“And we made sure I used Visa, no American Express. “We bought everything on credit cards,” Rogers said. When Gris noticed a “for rent” sign on a tiny coffee shop on Ventura Boulevard, he persuaded Rogers to join him in opening a restaurant. When business started to slide at Cafe Katsu, all they had between them was a reservation book with the names and phone numbers of steady San Fernando Valley customers and about $5,000 in savings.
Both were immigrants Gris packed up his belongings and moved from Paris in 1986 after spending three months here on vacation, and Rogers came over from Wales in 1988 as a foreign cuisine chef at Katsu. “They just do what they do well.” Charging it Gris, who manages the restaurant, and Rogers, who is the chef, met while working at now shuttered Cafe Katsu in West L.A. restaurant critic and co-editor of Zagat. “That’s a pretty classy neighborhood for what’s basically a small, neighborhood restaurant,” said Merrill Shindler, a longtime L.A. 2 spot in the Zagat Survey of L.A.’s most popular restaurants, making it runner-up to the pricey and elegant Patina while besting Spago Beverly Hills.
Cafe Bizou, with its formula of large portions of California-French dishes at prices well under what similar restaurants charge, has climbed to the No. Gris and Rogers have opened a second restaurant in Pasadena and a third is set to open in Santa Monica this summer. Today the wait for reservations at their Sherman Oaks restaurant can be as long as five weeks for prime dining time on Saturday night. “It was a do or die situation,” Rogers said. What they did know was that the restaurant they were working in Rogers as chef, Gris as maitre d’ was going downhill fast, and if they didn’t find another alternative, they’d be on the next plane back to their respective homelands. Neither had ever owned his own company before.
#Cafe bijou how to#
They didn’t know how to get financing or obtain permits, let alone how to run a business. The unassuming cafe bizou in sherman oaks has quickly climbed to the second most popular restaurant in l.a., according to zagat Philippe Gris and Neil Rogers knew nothing about owning a restaurant when they opened Cafe Bizou five and a half years ago.
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