From baking to bistro

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

On Thursday, March 25, Trafalgars Bistro will be donating 25 percent of its daily food revenue to Dining Out for Life, a charity that helps those living with HIV and AIDS. Chef Chris Beltrano will be making a special three-course prix fixe menu that night – and reservations are recommended.

But Trafalgars doesn’t need a special occasion to get a crowd out. The award-winning bistro, at the corner of West 16th Avenue and Trafalgar Street, has become a fixture in Kitsilano. Now entering its bar mitzvah year, the restaurant has thrived, as has its near neighbor, Sweet Obsession Cakes and Pastries Ltd., which celebrated its Sweet 16 last year.

Behind both successful ventures are Lorne Tyczenski and Stephen Greenham. When they started Sweet Obsession in 1993, Tyczenski had been working in the fashion industry.

“I quit and started teaching myself [baking] but realized that I had to have a professional situation to see how it works in a pastry shop,” explained Tyczenski. “So I convinced a woman in West Van who owned a pastry shop called Le Pic-Nic to hire me for a couple of months for free and then at a very, very low wage. I worked there for almost two years.”

The motivation to switch careers came about, he said, “Just because I wanted to do something that I really, really loved doing.... From early on, I loved desserts, I loved pastries, I loved doughnuts and it was a point in my life where ... there was an opportunity to move on to something that I really wanted to do.”

There are many things Tyczenski loves about baking. “I like doing things precisely,” he explained. “With baking and such, if it’s a new recipe that I’m getting from somebody else, I’ll follow it precisely the first time I do it and then see what I think are mistakes or better ways of doing it and then I’ll change it, but it’s still in precision, it’s not ad hoc throwing things in. You still have to figure out, if you’re using leavening agents, you’ve got to figure out how much and salt causes the chemistry to be different, and I like that precision.

“I also love sweets, and it’s very gratifying when you make something. When you cook a dinner, it’s more for sustenance. Dessert isn’t necessary, but people love it.”

When Tyczenski was working at the pastry shop, he began making wedding and other special occasion cakes out of his house. He then rented a kitchen from a catering company at night. “I did up a little flyer and went to all the restaurants and took samples and dropped them off with a flyer and, fortunately, when I went to Bishop’s, Adam Busby was the chef at the time, I talked to him and he loved the things I did, so I was doing all their desserts for a while.”

Tyczenski began to get very busy, baking at home and at the catering kitchen at night.

“I figured, if I could do this,” he said, referring to the tiring schedule, “why not open our own shop, because it was a small step at that point just to rent [my] own space.”

“It wasn’t a sudden decision on anything that we did, it was more of a progression,” explained Greenham, who said that, during Sweet Obsession’s first year, he worked full time at the bakery as well as in real estate. “It got to a point where I just couldn’t deal with doing both and so, basically, there was no decision because by that point Sweet Obsession had taken off and we owed a lot more money on Sweet Obsession, so that was the one that we had to concentrate on.”

The original space of Sweet Obsession was half of what it is today. Tyczenski and Greenham have since taken over the hair salon next door to double the bakery’s space, but Trafalgars came into being in 1997, in part because Sweet Obsession was so small, with one case for the cakes, a little place for the pastry and, technically, three tables with about six chairs, said Greenham.

“We were serving, in the summertime, 30 and 40 people at a time sitting down. We had tables and chairs out to the sidewalk,” said Greenham. “With a path in the middle so that people could get in,” added Tyczenski.

“It was crazy,” said Greenham. “We needed to expand. This was where we wanted to expand as far as the retail was concerned,” he said about Trafalgars’ current location, “but we also needed more production space for the kitchen.”

When the couple first opened Trafalgars, the bakery became production and office space, and Trafalgars became the retail space for the baked goods, as well as a bistro. As it stands now, both Sweet Obsession and Trafalgars serve customers, with the baked goods once displayed in the latter back home in the pâtisserie. (Sweet Obsession still provides the bistro’s desserts.)

About their success, Greenham said, “In individual, privately owned restaurants [as opposed to large chains], there are people who are very good at opening them ... but opening a restaurant and maintaining a restaurant are two different things and you can be very good at conceptualizing a restaurant and opening it, and then the drudgery of day-today operations is something totally different. Maintaining quality, maintaining staff, service, everything, is a totally different thing.... My perception is that that’s why a lot of places close. I mean, a lot of places close very quickly because they weren’t good at the first aspect either, but even if you are good at the first aspect, if you’re not good at the second aspect, then you’re not going to last.”

“That is the key factor,” agreed Tyczenski, “but there’s also location. Stephen was much more hyped on this location than I was when we first opened Sweet Obsession. There was nothing here at all; there was a dry cleaner, the hair salon and Choices, which had been an IGA for many years ... and then there was this one little derelict shop all by itself for rent and Stephen said this is perfect because we’re on 16th, which is a main artery.”

The partners now have 40 employees and their roles have changed. “We hire talented people,” said Tyczenski. “We have them and we give them responsibility,” added Greenham.

From 16-plus-hour days, with occasional holidays or diversions such as cooking classes in France, in “the last few years, we have realized that life is more than work, so we’ve managed to carve out some leisure time,” said Greenham.

The couple spends part of that time in Mexico, after visiting a friend in San Miguel de Allende about two years ago. “We immediately thought that this place is fantastic,” said Tyczenski. On that first visit, they met with a realtor and, a few months later, bought Casa Fortuna. They have since bought a second property, Casa Estaban, and both places are available for rent.

The pair are learning Spanish. Tyczenski also reads Hebrew, studying Torah every week with Rabbi David Mivasair of Ahavat Olam.

“I wasn’t raised Jewish,” explained Tyczenski. “My Jewishness is way back on my father’s side.... I obviously had to go through a full conversion to be fully involved, which I did.”

There are many things that drew Tyczenski to Judaism. “I’ve always been connected to the Judeo-Christian story, so that’s where I felt most at home,” he explained. “I actually taught myself the Hebrew alphabet when I was about 10 and I don’t know why – I couldn’t say them because I didn’t have anyone to repeat them, but I knew their names, so there was always a connection there – but I’ve always also been very spiritually connected; ritual has always been very important to me. That’s a major part of Judaism, the ritual aspect.” He also likes “that it’s something that you own yourself rather than it belonging to somebody else, each Jew has their own approach.”

For his part, Greenham describes himself as “devotedly agnostic.”

While the two were married in a Jewish ceremony just over a year ago, they have been together more than 26 years. With their two houses in Mexico, the two restaurants and the relatively new ability to take time off, Tyczenski said there are no other entrepreneurial ventures on the horizon.

As for others wanting to start their own business, Greenham said, “If you’re planning on making a change, do it gradually and don’t give up what you have.” He advised anyone feeling, for example, unfulfilled artistically at their current job to consider, “Can you fulfil that outside of your work?... Can you take a year’s absence and go do something?”

“A lot of people say that they want to do something different and they want to own their own business because they want to work for themselves,” added Tyczenski, but they need to “get beyond that, because you’re not working for yourself.... It’s not just one boss anymore, it’s all of who you’re selling your product to.”

“And your employees, too,” interjected Greenham. “You realize you have a huge responsibility to your employees.”

“If you’re serious about wanting to get into a particular industry,” advised Tyczenski, “go and volunteer to work as an employee full time, not just hanging around watching but actually doing. Convince the employer, like I did, that, ‘I’ll work as an employee, not as an observer, just as if you were paying me, and if you think I’m doing a great job, then take me on.’ And work in the industry for a couple of years.

“A lot of times, especially in this industry, people see it from the outside and they think, ‘I’d love to own a restaurant because I could just sit and drink wine and wave to people, a constant dinner party.’”

For Tyczenski and Greenham, after many years of hard work, the dinner party may finally be starting.

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