Owning Your Own Restaurant

So you want to do it all, do you? It’s not enough to put in sometimes 70 hours a week on your feet lifting heavy pots in 95-degree temperatures. You want more stress than that of figuring out what to do when both the sous chef and the garde manger call in sick. Well, then, you sound like the perfect candidate for your own chef-owned restaurant. Congratulations! You’ve just joined the ranks of a few crazy-as-a-fox chefs who feel just as you do – and to find out a little more about some of them, read on . . .

From picking tomatoes and squash as a child for the evening meal from his parent’s garden to the 2004 opening of his new signature restaurant in Atlanta, Kevin Rathbun’s been blessed with success. At only 17, he drew the attention of renowned chef Bradley Ogden of The American Restaurant in Kansas City, and from there moved on to the prestigious Brennan’s of Houston. He then went to work for none other than Emeril Legasse at New Orleans’ Commanders Palace. After several more stints at illustrious establishments, Kevin opened his own restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia – Rathbun’s – to the delight of many. Already he has received Esquire’s “America’s Best New Restaurant” award and looks forward to many more years of hard work, dedication – and fulfillment.

Another chef and new restrauteur of note is 31-year-old Edward Lee from Brooklyn’s Korean section in New York City. Chef Lee’s cuisine showcases locally grown produce of his restaurant’s Kentucky locale. Growing up pickling eggplant, cucumbers, and carrots with his grandmother formed his love for food and for cooking. Edward worked at Trump Tower’s Terrace Five restaurant during high school, then helped run his family’s eatery in mid-town Manhattan. After working in several more New York kitchens, including one under the tutelage of legendary chef Frank Crispo, he opened his first restaurant in New York’s NoLiTa (North of Little Italy) area. After five years of media acclaim both nationally and internationally, Edward sold out and moved to Kentucky – where he is in the process of repeating his past success.

Diane Forley apprenticed under the Palace restaurant’s Michel Fitoussi in New York City at the tender age of 16. Becoming acquainted with classic French cuisine, she finished her Brown University academic education and moved on to 24 Fifth Avenue, and then to the Gotham Bar and Grill as patisserier (pastry chef). After a year, Diane began work at the Maxim’s Hotel restaurant, Adrienne, and in 1989, the River Café’s chef, David Burke, persuaded her to join him there. After a stint in France, where she learned bread making at the Lenotre School and apprenticing more under a number of notable French chefs, she came back to New York as sous and pastry chef at the Petrossian. She then became chef at Oggi Domani in the Village, where her Italian cuisine won acclaim. Finally realizing her own dream, Diane opened Verbena, garnering a two-star review from The New York Times a mere eight weeks later. With rave reviews from the likes of New York Magazine, Esquire, and Gourmet Magazine, Diane has hit her stride at last.

What all these chefs-turned-proprietors have in common is obvious: a great love of food and cooking – and an amazing source of energy with which one can only be born. Ambition, intelligence, determination, and perseverance also play important roles, as well as an utter lack of fear of failure. “Failure is merely a learning step,” said one chef who knows. After opening one eatery that failed miserably, this chef opened another – after a five-year wait to recuperate losses – to a success of which he never dreamed.

So the question of whether or not to open your own restaurant is up to you: Do you have what it takes? One thing’s for sure – you’ll never know until and unless you try!