Seven years ago, I was an analyst for Telefilm Canada, earning a paycheque by sitting in a grey cube and shuffling box office stats. At the end of each day, I would rush home to my wife, two daughters and truest passion: making dinner. The sights and smells of my kitchen were balms to my soul.
Cooking would have remained a hobby if I hadn’t stumbled across old footage of Michelin chef Marco Pierre White preparing a stuffed pig’s trotter on YouTube. It was an audacious dish and maybe even a bit sinister. It looked a little like a stubby, sun-baked human hand on a platter. I loved how the deft skill of an unlikely genius and a few choice ingredients transformed a cheap cut of meat into a beautiful plate. The dish was transcendent to me, and in a rough kind of way, so was its creator. White smoked. White sneered. White swore. He was handsome. I could envision him swaggering around his Hampshire restaurant, the Yew Tree Inn, dropping exquisite plates of food in front of wealthy customers with all the bombast of a star footballer. As he got older and no longer cooked in the kitchen, he was known to hang about the bar and drink cider with customers, at times with a .22 rifle close by in case he had the sudden urge to go rabbit hunting. To me, Marco Pierre White was inspirational. I wanted to be him. And I wanted my own Yew Tree.
I soon joined the burgeoning ranks of the know-it-all gourmand. I owned fancy knives. I photographed my food. I had a subscription to Lucky Peach. I had a well-thumbed copy of Kitchen Confidential and a demi-glace-spattered copy of The French Laundry Cookbook. At work, I had trouble concentrating on spreadsheets and instead found myself scribbling menus on graph paper. I could picture a quaint dining room with wooden tables, scalloped plates and plaid napkins. I even came up with the perfect name: the Beech Tree, inspired by the Yew Tree. I naïvely figured I could do it as well as the restaurant lifers, the tattooed dude-chefs and the nut-busting empire builders. What I lacked in experience I could make up for in enthusiasm.
In 2011, I applied to operate a booth at the Toronto Underground Food Market, a short-lived festival, known as TUM, where home cooks could sell their culinary creations to the public. I served mini-panko-crusted codfish cakes with green pea pesto, gourmet pork belly sandwiches, and wild mushroom and black pudding hash. I slogged through each step of thrice-cooked English chips, my fingers cramping so severely from peeling 100 pounds of potatoes that I almost called 911. In the end, I fed 400 people, and they liked my food. Several local bloggers wrote about my dishes. It was an adrenalin rush like no other. I lost money, but I didn’t care. My dream was gnawing at my insides.
Eighty per cent of first-time restaurateurs fail. I knew this. Opening a restaurant was the least sensible, dumbest thing I could do. My wife, Dorothy, a daycare worker, was coasting toward the end of a maternity leave, and we had two kids to feed. I was in no position to take a risk. But if it succeeded, I could make more money than any office job had ever paid me. We could enjoy a better lifestyle and maybe buy a nicer house. Plus, I’d be doing what I loved.
I pitched the concept to Dorothy, explaining that I would be front of house, designing the menu, signing cheques and glad-handing customers. I told her about a guy I had met at TUM who had launched a successful restaurant and still made it home in time to tuck in the kids every night. I proposed that she work alongside me, hosting the lunch service while our girls were at school, and I would look after the dinner service. We could run errands in the mornings, maybe sneak away for breakfast at the competition and write it off as research. Eventually, she embraced my dream, too. Now I just needed to find the money.
Six months later, an opportunity arose. My position at Telefilm, a Crown corporation, was eliminated. I was offered a lateral step, but if I walked away, I would be able to cash out $60,000 from my $130,000 pension. I could already see the tufted banquettes, the Victorian wallpaper, the brass beer taps—and me, a rifle slung over my shoulder, a pint of cider in hand. As my last day approached, I brought up my idea over drinks with a friend named Jameson, who owned a popular west-end bar. After some talk about which craft beers I should offer, he turned serious. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked. “I don’t think you know what you’re getting yourself into.” I smiled, drained my pint glass. “You pulled it off,” I said. “Why can’t I?”
Cooking would have remained a hobby if I hadn’t stumbled across old footage of Michelin chef Marco Pierre White preparing a stuffed pig’s trotter on YouTube. It was an audacious dish and maybe even a bit sinister. It looked a little like a stubby, sun-baked human hand on a platter. I loved how the deft skill of an unlikely genius and a few choice ingredients transformed a cheap cut of meat into a beautiful plate. The dish was transcendent to me, and in a rough kind of way, so was its creator. White smoked. White sneered. White swore. He was handsome. I could envision him swaggering around his Hampshire restaurant, the Yew Tree Inn, dropping exquisite plates of food in front of wealthy customers with all the bombast of a star footballer. As he got older and no longer cooked in the kitchen, he was known to hang about the bar and drink cider with customers, at times with a .22 rifle close by in case he had the sudden urge to go rabbit hunting. To me, Marco Pierre White was inspirational. I wanted to be him. And I wanted my own Yew Tree.I soon joined the burgeoning ranks of the know-it-all gourmand. I owned fancy knives. I photographed my food. I had a subscription to Lucky Peach. I had a well-thumbed copy of Kitchen Confidential and a demi-glace-spattered copy of The French Laundry Cookbook. At work, I had trouble concentrating on spreadsheets and instead found myself scribbling menus on graph paper. I could picture a quaint dining room with wooden tables, scalloped plates and plaid napkins. I even came up with the perfect name: the Beech Tree, inspired by the Yew Tree. I naïvely figured I could do it as well as the restaurant lifers, the tattooed dude-chefs and the nut-busting empire builders. What I lacked in experience I could make up for in enthusiasm.
In 2011, I applied to operate a booth at the Toronto Underground Food Market, a short-lived festival, known as TUM, where home cooks could sell their culinary creations to the public. I served mini-panko-crusted codfish cakes with green pea pesto, gourmet pork belly sandwiches, and wild mushroom and black pudding hash. I slogged through each step of thrice-cooked English chips, my fingers cramping so severely from peeling 100 pounds of potatoes that I almost called 911. In the end, I fed 400 people, and they liked my food. Several local bloggers wrote about my dishes. It was an adrenalin rush like no other. I lost money, but I didn’t care. My dream was gnawing at my insides.
Eighty per cent of first-time restaurateurs fail. I knew this. Opening a restaurant was the least sensible, dumbest thing I could do. My wife, Dorothy, a daycare worker, was coasting toward the end of a maternity leave, and we had two kids to feed. I was in no position to take a risk. But if it succeeded, I could make more money than any office job had ever paid me. We could enjoy a better lifestyle and maybe buy a nicer house. Plus, I’d be doing what I loved.
I pitched the concept to Dorothy, explaining that I would be front of house, designing the menu, signing cheques and glad-handing customers. I told her about a guy I had met at TUM who had launched a successful restaurant and still made it home in time to tuck in the kids every night. I proposed that she work alongside me, hosting the lunch service while our girls were at school, and I would look after the dinner service. We could run errands in the mornings, maybe sneak away for breakfast at the competition and write it off as research. Eventually, she embraced my dream, too. Now I just needed to find the money.
Six months later, an opportunity arose. My position at Telefilm, a Crown corporation, was eliminated. I was offered a lateral step, but if I walked away, I would be able to cash out $60,000 from my $130,000 pension. I could already see the tufted banquettes, the Victorian wallpaper, the brass beer taps—and me, a rifle slung over my shoulder, a pint of cider in hand. As my last day approached, I brought up my idea over drinks with a friend named Jameson, who owned a popular west-end bar. After some talk about which craft beers I should offer, he turned serious. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked. “I don’t think you know what you’re getting yourself into.” I smiled, drained my pint glass. “You pulled it off,” I said. “Why can’t I?”
by Robert Maxwell, Toronto Life | Read more:
Image: Dave Gillespie
