Umberto Menghi: Fresh, Simple, and Authentic

Foodies are rejoicing. Umberto’s back in town. Vancouver’s effervescent restaurateur – nobody calls him Mr. Menghi; it’s simply Umberto – is back in business, mere footsteps from the legendary Yaletown eatery that cemented both his reputation and his fortune. Il Giardino is gone, slated to be replaced by a highrise. In fact, losing his flagship is the reason Umberto retreated into self-imposed exile five years ago. He wanted to build a boutique hotel adjoining the restaurant, but costs spiralled out of control and he had to abandon his ambitious plans.

“It became too complicated,” he says. “I tried to do it before the 2010 Olympics, but then the prices went crazy and I just couldn’t compete with all the large construction that was going on.”

So, he went on hiatus, stepping away from the restaurant scene, until boredom and anxious customers brought him back into the spotlight.

“I got tired of lunches, I got tired of playing golf, I even got tired of going on holiday,” says Umberto. “It was as bad as that. I would meet my former customers and they would say we don’t have any place to go now. My body and my mind wanted to work and create.”

Not that he was suffering for money. When he sold the land on which Il Giardino was sitting, the proceeds allowed him to open up his new digs just down the street from its predecessor. His new restaurant, simply called Giardino, serves up that familiar brew of food, service and ambience.

Granted, the new Umberto is a condensed version of his former self. Thirty years ago, he had a nationally syndicated television show, authored five cookbooks and owned 23 restaurants in the States and Canada. Today, he manages a smaller portfolio, La Trattoria in Whistler and Giardino in Vancouver. It’s been quite a journey for the 71-year-old Tuscan immigrant who landed in Canada with virtually no money in his pockets.

“I grew up with a good taste of Nature,” he says, recalling his modest upbringing in Pontedera just east of Pisa. He chopped up tomatoes and onions and helped his mother prepare the family meal, but his parents had other plans for their second son. “They put me in a seminary to become a priest, but I stole a bicycle and I ran away. That’s how good a priest I was.”

The 14-year old took shelter in a small trattoria or café, helping the owners in the kitchen until his parents found him a few days later and brought him home. His parents eventually relented and sent him to culinary school in Rome. From there, he moved to London and, in 1970, he immigrated to Montreal. Lured by tales of cowboys, Indians and the Old West, he promptly left Montreal for Vancouver.

“I came by train,” he says. “I didn’t see a buffalo. I didn’t see an Indian. I didn’t see anything. It was all grey to me and I said where the hell am I going? I landed with 20 bucks in my pocket. I had two meals in a Chinese café on Robson Street; one of them was a spaghetti sandwich. The other was spaghetti and meatballs, which my mother never made. The pasta was like soup. It was disgusting.”

“I wanted to serve something much finer than what was served at that time,” he says, shocked at how badly Vancouver presented Italian food and convinced there was a demand for something better. He opened his first restaurant, Casanova, in Gastown in 1970 and, in 1973, he opened Il Gardiano, making it the city’s go-to destination for quality Italian dining.

He rapidly expanded. First, he signed a deal with Labatt’s Breweries, which underwrote a string of fast food outlets called Umbertinos. Think of an Italian McDonalds. Next, he opened restaurants in Seattle and San Francisco.

“I had deals with real estate people. When they did a building, they needed to put in restaurants and my name was attractive to them, so I took a contract. I was being paid management fees and profit sharing. Actually, I was going to open in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and others. I had a lot of offers.”

And he opened his jewel in the crown, a cooking school and resort in Italy, Villa Delia, named after his mother.

“The Villa’s a really nice place. There’s a tennis court and a pool and it’s in a little village called Ripoli di Lari” says San Francisco resident Bill Huff. Bill and his wife, Valerie, stayed in the Villa 11 years ago and have popped into Gardiano to say hello to their former host while waiting for their Alaska cruise ship to arrive. Bill recounts his initial meeting with Umberto years ago.

“The first day, he takes us around the villa and he looks at us and says ‘this is what we’re going to do, we’re doing the cooking school in the morning and, in the afternoon, I’m going to take you somewhere.’ And then he says, ‘and frankly I don’t care if you do the cooking school or go on the tour because I already got all your money.’ Bill and Umberto share a laugh, “So, that’s when I said I’m going to love this place.”

“We had a ball. It was a blast,” confirms Valerie.

Umberto’s experiment with fast food ended in the 1980s. “Soon there were office managers, engineering, marketing, advertising and I was just an innocent boy making food.” And in the 2000s, he sold his American restaurants. “I didn’t want to go in with the new people and I could see in the future it was going to be a squeeze.”

He shuttered his beloved Villa – it’s being renovated for a future re-opening – but he still offers annual tours and cooking lessons for the well-heeled, this time aboard the cruise ship, Silver Spirit, as it sails the Mediterranean.

“I do two cooking shows in the theatre, especially when the ship is at sea and the passengers are looking for something to do. They can’t get out. They’re trapped.” he laughs. “And I also do excursions. I take people for a special slice of Italy. I let them discover how Italians live day-to-day. I let them discover how they eat. I feel like I’m at home. I feel like I’m in my own restaurants. The chefs, the crew, they’re all professionals. It’s a pleasure. It’s like a holiday for me.”

A pared-down Umberto, to be sure, but although the empire has shrunk, it’s the same jocular bon vivant behind the smile, flitting between the tables and welcoming old friends, loyal locals and visitors like the Huffs who pop in whenever they’re in town.

“When a customer comes in, they need to see a connection with the operator, that he cares about the restaurant and he maintains it,” says Umberto. “When you do go out, you want to be refreshed and you want to be positive. You want to keep things going and create an energy.”

Umberto certainly supplies the energy. And while he has adapted to the times, altering the menu to include vegetarian, gluten-free and organic food choices, his philosophy remains the same. Respect the food by keeping it fresh, simple and authentic.

“I’m here to serve the food of Italy. It is the food basically of the seasons. Italians don’t eat tomatoes in the winter because they’re imported from somewhere else. They’re not theirs. They don’t eat mozzarella off season. The dishes change with fall, they change with the wintertime, the spring and the summer. The flavours are straightforward,” he continues. “You get what you see. If it’s veal scaloppini à la lemon, there’s only one way of doing it, fresh lemon sauce with salt and pepper and a little flash of white wine from the area. And there’s always oil. Extra virgin olive oil for a Tuscan dressing. There’s no other dressing in Tuscany. In the summertime, all you see is extra virgin olive oil with a bit of lemon. That’s your dressing. They don’t even use pepper.”

Umberto says today’s suppliers offer more product and more choice than ever before and that affects the menu. “We use what’s available here. Like a lot of beef because it’s always around. Beef steak à la Fiorentina. It’s a special cut, usually a large T-bone for two or three people and it’s grilled with coarse salt. Most of my dishes have a Tuscan approach, but I also do Ossabuco Milanese, which is braised beef shanks with red wine and vegetables cooked for two-and-a-half hours.”

When asked to explain his success, he subscribes to three tenets. First, “be clear on what you represent. I represent something of the culture of Italy.” Secondly, “to be successful you need your customers. Service is extremely important. Food is important. If you don’t deliver the food properly, they get tired. You need recipes. It’s not just one item.” And, last but not least, own the property on which the restaurant sits. “I have the restaurants, I have the land because there has to be a financial ending that is more secure than just the restaurants. My father always told me, if you have something somebody wants, and they pay for it, give it to them.”

Umberto says he’s fulfilled his original dream, which was to expand in California (he did that in the 1980s), travel the world and then go home to Italy and teach. He’s done that too, returning to Tuscany every summer to re-energize and teach cooking at Villa Delia, supplanted lately by his annual culinary cruises. Blissfully content, he talks about writing an autobiography.

“It’s about how I did it,” he says. “I did it my way because I didn’t take any schooling in business. I started by washing dishes, cleaning windows, everything in the restaurants I used to do.”

He considers himself one of the originals, a chef in the traditional mould and that means a reverence for food and hospitality.

“It’s done with love and it’s done with respect. You don’t approach [the restaurant business] just for money. You’re committed to it when you enter that part of your life. You get the rewards in every dish. You get a reward anytime you shake a hand, or you see your client face-to-face.”

“Today, I’m 71. I have a younger wife, an adult son and a little doggy. I just want to spend more time with them. I love everybody. I don’t care what colour, what religion they are. They love you, you love them. They respect you, you respect them. ‘Hey, how are you?’ I ask people in the restaurant. It’s a joy. I love my life now better than ever.”

SNAPSHOT

If you were to meet your 20-year-old self, what advice would you give him?
“Nothing. I would do the same thing. I would change nothing.”

Who or what has influenced you the most? And why?
“Mr. Pelligrini from Rome. I went to his hotel school in Rome and his school taught me everything. It was three years college and schooling and then you got your diploma. Mr. Pelligrini was speaking with this passion about food and that’s the way I’ve learned.”

What does courage mean to you?
“I was not afraid of anything. What have you got to lose really? You’ve got nothing. You’re born with nothing. I had no fear.”

What does success mean to you?
“It means providing shelter. It’s very important for me to own a house and have a roof over our heads. To be able to get up in the morning and not feel threatened, to feel that you have achieved something that day and you’re going to achieve something by going to work.”

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