WHY I LEFT THE RESTO INDUSTRY
Former chef opens up about stresses
I first met Stelio Perombelon in 1997, in the small kitchen of the famous Montreal restaurant Les Caprices de Nicolas.
There was major star power in that kitchen, starting with the late Nicolas Jongleux, for whom the restaurant was named. William Frachot took over after Jongleux’s departure, but moved back to France to run the restaurant in his family’s Hostellerie du Chapeau Rouge in Dijon, which boasts two Michelin stars.
Perombelon was second in command under Frachot, and was promoted to chef after Frachot left. The promotion was risky: at 28, Perombelon had never held that high a position in any top restaurant. But he rose to the occasion, and a star chef was born.
That achievement is but one in Perombelon’s 25-year career. Now 47, he has worked in or opened many of Montreal’s most famous restaurants. He has written books, appeared on TV and received international accolades, culminating in rave reviews while at his latest post, as chef/ partner at the Laurier Ave. wine bar M.Mme.
All the more surprising, then, that this year he decided to give it all up. His last service at M.Mme
was in April.
I received a note from Perombelon saying he was not only leaving the restaurant, but the restaurant world.
“I won’t stop being a cook, but I very much doubt I will lead a restaurant again,” he wrote. We made a date to talk.
The struggles of the life of a chef have come to light ever since the publication of Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential in 2000. Since then, dozens of other chefs’ memoirs have detailed careers rife with psychological abuse, substance abuse, odious work conditions and long hours, as well as intense struggles involving personal relationships and lack of family time, leading to divorce, depression and, in some cases, suicide.
The image of the suave star chef surrounded by fawning foodies is misleading; the day-to-day, month-to-month, year-to-year grind of the profession wears down even the most successful. Besides eye-opening autobiographies from the likes of Bourdain, Éric Ripert, Jacques Pépin, Gabrielle Hamilton and Grant Achatz, recent documentaries detailed the colourful yet often depressing careers of Georges Perrier (King Georges, 2015) and Jeremiah Tower (The Last Magnificent, 2016).
Professional cooking can be an ideal outlet for youngsters who may not be the sharpest academically but have good dexterity, a love of discipline and organization, and an artistic sensibility. A career as a chef can be extremely fulfilling under the right conditions. And yet it is so challenging that many cooks are leaving the restaurant world in favour of work that is less stressful, less time-consuming, less physically draining and often better paying.
While Perombelon is now on that ever-growing list, his career is the envy of many an up-andcoming cook.
Born in France to parents of Mauritian descent, he moved to Montreal at the age of four, and his father took a job working for the STM.
“My dad worked evening shifts, from 3 to 11 p.m.,” Perombelon recalled when we met at Leméac, a restaurant whose menu he conceived back in 2001. “And I remember even back then vowing to never take a job where I wouldn’t see my kids.”
His early food memories are of farm stands in Fabreville, where he grew up. “I remember even back then being drawn to all these vegetables,” he said. “We ate Mauritian dishes on the weekends, but day to day we had very French food, which I loved. And everything was seasonal. We’d buy strawberries in June, and raspberries and tomatoes in July. We’d freeze everything in a big chest freezer. It was fun, and I was already interested in cooking.”
When Perombelon was 13, his mother died of cancer. “She knew she was sick for a while,” he said, “but she never told my father. But from a very young age, she prepared me. By age 10, I was doing the laundry and baking cakes on weekends.”
An only child, Perombelon was now alone with his father, who sent his son to Collège Français secondary school with the intention that he attend university.
“Immigrant parents want their kids to go to university, but I was only average at school. I played the bass guitar and thought of being a musician for a while before I entered the Université de Montréal to study teaching, but I left after a few months. It took me a long time to tell my dad.”
Immigrant parents want their kids to go to university, but I was only average at school. I played the bass guitar and thought of being a musician for a while.
Perombelon worked as a bike courier for two years — “summer and winter,” he stated proudly — but one day saw a cooking-school ad in a newspaper “and I thought, why not?” With his father’s blessing, a year later Perombelon entered the Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec. “From the first day, it was so clear to me that I was doing the right thing.”
After graduating, he staged in France for one of the most famous chefs at the time, Bernard Loiseau. During his second year at the ITHQ, he entered a brigade that would influence his career even more, when he started to work nights at a hot new restaurant on St-Denis Street run by a young Québécois chef. The restaurant was Toqué!, and the chef was Normand Laprise.
Perombelon spent two happy years in Laprise’s kitchen before heading downtown at the suggestion of Frachot to work with Jongleux, Laprise’s main rival at the time.
“I never had the guts to tell Normand where I was going after I left Toqué!,” he said. “When his mushroom supplier, Serge, who used to also sell to Nicolas, would show up, I’d go hide in the refrigerator so he wouldn’t tell Normand that he saw me.”
After four years at Les Caprices, two of them as chef, Perombelon left to open Leméac, where the majority of the menu can still be credited to him today. During his time there, Perombelon hired young pastry chef Patrice Demers, now owner of Patrice Pâtissier. Soon after, Demers and restaurateur Claude Beausoleil began plans for a restaurant where the menu would be built around vegetables. Opened on Van Horne Ave. in 2003, with Perombelon as chef, the restaurant would be called Les Chèvres.
“After two years at Leméac, I wanted to go back to doing highend cooking,” said Perombelon. “We ended up running what turned out to be a revolutionary restaurant. It was all vegetable centred, with only foie gras, fish and goat meat as proteins. We were shaking the foundations, even if we didn’t realize it.”
Indeed they were: Les Chèvres was the first Montreal restaurant to feature a vegetable- and dessert-focused menu, along with a wine list featuring natural, organic and (gasp!) privately imported wines — popular today, but completely unknown then.
Former GQ food columnist Alan Richman told Eater Montreal in 2013: “Les Chèvres in Outremont was a favourite. I was crazy about that place. It was stunning. I didn’t like vegetables that much — I still don’t — but it was staggeringly good. The emphasis on vegetables and local ingredients was ahead of its time. If it were still open, Les Chèvres would be modern today.”
Les Chèvres was so successful right out of the gate that they opened a more casual space, Le Chou, next door. But as wonderful as it was, Les Chèvres lasted only three years.
“We had a great first six to eight months,” said Perombelon. “We were in Condé Nast Traveler, on enRoute’s Best New Restaurants list, and more. There just wasn’t enough money to keep it going. Maybe we were ahead of our time.”
The months after Les Chèvres’ closing were tough on Perombelon, who incurred debts in the bankruptcy. He taught at the ITHQ for nine months, consulted on the menus at Pullman wine bar and eventually worked on a new casual restaurant with a bistronomie concept, Les Cons Servent.
“Truth is, I was ashamed after Les Chèvres closed,” he said. “People would ask me for quotes for stories, recipes, to be on TV, but I declined everything.
“You get used to the attention of being a top chef, but I noticed quickly that the media people were more interested in the bigger names like Martin (Picard) or Normand (Laprise). Already I wanted to get away from the stoves a bit.”
In 2012, Perombelon headed back into fine-dining territory with Sinclair, a swish restaurant in the St- Sulpice Hotel. During his three years there, his father was diagnosed with colon cancer, and died after an operation. Perombelon was devastated.
“That’s when I first began to feel that my profession was taking me away from my family.”
After leaving Sinclair, Perombelon was already thinking his time as a chef was done. He spent the next year teaching and promoting two books, 25 verbes pour apprendre à cuisiner and Boulange et boustifaille, the latter co-authored with baker Albert Elbilia. But the call to the kitchen returned, and he was approached by Asbed and Sevan Istanboulian to head a wine bar being built next door to their Laurier Ave. coffee shop Toi Moi & Café. The restaurant, to be called M.Mme., was chic, large enough to incorporate private rooms, and featured casual and gastronomic menus. Everything was built to highlight Perombelon’s cooking. Who could resist?
M.Mme took 20 months to open, but when it finally did, reviews were excellent. The chef ’s delicate touch and knack for subtle flavours and diverse textures was obvious, as was his impeccable technique. Dishes included Quebec buffalo mozzarella cubes with tomato jam garnished with pea shoots and oven-dried vegetable peels, as well as raw hamachi topped with three kinds of radish, curry oil and popped wild rice.
“I always cooked like a jazz musician,” said Perombelon. “I improvise. I create. I never want to make the same dish twice. That’s how I tried to cook. I wanted each dish to be a statement — as in, this is where I am now.”
It looked like Perombelon was back in his element, especially when he was among 10 chefs in the running for Les Lauriers de la gastronomie québécoise’s Chef of the Year award. But in January it all started to unravel.
“My 18-month-old daughter was admitted to St-Justine Hospital for a health problem that was extremely serious. I rushed her in to the hospital, driving with one hand and holding on to her with the other. The doctors took over and I stayed until my wife showed up after work, but then I had to leave because I had a winemaker’s dinner at the restaurant and two members of my kitchen staff were off that night.
“My daughter remained in hospital for six days, and each day I was at the restaurant and away from her I grew more and more bitter. I was thinking a lot about how cooks don’t go to the dentist, or to the doctor. They don’t take a day off, because they don’t want to let the team down no matter what.”
After much reflection, Perombelon told his family he was leaving the profession and gave in his resignation at M.Mme. Since then, he has been working on a book based on vegetable cookery and concentrating on his new passion: running. He’s preparing to run his first marathon in Montreal in September.
“I started running when I turned 40, and I fell in love with it,” he said. “It helped me a lot with discipline. So many chefs are on antidepressants, but running is what has helped me alleviate stress and stay fit. It’s easy to pass up that beer or smoked meat after the night service when you plan to run 10K the next day.
“I still have the energy to run 80 kilometres a week, but I don’t have the energy to put in 80 hours in the kitchen.
“I had no family when I was young; the kitchen was my family. But now I cook for my kids every night, and I’m happy with that. I want to give them a better life.”
I always cooked like a jazz musician. I improvise. I create. I never want to make the same dish twice .… I wanted each dish tobea statement.