•INDUSTRY LEADERS• PRESIDENT RICK WAHLSTEDT Q&A

RICK WAHLSTEDT, is no stranger to winning. As one of America’s most successful restaurateurs,
Rick began his career as an internationally ranked professional Squash player. He found his way to New York from his native Sweden during the 1984 World Squash Tour.

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Playing Squash by day eventually led him to nighttime bartending and so began a 30-year love affair with the restaurant industry. Rick learned the ropes at some of New York’s most famous and enduring hot spots including Indochine and Odeon.

His first foray into ownership came in 1987 when he opened Punsch, a French Scandinavian restaurant on the upper west side of Manhattan. With such a rich past working for the McNally brothers, he brought to his restaurant gold standard secrets of the trade. Not surprising, Punsch became wildly successful before closing three years later.  But that was just the beginning.

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After Punsch, Rick chose to return to his educational roots and joined Jonathan& Foster, a corresponding firm of Bear Sterns as a security broker focused on emerging markets. But during his ten-year stint in finance, the industry called to him and in 1993, he opened Le Colonial, the French-Vietnamese sensation on East 57th street. That success would be duplicated many times over in the years to come. Currently, Rick owns the following restaurants:

Le Colonial in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Houston
L’Escale in Greenwich, CT
Japonais in Las Vegas
Artisan in Southport and West Hartford (’17)
Le Bilboquet in Atlanta
Minority interests in Rockbit Bar and Grill in Chicago and Delamar Hotels
in Greenwich and Southport, CT.