Robert Petit, an atypical life.

I come from a family of restaurateurs and as a lot of child of restaurateurs I first rejected this job which deprived me from my parents until the day I got caught by the virus and I decided to study in a hotel management school.
I must pay tribute to my parents and particularly to my father the former cook at the restaurant Point in Vienna where he worked with Paul Bocuse. My father was passionate and talented especially when he worked at Hotel de France des Rousses, awarded by the Michelin guide.
My father was a resistance fighter during the war, it made him very opened-minded with the desire to share his passion. Creating was very easy for him, it inspired me a lot.

After the hotel management school I started working in various restaurants’ kitchen, I decided to go studying at the university Paris Dauphine, I got an economy diploma. I was lucky to meet interesting people such as Jacques Delors, Jacques Attali and Raymond Barre.

The history of my restaurants begins in the kitchen of the restaurant Taillevent. I took a look at the dining room and wondered with which customer I could spend the evening with. It was 1979, I am 19 year-old and my job feels wrong according to what was going on in that time.
So I decided to use my savoir-faire and open my first restaurant: Dame Tartine.
I asked Mr Vrinat the owner of Taillevent, his opinion. He understood me and said he felt exactly the same. He recently passed away and I want to pay tribute to him.

One year later, Dame Tartine opened. It wasn’t easy because I didn’t have a lot of money but my companion Marie-Hélène helped me a lot.

The success of Dame Tartine gave us the opportunity to look for a bigger restaurant. In 1983, we started to plan the opening of a new restaurant in Beaubourg but Marie-Hélène has never seen it completed, a tragic accident took her away.

This restaurant opened in 1984 with the help of my two close friends: Bobo, Philippe (owner of “Petit Kawa” and my cousin Sylvie. The location is great, right in front of the Stravinsky fountain. But everybody makes fun of us with our inexpensive product, the tables with no tablecloth, the relaxed service with no uniform. However we had a lot of success, the product was up to date with the time and after 6 months the restaurant was fully-booked, 400 settings a day and 700 settings for the next years.

The recruitment is more about personalities than the skills The team is baroque but they are very hard worker and are appreciated by the customers.

We opened two others Dame Tartine-like restaurant: one in Bastille and other one in the Tuileries, under the name of Cafe Very.
We are a real company now and we try to keep our values. For example, we hire “ex-con” or people who have narcotic’s issues.

In 1997, I sold Dame Tartine to the Horeto group and after a quarrel, I left Dame Tartine to settledown and spend more time with my children.

In 1999, a new adventure began with the restaurant Pataquès which is meant to be modern Provencal cuisine. The restaurant is a success but I didn’t like the location so I decided to sell it and focus on what I was really interested about: a fast food restaurant with various healthy cuisine. The beginning of A Toutes Vapeurs.

Trackback URI |