This is the second part of a two-part chef chat interview. To read the first part of our chat, click here.
This week we're chatting with David Denis of Le Mistral, a French restaurant located in the Energy Corridor. Yesterday, Denis shared his history working as a private chef, and told us his reason for opening outside of the Inner Loop. Today we continue our conversation.
EOW: If you were so successful at the former location, why did it take seven years to open this current location?
DD: We own our building and our land. I'm not rich. I started with nothing. I didn't have mom and dad give me money -- we give them money. So, what we did, we ran this other restaurant for seven years. And we were booming. The last two years at that location, this area became the Energy Corridor.
EOW: When did you open the original restaurant?
DD: We opened three days before 9/11. We almost closed. Everything shut down in the United States, remember? We burned our cash flow in two months. At the time, we did it all. My brother painted it. I remember my brother was painting the wall, and the TV was on, and this thing happened, and our opening was two days after that. It was a terrible time. I didn't think we were going to make it.
EOW: So, two months out, you burned all your cash; how did you pull through?
DD: I'm glad we owned a restaurant. I don't know what we would eat otherwise. And can you imagine, I was a private chef, I was making a ton of money. And I decided to stop that and open my own restaurant. I got married in 2000. When we were dating, I was the breadwinner in the relationship. Then we got married, and my wife had to help support me.
EOW: When did you start having the idea that you wanted to open up bigger and own your own land?
DD: It was year number six. We were very successful, lunch and dinner, the restaurant is booming. You'd be surprised. Even now, Thursday through Saturday night, we are filled with Inner Loopers. Anyway, everybody was telling us, "Guys, you should open inside the Loop," and "What the hell are you doing here?" We had a choice to make. We could move inside the Loop, but we could not own our land or our building, because it was way too expensive. At the time, we found out that this place would turn into the Energy Corridor. So we were like, "Let's invest in real estate." So that's what we did; we bought one acre of land on Eldridge Parkway, and we built 11,000 square feet on top of that.