All over Toronto the grass is being watered at hot spots with couples at the helm, even though it’s been said that the only thing harder than running a restaurant is running a relationship.
One of the city’s hippest new covers is Fonda Balam, a Mexican joint on Dundas Street with the backing of Matty Matheson, owned by husband and wife Kate Chomyshyn and Julio Guajardo. They’ve been together for 18 years and say their relationship creates a symbiotic approach to restaurant management.
“We don’t always get along — we’re two separate people — and stressful situations come up, but this place is our life and everything revolves around it,” says Chomyshyn.
Guajardo says he couldn’t imagine running Fonda without his romantic partner.
“Having someone you love to deal with the same situations is extraordinarily helpful, even fun,” he says. “We balance each other out: when I feel like giving up, she’s the push to keep going, and it also goes the other way. The restaurant benefits by having both of us involved, and you taste that certain something — that care, attention to detail, that love — in the food.”
The other night during the Raptors game, Danny Barna ran a roast chicken to hungry customers then stopped for a quick Jameson’s with some thirsty reporters at the bar. His hot spot, Danny’s Pizza Tavern, which he runs with his fiancée, Anna Hopkins, is a year old and buzzing, a Toronto spin on a New York institution mixing good vibes with good food on College Street in a welcoming, friendly atmosphere.
Barna and Hopkins, who complete each other’s sentences and have been together for seven years — and even look alike and dress the same — never went to chef school but have the indelible quality they bestow on their guests: they say the warmth and generosity of their relationship imbues every aspect of their of- the-moment bistro.
“It’s like we’re inviting people into our living room. We’re hosting a dinner party every night,” says Hopkins. “If we were going to do a restaurant together,it had to be somewhere that feels good, and I think Danny’s probably does mirror our relationship — after all,the grass is only green where you water it.”
There may be nothing we want more from the places that feed us than gentleness, good food and warmth. For a huge swath of Toronto — from diners to their almost six hundred employees — those places are owned by Jeff and Nuit Regular, the husband-and- wife cooking team behind Sukhothai, Pai and Kiin. With Nuit handling the kitchen and Jeff handling everything else, the restaurants emit a caring, delicious and thoughtful vibe.
“What we’re both about is the power of love and a belief that we need to share more of it, at all times,” says Jeff, adding that his family business not only employs his brother, but several of his wife’s cousins too. “With us, things get heated fast, but resolve fast — we’ve learned to let things go as we’ve grown the business and raised our family at the same time.”
As their business became more complicated since 2008 — there’s now catering, ghost kitchens and books, along with the 10 restaurants they own — they’ve relied more deeply on each other.
“We may not always agree, but there’s always respect,” says Nuit, adding that forgiveness is another cornerstone for making relationships, and restaurants, work. “Trust gives you confidence to move forward and, because we’re in a relationship, we’re moving in the same direction — we’re co-workers, but there’s this invisible, powerful, compassionate shorthand.”
Craig Wong is the chef at Patois, which sits beside Fond Balam and is a delicious Jamaican- Asian soul food spot that he runwith his wife, Ivy Lam. Lam says,“Our view of how we run the restaurant is the same way that we operate our home; we try to always do better and not repeat mistakes.”
Of course, if the restaurant fails, that means both husband and wife are out of work, but Wong says that they’re all in
for both the relationship and the restaurant anyways, and they feel confident working together, betting on themselves.
“At the end of the day, it’s not only how we stay together as a couple, but how we make the restaurant, just like the
relationship, as good as it can possibly be.”
Back at Danny’s Pizza Tavern on a cool Wednesday night in Little Italy, it’s impossible not to be charmed. Hopkins and her fiancée treat their staff like family, and you see it in the breezy way they treat guests. It’s warm, inviting and
friendly — the kind of room where you could see love last.
“It’s like we’re inviting people inside to sit amidst pieces from our relationship,” says Hopkins. “How could you not feel welcomed eating pizza on a cold evening while my fiancé runs pizzas, and you’re surrounded by pieces from my childhood home?”