Enrico Malta didn't want to open a chain of restaurants. He wanted to open a neighborhood restaurant in several different Manhattan neighborhoods. His real estate and restaurant company, New York City Restaurant Group, owns 17 restaurants. Sixteen of them are Italian.

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Each restaurant has a different menu: "The cuisines are either Tuscan or Roman or Sicilian. They have an accent on different dishes, depending on the town or region and what the chef is used to eating," he says. The difference in each menu could mean pine nuts instead of tomatoes, more meat and less pasta, or menus that work around fish.

Albert Marcus, instructor of restaurant management for the New York Restaurant School at the Art Institute of New York City, says it makes sense to open independent restaurants instead of a chain because chefs want to create dishes independently. "Chefs are changing, reinventing themselves, and there is a thirst for that in the New York area," he says. "They all want to try something new and something different."

There's also a demographic reason for opening similar restaurants in various neighborhoods. "Some people don't want to venture too far from their apartment,"  "Also, they want to feel like they know the chef, the waiters, the busboy, and they feel like they will get better service."

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NEw York City Restaurant Group - NYCRG

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