Andre’s Steakhouse exceeds expectations

by Paul Chaderjian

Naples - Scents that would whet even a vegetarian's appetite waft through Andre's Steakhouse, at the northeast corner of Tamiami and 28th Avenue. The front and back parking lots are full, and there are no empty parking spots on the street. It's the last Saturday night of February, and Andre's is packed like it is every night during "the season," when tourists and retirees converge on Florida's Paradise Coast, off the Gulf of Mexico.  

Enter the epicurean wonderland of Andre's, and there is not one empty table. The steakhouse is full of loyal patrons of all ages - some in shorts and T-shirts and others in short-sleeved shirts or summer dresses. It's the dead of winter, but one can easily forget the blizzards blanketing the Midwest and Northeast in snow.

There is laughter, people talking, someone making a toast in one corner, and half a dozen clean-cut waiters - dressed in white shirts and bowties - dance a perfectly choreographed number. Watch them sweep past one another, expertly picking up plates and cups, smiling, pouring wine, delivering drinks from the bar, making small talk, and serving huge portions of steaming steaks, fresh off the grill: lamb, pork, or fish with fresh salads, large baked potatoes, or German fries on the side.

Inside these walls is the good life, free of the outside world of economic strife. This is paradise, the American Dream, and the Armenian-American at the center of all the action is Andre Cottoloni.

Google Andre's, and the reviews are many. The steakhouse is considered the best in Florida. Many come, time after time, for the thick cuts of prime beef that are dry-aged for tenderness, but most come for the atmosphere and to see their friend Andre.

He's a rock star among those who frequent his steakhouse, and his name is known to any of the hundreds of local Armenians. 

A young man's journey

Andre, a Turkey native, was born to an Italian diplomat who fell in love with an Armenian woman in Istanbul. Together, the couple began Andre's story, which would span several continents and culminate with the realization of the American Dream in the paradise of Southwest Florida.

Andre's long journey from Shishli, Turkey, to Naples, Florida, began in a multilingual society, where he learned eight languages - all of which he still speaks.

"I went to an Italian school in Istanbul," Andre says. He not only learned Armenian and Turkish, but also picked up Hebrew and Spanish. "Because the Jews in Turkey spoke Spanish," he explains. He picked up Greek when he served in the Turkish Army in Ankara for two years. Andre was part of a troop that included other minorities, including Greeks and Jews.

"We were in the minority, and being in the minority in Turkey," he says, "you stick together. That's why I learned so many languages."

Andre also learned French and English, and he learned German after arriving in Germany, at age 24.

"Turkey was an okay place to live at the time, but we always looked toward living in a bigger country, a better country," says Andre. "Europe, America, and that was the reason that I went to Germany all by myself."

He is comfortable in his own skin; perhaps he's always been. Wearing a red T-shirt and preppy Bermuda shorts, Andre has come to the steakhouse earlier than usual to give the Armenian Reporter an interview.

The steakhouse is open only in the evenings. On this night, we run into the visiting parish priest, Fr. Nerses Jebejian, who is here to dine with his wife.

"I was baptized by [Angelo Giuseppe] Cardinal Roncalli, who later became the Pope [John XXIII]," Andre says. "In 1935, he was a cardinal in Istanbul. But we grew up Armenian, because my father passed away and my aunt married another Armenian guy. He is the one who raised me, practically. So we grew up Armenian in Shishli, where there was a thriving Armenian community. It was really, really nice to be there."

Leaving Shishli for Stuttgart, Germany, in 1959 was a life-changing experience for Andre. "Because, all of a sudden, you're out of the nest and you're flying away, not knowing where you're going and what you're doing," he says.

Andre reached Germany with four suitcases, and he was greeted with an important lesson about good customer service. The lesson has stayed with him since and is perhaps a key factor in his success in the restaurant business.

"I grabbed two of my suitcases and put them on the train I had to take," he remembers. "When I came back to get the other two, the train [with the remaining suitcases] had left."

Andre did not speak German at the time, but he found someone who spoke French. The French-speaker told him where to go and what to ask for.

"Finally, I went and found the place, and two hours later my baggage was back there," he says. His first interaction with German society left him in awe of good customer service and hospitality. "It was amazing."

Soon after his arrival in Stuttgart, Andre began working in a factory.

"After a year, I said, ‘This is not my cup of tea,' and I had to move on," he says. His next stop was a job with a company that served American GIs.

"I worked with them for two years in the parts store, in the garage and repair shop," he says. "Then I went to a construction company and became an interpreter."

After eight years with the construction company, Andre became the manager of the payroll department and supervised eight Germans.

"I was about 30 or 35 and stopped doing that and bought a restaurant," he says. 

Eating and eateries

Andre's interest in restaurants dates back to his youth in Turkey, where he and his family frequented local eateries.

"They were good," he says. "Turkish food is excellent. While living in Germany, every time we visited Turkey, the first stop was in Istanbul and a place called Beytee. They had the best stuff, best food."

Andre got to know the restaurant business inside out when he moved to Germany. One of his first places of residence was a room over a German restaurant.

"I was practically more down in the restaurant than I was in my room," he says. "They were a nice family and had a nice bakery, and I enjoyed it and liked it. It was called the Gruenerbaum, and it's where I learned how to serve people, how to cook. You know, it was very, very interesting."

Andre opened his own restaurant in Stuttgart at the age of 40. He says his first place was more of a pub than a restaurant. He and his Turkish partner served a lot of beer but also offered Turkish food.

"People came, but they came more to drink, because the German love drinking," he says. "And from there, I took a bigger restaurant, a better restaurant with more food than beer, and that worked out.

The move to the Big Apple

The big move to the Big Apple happened in the early 80s, after Andre traveled to New York to visit his sister, who had moved to the U.S. from Turkey.

"We came to visit them, and we liked it," he says. "The first thing that caught my eye and my ear is that nobody gives a damn where you are from. You are an American, even if you don't speak English. You don't feel like a stranger, and that impressed me. I liked it a lot. I said, ‘We have to go back, sell everything, and establish ourselves in America.' So we moved to New York and spent 12 years in New York before coming to Florida."

Growing up Armenian in Turkey, says Andre, wasn't a big deal. Ethnicity wasn't an issue he had to deal with. "Maybe it's a bigger issue today," he says, "but at that time people didn't talk about the Genocide. We knew it [had happened], but nobody talked about it."

Andre was made very aware of his ethnicity and nationality when he arrived in Germany.

"The funniest part of Germany is that when you are in Germany and you don't look German, people are a little apprehensive about you," he says.

The open arms of America welcomed Andre and his family in 1982, when he moved to Long Island.
In New York, Andre worked in coffee shops and restaurants for $25 a day. He also drove limousines to help make ends meet before he landed what he calls "the right job," at Peter Luger Steakhouse.

"I used to work every day at the coffee shop, from 5 to 3," he says. "I didn't care about the money, because as long as I worked, I was learning English. Those two years were a good experience - working as a dishwasher then on the counter, and from the counter to the wait station, which was a promotion for me."

Going from a restaurateur in Germany to a dishwasher in New York was hard for Andre, who was over 40 years old already, but the difficulty was overshadowed by the promise of the American Dream. He knew that he could work his way up the ladder.

"America is great," he says and repeats himself. "America is great. You know, in Europe, we used to say, ‘The gold is on the ground' [in America], but no one told us that you have to bend down and pick up that gold. That's the issue. That's the point. You have to work and you get it. If you don't work, you don't get it."

The turning point

"The right job" for Andre came in 1984, when he began waiting tables at the famed Peter Luger Steakhouse, which has been popular for more than a hundred years.

"I had a very good experience, and the money was right," Andre recalls. "At that time, in five hours we used to make $120-150. That was great money for me, compared to $40-50 a night. Then I became part time manager, and I made more money."

Holidays were spent in Marco Island in Southwest Florida, and in 1993 Andre decided it was time to move on again.

"We had a house in Marco Island," he says. "We came down regularly, and, finally, we said, ‘We gotta go now. We gotta do it.' So we came looking for a place."

Andre spotted a former Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant on the lot where his steakhouse now sits.
"We rented the place, we renovated and started the business," he says. "The first night, I had about 25 people here. The second night, a Saturday, I had 40 people. The third day, I had two people, and one of them was an Armenian I knew from New York, and that was it. But slowly it picked up. It took a year and a half until the place was going. Two years after we opened, we had to put this addition, because the space wasn't enough. Now we are doing okay. We are surviving even now, even in this economy."

"When I started 15 years ago, I was the only steakhouse in town," says Andre. "Now there are a few others, but they are having a hard time. Our clients come back time after time for the porterhouse and the best steaks."

"People sometimes call and ask if Andre is there tonight. ‘We're going to come, and we want to see him,' they say. They come in, hug and kiss, sit down, eat, and go," he says. "People come in and want to see me. They want to see me in my shorts, because I never wear long pants. I'm in Florida, and I refuse to get dressed up. I run a casual place, and you see it, and people put on their shorts just to come here."

The most important lesson Andre has learned in his long journey from Shishli to Naples is that, in order to succeed in life, people always have to adapt to their new environments.

"If you go somewhere, and you try to stay with your culture and impose your culture on the other people, it's no good," he says. "You have to adapt yourself to the country. You have to go with the flow, so you can survive. If you do it different, it's not good."
 
Tight-knit community

Members of the Southwest Florida Armenian community often come to dine at Andre's, and Andre joins other members of the Armenian-American Cultural Society of Southwest Florida at various events.

"The Armenians here get together, and we socialize," says Andre. "One tells the other one, and we get more familiar with each other. Many of the people come from the north in the season. They are retired. They are nice people, very nice people."

Andre says if one Armenian meets another Armenian, the first Armenian eventually ends up meeting the friends of the second Armenian.

"If I see that you are Armenian, I'm going to talk to you, and you're going to talk to me," he says. "Then you're going to talk to another Armenian, and you're going to say, ‘I met Andre, and he's Armenian.' That's going to happen, and that's the way you do it."

So when you visit Naples, stop by for a visit to Andre's. Enjoy a great meal and share an Armenian tale.

connect:
1-239-263-5851
2800 Tamiami Trl N.
Naples, FL 34103