French-born restaurateur knew how to please picky palates
YVES CARREAU | Sept. 28, 1959 - April 26, 2020
From crepes to Creole, Yves Carreau had an extraordinary knack for knowing what the picky Pittsburgh palate needed and when.
A pioneer in the Pittsburgh restaurant scene for more than 20 years, Mr. Carreau opened seven wildly different restaurants in Market Square and the Cultural District, including Sonoma Grille, NOLA on the Square and Seviche.
“He loved creating all the different menus and decor, and he just loved that whole creative process,” said his wife Jennifer Carreau.
Mr. Carreau, 60, of Penn, Westmoreland County, died April 26 after a 14-month battle with renal cancer.
Born in Lyon, France, Mr. Carreau first hoped to become a pilot through a government-sponsored training school, but his plans changed when the program was discontinued, Mrs. Carreau said.
“He turned to his second love, which was cooking,” she said, adding that Mr. Carreau learned to cook from his mother.
Mr. Carreau graduated in 1978 from the Thonon Les Bains Culinary Institute and headed to the Cotton House, a hotel on the private Caribbean island of Mustique, for his apprenticeship.
“He ended up becoming a manager there, and I don’t think he ever forgot what it was like to live on an island,” his wife said. “He loved the ocean, and he got his captain’s license so we could rent our own catamarans, and we took many sailing trips.”
By 1984, Mr. Carreau found his way to Pittsburgh, where he accepted a job as executive chef at the Churchill Valley Country Club.
He met his wife in the late 1980s at the former Brady Street Bridge Cafe — now Mallorca — on the South Side.
“We needed a chef and he came in for an interview and that’s how we met,” said Mrs. Carreau, nee Sommer, who married Mr. Carreau in 1994. “He became the executive chef there.”
The story of how he became a restaurateur is one of serendipity.
“The general manager of Churchill Valley Country Club resigned, and he put in for that position,” his wife said. “They didn’t give it to him, and all of the sudden, the owners wanted to sell [Juno Trattoria].”
Mr. Carreau partnered with a friend to buy the Oxford Centre restaurant in 1998 and rebranded it as a French and Italian eatery called Asiago.
Lawyer Stanley Stein loved coming into Asiago for after-work drinks and quickly found much in common with Mr. Carreau, who held dual citizenship in the U.S. and France.
“He became interested in my hobby of fly-fishing, and I became interested in wine and food,” said Mr. Stein, of Elizabeth Township. “We became very good friends and often combined those things. He was a wonderful, loyal friend and a compassionate man. We traveled a lot together to fish and hang out in the mountains.”
Mr. Stein was the first investor to support Mr. Carreau in buying what would become the flagship of his empire: Sonoma Grille, the first Northern California-inspired wine and kitchen bar in Pittsburgh.
“He was very meticulous and a careful learner and planner,” said Mr. Stein, who also became his friend’s legal counsel. “He was as good of a risk as you could think of in the restaurant business. It’s a tough business.”
Opened in 2004 on Penn Avenue, Sonoma succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, Mrs. Carreau said.
“He fell in love with the 18foot ceilings instantly and the space next to the [David L. Lawrence Convention Center],” she said. “He knew things were turning around Downtown, but it was still a huge gamble. He wanted a format to introduce California wines to the city and it would cater to women, because he thought women were the ones who made the decision where to go to dinner.
“We never ever imagined that it would take off like it did. Yves basically opened a new restaurant every two years after that,” she said.
Seviche, a Latin-inspired bistro featuring ceviche and tapas, opened on Penn Avenue in 2007, followed by Market Square eateries NOLA on the Square, Perle and Poros.
After the initial success of Seviche, Mr. Carreau opened a similar restaurant in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.
He was named 2007 Restaurateur of the Year by the Western Chapter of the Pennsylvania Restaurant Association and received the Wilmer S. Lapp Keystone Award in 2012.
As business began slowing, Mr. Carreau rebranded Sonoma in 2017 as a French restaurant called Le Lyonnais.
“There was this huge, huge push of opening restaurants between 2016 and 2018,” Mrs. Carreau said. “In those two years, there were 30 new restaurants in town. Everybody’s sliver of the business pie got smaller and smaller.”
Mr. Carreau sold off the restaurants in 2018 in response to the glut of new Downtown eateries.
“It became outrageously competitive in the past three years, but I trusted him,” Mr. Stein said. “I knew if anybody could make money, he would.”
Her husband had no regrets, Mrs. Carreau said.
“We said, ‘It’s time,’” she recalled. “We’ve been in this 20 years, and Yves saw all of these younger chefs with great new ideas. He said, ‘Let this be their time,’ and that’s what we did.”
Though the restaurant business is notorious for its unforgiving schedules, her husband prioritized his family, Mrs. Carreau said.
“Yves was a master at finding the balance between work and family, and family always came first,” she said.
Mr. Carreau was overjoyed to spend the last year of his life sailing around the world and visiting friends and family in Europe. He especially loved their second home overlooking the water in Antigua, his wife said.
“His favorite place in the world was sitting on our veranda, looking at the view from our house,” Mrs. Carreau said. “It was our special place.”
Along with his wife, Mr. Carreau is survived by his children Pascal, of Brookline; Sebastien, of Washington; and Arielle, of Penn, as well as a brother, Philippe, of Lyon, France.
A funeral and memorial service are being planned for a later date.
Memorial donations are suggested to: Cystic Fibrosis Foundation of Western Pennsylvania: https://www.cff.org/WesternPA/; Light of Life Mission: https://www.lightoflife.org/; Hillman Cancer Center, to support the work of Dr. Leonard Appleman: https://hillman.upmc.com/ difference/supporting and Judy Nicholson Kidney Cancer Foundation: https://www.jnfkidneycancer.org/