Restaurateurs of the Year 2009

What do La Belle Vie, Solera, Smalley’s Caribbean Barbeque & Pirate Bar, and Barrio have in common? Their sunny cuisines and equally sunny owners. Tim McKee and Josh Thoma have brought us French Mediterranean elegance, glittering Spanish tapas, authentic jerk barbecue, and Latino street food with authentic flavors and ambiance to match. Over the past decade, McKee, forty-one, and Thoma, thirty-eight, have seduced and fed us well.

Their awards and honors from Gourmet, Food & Wine, The New York Times , and the James Beard Society have put our cities on the nation’s culinary map. They’ve breathed life into historic buildings, they employ more than 300 and support a burgeoning network of local farmers and producers. With ambitious menus and extraordinary service, they educate and entertain. And these titans of the table haven’t lost their boyish charm.

“We are not looking for that pot of gold or the home run,” says Thoma, with an earnest, open smile. “We are not about great big concepts, but small, well-executed and focused places we can get our arms around.” Blond and bearish, enthusiastic McKee adds, “Our local scene is exciting, changing all the time. The other day, I was working with a farmer and thinking, ‘This is what Alice Waters gets to do!’ I cook something I like, and pretty soon I guess I’m introducing people to salt cod or jerk chicken.”

If they could credit their success to a single source, both point to their years working with Jay Sparks in the 1990s at the much lamented and lost D’Amico & Partners restaurant Azur. (Sparks is now executive chef for the D’Amico restaurants.) “We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Jay,” says Thoma of his time at the legendary venture in Gaviidae Common. McKee interjects that “before Jay, we were just cooks. Jay’s passion, curiosity, and determination to get it right inspired us all. We’d go off to research cultures and cuisines, hit the library, share cookbooks, then come back and talk with each other.”

Recalls McKee, “The D’Amicos are very disciplined. They’re meticulous, organized, and efficient. Their main concerns were quality and integrity. They did an incredible job cultivating people. When Jay hired me, I had little experience, but I was lucky to be around the best cooks, working in one of the best kitchens in America. To this day, that food is the closest to my heart.”

Back then, a bright constellation lit Sparks’s kitchens: Isaac Becker (112 Eatery), Doug Flicker (Porter & Frye), Seth Bixby Daugherty (Real Food Initiatives), Jim Grell (Modern Café), and Jordan Smith (Black Sheep Pizza). “We learned from and with each other,” says McKee.

Of those times, Sparks recalls that “Tim was very serious about his work. He cared a great deal. You could tell that. We researched, and we cooked, and we’d talk about food on the line, and then when we were done with work, we’d go out for a beer and talk about food some more. When I worked with Greg Westcott at 510 Groveland, he made each chef responsible for a special, the appetizer or entrée, and I took that philosophy with me to D’Amico. It’s how you learn. I remember Josh asking me about going off to the CIA [Culinary Institute of America], and I said, ‘Why would you when there is so much going on here?’ ”

Neither Thoma nor McKee were planning restaurant careers when they took kitchen jobs as undergraduates at the University of Minnesota. “We were just trying to earn a little cash,” Thoma says. “I had no idea when I started cooking that this is where I’d be,” says McKee. Thoma studied design, McKee anthropology. Thoma worked his way “up the food chain” at places such as Bakers Square, Monte Carlo, and, one summer in Alaska during fishing season, at an all-night joint. (“The bar rush was at 6 am.”) He came back to a job at Sweeney’s before hiring on at D’Amico’s Azur and its casual sibling Toulouse, where he did a variety of tasks such as delivering food, sweeping, and worked in the kitchens. He recalls one thirty-six-hour shift peeling potatoes and carrots for a big event. McKee came to Azur from a gig as a sauté cook at Figlio, where he and Thoma metworking the line. (Anoush Ansari of Hemisphere Restaurant Partners, last year’s Restaurateur of the Year, worked at Azur at that time as well.)

When Sparks left Azur for D’Amico Cucina, they followed him, and within months, McKee was promoted to chef and Thoma to sous chef. In their twenties, they were the youngest cooks—and constantly teased. (McKee earned the name “Flipper” for the way he tossed back his blond locks.)

In 1997, Food & Wine named McKee one of the country’s ten best new chefs. He and Thoma decided to strike out on their own. “It was something we’d kicked around,” recalls Thoma. “We figured, now or never.” Bill Summerville, who later became the third partner in La Belle Vie, worked with the two at Cucina as well.

La Belle Vie’s Stillwater location was a mixed blessing. “We didn’t get lost out there as we might have if we’d opened downtown,” says McKee. “But it never really became the destination we imagined.” Still, the French Mediterranean menu “allowed Tim to go back to some of the things he learned early on at Azur,” recalls Thoma. “He made them his own. As much as we both loved the rigor of Cucina’s northern Italian palette, it was good to put charmoula on the menu again.”

McKee took the helm in the kitchen, Thoma continued at his side, and they contracted with Ansari, who had opened Atlas Grill, to organize the front of the house, set up systems, and train staff. “There were days when I’d race up to my station after trying to reconcile ledgers,” Thoma cackles. Computer savvy and good with numbers, he began to take over management responsibilities. McKee would craft the menu. “No one layers flavors quite the way Tim does,” says Thoma, who would critique to help sharpen the focus of dishes. The collaborative approach survives to this day.

“Spanish flavors always interested us. Tapas just made sense,” Thoma recalls of the decision to open Solera, their second restaurant, in 2003. The two took off for Barcelona, digging into research. “We imagined a small, intimate space,” says McKee. But following 9/11, financing dried up. “Thanks to [building owner] Lee Lynch, we were able to put Solera in the Backstage at Bravo space,” says Thoma.

Ambitious and gleeful, Solera’s menu mixes traditional tapas and modern elements in continuous evolution. A sexy amalgam of sparkling tiles and glittering mosaics, colorful light fixtures, and rich colors, all reference the art nouveau style of the bars they’d discovered in Spain. An immediate hit, Food & Wine hailed Solera as one of the best new restaurants in the world in 2003. By then, Thoma had hung up his apron for good and centralized the two restaurants’ systems. Though he misses the intensity of working in the kitchen (“being in the zone,” as he calls it), he now manages full-time.

Back in Stillwater, the lease (with its unfavorable terms) was up. It was time for La Belle Vie to move to the big city. A tip from a resident in the 510 Groveland Building co-op set things in motion. In 2005, Gordon Schutte’s storied restaurant, as well as the building’s venerable parlor, became Thoma and McKee’s.

The design for La Belle Vie by Shea Architects honored 510’s history and updated the space with sumptuous additions. The crown moldings and terrazzo floors were restored and polished; cushy new furniture, rugs, and luminous gold drapes added life to the lounge. In the dining room, a large captain’s table and wine cabinets underscored an aura of wealth and stability. Summerville joined the group as sommelier and became a managing partner overseeing the front of the house. Johnny Michaels, the city’s star mixologist, created a long list of drinks and lent his hand to Solera’s collection of sherries.

Then in 2008, the guys went in a new direction—informality. McKee, Thoma, and longtime La Belle Vie cook Shawn Smalley opened Smalley’s Caribbean Barbeque & Pirate Bar in Stillwater. They’ve brought all they learned in Jamaica about grilling over pimento wood to the St. Croix’s shores. McKee says that Smalley’s jerk chicken and ribs were what “we all begged for when Shawn cooked staff meals at La Belle Vie. It makes sense for him to have a place of his own.” Michaels designed an array of mojitos and fanciful drinks with names like Blackbeard and Barbarbossa; bar manager Frank Brewer crafted a list of rare rums. It’s a shaggy, eat-with-your-hands joint, appealing to pirates of all ages.

Next up, Barrio. “Latin street food is what I love to eat, but never get to cook,” says McKee. Local developer Tim Rooney and real estate man Ryan Burnet approached McKee and Thoma with the concept. “We knew that the food had to be good,” says Thoma. “Otherwise, once the buzz dies off, it would be just another tequila bar.” The menu, spanning Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, is sassy and bold, with dishes such as diver scallop ceviche, tequila-cured salmon, and barbeque pork sopes with habanero-pickled onions. More than 100 tequilas can be paired with a wealth of compadres , such as spicy grapefruit or cilantro-tomato juices. There’s a long list of Michaels’s cocktails—The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Cobra Verde . . . . The decadent, playful, Day of the Dead vibe, bright flavors, and low prices shine (small plates start at $7.50). “The concept was selfish,” says Thoma. “Some nights, I just want a good beer and taco after a long day.” Selfish never made so many people so happy.

Managing four places at once, the partners work collaboratively. Both check in with each operation by phone daily and make a point of meeting in person at the restaurants once a week. Systems are centralized and managed by Thoma at Solera. Each establishment is a separate company with different investors. McKee and Thoma’s partnership does not have a corporate moniker.

“We’ve all worked together for a long time,” says McKee. “Bill Fairbanks has been a chef at Solera and La Belle Vie and is now executive chef at Barrio. Mike DeCamp, chef at La Belle Vie, has worked with me for thirteen years. Shawn Smalley and I have been together at La Belle Vie for I can’t remember how long, and we both live in Stillwater. I credit the quality of our servers to Bill Summerville’s ability to train people. We know each other so well we can finish each other’s sentences.”

After an ambitious growth spurt in a spiraling economy, 2009 would seem like a time for caution and fine-tuning. “The days of unlimited opportunities are gone,” says Thoma. “It was there for Cucina in the golden days, it was there for La Belle Vie when it first opened. I think there will always be a place for high-end establishments where you can celebrate anniversaries and special occasions, where dinner is an experience, like theater. But those aren’t the places where folks just go out to eat.”

Which doesn’t explain why the duo has a variety of irons in the fire for this year, even more new projects than in 2008. Perhaps success is a powerful attractor, thus the projects are now coming to them. So they are pushing forward, rather than consolidating their winnings. There will be a Barrio in Lowertown St. Paul; a cocktail-oriented concept, sans velvet rope and cover charge, geared to the thirty-five-plus crowd; and McKee will reconcept the flagging Cue at the Guthrie, under contract to its new foodservice vendor, Culinaire. All three projects are to debut by summer.

The duo has a lot of talented people they’d like to keep around. And one way to do that is through the promotions that come with growth. “I have a terrific staff,” McKee notes. “They are young, ambitious, and upbeat. It’s important to stay positive and to promote those you work with. It’s a stretch to replace them and bring more into the fold.”

But the duo can’t possibly employ everyone they train, and, eventually, those chefs step out on their own as well, seeding the town with more good cooks, continuing the example Jay Sparks set back at Azur.

“Josh and Tim are examples of the most positive trend I’ve seen in dining in this town over the years: the rise in chef-owned restaurants,” says Sparks. “There weren’t many when I began, except Lucia’s. It’s great to see chefs strike out on their own. It’s good for the industry. It’s good for us all.”