Drew Nieporent: The Restaurateur Who Remade New York

Impolitic with John Heilemann

Audacy | Puck

News, Politics

4.8 • 4.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2025

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

John welcomes Drew Nieporent, the celebrated owner-operator behind Nobu, Tribeca Grill, and Montrachet, to discuss his new memoir, “I’m Not Trying To Be Difficult: Stories From the Restaurant Trenches.” Nieporent describes his role in transforming the stuffy, fussy, French-focused fine dining culture of New York in the 1970s into the dynamic, freewheeling, scene-driven atmosphere that took hold in the late 1980s; how his fabled partnership with Robert De Niro and Nobuyuki Matsuhisa spawned a globe-spanning culinary empire, but not before his partners cut him out of the business; and how, although the restaurant industry managed to survive Covid, it was changed forever (and not for the better) by the pandemic. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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1:07.6	Aloha and namaste everyone and welcome to Impolitic with John Heilman, a puck and Odyssey
1:11.9	joint featuring lively in-depth conversations with the people who cruised the corridors of power
1:16.3	in America sculpting and shaping the ebb and flow of our politics and culture.
1:20.8	A few months ago, a trio of memoirs arrived in quick succession by a trio of men of a certain age
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