Creating a Kind of One Experience
Todd Leebow and Gary Shamis start at The Last Page By Carlo Wolff
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hen Todd Leebow was living in Los Angeles, a friend advised him to read the last page of a script first. That way, he could tell whether reading the whole thing would be worthwhile. “Start at the last page, where most of the meat is,” Leebow says in an interview at The Last Page, the 200-seat restaurant he and fellow founding partner Gary Shamis opened in Orange’s Pinecrest mixed-use development in February 2021. “If you start with that, you can navigate how you want to enjoy your whole experience.” Asked about the derivation of his modern American restaurant’s name, Leebow says, “The best way to say it is, the best stories come together on the last page.” Leebow’s and Shamis’ hospitality group, Kind of One Concepts, manages The Last Page. Its clever name, too, carries meaning. “You know the phrase ‘one of a kind?’” asks Leebow, who is also CEO of the family-owned company Majestic Steel
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USA. “One of a kind can be perceived as one of many, where with Kind of One, we’re looking to create a unique concept, something you’ve never experienced before.” Whether you’re eating The Last Chicken Sandwich (with pickled banana peppers, yum yum sauce and iceberg lettuce, on a Hawaiian bun), a side of crispy potatoes and a beer on tap, or sitting on the patio sharing dishes with friends, the idea is “to have a Kind of One experience every time.” Restaurants were the key niche at SS&G, Shamis’ former CPA firm, and he became “infatuated in terms of servicing them,” he says. “Friends say I’m a foodie,” says Shamis, who is now CEO of Winding River Consulting, a company he founded in 2016. “I’m not a foodie, I’m a restaurant person. I like the ambiance, the service. I like the food, I like the creativity.” In a sense, The Last Page is a laboratory for both men. “Todd and I have a lot in common with respect to us being entrepreneurial business owners,” Shamis says. “I think one of the commonalities is we really
like to build things. There’s nothing I like more to do than build something. And when he approached me and we talked about this, the whole idea was to be able to build something that would be challenging to do. Here we are 18 months later, and I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve been able to build.”
A TEAM APPROACH The underlying tenets of their restaurant are providing a memorable experience for the customer and continuous improvement – a process veteran accountant Shamis explores in his business books. Every day, both men suggest, is hard work. Every day is also a joy. Since The Last Page opened during the COVID-19 pandemic, business has steadily increased, largely due to word-ofmouth and social media. Where brunch used to draw 12, it now hosts 200. “I always say that the restaurant is a live production every single day and so therefore, every day is unique,” says Leebow, who in 2007 moved back to Ohio from Los Angeles, where he was launching his own film company, to run
Fall / Winter 2022
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