Two years in the restaurant racket serves up great stories
Credit to Author: Dana Gee| Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2019 18:00:17 +0000
Back when the world was coming to town for the 2010 Olympics, Switzerland native Bruno Huber was the newly minted co-owner and co-manager of Le Bistro de Paris, a restaurant on Denman Street in Vancouver’s West End.
The restaurant (the site is now a condo development) opened and stayed that way for two years during which time all manner of things happened and all manner of people passed through the restaurant’s doors.
Huber, not one to let a good story slide, has chronicled those times at the eatery in his new book, Folly Bistro. For the record he has also written a play about this experience.
After launching the book recently, we got the Sunshine Coast’s (Granthams Landing since 1990) Huber to answer a few questions about cooking up this behind-the-scenes look at a life in one of the hardest rackets around:
Folly Bistro by Bruno Huber. Photo: Granville Island Publishing
Question: What’s harder: opening and running a restaurant or writing a book about opening and running a restaurant?
Answer: Opening and running a restaurant of course. Writing about it is like dancing. First you need to have good music (stories), then you can dance.
Q: In the book you’ve changed the names to protect the innocent or something like that, why?
A: The characters in the book are constructs of real people like my wife Clare who is a saint in the book. And nobody was innocent. At any one time we had 16 employees working (two shifts, seven days a week) and due to the constant turnover one year I signed 160 T4s at tax season. I only had room for about 30 characters.
Q: Thanks to the late Anthony Bourdain book Kitchen Confidential the dark, booze and drug-soaked side of the business was exposed. Did you see that in your place?
A: Unlike Anthony I wasn’t the chef, but we did have drug addicts and alcoholics working in the kitchen and upfront. Restaurants are one of the few places where you can come out of jail in the morning and have a job in a kitchen in the afternoon. Bartenders, servers and cooks are constantly exposed to large amounts of booze and many fortify themselves before a shift. I had one server who fired himself because he was too drunk to work the shift.
Q: You and your partner Aldo (not his real name, right?) were successful in other ventures, then you decided to go in on a restaurant, why?
A: Aldo (yes, not his real name) and I made a bit of money on an apartment that we owned together, which we invested into the restaurant. The restaurant itself was an opportunity because it was abandoned and all we had to do was take over the lease and pay off the bailiff and then apply for all the licences since we didn’t buy the business.
Q: Timing is everything, they say. Did the chance to cash on the 2010 Olympics push you into this venture?
A: The Olympics was a great time to open the restaurant and try out our menu and staff. We barely made it since our liquor licence came through just days before the (Olympics) Opening Ceremony. During the Games people came in all day and night from all over the world and since we were close to the broadcast centre at the Westin Bayshore the restaurant filled up every night after 10 p.m.
Q: You had to totally renovate the restaurant and did a lot of it yourself. You say in the book one of the jobs “put me off chewing gum for the rest of my days.” What was the hardest part of getting ready to open?
A: We did mostly cosmetic renos but one of the jobs was scraping off the chewing gum people had stuck to the underside of tables and chairs. The hardest part was the floor, which was grimy from 30 years of traffic.
Q: You only owned the restaurant for a couple of years. What happened?
A: We only lost our socks and sold it before we lost our shirts. I was in way over my head — since I had no previous restaurant experience — and my wife and I never saw each other and we were like ships passing at sea. She was asleep when I got home at one or 2 a.m. and long gone in the mornings when I got up. Fridays and Saturdays were the busiest times at the restaurant so we had no private social life anymore. When the opportunity came along to sell it we jumped at the chance.
Q: What happened to Aldo? Do you speak to each other?
A: We’re still good friends, which was the one thing we valued above all else. We could have easily fallen out over some of the disagreements and different visions of the restaurant, but we always stopped before it got to a fight. ‘Nothing is as important as friendship,’ we both believed that and stuck to it. Aldo continued to run an Italian restaurant until last year, when he had to make room for another spiffy condo tower.
Author Bruno Huber. Photo: Granville Island Publishing
Q: Is the restaurant business a young person’s racket?
A: It’s anybody’s racket who has the money, the vision and hopefully some of the skills required to run a restaurant: Cheffing and/or cooking, serving, dealing with the public, managing inherently unstable staff and giving up any social life.
Q: What makes a great restaurant?
A: Always the food and the price. Location as well, but you can have the best location (usually the most expensive) and your fare is mediocre and costs too much and before long you’re behind on bills and you try to save on staff and make shortcuts with the food and then the bickering and blaming starts and it’s the beginning of the end. Serve great original food at a fair price and you’ll have a chance to make it. Independent restaurants work best if they’re family endeavours. Nothing works like loyalty and consistency. Sometimes a personality — usually the chef — attracts customers, but again it’s the food he makes that matters in the end.
Q: What was the best thing about this venture and what was the worst thing?
A: The best thing was the fact that I could host all my friends and family in a fantastic setting with incredible food and wine, and we had some fabulous times like birthdays and new years. The worst things were the confrontation and power struggles with some of the staff and the overwhelming amount of bills at the end of the month.
Q: Do you have a favourite memory at the restaurant?
A: The last night we served everybody that frequented the restaurant over the two years, as well as many friends and family. The chef and the kitchen outdid themselves and performed at the top of their craft — it was their swan song as well. When we opened the bar after midnight — because all open bottles had to be emptied — it turned into a regular wake with tears and laughter, and many stories already turning into memory.
Q: What was the biggest thing you learned from the whole experience?
A: To jump at a chance when it offers itself. I’ve never regretted the chance we took — a chance to fulfil a dream like owning an iconic restaurant — don’t hesitate and jump. These opportunities don’t come very often in one’s life.
Q: How did owning your own restaurant affect your view of other restaurants?
A: I became a bit of a food snob and I always want to know if the fries are homemade or come out of a plastic bag. I also have respect for what it takes to produce good dishes consistently. Chefs are some of the hardest workers in any industry. The tense, boiler-room atmosphere in a busy kitchen is not for everyone.
Q: What is your favourite meal?
A: Steak ‘n’ frites but the frites have to be properly prepared and the New York steak seared and medium rare.