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Who

One of the city's most prominent restaurateurs, Steve Hanson is the chief of B.R. Guest and the owner of 16 restaurants including Blue Water Grill, Atlantic Grill, Ruby Foo's and Dos Caminos. As of 2007, his partner in B.R. Guest is Barry Sternlicht.

Backstory

The son of garment industry executives—his mother, Betty, ran Anne Klein's flagship showroom for a number of years before starting a clothing line of her own—Hanson got his first taste of the restaurant biz during his NYU days: He moonlighted as a maitre d' at the original T.G.I. Friday's, working under the restaurant's founder, Alan Stillman. After graduation, Hanson and several buddies indulged their disco king aspirations, converting an 18,000-square-foot restaurant in New Rochelle into a nightclub named Peachtrees. But by the time the 1980s rolled around, Hanson had turned his attention to the commodities market, and he amassed a small fortune before losing his shirt when the silver market took a tumble.

He retreated to his mom's sportswear company for a while, then waded into the restaurant industry in 1987 when he founded BR Guest (a riff on the Chicago restaurant firm Lettuce Entertain You), opening the Coconut Grill on the Upper East Side the same year. Over the following decade and a half—with investors like Nicole Miller, Bud Konheim, and Campion Platt—Hanson opened more than a dozen restaurants including Park Avalon, Blue Water Grill, Ocean Grill, Atlantic Grill, Blue Fin, and more branches of Ruby Foo's and Dos Caminos.

Of note

The so-called king of the one-star restaurant, Hanson is known for his shiny, big-box crowd-pleasers: His restaurants don't impress critics, but they cultivate regulars with tried-and-true, albeit somewhat unimaginative, dishes. One notable exception to the formula was the Jeffrey Beers-designed Italian eatery Fiamma, which Hanson opened in 2002 with Michael White behind the stove. It ended up nabbing three stars from the Times and later spawned a sister restaurant called Vento in the Meatpacking District. Unfortunately, rave reviews weren’t enough to keep Fiamma afloat, and Hanson eventually shuttered the restaurant, along with Ruby Foo's on 77th Street, and the Blue Water Grill in Chicago, in early 2009.

Hanson’s still got plenty on his plate to keep busy with, though. In mid-2007, he sold a 50 percent stake in his company to Barry Sternlicht's Starwood Capital Group for an estimated $100 million. The deal gives Hanson exclusive rights to the restaurants and room service menus at Sternlicht's new "1" chain of environmentally-friendly hotels, which will be opening in the U.S, Europe and Asia. He's been busy on other fronts as well: He opened an iteration of Primehouse in the Flatiron space that once housed the Park Avenue Country Club and introduced Wildwood BBQ in the former Barca 18 space in 2008.

For the record

Hanson has a rep for his attention to detail and a near-obsessive focus on efficiency. BR Guest was one of the first companies to keep an electronic database of its customers, which logged how often people stopped by, what they ordered, and how much they spent—technology that is now commonplace in the industry. Hanson also strictly polices what his waiters can—and cannot—say tableside. Waiters are strictly forbidden from saying "Hi, guys," "How you guys doing?" or the ever-cringe-inducing "That's my favorite dish."

On the side

Hanson ventured into the hotel business in 2004 with Equinox founder Danny Errico: Together they spent $30 million to turn Scottsdale's former Old Town Hotel into a James Hotel, tapping architect Deborah Berke to oversee the redesign. Apparently Hanson prefers operating restaurants inside hotels, not the hotels themselves. After expressing frustration with the snail-like pace of hotel development, Hanson and Errico sold the property in 2006 to the Ian Schrager-founded Morgans Hotel Group for $46.5 million.

Personal

Hanson's wife, Deana, is nearly 20 years his junior; they have two daughters, Brynn and Leah. The family lives in the Ansonia on the Upper West Side in a sprawling apartment that features works by Miró and Picasso. The Hansons also have a lavish spread on Further Lane in East Hampton.