Jonathan Gushue is Back in the Game With His New Restaurant, The Berlin

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Jonathan Gushue

Jonathan Gushue speaks with the courage of his convictions: about food, about the craft of cooking and teaching his cooks, about his own restaurant in the burgeoning food scene in revitalized downtown Kitchener, Ont. — and about facing his struggle with alcohol.

Opening The Berlin — a first for the former executive chef at Langdon Hall in Cambridge, Ont. — is a milestone for the 44-year-old in a couple of ways. It represents the first time he’s had his own restaurant, and it marks his return to the industry after vanishing from the restaurant scene with personal troubles in 2012.

The married father of three left Langdon Hall the night of Dec. 28 — leaving his mobile phone and car behind — and wasn’t heard from for days. His disappearance blew up on social media and the mystery remained a hot topic until he was located by police, drunk, in a Montreal hotel about two weeks later, safe and honest with himself about his alcoholism. He quietly left Langdon Hall a few months later and set about getting his personal life and career back in working order. “I’ve learned a lot about alcoholism,” says Gushue who has been in rehab and admits his drinking was out of control. He acknowledges the situation and says, “I know what I need to do.”

As for The Berlin, it’s a concept 10 years in the making and something he’s been intensely focused on. He recounts a conversation with world-renowned chef René Redzepi in Toronto about a decade ago during which the Noma chef asked him, “Why don’t you have your own restaurant?” Gushue says he didn’t have an answer then, but the comment stuck with him and he kept asking himself, “Why don’t I?”

Now, three years later, he’s built his own venue — a process he calls stressful yet cathartic. “It’s exciting and it’s liberating,” he says. Given that he was looking for a space in Toronto, it’s also serendipitous. “Kitchener never really occurred to us, but if you look at our original business plan of what we wanted, it is this exact space.”

Gushue and his business partner, Ryan Lloyd-Craig, opened in the city’s central downtown on Dec. 21, 2015. The restaurant’s name captures both the historic Germanic past of the city — Kitchener was called Berlin until 1916 — and Gushue’s vision for the food. “The reason we opened this restaurant was to do something that was fair and something that could offer value. You can get great product and you can offer it at a good price. So many people say if you buy organic or grass-fed beef, you can’t possibly offer that to your guests at a proper price. That’s just not the case.” Among his favourite local suppliers are Chassagne in Puslinch, Ont.; Blackview Farm in Listowel, Ont.; and Sebringville, Ont.-based Antony John and Soiled Reputation.

The design and build-out took time. There were the usual delays with regulations and code standards for ventilation systems, chair purchases to be made and getting the dining-room floor just right, but Gushue won’t comment on the restaurant’s renovation costs, saying he was more concerned about meeting timelines. The design process began in June 2015 and the doors opened for a private event on Dec. 10, 2015.

Lloyd-Craig says the new restaurant, which is open for lunch Tuesday to Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. and for dinner Tuesday to Saturday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., appeals to a wide range of clientele. “There are young professionals, lawyers and those self-proclaimed foodies looking for a new upscale restaurant,” says Lloyd-Craig. “We do get a lot of people from Toronto, Hamilton and Burlington on Friday and Saturday nights [but] during the week, it is mostly locals.”

In what is Canada’s 10th largest metropolitan area, the building is iconic Kitchener: its earlier iterations as a grocery and then a hardware store date back to the late 1800s. It was a popular downtown business, Peter Martin’s 41 Restaurant, until a few years ago and retains those old bones. The 3,300-sq.-ft. main dining room seats 114 while the multi-purpose rooms on the second floor can accommodate another 145 guests. “We can do seated events for 24 and a standing reception for up to 40 in the boardroom, which is set up with AV equipment,” Lloyd-Craig says. The larger room upstairs can accommodate 70 seated and 100 standing. The main dining area also features a good-sized bar and a living wall of herbs from Living Fresh Flower Studio and School in Kitchener.

Gushue describes the kitchen as modular and Japanese in style with a “kitchen counter” that allows guests to watch the cooks as they work. The centrepiece is the Grillworks wood-burning hearth, which is constantly in use. The Medieval-looking mechanism has two 24-inch grills that are manually cranked up and down. It’s a unique piece of equipment, and Gushue’s cooks use it for just about every ingredient. “We have fun playing with it. It brings everyone in the kitchen together because every section of our menu is tied into it in one way or another,” he says.

That menu, offering five appetizers ($9 to $16), five mains ($15 to $42), three desserts ($10 to $13) and a daily cheese feature, has stayed true to the original business plan and most Saturdays, the restaurant breaks the 200-customer threshold. People have been happy with the selection and the price point, which are in line with the fine-dining industry, according to Lloyd-Craig. “If we find some terrific grass-feed beef for a weekend and we need to charge more, we do it. We did a special appetizer on a Saturday night and had to [increase] the price by $6. We sold almost 60 of them.”

Gushue is quick to praise Waterloo Region’s farmers and producers and draws on them to create food he describes as modern European. “But I still want the opportunity to use other techniques and styles I’ve learned during my travels through England, France and Japan. I love the noodle tradition of Hungary, spätzle in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany and Poland. These are fascinating traditions of food. It’s funny how close they are but how different they are.”

Gushue, who lives in nearby Cambridge, Ont. with his family, recruited Andrea Hennige, a veteran of the Waterloo Region food scene, as restaurant manager. “She naturally understands the dining room,” he says. “She gets how to deal with customers and staff.” A number of former colleagues from Langdon Hall have also joined him: sommelier Wes Klassen and bar manager Stacey Anderson, among others. Along with sous chef Kempton Munshaw, he has a crew of 12 cooks (he had 43 at Langdon) and says that though there is a responsibility similar to other positions he’s had, he feels more in control here. “When it hits the fan here, it’s up to me. And I think that’s great.”

At the same time, he believes cooks need development. Gushue is a pragmatist and knows their engagement benefits the restaurant and manifests itself as good quality work and employee retention. “You owe them more than a paycheque. They owe you their best hard work. If you are teaching them, they are constantly engaged but I don’t want them just to toe the line. I want people coming out of this kitchen to be creative and think for themselves.”

On the topic of other ventures in the works, Gushue is cagey. “We have had offers for new properties that are going up in Waterloo Region and have a larger project that we have always been interested in. That’s really all I can tell you now.”

Despite the stir his disappearance generated on social media, there is a peace, an equanimity, in Gushue’s demeanour. “I’m probably having the most fun I’ve ever had in my life,” he says. Yet, while he’s forthcoming and animated in talking about his personal issues, you can sense he is being cautious. “As far as coping strategies, I stay the course and do what needs to be done, and not forget. You don’t want to get into that corny adage of ‘one day at a time,’ but I accept life on life’s terms.”

It’s clear he’s taken stock of where he is in his career and at the same time has rediscovered a submerged aspect of himself. “It’s not totally unexpected that I’ve found it, but it’s a discovery about relationships. I did once think people were absurd for having relationships with other people as friends or professionals. That belief that people help people — I thought that was madness and that everyone is conniving. That’s the typical mind of an alcoholic. They say you point out in others what you hate most about yourself,” he says.

The reflection prompts him to return to the positive thoughts of how he and The Berlin have been warmly welcomed in Kitchener. “People have been so good to us. We’ve been so well received and get people regularly coming up to the kitchen just to say thanks for opening this restaurant. I’ve never heard that in my life.”

Story By: Andrew Coppolino 

Volume 48, Number 2

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