Starting Your Own Restaurant: 20 Questions with San Francisco Restaurateur Mark Pastore

The dream of many food lovers and culinary professionals is to open their own "dream" restaurant. Mark Pastore, owner of San Francisco's Incanto, is living that dream. Debuting in 2002, Incanto quickly evolved from a neighborhood hot spot to a San Francisco and Bay Area destination as one of San Francisco's best Italian restaurants. Whether it's a down economy, under-informed industry regulators, or the ever-changing palates of neighborhood diners, Mark has experienced the entire spectrum of challenges inherent to any new restaurant owner. Thank you Mark for agreeing to chat with us!

1. What are you up to these days?

San Francisco is full of great restaurants. San Franciscans are among the most food-savvy diners in the U.S. This gives San Francisco restaurateurs the opportunity to do something a bit more on the edge, to push our diners to the limits of what they are familiar and comfortable with, and in the process to raise the bar for what people come to expect from a top-notch dining experience.

Looking beyond our primary goal of providing a deliciously authentic rustic Italian dining experience, we exert a lot of energy living up to and promoting a concept we call "sustainable eating." Most food-aware San Francisco diners give some thought to where their food comes from, how it is raised, and generally pay attention to sustainable food production. Shopping at local farmers' markets is one way local foodies demonstrate a commitment to local, sustainable food. Our goal is to challenge our diners to take the next big step: to think about not only where their food comes from, but to consider how their eating habits impact our ability to have a sustainable planet.

What does this mean? It means being open to eating unfamiliar types of food, to making a greater effort not to waste food, and perhaps the most beautiful part, is that it means reviving many aspects of our cultural and culinary heritage that have been largely swept aside or abandoned over the past 60 years here in America and elsewhere. First and foremost it means going against the homogenization of taste by respecting the variety of flavors, textures and nutrition to be derived from foods in their entirety. This is why we serve radishes with the radish greens still attached (the greens are both edible and delicious), why we grind up pea shells to make soup instead of just throwing the shells away, and why we frequently include variety meats such as heart, liver, tongue, tripe, brains, and sweetbreads on our menus. Eating these extremely nutritious foods was common 60, 80, and 100 years ago, but we've since dramatically narrowed down our idea of what is acceptable to eat. In the meantime, our society has become more obese, more lethargic, and more wasteful as a whole. It is a disturbing trend.

Anyone interested in these ideas should go to Incanto's website and read a few of our "Letters from Incanto", that more fully describe why this subject is so important to us.

2. Looking back, from conception through today, what were the most challenging obstacles to overcome in making Incanto happen?

This may sound incredible, but Pacific Gas & Electric (our local gas and electric utility) almost prevented Incanto from opening. We spent 10 months working with PG&E to hook up our permanent electrical service, but their bureaucracy was so screwed up that after 10 months of applications and meetings they were still unable to provide us even with an estimate of when we might receive our electrical service. What saved us in the end was that a local PG&E work crew upgrading the gas pipelines in our neighborhood took pity on us and called in their buddies to get our electricity connected, circumventing the "official" process. If we had waited for the PG&E scheduling department to do their job, we might still be waiting.

3. Given the chance, what if anything would you do differently?

Other than a couple of minor changes to the physical design of some of our working spaces, I would not do a thing differently.

4. Anyone who's visited San Francisco knows it's a culinary hot spot. What are the pro's and con's of operating in a place as creatively and economically competitive as San Francisco?

If you want to find out how good you are, you should play in the big leagues. Being in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago gives you a chance to measure yourself against the very best. That's all anyone serious about this business can hope for.

5. What did you do pre-Incanto? How has your prior experience helped or hindered your success with Incanto?

I worked in Silicon Valley for 12 years, the last 8 of which I spent helping to build a small software company from 4 to 200 employees. The experience definitely helped prepare me for running a restaurant, because I was already comfortable dealing with chaos.

6. What are the most common misconceptions people have about running your own restaurant?

Many people might believe owning a restaurant is high-paying and glamorous, the truth is that it is a very demanding, full-time job, all about paying great attention to lots of very small details. The rewards are tremendous, but they are extremely personal, not as much financial.

Before leaving my old job I spent 9 months talking to restaurant owners so that I wouldn't walk into this experience with many misconceptions. And I really haven't had many surprises.

7. Best/worst current culinary trends?

Best trend: It's not exactly a new trend, but I place great hope in the increasing number of restaurants that are concentrating their efforts on featuring products from local farms.

Worst trend: In the past few years, everyone and their brother have jumped on the "small plates" bandwagon. While it definitely has its place in the culinary world (dim sum and tapas, for example), this trend has reached the point at which, here in San Francisco at least, it is being abused. In many instances, it has become a gimmick used to induce guests to spend more money for less food. We've kicked around the idea of opening a "large plates" restaurant out of protest!

8. What's more important for a restaurant owner: Food knowledge or business knowledge?

It's possible to succeed, even thrive, in the restaurant business with strong business knowledge and weak food knowledge. Conversely, it's nearly impossible for a restaurant to succeed if the owner is unable to manage it as a business, no matter how good the food is. Ultimately, the owner can be strong on the culinary side or strong on the business side, but he/she needs to make sure that both capabilities are present on the team of people managing the restaurant.

9. Your pet peeves when dining out?

I'm just happy to be dining out in someone else's restaurant!

10. What are the most significant staffing challenges you encounter?

Finding qualified cooks. Whenever we post a position for a waiter opening, we receive 100-200 resumes. When we post a position for a cook position, we receive 20-30 resumes.

11. As a restaurant owner, what skills do you look for in an entry-level line cook?

Integrity, diligence, capacity and desire to learn, punctuality, organization, and passion for service. It's rare to find all those in one person.

12. One piece of advice to anyone looking to run their own restaurant:

Consider this quote from Muhammad Ali, "Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth."

13. Incanto became a San Francisco destination spot in just a few short years. Where do you go from here?

We aspire for Incanto to become a hub of our neighborhood, where people can recount important personal milestones and celebrate the occasions of their day-to-day lives. We want to be a part of neighborhood children growing up, graduating, marrying, and raising families. If, in 25 years, we can look back on lots of great memories and count on strong personal connections to our community, then we will have succeeded. Ultimately, that is what the hospitality business is all about.

14. The majority of your work day is spent:

I really don't have a typical day, which is one of the great things about owning a restaurant. I usually spend 1 or 2 hours in the morning on bookkeeping and administrative duties; after that I might be up on the roof with a serviceman repairing some equipment, researching an upcoming special dinner, checking in a delivery from a purveyor, meeting with our chef or sommelier about a menu change, or on the phone with a guest booking a reservation. At night, I'm on the floor of the restaurant, greeting guests at the door, running food, and helping to pour wine.

15. Is Incanto your "dream" restaurant?

Absolutely!! I dreamed about it for 11 years, spent 18 months designing and building it, and now have spent 2+ years working in it. It's still under my skin and I expect it will be for quite some time to come.

16. Fill in the blank.....restaurant owners make -----------

...an environment in which people can celebrate life.

17. Incanto is big on serving sustainably grown organic farm products. How does this commitment add to the challenge of running a profitable and competitive restaurant?

The challenging aspect of this commitment is that we also have a great desire to keep our prices in line with the notion of a neigbhorhood restaurant. Our food costs may be somewhat higher than our competitors, but San Francisco diners are smart enough to recognize the value they are receiving, which benefits Incanto in the long run.

18. Biggest mistakes you have seen other new restaurants make:

I think most small, independent restaurants like Incanto should be sure to invest the time and energy into fully training their staff before opening. A poorly trained staff can lead to disaster at the table, which can translate into bad word of mouth, which is the death knell for a new restaurant. At the beginning, the main goal has to be building a clientele of customers.

19. How much does it help if a restaurant owner is also an experienced professional chef?

The key word is "experienced." Having competent, experienced people, in general, is extremely important to any restaurant. I would not consider a professional chef to be experienced until he/she has worked at least 5 years in busy restaurants.

20. How do you balance art and commerce? That is, the desire to deliver the finest dining experience with the need to earn profits?

We honestly don't think about it in those terms -- we certainly don't think of ourselves as artists! Our main focus is on how we can provide the best possible experience for our guests, without any regard for balance. If we can succeed in doing that (which is the hard part), then the commerce part follows, just by paying attention to reality.

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