The Dish: Meet the brothers behind the Blue Ribbon restaurant empire

Bruce and Eric Bromberg's Blue Ribbon restaurant empire got its start 25 years ago with the original Blue Ribbon Brasserie in New York. Considered a cradle of today's culinary scene, it was a hangout for some then-unknown chefs who would go on to become some of the biggest restaurateurs in the world.

From fondue to pu pu platters, to their famous fried chicken, Eric and Bruce say the secret to Blue Ribbon is a brotherly love of eating, reports CBS News' Dana Jacobson. 

"Ever since we were young, ribs were just like always the highlight for me," Eric said. "So it's just that situation of, let's make things that we love."

The chefs behind this finger food were actually classically trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, but they found cooking in three-star restaurants far from satisfying.  

"One of the things that really struck me was none of my friends could come to those restaurants. They were so expensive, so exclusive. But why don't we just take the technique of fine cooking, let's apply it to everything we learned and let's make it accessible to everyone," Bruce said. 

They opened the Blue Ribbon Brasserie on Sullivan Street in SoHo on Nov. 3, 1992. Kimball Kramer showed up just a few days later. He's been coming back up to five times a week ever since.

"I saw a new restaurant, walked in and liked it.  The food was outstanding. I was looking for a hangout place and I knew I had found it," Kramer said. 

"It all began in this, you know, tiny, little, hole-in-the-wall. This was two apartments that we joined together and, you know, kinda had this idea of just making a good restaurant," Bruce said. 

They started with a simple notion. 

"What is blue ribbon? It's first prize, it's the best thing. It sounded American, the translation of Cordon Bleu is blue ribbon, so it all kinda came together," Eric said. 

"It was more of an idea," Bruce said. "And I think that's what Blue Ribbon meant to us. It was this concept, it was this heart and soul of everything we had done growing up as kids."

The brothers used to actually play "restaurant" -- or more like Benihana -- when they were young. 

"Seeing a chef in front of us was just the coolest thing in the world," Eric said.

"And we'd always try to order shrimp cocktail which our dad never let us do, and it has been a special at Blue Ribbon for 25 years now," Eric said. "Just because of that. It is a special every single night."

The Bromberg's credit their father, an attorney, for their insatiable appetite.

"It was always about that next meal. Summer camp in Maine, there were stops along the way where it was pizzas in New Haven and clam chowder at this place and the lobster at this place. Where are we going in Chinatown in New York? Where do you get the best egg roll? Where do you get the best fondue, you know? Everything was about the meal," Bruce said. 

But as they were getting ready to open Blue Ribbon, there was one key ingredient missing. 

"We didn't really know what the menu was gonna be and at one point literally a couple days before opening, Eric's wife, Ellen, was, like, 'Guys, we need to print menus. We need, like, lists. You know, what are you doing?'" Bruce said. 

Blue Ribbon, which stayed open until 4 in the morning, would become a late night hangout for up-and-coming chefs coming off their shifts. 

"It was that time when the entire culinary scene was giving birth in a sense, and the group of people whether it was Daniel [Boulud] and his team or Bobby [Flay] and his team, Mario [Batali] -- Mario was the sous chef at a local Italian place. He had just moved from Seattle and he would come in every single night and sit at the bar and we all just hung out," Bruce said. 

"Just sitting here again and thinking of how many different people have sat at this table over the years, from President Clinton to Mick Jagger to -- " Eric said.

"The chefs that we grew up learning about and idolizing," Bruce said.

"Daniel or Jean-Georges or any of these people coming in and saying like, 'This is the greatest place I've ever been to,'" Eric said. 

"It wasn't like, 'This is the best dish I've ever had.' It wasn't that. It was that they saw something different in Blue Ribbon," Bruce said.

That something different helped the Brombergs turn Blue Ribbon Brasserie into the Blue Ribbon empire operating 20 restaurants, from fried chicken to sushi, around the country over the last 25 years.

"Eating like this is I think ultimately what makes us really happy, and thankfully it makes some other people happy too," Bruce said.