Dwell [ Persona ] A Life in the Restaurant World December 2006

by Billy Quon Lee
Images by R. Byrne

Billy got his first restaurant job at the ripe old age of 14, his first manager’s job six years later, and opened his first restaurant nine years after that. Seems like he was born to this biz.

In the 39 years I’ve spent in the restaurant business on the Monterey Peninsula, I guess I’ve learned a few things. First and foremost, I’ve learned that if you’re going to be happily married in this business, you’d better be happily married to a wife like mine who’s a great restaurateur in her own right.

Throughout the first few decades of my restaurant life, I found it impossible to maintain a relationship with anyone who wasn’t in the business. Choosing between a wedding party I was scheduled to cater and the wedding of a friend of hers was too difficult.

Enter Teresa Raine, my wife-to-be. I first saw her at my Orchid Grill Restaurant in Santa Cruz. She came out of nowhere and blind-sided me with her beauty, wit, and charm. After five years of culinary adventuring together, we decided to get married.

Not only does Teresa juggle the dozens of daily activities of the restaurants we operate together, she’s also a fabulous mother to our five-year-old son, Kai.

Teresa perfectly balances home and work along with being vivaciously beautiful and stylish, athletic, humorous, and someone everybody loves. My wife truly is “the wind beneath my wings” and she is a great contributor to the success of our restaurants.

How I Got Started
When I was nine, my mother moved me and my sister, Cathy, to my grandmother’s house in Pacific Grove. After a few years as a paperboy and weekend gardener, I heard the call.

I was 14 when I walked into the Lover’s Point Inn in Pacific Grove and snagged a job as a dishwasher. What a mountain of dishes I faced! And they didn’t stop piling up until about 11 p.m. To this day, I sometimes see a new dishwasher start his first day on the job and picture myself behind those stacks of dirty dishes. It’s not easy scaling that mountain the first day.

After what seemed like forever that first night, the chef, a big guy resembling George Foreman, walked me to the timecard rack and said, “We’re going to see you tomorrow, right?” I showed up and after nearly 40 years in this business, I still have a great deal of respect for the guys in the kitchen who show up.

Over the next couple of years, I moved into various other kitchen positions before shifting to the dining room as a busboy. At age 17, I was made a waiter at Lover’s Point Inn and landed a third job working at The York of Cannery Row Restaurant. (I sold shoes a couple of hours a day after school besides.) The York was the hot new place in town and it gave me a chance to work in a fine-dining restaurant. I remember one night as a busboy there, Clint Eastwood gave me a $5 side tip and said, “Here, go see a movie on me.” I jokingly said, “Give me another $5 and I’ll take my girlfriend.” He just chuckled and walked away.

In 1973, after graduating with an AA in business management, I got a job as a waiter at Willie Lum’s China Row Restaurant on Cannery Row (where the Chart House is located now). I worked my way to Dining Room Captain and then, after a few years of building a following of people who knew me as Billy Quon, I was promoted to General Manager.

After four years at Willie Lum’s, I figured I was ready to try my own restaurant, so I bought an old service station location in Pacific Grove to build a Chinese fast food drive-through I was going to call Genghis Quon’s. Unfortunately, the water building moratorium of the Peninsula’s “dry years” thwarted those plans.

China Row owners Bert Cutino and Ted Balestreri promoted me to be the General Manager of the Sardine Factory in 1978. Over the next four years, the award-winning restaurant was building a beautiful new glass-domed room and wine cellar, giving me lots of experience in new construction and restaurant opening.

In 1982, I opened my first restaurant, Billy Quon’s, a Great Place for Ribs at the Crossroads in Carmel. I was really fortunate there; it became something of a landmark. In the early 80’s there were a lot of celebrities living here and they all dined at Billy Quon’s. In one week, Doris Day, Paul Anka (and his five daughters), Gene Hackman, Clint Eastwood, Merv Griffin, Doug McClure and ZsaZsa Gabor all dropped in.

As luck would have it, a group of restaurateurs looking to buy a Carmel location were in the restaurant all of those nights. I’m sure the celebrity presence helped them decide to make me an offer on the place. They opened the Rio Grill there and now 20-plus years later, they’re still there doing a great job.

Over the years, I’ve opened a half-dozen or so restaurants, including the Point Restaurant at Heritage Harbor, the Orchid Grill in Santa Cruz County, Cancun at the Crossroads and Billy Quon’s at Ryan Ranch. Along the way, Teresa and I spent a year in Maui where I was a food and beverage director at the Kea Lani Hotel in Wailea and Teresa worked at the Grand Wailea Spa.

And Now for Something Totally Different
When we decided to come back to the Peninsula, I began working on a new restaurant idea. Billy Quon’s at Ryan Ranch had been based on a Pacific Rim cuisine, but I decided that other restaurants and I had pretty well worn out that theme, so I was looking for something different. I love the feeling of the islands, even though I haven’t had a chance to spend a lot of time there. And I’m really into not wearing ties, so the whole Tommy Bahama’s open-collar shirt look appealed to me a great deal.

One of the parts of being a restaurateur that I enjoy the most is the interior design of the place. An interior designer can help to a certain extent: figuring out room sizes and layouts, where entrances and exits go, that sort of thing. Overall color scheme, maybe. But that’s about where they stop. I want to get involved in the real details. So I shop all over the world for the little touches that make the restaurant look and feel like an authentic experience.

Bahama Billy’s is now almost five years old and Bixby Bistro, also at the Barnyard, is just over one year old. Although they have different atmospheres and menus, they have two things in common: a relaxed and comfortable tie-free atmosphere and our famous Hot Cheesebread. Guests who came to Bixby figured that if they were that close to Bahama Billy’s they ought to be able to get some of that delicious bread. We caved to the pressure so you can get cheesebread both places now.

Short Hours and Lots of Money…
…the restaurant business clearly is not.

I often think how really difficult this business is. Being in the restaurant world requires you to wear so many different hats it’s almost crazy. You have to have expertise in loan applications, lease negotiations, construction, equipment purchasing, interior design, menu planning, and hiring. And that’s just to get the doors open!

After that, the food had better be tasty, imaginative, competitive and hot, and your staff has to be on top of things at all times. Trying to keep the crew from coming in late, sampling the wine or even reading their schedule wrong, is enough to make you think you have to be nuts to be in this business.

So it’s a good thing I have some pretty fabulous people on the team, people who operate with the same care for my business as Teresa and I do. Without the help of a great Executive Chef, Jason Wright, and managers like Anthony, Jeffrey, Tracy and Don, I’d be lost!

All this craziness nearly did me in last year. Just after we had opened Bixby Bistro, I suffered a heart attack. That came on the heels of having my first child. Things were a bit of a struggle there for a while. Business fell off but I couldn’t take time to worry about it because I had to make sure I’d be around for my wife and our little guy, who had just turned four at the time. The experience really brought home to me, not for the first time but more dramatically than ever, the incredible precariousness of this business. You can lose it all so very quickly and it’s not always something you can foresee or control.

But this business is my passion. I am dedicated to it. I love it. I miss it when I’m not here. At the same time, I’ve reached a place in my life where I’m working less now than I probably ever have in my life. I can do that thanks to the fact that I’ve got some great help both at Bahama Billy’s and at Bixby Bistro. So I can enjoy the business with less stress and anxiety than I’ve ever had.

When it’s all said and done, you can look back with pride at your accomplishments. You love to hear the satisfaction from your guests, you love the fact that they fill your restaurant nightly, and you love the fact that you are succeeding in one of the toughest businesses around.

And what a bonus if you can do that and still be happily married! °