<\/p>\n
The restaurant 15 Church, right, and its enclosed patio next door have been sold to a\u00a0 couple who are longtime patrons. The restaurant is closed until April 14 for renovations.<\/p>\n
Times Union archive<\/p>\n
Tom Burke founded 15 Church and sold it this week after 12 years.<\/p>\n
Lori Van Buren\/Albany Times Union<\/p>\n
The bar at 15 Church is seen. The restaurant is closed until April 14 for renovations that will include new floors, restrooms and staff uniforms.<\/p>\n
Steve Barnes\/Times Union<\/p>\n
The 15 Church patio will be repainted and the restrooms remodeled. It will also have a menu more noticeably different than in the past from what\u2019s served in the dining room.<\/p>\n
Jenn March<\/p>\n
Michael Mastrantuono, executive chef of 15 Church for the past nine years, is staying on under the new owners and is creating new menus.<\/p>\n
Jenn March<\/p>\n
SARATOGA SPRINGS\u00a0\u2014 A dozen years after the restaurant 15 Church opened with the goal of setting a new standard for fine dining in the region, the business has been sold to and will continue under the owners of a Gansevoort company that makes control systems for entertainment explosions.<\/p>\n
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Tom Burke, a real estate developer who co-founded 15 Church in 2013 and spent a year developing it at the eponymous address, confirmed the news Tuesday. The new owners are Scott and Cait Smith, described by Burke as devoted customers of 15 Church who want to ensure its future. The Smiths own COBRA Firing Systems, a manufacturer of electronics for creating, managing and operating fireworks displays and special effects for concerts, film and television.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI wanted to go out on top. We aimed to be No. 1 (in Saratoga) from the beginning, and we stayed there for 12 years,\u201d said Burke. Now in his early 70s, Burke said, \u201cI\u2019m at a point in my life where I want clarity and simplicity. The restaurant is a heavy obligation\u00a0\u2014 a big responsibility that takes a lot of time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The restaurant is closed until April 14 for renovations that will include new floors, restrooms and staff uniforms, painting the next-door patio all white and revising menus to create a bigger distinction between patio and inside offerings and to make both less expensive, Scott Smith said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want the restaurant to be more accessible,\u201d he said. \u201cIf people are walking by and decide they want to drop in for something light to eat and a drink, they will be able to do it without having to spend $100 or more.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Smith estimated that approximately 20% of the staff has chosen not to stay on. Among those who will is Michael Mastrantuono, 15 Church\u2019s executive chef since summer 2017.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cI want the food to be lighter, more approachable overall and more fun, especially outside,\u201d Mastrantuono said. He gave an example of a Chilean sea bass entree, an expensive product that\u2019s been on the menu since before he started. He\u2019ll be replacing it with steelhead, a trout relative raised at Hudson Valley Fisheries, a sustainable aquaculture farm near Hudson.<\/p>\n \u201cI can charge $38 for that instead of $59 for the sea bass,\u201d he said. Entrees on a recent menu averaged more than $50.<\/p>\n Although Mastrantuono described himself as a chef who has \u201canimal tattoos all over my arms, and I eat pork belly all the time,\u201d he will be adding more plant-based options to the menus as well.<\/p>\n The luxury experiences for which 15 Church is known will remain available, the chef said, whether a simple slab of foie gras with sauce or an extravagance like a recent five-course menu created from a 17-pound Norwegian king crab that fed six people and cost $3,200.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Smith said he wants to create an equitable culture within the restaurant in which all employees are empowered to contribute and attention to guests is paramount. That sentiment is at the core of COBRA, he said, which promises a 5-minute response time<\/a> anywhere in the world, around the clock, for emergencies at show sites. He said COBRA, with a 16,000-square-foot warehouse near Northway Exit 16, is the largest company of its kind in the world, with 40,000 customers in about 100 countries.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to have over-the-top customer\u00a0service, making sure they\u2019re taken care of from start to finish,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n Burke said he repeatedly turned down sale opportunities that, while lucrative, did not seem to guarantee the continuation of the 15 Church legacy and standards that he believes the Smiths will bring to their ownership.<\/p>\n \u201cSome were for more money, but it was important for the restaurant to go to people who will love it and \u2026 build on the history,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cWhere we connected is over the soul of the restaurant,\u201d Smith said. \u201cIt\u2019s an incredible, intimate\u00a0experience. \u2026 I\u2019m so thankful for Tom\u2019s support through all of this and am happy he feels good about (the sale).\u201d<\/p>\n Neither side would discuss terms of the deal, which closed on Monday. The Smiths now own the 15 Church business and are leasing the building from Burke; its large, enclosed patio is a separate parcel with a long-term lease from another owner. Smith declined to discuss the duration of the building lease, saying only that it is for \u201can extended period.\u201d He said he and his wife, who will manage the restaurant\u2019s marketing and social media, would like to buy 15 Church St. in the future \u201cif at some point Tom wants to sell.\u201d<\/p>\n A developer with broad commercial property holdings in five counties, Burke was familiar with the casual side of the restaurant business, as his family\u2019s The Burke Cos. owns 22 Dunkin\u2019 locations. But fine dining was new to him, and when considering opening a restaurant in the competitive Saratoga market, he sought out as partners the people he admired most in the upscale side of the industry: the husband-and-wife team of Paul McCullough and Susan Diep, whom he knew from frequenting the since-closed McGuire\u2019s restaurant in Albany, where McCullough was general manager and Diep a server. They became minority partners and managed 15 Church until McCullough and Diep divorced and McCullough left Saratoga for Florida about a year before his 2022 death<\/a>.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cI miss him every day,\u201d Burke said. \u201cPaul was in large measure the reason for the restaurant\u2019s success. It hasn\u2019t been easy without him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The restaurant 15 Church, right, and its enclosed patio next door have been sold to a\u00a0 couple who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1070,844,610,9,11,10,49,51,50,821,31841,31842],"class_list":{"0":"post-182967","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-food","9":"tag-latestnews","10":"tag-local","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-news","14":"tag-new-york-state","15":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","16":"tag-new-york-state-news","17":"tag-restaurants","18":"tag-sarco","19":"tag-table-hopping"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}