Opening a Restaurant is Scary | Tatiana Levha, Co-Owner of Le Servan

uh thank you thank you david thank you everyone for having us here today we're very happy very honored um i'm sorry i have a very i was very nervous so i had i developed a very bad cold so i'm sorry if i cough and it hurts your ears so my name is tatiana and i'm 29 years old half french half filipina and the very proud co-owner of a four month old lu servo which i opened with my lovely sister katya who takes care of everything else that's not cooking and our business partner edward without whom nothing would have been possible um so it's we seat 40 people and we work on a cat it's seven of us working there so it's a very small structure and it's been open as i said for only four months so it's a it's a baby basically the past 10 years in paris lots of young chefs have opened many new bistros where they propose exceptional produce and very creative food for an affordable price and parallelly to the parallel i mean at the same time chefs all over the world in paris have been getting so much attention and it seems that what used to be a very blue color profession is shifting to something a little bit more glamorous and it's a it's a very interesting time to be a chef now because things are changing and even when i started which was barely 10 years ago i never could have imagined things would go so fast so um when you start a restaurant everything is very very scary and um time and timing is in the middle of everything it's like everything goes so fast and you just can't get a hold of things so for me this is this is what this was about time and how you work with it so working with hours work hours that go too fast and then working with your own past and tradition to fit in the present and the time you're you're in but also building the future so um two years ago my sister and i had the first talk on what we wanted to do on on what we wanted to build um and we didn't really have an idea of what that was uh but we knew that we wanted to work together and support each other and do something on our own to sustain ourselves so after going through lots of different phases and very different ideas we started looking for an old cafe or something casual where we could make something that resembled us because that's what that's what it was about it was about doing something that resembled us and that reflected what we loved and what we what we knew what we thought good so um that was very scary that was maybe the scariest thing of all because you feel like you're showing yourself to everyone and giving showing the most intimate things about yourself and also exposing yourself to judgment as of what you're capable of doing and that's that's very very very scary um so um what was interesting is that all the ideas that we could have had that we had before the opening of the restaurant were mostly never mostly never happened i mean we we had lots of prefixed things in mind and none of it just came true because things are actually so spontaneous and so so driven by your mood and the people you're with and and what you feel like so it was actually very interesting because we i think i say we because i speak for both of us but we learned a lot about ourselves in the past four months maybe more than more than ever so the first the first week of the rest of the opening i remember thinking i can't wait to be in three months this is too new this is too hard this is too new this is completely crazy and in those first weeks all the press came all the journalists were here lunch and dinner and it was like every service you were being judged and it's a there's a huge gap between what you feel when you're it's an embryo of a restaurant nothing is fixed yet you're not even sure of what direction you're you're taking and people are already here waiting for something to be completely done and completely finished and it's it's completely it's very scary and it's very it's sometimes very frustrating to think that people make make up their mind so early on when you feel like you're you're just at the very very beginning of something and it's also there's another another huge gap there um it's that uh you live in a in a very closed bubble and you work really long hours with six people always the same and you're very focused and then when when you when you take us a breath and look out and you you realize how much exposure you actually get that's just it's it's crazy and though i i was in a good position to imagine that i didn't realize things would go so fast and would be so would would be so important and so so it's a good thing because it does um it does fill up the restaurant from day two which is i think something new in in the restaurant business now is that restaurants can they become full from day two from an article or and and so that's it's a good thing you can't i mean you can't deny but uh but it's also it's also hard because you feel like it exposes you to much more judgment maybe than it used to and everyone is here to judge you and that's something that's very very difficult to to take at first i mean to to support so um by by the time the two first weeks were over the press had already come and that was done so we could move on with uh feeding real clients and uh cooking for real people who wanted to eat which was a relief and and it was very it was a very good thing uh our image was already fixed because the whole press had done it for us we don't have any facebook or instagram or anything so because we thought that we should focus on some things that were more uh of our competence and we didn't really know how how to use those things to our advantage we thought we'd focus on cooking and taking care of our of our small little business but there's this whole image of the restaurant that was built without us and what's interesting is that it's always the same thing it's there there weren't we made no press release no and what comes out is always the same thing so i think that's a that's a good thing but i'm not sure um so in the in the two first months we lost part of our team i think that's uh something everyone who opens the restaurant goes through and though it's it was for the best for everyone it was very very scary so early on to have to start everything over again and and teach again especially after realizing how bad a teacher i was and how complicated it was doing all these things at the same time so um all this turnover made me realize the importance of manpower and the importance of the people you work with and this is really what what made the opening and the what made the food what it was at that time it was who the people were who we were and and also what we were capable of doing given all the constraints so constraints result has always been for me something something of a of a it's a good thing it's a it's a motor it's it's something that helps you makes make choices and it's the people who you work with um what they're willing or capable of doing and it's also season and time and and material place and all of those things or rather than inspiration what the constraint is what forged um what we did those first few months so it's it's always a funny thing to hear for me to hear about inspiration and because it makes cooking sound like such an art and for me cooking is much more of a craft and it inspiration is something that i don't know it's just what you cook is something that's that comes from so many different things it's inspiration is something i i think i've never really felt but anyway um when inspiration or what people call inspiration fails uh constraint was a good thing and also what i found very reassuring in time when i was scared of everything was the past and tradition and uh what we my sister and i have always liked to eat and the way we we we are used to eating and also uh what i've learned in in very different structures uh very traditional ways i found that knowing this knowing traditional technique knowing traditional french cooking was something that was very reassuring like if if worse came to worse and really i had no idea of what to do i could always go back to doing a blog or something very traditional and that would just work i guess because it's always worked and so in the time where everything is scary i found that tradition and and technique is something that's very but it was very reassuring um because the way we work is i think i mean it was for a while a little bit too spontaneous last year i was here to translate pascal babu's talk about spontaneity and i had no idea things would get so spontaneous so it was a good thing i had reflected on it before because what happened was crazy and the way we make our menus it's is much more spontaneous than what i think anyone could imagine um we have all these products and i'm not saying this is a good way i'm even saying this is not a good way of doing things but um and cook up things the way we feel like it menus change every day and katya prints the menus out always a little bit too late 45 minutes before the clients come so i tell her what we're cooking and sometimes she gets it right sometimes she doesn't and then so she prints it out and by the time menus are printed it's already too late so whatever she she printed out or whatever i told her sometimes i didn't even tell her the right thing is what we're going to do and so we always have a menu that's in the kitchen so if we forgot something that we we prepared or got something wrong we have a reminder of what we're supposed to be serving people um so again a very bad example of how to how to open a restaurant i think it's it's not a good idea um so what was i saying this yes so all of this makes you feel not that comfortable it's like you're always on the edge um being judged you're giving give giving everything we um after four months we closed the restaurant for two weeks vacation which was uh necessary i think for us and and the whole team who's been working really hard and whom i think very much and we look forward to the future but i'm also we're also very nervous that in those two weeks everyone has forgotten us and you come back and your restaurant is empty and all of that is like something a new a new fear that's within you and that like renee told me yesterday that just doesn't leave so it's it's actually scary be knowing that you're going to be scared for the next 10 years but it's also very exciting and i think it's i'm sure and so but it's also very exciting and what we really do want is to learn how to how to cook in the future and how to cook to make this last um what's uh interesting is learning about yourself while you're building your your own future and so the for in that sense this opening was a huge success because we learned so much about ourselves and we learned so much about the people we work with it that was a huge success but i have to say um i had i had a yoga teacher who used to tell me feel the pleasurable pain and i found that this expression was something very true for a restaurant opening it's like you're almost it's a discomfort that's almost painful but yet it's very constructive and it it makes you grow so much that it gives you pleasure and i think that cooking in a in a very new restaurant is about that is about taking pleasure in what you do and it's the only way to give to give it to other people so i think now that things are going so fast it the truth is still what it was maybe 50 years ago cooking is about hospitality and sharing what you love with other people and making them want to love you and come back to see you so that's it um i really wanted to thank everyone here for having us again it was a huge honor and thanking i really wanted to thank our team who's been they they've been so great and so so brave and it was it was so touching to see them work so hard for us it's also it's also very new and and that was that was fantastic so thank you thank you very much