The bar at Lucky Diner
When I found out Sean Heather and Scott Hawthorn were taking over Yaletown’s Diner I was thrilled. Lucky Diner, as the new place is named (read the renaming thread here), comes fresh off the success of Gastown’s Salt Tasting Room while another Heather project, Pepper, is cocked, locked, and loaded. They have momentum on their side, not to mention the collective relief of those who were too often disappointed with the service at the old Diner.
But will opening something popular and leveraging its buzz against another new place work? Probably, but that won’t be the key to its success. It’s hardly a model exclusive to the restaurant business, and Salt and Lucky have something far more interesting in common.
Salt was revelatory for reasons that go beyond meat, cheese, and wine. While you’ve likely heard talk about the draw of its “walk on the wild side” location, I never bought into that. So what if it’s in an alley in Gastown? I’d much prefer if it was a block from my house! No, if we’re talking causation, one of the major underpinnings of Salt’s success was the buzz generated around it. This wasn’t conjured from thin air or delivered via a PR guru (though I hear Cate Simpson might now be filling those shoes). Rather, it was the staff that gave its glitter and glow. Getting Jay Jones, one of this city’s most iconic bartenders, on board was a coup. With a career gilded with starring roles at West and Nu, Jones guaranteed what precious few others could: name recogntion. That is, of course, unless you’re Chris Stearns. Formerly of Lumiere and, like Jones, recognised in just about every local media outlet as one of our most talented barkeeps (plus a gifted writer), Stearns brought the kind of rep and gravitas to Salt that put many bums in seats on opening day and in the months that followed.
The truth is, Salt’s impact would not have reverberated so thunderously if this pair hadn’t put their personal stamps on the place from the get go.
So has Sean Heather reinvented the Hollywood star system and applied it to the business of restaurants? Can you imagine On Golden Pond starring Bette Midler instead of Jane Fonda? Would George Lucas be such a strutter if he’d cast Richard Dreyfuss to play Han Solo? Absolutely not. Heather wasn’t the first restaurateur to do this, and he won’t be the last, but he sure is doing it at the right time. Just as different stars guarantee different levels of box office return and name recognition spurs poll points in politics, putting together the right FOH or BOH team seems to be generating free media storms and sparking wagging tongues in the industry. And what the industry thinks is mattering more than ever whether or not a restaurant gets its buzz properly on.
The arrival of Kurtis Kolt, the ex GM of Aurora Bistro and a recipient of a Premier Crew award this year, neatly plugged the gap when Stearns’ 6 month contract expired at Salt. Bringing him over to work as the GM of Lucky, putting former Chambar bar manager Mark Brand (VanMag’s bartender of the year) behind the wood and well, tasking Dan Tigchelaar (long time sous chef to Aurora’s Jeff Van Geest) to run the BOH of all of Heather’s restaurants (including the Irish Heather), and tapping former Chambar GM Quentin Kayne to oversee operations smacks of more than just your average personnel structuring. These were calculated hires, and I doubt they will stop with the coming of Pepper in the new year.
Whether or not these star hires were done with a mind to emulate the sparks that gussied up Salt for broader consumption (with the presence of Jones and Stearns) is a very good question – the answer to which, perhaps, spelling a sea change in how Vancouver restaurateurs consider their staff line ups. What do you think?
