Kendra Feather

It's not online yet (still) but here's the unedited version of the lovely Kendra Feather and her story from Belle:
   

    When Kendra Feather opened up her restaurant a decade ago, she knew a lot about waiting tables in restaurants, but not a lot about running one.  “If I’d known anything about it, I never would have lasted,” she says.

    She cobbled together the money to open Ipanema by saving the tips she made working at the 3rd Street Diner and relying on the generous help of friends who built her booths and renovated the space for very little remuneration other than her undying gratitude. The Friday she opened, she wrote checks to her suppliers from an empty checking account and prayed that over the weekend she would make enough money to cover it all on Monday.

    The gamble paid off. Over the years, she’s quietly and diligently worked to make the business self-sufficient and then profitable. “My ignorance kept me going,” she says. Other restaurants might have folded when an immediate pay-off failed to materialize, but Feather took the hard work for granted and persisted.

    Her decision to offer a vegetarian menu also filled a void vacated by Grace Place’s closing two years earlier. “I was forced to think out of the box . . . in 1998 there wasn’t much of a blue print for that kind of approach to vegetarian food. We were trying to take a side dish and make it an entrée.”

    And as one of the largest produce consumers for their size in the city, making it local and making it organic has proved to be a challenge as well. She hasn’t been able to find the right grower and has qualms about cleaning out all of the produce at a farmer’s market. Ingredients need to show up in time to be prepped for dinner service, and that hasn’t always happened when she’s tried to work with some small farmers. She’s becoming more optimistic, however. “I talked to Lisa (Taranto) of Tricycle gardens about an idea of local kids growing for us. I really like the idea (of an after-school program).”

    With Ipanema’s success and the experience she’s gained getting there, Feather was ready when her friend Manny Mendez of Kuba Kuba offered her the former Table 9 restaurant space on the corner of Park and Meadow. The restaurant immediately following (I can’t even remember the name of the place, Deveron. Do you?) Table 9 only stayed open for two weeks, and Mendez and his partner Johnny Giavos, owners of the building, were looking for a new tenant. Feather jumped at the opportunity to do something different.

    The new restaurant, named Garnett’s and opening this summer, won’t be vegetarian, although there will be vegetarian options. Feather envisions more of an old-style, neighborhood sandwich shop with things like Cobb salad and a Croque Monsieur on the menu. Named after her grandmother, Garnett’s will have plenty of sandwiches inspired by other family members as well. “Food is a way to connect with people. It’s a way to care for them . . . I come from the school of thought says, ‘a piece of pie can make everything better.’” If the past ten years are any indication, Kendra Feather knows exactly what she’s talking about.

Comments

[Scott Burger]

Congratulations to Kendra!

[mmh1]

Brandon, actually Table 9 was open for a while. It was called Credo's Park Place or something like that which only stayed open for a few days. Looking forward to the opening of Garnett's!