Chapter 1: Building a Tiny Restaurant in the Middle of Nowhere Little Burgundy was a refuge. To escape our prior workplace, Fred and I would go for drives around Montreal, stopping at hardware stores, food markets, Chinatown, old corner restaurants. Sometimes we would browse junk shops or raid the downtown Salvation Army. Maybe we were already starting to build a restaurant in our minds, or maybe we just needed to get away from the supper-club scene on Boulevard Saint Laurent, where we worked. Either way, we were always on the lookout for old plates, oyster forks, live king crabs, shitty chairs, medicine cabinets, or the ultimate baloney sandwich. All roads led to Little Burgundy. Little Burgundy is an area in southwest Montreal bordering the Lachine Canal. In the mid-1700s, French colonists named it La Petite-Bourgogne because of its resemblance to its namesake in France.
It sits on a plateau, south of Mount Royal and just north of the Saint Lawrence River. Home to the Canadian National Railway yards and the Canadian Steel plant, Little Burgundy was, and remains, a working-class neighborhood. For the past ten years, it has been featured in every local magazine''s "next up-and-coming neighborhood" article, but for reasons both obvious and obscure, it has been slow to reach its supposed potential. Notre Dame is Little Burgundy''s main north-to-south thoroughfare, a street full of inimitable characters, historical edifices, and appealing old boutiques, among them the amazing Grand Central antiques, the eclectic and now sadly defunct Arcadia, the Irish lady junk shop, and the All Things Vintage store. Nearby is antique purveyor Madame Cash, who earned her nickname in the 1960s from cashing government checks for residents in the surrounding row houses. Across the street stands the majestic Corona Theatre. Ella and Oliver Jones played there; so did Oscar Peterson, who was born in Little Burgundy. Around the corner is the ever-abiding Atwater Market.
This neighborhood has everything going for it. Among all this stood Café Miguel, a diamond in the (very) rough located at 2491 Rue Notre Dame West owned by a wildly passive-aggressive troll of a man. He made six killer sandwiches and espresso as strong as it was good. And while his ambition to open a small restaurant was good, he soon ran into trouble--trolls, alas, don''t make good restaurant owners. His trouble was our opportunity, and Allison, Fred, and I got to thinking. We knew we could cook, we knew what the restaurant should look like, and we knew intuitively that we could get people to come to Little Burgundy. But it would take work. For one thing, the café was a bit of a dump, like a dirty pig that wears a dress, too many accessories, and perfume.
It had a solid, yet filthy shell and was furnished with IKEA tables, school chairs, and a blackboard with sandwich listings full of spelling mistakes. There was a six-burner stove, a deep fryer, a ventilation hood, an espresso machine, and a working chimney. We would essentially be acquiring the bare bones of a restaurant, which might make it workable, since we had very little money to start. The backyard was full of graffiti, cigarette butts, beer bottles, tiny plastic bags, and what Fred believed was industrial waste. The clientele consisted of local furniture refinishers and antique dealers--basically guys with yellow fingers who stunk of lacquer thinner. Allison, Fred, and I held meetings in my truck in the backyard, during which we brainstormed on what our restaurant might look like, what food we would serve, and who we would harass--or terrorize--for favors to get it off the ground. We had anxiety about putting it all together, and for good reason: we don''t have the organizational skills to do anything. Ask anyone and they''ll tell you that we essentially have the attention spans of ferrets on speed.
At least Fred and I do. Allison is the voice of reason. So we met with three friends who also happen to be financial guys, Ronnie Steinberg, Jeff Baikowitz, and David Lisbona, to see if our idea could become a financial reality. We don''t remember much of the meeting except that it was boring, it was held in a boardroom, and after five minutes I was wearing a baseball helmet I picked off a nearby shelf and Fred was chasing me around with no shirt on. The obvious conclusion is that Ronnie, Jeff, and David convinced us it could work (if we did it on the cheap), and they agreed to partner in for 10 percent. Jeff tells us now that when we left the room, he told Ronnie and David to give whatever amount they would feel comfortable never seeing again. We are still partners with these three, and if it weren''t for them, none of this would be possible. If you walk into David Lisbona''s office today, you''ll see seventy-five laminated newspaper clippings about Joe Beef alongside one picture of his kids.
Their faith and pride in us are astounding. Building Joe Beef It took two months to build. We scrounged quickly to make it work. The restaurant came together with love, about twenty packs of wainscoting, and unlimited generosity and interest from friends. Mathieu Gaudet, a Montreal sculptor, friend, and Saint Henri local, built, among other things, our tables. On first glance, they look like they are ebony and mahogany, but they are actually MDF (medium-density fiberboard) combined with that really bad Masonite pressboard and many shiny coats of oil finish. He also built the bar from an old farmhouse floor that probably had fifteen coats of lead paint on it. (Don''t worry, it''s sealed; you can''t go crazy from eating at the Joe Beef bar.
) The beautiful old tavern chairs we found by chance. We spotted them when we were driving around one day and pulled over and asked the guy what he wanted for them. He said twenty bucks--not per chair, but for the lot. Our friend Peter Hoffer did a beautiful installation of paintings: about twenty small abstracts and landscapes on one wall. We have always liked Peter''s aesthetic, whether it is of Quebec trees or girls without shirts. His art fits our rustic environment and feels like it has always been there. The eccentric and kooky Joe Battat, another one of our friends and favorite customers, showed up one day in the dining room with a giant bison head. It looks real and is about half the size of a Honda Civic.
We zapped it onto the wall of the bathroom, and it has been scaring young kids ever since. A couple of years back, one of our customers, Howie Levine, gave Fred a fart machine with a remote control. Fred immediately hid it in an ear of the bison, so whenever someone walked into the bathroom and closed the door, Fred would go crazy on the remote and wait for the customer to emerge in a daze of confused humiliation. The bathroom also boasts old photos taken at Bob Dylan and Neil Young concerts by Joe Battat and the door is covered with old Canadian license plates, fishing permits, and Quebec signage. Serendipitously, all the crazy elements seem to come together. People still show up with old nostalgia-laden items that somehow fit the spirit of Joe Beef--things they''ve found at yard sales, in their grandma''s attic, at the back of the garage. We have a barracuda caught by a Quebec politico, Viking candelabras, bear heads, a grand notice of the beatification of the now good brother Saint Andre, whale bones, trophies (Best Eater: Kevin), pictures of Uncle Jack fishing for salmon in British Columbia, and glasses shaped like naked women. In other words, ambience is a big part of Joe Beef.
The lighting, the music, and what''s on the walls matter a great deal to us. Wine and food are not the only story. A true restaurateur has to be a jack of many trades. You see it all the time in restaurants: the food is good and the wine list is awesome, but the chairs suck, the art on the wall is revolting, and a Café Del Mar CD is playing continuously on the sound system. You can be a good cook or even a great chef, but it doesn''t make you a restaurateur. You have to have other interests, and you have to actually read. Thankfully, Fred, Allison, and I geek out over the same classic stuff: a perfect Adirondack chair, a red vinyl banquette with brass nails, a pretty oyster-bar counter, old enameled cast-iron sinks, industrial lamps, a banged-up Rancilio coffee machine. We like wood, old paint, and a simple touch of cottage.
This is why we love Maine, the Gaspé, and Kamouraska. I had so many bad experiences with Montreal''s "hottest" designers, who simply couldn''t design a proper service station, that I ended up buying an old medicine cabinet for Joe Beef. Its shelves, drawers, and glass bottles that once held swabs now hold knives. It works and it looks like it is where it should be. As Joe Beef came together, that''s how it felt in general: like it had always been there. The restaurant group we worked with prior to Joe Beef never understood our cooking, but the customers did. We are thankful for the experience; it just wasn''t for us. We wanted our next project to be different from anything we had done before.
We wanted to open a small, simple bistro, not unlike what Sam Hayward was doing with beautiful country food at Fore Street in Portland, Maine. We imagined we would walk to the market and buy our produce every day. I was going to cook the meats, Fred was going to do the appetizers and vegetables, and then we were going to do the dishes . together. Allison would run the dining room, and John Bil would tend bar and shuck the occasional oyster. We would.