Lois Weiss

Lois Weiss

Real Estate

A restaurateur with a passion for food, folks and fun

When you’re an 11-year-old who gets up at 8 a.m. on Sunday mornings in White Plains and insists your parents take you to open houses, there’s a good chance you will end up in real estate.

“Real estate has always been my passion; and also hospitality,” said Mark Amadei. “I know every building and every block. It’s great to be able to translate that into a [restaurant] location and then make them come alive.”

Amadei grew up to not only become a residential broker with Sotheby’s, where he is a senior global property adviser, but soon parlayed flipping his first apartment deal into a mini restaurant empire.

Amadei owns Cafeteria, Delicatessen, Macbar and the chrome-bedecked Empire Diner with one group of investors. As a partner with John DeLucie and Sean Largotta in Crown Group Hospitality, he also owns The Lion, Bill’s Food & Drink and Crown.

Amadei and executive chef/proprietor of The Lion and Crown John DeLucie.Michael Sofronski

Cafeteria, at Seventh Avenue and W. 17th Street, opened in 1997 — right before the original Barney’s location closed across the street, thus putting a damper on their startup business.

(Ironically, Barney’s is returning to its old site in 2017 as the current occupant, Loehmann’s, is now in bankruptcy.) But succeed Cafeteria did; it is finally getting a second spot in TriBeCa at 113 Reade St. at West Broadway. Designed by SHoP architects, it will be “modern but not starkly modern.” It will include a floating staircase and a “really, really cool second floor.” One table will even convert to a pool table. “People can hang out and play backgammon,” Amedei added. “We want to be part of the neighborhood.”

All of Amadei’s restaurants are designed to make people feel at home so they hang out often and not just once a month, he explained. “We run iconic restaurants.”

Each place has its own décor designed to be comfortable. The Lion, he says, was inspired by Enrico Cinzano’s old West Village townhouse with Renaissance and modern art mixed together. “Bill’s was our way to update a men’s club and Crown is very Upper East Side and Art Deco,” he added.

Amadei, who has a country house in Bucks County, Penn., where free range chickens now roam, would love to do a farm-to-table restaurant. “It’s the wave of the future,” he says. “It’s not a fad; it will keep on growing.”