

Either extreme misses Fertitta’s secret recipe for restaurant success. And E.S.P. will now reveal the secret formula that has made Mr. Fertitta one of the most successful restauranteurs currently at work in America:

“We always try to create and serve good basic seafood, food that caters to the masses, nothing too fancy -- but it must have great flavor.”

Landry’s executive chef Kathy Ruiz, with input from Fertitta, developed a menu that ranges from $8 po-boys to $27 stuffed lobster tails. “We wanted to be careful not to make it only a special occasion destination, and we wanted it to be accessible to everyone,” says Ruiz. The menu, dominated by seafood, draws a check average of $23. There are 12 appetizers, including crab wontons with ginger-soy dipping sauce ($7.99) and an avocado-lump crab cocktail ($10.99). There’s jumbo shrimp prepared nine different ways ($13.99 to $17.99), combo platters and mixed-grill entrees, sandwiches and burgers ($6.99 to $11.99), and pastas, salads, and soups. Daily specials are also important to the menu mix, bringing in repeat business.

Repeat business and high volume is essential when it is also considered that Aquarium’s payroll includes a full-time marine biologist and several assistants to attend to the fish and the complex aquarium systems.

Fertitta tells E.S.P. that he definitely plans to open one new Aquarium a year with major cities like Chicago and Philadelphia in mind. “We’re looking for landmark locations where we will get a mix of business and convention clientele, tourists and local patrons,” he says. Orlando and Vegas have also been considered, but Fertitta emphasizes that he wants Aquarium to function as both a special event venue and as an everyday local dining spot. The menu has been designed to offer very special meals along with basic good food with prices accessible to all. “At first, it looks like we are all over the place, Fertitta says, adding, “But we’ve designed a very special and flexible venue. We are an appealing place to eat for a lot of different dining occasions, from prom nights and wedding anniversaries to couples going out to dinner on a weeknight.”

The roll-out of Aquarium restaurants will be more expensive than the expansion of any other Landry’s Seafood Restaurant chain. In response to our questions, Fertitta told E.S.P. that every new Aquarium will be based on the original in Kemah, with the same unique aquarium setting. Expansion funding for the publicly held company will come from cash on hand and lines of credit, if necessary.

Of mistakes that theme restauranteurs before him have made, not paying enough attention to good food is only the first miscalculation, says Fertitta. “We’re looking at limited expansion with the Aquarium concept. About ten locations domestically seem about right. And we may open a few overseas in the right landmark locations. I definitely won’t overbuild the Aquarium. That would be a mistake. But each Aquarium will be built and designed right.” That seems to be the way Tilman Fertitta tries to do everything.

For more information on the Aquarium expansion, contact Christina Jeffcoat, Landry’s Seafood Restaurants, Inc. 1400 Post Oak Boulevard, Suite 1010, Houston, Texas 77056; 713-407-1027.