Dining » Golden Plate Awards

From superstitious cooks to light-fingered diners, what goes on behind the scenes at your favourite eatery may surprise you.

Patrick Mercer loves running a restaurant. The proprietor of Brix Restaurant and Wine Bar can handle almost anything the business throws at him. Except, perhaps, brunch.

A restaurateur’s job is to “make all of the planets align every day”, Mercer explains to the Straight. There are countless variables that affect a diner’s experience, from having the right number of staff on shift to ensuring that the kitchen has its veggies prepped.

“The chef has to be in a good mood; everyone in the front [dining room] has to be at the table they want to be at,” he says. “The wine has to arrive [at the table] at the correct temperature, at the correct time, from the correct vintage; the pictures have to be dusted; the lights have to be at the right level; the music has to be the right music.” The list goes on.

“That’s why I don’t open for brunch,” he says. “Anything to do with eggs—if you take all of the things I just said about aligning the planets and then add eggs”¦it can really throw everything off.”

Mercer has worked in many restaurants over the years, and he’s “seen some pretty nasty things happen at brunch, everything from things that people did in the kitchen that they shouldn’t have, to the guest who can never have the correct eggs—it’s too soft, it’s too hard.”¦I’ve seen a lady set on fire at a brunch I attended,” he continues. “I won’t mention at which restaurant, by one of those people making a flambé crepe.”¦Set on fire,” he repeats. “I won’t touch brunch.”

Mercer’s tale is one of many told to Straight staffers when we interviewed over 100 restaurateurs, chefs, and managers. We asked them what goes on behind the scenes at their restaurant and others, and boy, did they tell us. From adrenaline-fuelled kitchens to customers who walk off with the cutlery, here’s a look at what makes Vancouver restaurants tick.

Getting down with overhead When diners read a menu, they often forget that the price of lasagna covers more than just the food.

“Customers don’t realize how much things really cost to produce,” says Emad Yacoub, owner of the Glowbal Restaurant Group, which includes Glowbal, Sanafir, Italian Kitchen, and Coast. Customers ask why a wine that sells for $20 at the liquor store costs $45 at his Yaletown restaurant and goes for $10 less in a Surrey restaurant. “What they don’t realize is that any price in a restaurant [is based on] the whole cost of the operation,” he says. “Some restaurants pay $5,000 rent, some pay $50,000 rent.”

Décor and supplies are also factors. According to Yacoub, an average busy restaurant loses about $3,000 a month in broken glass and china and missing tableware.

“You’re going to lose it two ways,” he says. “Off the table or”¦because it went into the garbage by mistake.” Although many restaurants use a magnetic device attached to the trash can to prevent loss, “The higher the silver content—the better your knives and forks are—the less chance they’re going to stick.” The $1 knife may be salvaged, but kiss that $8 knife goodbye.

And although Yacoub would never say that customers pocket items, “I know when I start the shift for lunch with 10 salt and pepper shakers and then after a busy lunch there’s only five or six left on the floor, they didn’t just disappear by themselves.

“That’s how prices evolve,” he explains. “We set the prices because we thought it was very fair for what it cost for us to produce.”

“Breakage is huge,” confirms Dean Mallel, president of the Incendio Group, which owns Stella’s Tap and Tapas Bar and Incendio. His cost for some of the beer glasses at Stella’s is $12 to $20 each. Exactly how much breakage is there? “Oh, God,” he groans. “Too much.”

Running a restaurant is “a game of extremely slim margins”, Mallel says. “If you don’t have a really good grasp of what your costs are, it’s very easy to lose all your money.” The average restaurant runs on a profit margin of less than five percent, according to Richard Floody, past chair of the British Columbia Restaurant & Foodservices Association.

Right now, restaurateurs are caught between squeezing their profit margin and asking a fair price but losing a customer. Even though ingredient costs have gone up by about 30 percent over the last few years, “You have to be super competitive,” says Ben Cí´té, owner of Cassis Bistro and Lunchbox. “A big majority of restaurants are undercharging.”

“The cost of everything has gone up quite a bit,” says Simon Chan, manager of Sun Sui Wah Seafood Restaurant, “but the price of the menu can’t adjust due to the poor economy.”

The calm before the storm “The restaurant business is probably 90 percent preparation and 10 percent execution,” says Sebastien Le Goff, food and beverage consultant for Cibo Trattoria and Uva Wine Bar. “What people see is like the [tip of the] iceberg.”

It starts with creating a menu that will appeal to many customers—and ensuring that those dishes are consistently prepared well. Popular menu items aren’t to be trifled with. Le Gavroche owner Manuel Ferreira says his menu changes are “subtle and like a good haircut. When you get a good haircut, no one should know that you got one.”

At Cactus Club Cafe, food concept architect Rob Feenie comes up with dishes that can be replicated precisely by cooks throughout the chain. “We cover all angles when we write a recipe,” he says, from exact measurements of a tuna steak to photos of the finished dish. “You could walk into a Cactus yourself, look at a recipe, and—start to finish, you follow everything that’s on there—you’ll probably execute it at about 75 to 85 percent. Which means the recipes are perfect.”

At MARKET by Jean-Georges, executive chef David Foot’s team follows Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s recipes right down to the 10th of a gram. “That’s where a lot of restaurants miss the boat, is in consistency,” Foot says. If a customer returns for the fabulous short ribs, they should taste equally fabulous the second time. “That’s how you gain customer loyalty.”

Sourcing ingredients is key. “Paramount in any restaurant is to have a great relationship with the supplier,” says CinCin restaurant director Ricardo Ferreira. “When they have an ingredient that’s scarcer, they’re going to come to the restaurants that share their passion.”

“We’ve got about 19 suppliers that we have to coordinate with to be able to put a very simple menu together,” says Bistrot Bistro restaurateur Laurent Devin. Aphrodite Café’s Peggy Vogler deals directly with Fraser Valley farmers to get the best fruit. And Ashiana Tandoori chef Rick Takhar goes all the way to India to bring back spices, to ensure their freshness.

Delivery problems can throw the kitchen a curve. Devin relates that when the highways through the Okanagan are blocked, the restaurant doesn’t get its rabbit. Incendio’s Mallel says that the snowstorms over Christmas threatened his restaurants’ mozzarella supplies, which come from Montreal.

Food preparation starts long before customers arrive. Chefs at Transylvania Flavour spend hours making sausages and cabbage rolls from scratch. Likewise, a team at the Jonker Street Malaysian restaurant makes its own curries. “If you try to make a full Indian meal at home, it’ll take an hour, an hour and a half,” points out India Bistro manager Steve Kilewala. “Here, we can get stuff to your table in 15 minutes because of the prep work we do.”

Meanwhile, the front-of-house staff must be well trained. Miku Restaurant general manager Tai Hasumi explains that his staff meets every morning. Staff members do a voice-training exercise in which one person leads a chant of “irasshaimase”, a greeting used to welcome guests. “All the staff repeats it back to them in the biggest voices they have,” he says. “It’s so empowering. It’s better than having morning coffee.”

At other restaurants, the staff meal may be the only time everyone gathers. “We do it exactly at 4 o’clock, every day,” says the Pear Tree Restaurant’s Scott Jaeger. “Our whole team”¦cooks and servers, all sit together at one table.” The meal allows staff to refuel and bond. Usually the meal incorporates surplus ingredients. “If we have chicken breast on the menu, chances are chicken legs will become [the] staff meal.”

Just before the first customer arrives, things can get tense for both the kitchen and the dining room staff.

“People might have dinner parties at home, when they feel the pressure that people are walking in and they’re still cooking,” says Angus An, chef and owner of Gastropod. “But imagine if you have 70 guests over.”¦We have never, ever not been prepared for a customer, but a lot of times it feels pretty darn close.”

“My least favourite part of the day is the last hour before service,” says Adam Pegg, chef and co-owner of La Quercia. “There’s always something that comes up,” he says, like discovering that the ice machine’s broken or a wine is missing that somebody must run out and buy. (The best time of day? “When the first plate has just gone out.”¦That, or the beer at the end of the service.”)

The day the Straight spoke to La Buca restaurateur Andrey Durbach, a health inspector had shown up just prior to the restaurant’s 5 p.m. opening. “He didn’t want us using latex gloves to handle the food in case somebody has a latex allergy,” Durbach recalls. “Apparently, surgical gloves are okay for operations”¦but to clean beet roots, it’s not good enough.” He tries, however, to “not get too worked up about things you don’t have much control over, or else you’ll have a heart attack”.

Some restaurateurs turn to higher powers to cope with uncertainty. “We have some superstitions, like it depends on who opens the restaurant [in the morning] if we’ll get more business,” says Sawasdee manager Nat Poonpoem. “If I open the doors with my key, it tends to be quiet. If my mom opens, she thinks it’s more busy for her.”

Maurya Indian Cuisine’s Mayur Arora says that his chefs “touch the floor of the kitchen every morning when they go in and kiss their hand”¦which signifies they are giving respect to the kitchen. It gives the positive energy that is required in the kitchen.”

Meeru Dhalwala, co-owner of Vij’s and Rangoli, says her husband, Vikram, asks his aunt to pray for his restaurants. “He’s a self-professed atheist,” Dhalwala says of Vij. Nonetheless, “He’s a very superstitious guy.”¦He carries in his briefcase still the very first $20 note a customer gave him.”

Ready or not, it’s showtime When meal service starts, “It’s like going into battle,” says Gastropod’s An. “When the bills [orders] keep coming in, you just have to be focused.” An tries to turn around a dish within 10 minutes of receiving the order. But cooks must coordinate with each other to juggle multiple orders. Adrenaline runs high. Many love the job for what An calls “that rush of getting things done in a short span of time, and the challenge of getting things done perfectly”.

“You get hit for two hours of high-stress service,” says Marc-André Choquette, executive chef of Voya Restaurant. “What people don’t see in the back of the house is how fast it happens, how precise it is, how loud it is.”

Students at the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts train for these conditions. Executive chef and program director Julian Bond says that once students have perfected a dish, they’re challenged to maintain that perfection while being bombarded with orders. “This sense of panic sets in,” Bond says. “A cow’s still mooing and they’re trying to burn it so it looks like it’s medium when it’s actually still raw.”

The vast majority of head chefs don’t act out with Gordon Ramsay–style swearing when somebody’s doing something wrong. “People don’t realize how much great communication is required for a successful kitchen,” says David Wong, chef instructor at Dubrulle Culinary Arts at the Art Institute of Vancouver and most recently Canada’s candidate in the Bocuse d’Or international culinary competition. He says that bad behaviour just isn’t tolerated here to the degree that it is in Europe (and on television).

Meanwhile, the challenge in the front of the house is to deliver a seamless experience even when things are going sideways.

“It’s like a show,” says Neil Ingram, co-owner of Boneta. “You’re rehearsing and getting everything ready all day, and when you open, the curtain goes up.” Whatever happens, you roll with it.

If the dishwasher doesn’t show up, Ingram fills in. If the roof leaks, he deals with it while keeping customers oblivious to the crisis, as he did one rainy evening. “It was like Niagara Falls,” he says of the water that poured into the bathroom. He and his partners took turns emptying buckets and attending to guests. “You make sure you’re dry and your shirt’s tucked in,” Ingram recalls, “and then you very casually stroll out [of the bathroom] again.”

What goes on in the dining room can spill over into the kitchen. “The hostess has a huge impact on the entire flow of the place,” says Glenn Cormier, owner of Plan B Lounge and Eatery. “It can start the dominoes falling if she doesn’t seat at a proper pace, or if she mis-seats and puts too many people in one section and overwhelms a server or the kitchen.”

Reservations, too, are an imperfect science. CRU owner Mark Taylor describes the system as “a bit of a chessboard, gambling experience”. Diners may linger longer than expected, yet “you absolutely don’t want to make people feel rushed.”

Restaurateurs really do want diners to enjoy their experience. “The secret is to build up the customer trust relationship,” says Szechuan Chongqing Seafood Restaurant manager Albert Ling. “People don’t just go for the food. They go for how they feel when they’re here.”

Tailoring the food to different tastes is also important. “The traditional way of making Ethiopian food is really, really hot,” says Lalibela co-owner Nehirat Berhe. “Some people can’t handle the heat. So we do it more mild.” If Mumbai Masala owner Lalit Sharma suspects that somebody’s ordered a dish that’s too hot for them, he brings them raita yogurt sauce. “We call it the reset button,” he says.

Alas, some people will never be happy. William Tell Restaurant owner Philippe Doebeli comments on the rare customer who sends food back to the kitchen. “Normally, when a dish is sent back it’s a fairly basic thing, like something was overcooked or not hot,” he says. “But when we get into the situation of ”˜I don’t like the way this tastes’”¦a lot of times there’s no point in making it again for them because they’re not going to like it.” He gives the example of a woman who complained about the texture of the halibut cheeks. “The way she described the texture was exactly how a halibut cheek should be.”

Every restaurant gets the odd obnoxious customer, says Le Crocodile’s Michel Jacob. He cites “people who eat 85 or 90 percent of the food, and then they call the waiter and say, ”˜I don’t like my steak.’ But he ate it all, and now he doesn’t want to pay for it.” Jacob never argues with customers.

But he says that Vancouver diners are also liberal with their praise if they’ve had a good experience. He always appreciates compliments, as does Bishop’s executive chef Andrea Carlson. “It is really, really lovely to hear that people are enjoying themselves,” she says. “It makes a difference to us in the kitchen, for sure.”

Lovin’ those long hours The rewards must be worth it, because so many people we talked to mentioned the long hours they work. For many in the kitchen, 10- to 12-hour shifts are the norm.

“People don’t really realize what everyone’s putting into it, from the chef right down to the dishwasher,” says Dale MacKay, executive chef at Lumií¨re. He works 14-hour days, six days a week. “When people come to start work for me, I ask them, ”˜Do you have a girlfriend or boyfriend?’ ” If they do, he advises them to stay with that person, because “the fact is, you don’t have a social life anymore. Your social life is work, which is good, because we all get along.”

MacKay loves the camaraderie of the kitchen, the shared passion for food and for excelling under the intense pressure of service. “It’s like a sports team,” he says, noting that when the cooks arrive and leave each day, everyone shakes hands. “When you all come together as a unit, it’s just a fantastic thing.”

Restaurateurs, too, are passionate about their jobs.

“I adore what I do,” says Incendio’s Mallel, who works 60 to 100 hours a week. “I love the frenetic energy. I love the customers, I’m passionate about food.”¦You have to enjoy the business, because if you sit down and start analyzing what your income is versus the hours you put in, it’s just not worth it.”

“We’re in this business because we adore it,” says Tom Doughty, co-owner of Fuel and Campagnolo. He turned down a law-school offer to pursue a career as a sommelier. “It’s so much nicer bringing good food and good wine [to people] than subpoenas.”

Says Brix’s Mercer, “My favourite time in life—with the exception of [time spent with] my fiancée—is when it is busy and everybody is working together and everybody is happy in the room. It is a high second to none.”

Just as long as he doesn’t have to crack any eggs.

> With files from Pieta Woolley, Helen Halbert, Miranda Nelson, Shannon Li, and Shadi Elien