Opening two new restaurants within the same month—one of them in the most widely anticipated food court in the world—is a tad masochistic. But Lois Freedman—who’s launching Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Spice Market and his Time Warner Center steakhouse, tentatively named Rare—seems unfazed. Now Jean-Georges’s chief collaborator (creative right hand, director of operations, etc.), she began working with him at Lafayette in 1986. After five years, the restaurant earned four stars, and she and he became a couple. Their romance has ended, but the business relationship continues. “We’re more like brother and sister now,” she says. Like Jean-Georges, who famously wears Prada shoes in the kitchen, Lois will turn up in a Christian Dior dress one night and jeans the next. “I’m very visual,” she says. “I’m involved in the look of a restaurant, down to the staff’s jewelry. At 66, I don’t allow it. At Spice Market, I want the women to wear Indian earrings, yellow gold. I have to be specific. Otherwise they could come in with turquoise ones from New Mexico!”

Related:

• Archive: “New York Minute”
• Articles by Beth Landman
• Table of Contents: February 9, 2004 issue of New York | Subscribe!