Balancing biscuits and baby at Saturday Dinette
Saturday Dinette, 9:30 a.m.
All day long, people wander into the restaurant, asking Suzanne Barr the same two questions: Are you open for lunch? Are you the baby lady?
The chef could easily place a sign on the door of her restaurant, Saturday Dinette, explaining that the bright, inviting space is only open for dinner and Sunday brunch. But then the hungry locals of the neighbourhood at Logan Ave. and Gerrard St. E. wouldn’t stroll in and Barr would miss an opportunity to charm them.
And while she is not the first woman to ever have a baby, it has become the narrative of her business: Barr discovering her pregnancy the day the restaurant opened; cooking in the kitchen until she went into labour; closing down for only six weeks before reopening the restaurant, baby on board. More than any of the restaurants I’ve cooked in for this column so far, at Saturday Dinette I feel like I’m actually helping. Barr starts me with biscuits, trusting me with her recipe, stepping in only at the rolling stage when it looks like I’m using a bit too much force with the wooden pin. “The secret to biscuits is not working the dough too much,” she says.
She has me prepping in very small batches: breading eight orders of country fried steak; puréeing a litre of tarragon pesto; roasting five cobs of corn. Barr doesn’t want to be serving anything made three days ago. Her cooking is unfussy, without too many competing elements on the plate, focusing on the quality and freshness of ingredients.
Watching the baby is considered another item on their prep list, a shared duty of employees and sometimes customers. Husband Johnnie Karas spends the day running errands with baby Myles. When they return around 4 p.m. I walk the stroller to the park. Being a chef or a parent are both such demanding jobs. It’s hard to fathom doing both at once and only taking six weeks off before going back to work. But that’s the reality of owning a business.
“The thought of even having a year off,” Barr laughs, “I was like, ‘That’s not even an option for me. What am I supposed to do for a year? That’s crazy talk.’ So I took a month-and-ahalf off.”
During service, Myles’ crib is parked between the stove and the prep area, next to the rack of pots and the breast pump. When the restaurant fills to capacity, Barr cooks swiftly, with great focus.
When the baby gets restless, Johnnie picks him up, bussing tables with one hand. Maybe it slows him down a bit, but the customers adapt to the it-takes-a-village flow, entranced by the exceptionally cute baby.
They don’t have high chairs and they don’t allow strollers inside, choices that could incite a ruckus in the baby-centric neighbourhood if it weren’t for the sight of the chef and her husband running the restaurant while holding their child.
Even at the door, where customers can become cranky if they’re not seated quickly, one look at how hard these parents are working and no one complains.
As she cooks, Barr calls on me to assemble frittatas, bring her lima beans and cream or run food to tables. When the baby gets hungry, she hands me a cup of breast milk from the fridge with instructions to warm it up. Myles attempts to latch onto his father’s left nipple while I fiddle with the bottles.
Once I’ve transferred it from the chilled container, there are a few drops remaining and I ask for permission first, “Is this creepy or can I taste this?”
I get my first sample of breast milk. Sweet, a little coconutty, maybe. At this stage of parenting, most people would just be desperate for a night’s sleep. “But we never slept before,” laughs Karas. “We had to have a baby just to take six weeks off.”
In a quiet moment, though, Barr says that the grass is sometimes greener. “On a beautiful Saturday, I’m here at eight in the morning prepping brunch for Sunday,” she says, Myles bobbing in her arms. “And I see these moms in their summer dresses and they’re going to the park and having coffee with their husbands. And I think to myself, ‘That’s their life and this is my life and I hope he’s not missing out on anything.’ ”
I think Myles is a lucky baby who isn’t missing a thing. Email Corey Mintz, mintz.corey@gmail.com and follow @coreymintz on Twitter and instagram.com/coreymintz.