Sarah Jane Sanders
“My husband [Chris] and I are chefs who worked our way into business, not the other way around,” Ouita Michel replied when asked about the strategy behind her family of restaurants. “I can’t say it was part of a grand plan from the very beginning.”
What began 20 years ago with fine-dining destination Holly Hill Inn and country deli Wallace Station has grown to include Windy Corner Market, Honeywood at the Summit at Fritz Farm, Smithtown Seafood, Zim’s Café and the Midway Bakery & Café, as well as a burgeoning events business.
Michel has grown the business and built a capable team over the years and has become a champion of Kentucky farmers and Kentucky cuisine. Her first cookbook, “Just a Few Miles South: Timeless Recipes From Our Favorite Places,” publishes in late April. We visited with Michel about the book, operating restaurants through the pandemic, and the resiliency that challenges can inspire.
Congratulations on the new cookbook. The obvious question is, what took so long?
[Laughs] People often ask, ‘Why don’t you write a book? Why don’t you have a TV show?’ but that’s a very different career path than running restaurants. That said, a lot of things fell into place to make this book happen. I have two coauthors, including Sara Gibbs, who used to work for our company and is an expert at recipe testing and editing. It was a lot of scaling and testing to get the recipes just right for home chefs, and we feel like we’re able to offer people something that they can go back to over and over again.
“Just a Few Miles South: Timeless Recipes From Our Favorite Places" by Ouita Michel, Sara Gibbs and Genie Graf.
Available in late April; pre-orders through ouitamichel.com include an invitation to a launch party at Fasig-Tipton and other perks
If your kid wants to make a scone, for example, my hope is that you’ll open this cookbook and that’ll be their favorite scone recipe, and then that page will become all splattery and dogeared. And when you make pimento cheese, this will become your favorite pimento cheese recipe, or a Benedictine sandwich with bacon. The book is filled with Kentucky flavors. There are also stories about the restaurants and the people behind different recipes.
The other thing I like about our book is that it’s clear, it’s concise and the recipes are simple and easy to follow. They work out and they’re tasty. I loved to cook when I was a kid, and I feel like you don’t have to have a special cookbook for kids with little smiley faces and things like that. By the time a child gets to be in the fifth or sixth grade, they should be able to open up a cookbook and make breakfast for their family, or lunch or make a soup, or bake something. I think that this book is going to be great for that, as well.
You are often called upon to represent Kentucky cuisine, including on the national stage, is that a fair assessment?
I think as I’ve gotten older, yes, I’m becoming a spokeswoman for Kentucky food. Although it’s so exciting to see so many young people involved in our food culture and young food entrepreneurs and brewers and distillers. It’s a huge industry, so I can’t say I’m the spokesperson, but I do a fair amount of talking about Kentucky food and promoting Kentucky farmers — at least my own philosophy of what that food should be and look like, and thinking about food access issues.
Have local restaurant owners supported one another over the course of this pandemic?
We have been a support to one another, and our community has really supported us as well. We’re all kind of isolated because obviously we can’t do the big restaurant celebrations that we used to do in our community right now, like Taste of the Bluegrass and big events like Crave. One thing that’s an outgrowth of the current situation is a monthly Zoom call with women business owners in the hospitality industry throughout the state, and that’s really helped.
There has been a lot of grief and a lot of loss among business owners, but I also feel like there’s been a lot of silver linings. I feel like we’re sticking it out together and that’s been very inspiring. I’m also happy to see that a lot of the newer restaurants that opened just before the COVID crisis hit are still with us and still plugging away. I think we’re going to have a good finish to 2021, and then I think we’ll have an excellent 2022 with the Breeders’ Cup coming.
One of the things we’ve learned in the restaurant industry is that you can’t always predict the future, and you have to be able to pivot hard and fast. Through tough times, you develop those characteristics that keep you afloat and then you have them in your toolbox for the rest of your life. I feel like the resilience that we’ve developed this year will be with us for years to come.
Within the Ouita Michael Family of restaurants, how far off have things been?
It’s always tough in January, but it’s tougher this year because sales are already down. We’re probably at 50 percent of where we normally are in January. Overall, I think we ended 2020 at around 60 percent of our revenue from the year before.
We’ve made a big investment in catering over the past couple of years. We manage the Fasig-Tipton events property, so we do the horse sales and all of the private events that book at Fasig-Tipton. Our book was full in 2020 and we were looking at 2020 being our first big year of events. We probably lost about $2 million worth of event business in 2020 there. We do see that business rebooking and coming back in the latter part of the second quarter of 2021 and through the third and fourth quarters.
Our group comprises different kinds of restaurants in very diverse locations. Our big restaurants like Honeywood and Zim’s are about 35 percent of their typical revenue most weeks. Our places located out in the country with big yard spaces, like Wallace Station, are doing closer to 80 percent of its revenue. It just depends.
What adjustments have you made?
I definitely feel like that was one of the things that 2020 taught me, is like, ‘OK, I need to be a lot more intentional about what I’m doing.’ I’m 56 years old and [my husband] Chris and I have been in business for 20 years. We don’t need to be floundering around. We need to be homing in on what we do, and we need to continue to do it better and better, and that’s what we’ve tried to impart to our staff. Our theme has been ‘come back better.’
Right now, I’m going through a process where we’re talking to every manager in our company one-on-one to check in and see what we need to be doing better as employers, what systems we need to be improving and setting the stage for spring. My mom passed away shortly after we opened Smithtown Seafood — she got really sick very suddenly with cancer and then died very suddenly — and I just couldn’t be intentional for a while. I’m kind of coming out of that now and it feels great, to be honest. It feels really good.
It also sounds like you’ve built a reliable team.
Oh, completely. That was one thing I learned from that experience. We had a terrible year in business the year my mom was sick, and both Chris and I realized that this can’t be up to just us anymore. At that point we just had four places — we didn’t have Zim’s or Honeywood, and we hadn’t started the events business — but we realized that we have a lot of people we’re responsible for and it can’t all be on our shoulders.
So, we got some consulting help and some business coaching and we hired a director of operations, Doug Mullins. He is now our chief operating officer and we have a new director of operations in Leslee Macpherson, and Tyler McNabb has been promoted to culinary director. Sharing that creative wealth is great, and it’s wonderful to have talented younger people coming up in your company and bringing all their new ideas, enthusiasm and energy.
Do you have a sense of what types of restaurants — from more casual to fine dining — will fare well in the future?
I think people are going to be looking for really great experiences, so we’re trying to focus on each restaurant’s core identity and how to improve the customer experience at that restaurant. I do think we’ll see a significant upturn in restaurant business this spring, even if capacities remain at 50 percent, as increasing numbers of people get vaccinated and folks feel more comfortable getting out.
At Holly Hill Inn we’re adding an art gallery upstairs. Art has always been part of our story, but we haven’t told it as well as we could. Chef Tyler McNabb has worked hard on the menu as well as the gardens at Holly Hill, and we’re going to host more themed meals and things like that. I also think people will be really happy to get back into taprooms and share a beer with friends and play some board games and have some fish and chips. I think it’s going to be really good for both ends of our group. I think people will be happy to have their weddings again — we had so many brides who had to cancel their weddings in 2020. I think we’ll be ready to celebrate, hopefully.