Volume 12 Issue 1 » 33
So, Michel, 30 plus years. It’s been
a long time. What is the secret of
your success?
For any business, actually, you have to be
consistent. That’s the number one reason
we are still open; because we are consistent.
We do real food. We don’t have a new
palate. We don’t try to change at all to a
new palate. We’ve been really happy and
people in Vancouver like the food we do.
And we’ve been doing it for the past 32
years now. If I make a menu only to please
myself, I will close tomorrow. It is the same
in the Michelin restaurants in France. You
have at least 10-15 items that people know
and people come from all over the world
like Malaysia, Japan, to eat that plate.
What keeps you motivated? How
do you keep going? And providing
that level of service and quality and
consistency?
I started being a chef in France at the age
of 14 under a hotel school in Strasbourg.
I have been cooking now for the past 43
years. And every day when I wake up in
the morning, I put my feet in my business
and in my kitchen 100% – not 80 or 90
– and every day is a “go go go.” When we
have some young chefs in the kitchen, I
ask them did you taste the soup, and they
said it’s okay. I tell them don’t ever tell
me okay. We don’t do okay food here. It’s
either good or bad. I am very demanding
to myself and very demanding to my staff.
And, again, this is one of the reasons we
have been open for over 30 years.
How about the enjoyment? What do
you like the most?
The most? Being a chef is instant reward.
You send something out, it will come back
as quickly as it came out. You know every
day when you go to bed, you feel good
or bad. Sometimes when you work for a
company, and you have to draft a ten-page
letter, sometimes it takes a month to have
someone get back to you with responses.
Being a chef, you know whether every
day you feel good or bad, so everything is
instant gratification.