Oak Bay Bistro

Owner's Blurb

Hi there. My name is Bart. I'm the owner of the Oak Bay Bistro. I thought perhaps someone out there might be curious about the why's and what's of the bistro so here's a little blurb.

It was originally the Blethering Place, an English style tea room and icon of Victoria, owned by Ken Agate. Petr Prusa (my partner at the beginning, and legend of Floyds and Cup Of Joe) and I took over Feb 1, 2011 and on a less-than-shoestring budget and a lightning pace of 7 weeks we reno'ed the place and officially opened March 26, 2011 (thank you C2 Contracting!).

A little trivia here: the funny sign on the front of the building? It came to exist because we simply flipped over the Blethering signs that were there, put OBB (for Oak Bay Bistro) on three of them and had one spare sign. So with great deliberation of about a quarter second we came up with a forward B and backward P pushed together (the B and P standing for Bart and Petr). Voila.

The original idea for the bistro was to be middle-of-the-road as far as food style and pricing is concerned but way over-deliver on quality. The ambiance was to be casual, comfortable and a little classy. The reason for these choices is that there is no real middle ground in the restaurant industry in Oak Bay.

Everything is niche. The bistro is large, it's the keystone location of the Oak Bay Village so let's take on that roll, do it right and eventually become an icon ourselves. This is also why the name Oak Bay Bistro was chosen. It's kind of boring, I admit, but it says what it is and it sounds like it's an Oak Bay institution. We were lucky enough to get another local legend, JC Scott, to help design the bistro. I'm quite proud of how it looks. We still need to make tweaks here and there but it's really warm (especially at night) and still casual enough for anyone to walk in. The bar's gorgeous, I don't understand why more people don't want to sit at it and chat with the cooks preparing the groaning boards. It's my favourite spot. Pete and

I kind of took the idea from the Oyster downtown.

But the real story to the bistro is chef John Waller. Through good timing and good luck, I got him. He came from the Wickaninnish Inn in Tofino and he brought along a few great people with him. If you ever manage to get a kitchen tour out of him, do it. They make everything from scratch in there. It's incredible. Cured meats, smoked meats, all the breads and buns, desserts, mustards, relishes, hot sauce, you name it. The chicken and fish come from whole chickens and fish that they buck up. And pretty well everything is local and as organic as reasonably possible. I heard him saying the other day that he'll only buy fish from a local fisherman because he knows that the fish is caught on a line, not with damaging nets. Cool. By the way, I do realize that I'm totally at fault for not advertising John, the local and the organic stuff like I should. It's an amazing reality at absolutely killer prices. I'll get there. Needless to say, I just let John do whatever he wants to do in there. He knows my general goal and tries to stick to it. There are times, though, that I have to try to bring him down to the level of we regular folk. It's fun and inspiring.

And John's the reason why we got that 5-star review from the Times Colonist (thank you Pam Grant). The only issues that Pam had were pointed at me, and true. Yes, we weren't as ready as we had hoped we were when we opened. But there is one issue that came along that people don't know about. Petr had to quit the bistro due to health reasons. I've read that old "health reasons" line elsewhere and assumed that it was just a cover-up. Unfortunately, it's not in this case. Pete needs to get healthy and the stress of opening a restaurant is definitely not good for him. So now I'm on my own and I am certainly no front-of-house guy. Heck, I'm not even from this industry. I'm actually an engineer. But once again I'm fortunate as I have Michelle Rintoul and Marc Wilson managing the front for me.

But you know, that 5-star review did cause some trouble for us. People assume that 5-star means extreme fine-dining at its best. That's not us. We don't wear tuxedos or white gloves, we don't have French accents, you won't get three forks, three knives and two spoons. What we will do is give you the best food in town but in a comfortable atmosphere. You can have a romantic dinner and you come down with your buddies for a laugh. The bistro is for everyone and it's priced that way, too. One catch-phrase I toy with is "I don't want to sell you good wine at $150 per bottle. I want to sell you great wine at $60 per bottle." That's the attitude I want at the bistro (and the wine quote is quite literal as well - check it out).

So not everyone has understood what we're doing yet. The Urban Spoon hasn't been overly kind. The 21 negative listings before we even opened!!! would be laughable if it didn't stress us out so badly. We all take it very seriously behind the scenes. The thing I'm most proud of is my staff. They genuinely care about the bistro as a project they want see succeed, not simply as a paycheque. And it shows. K, I guess I rambled on too long. Did anyone get this far? Thanks for checking us out and hope to see you at the bistro.