Transcription of Jonathan Cartwright for the show Hospitality, #109
Dr. Lisa: One of the first, best restaurants I ever went to in the state of Maine was the White Barn Inn. I remember walking in as a young 20-something, not even out of medical school with barely two nickels to scrape together, and being amazed. Amazed by the setting, amazed by the wait staff, but even more amazed by the food. As it turns out, Jonathan Cartwright is the wizard behind the amazement when it comes to the White Barn Inn Restaurant. So, we’re very privileged today to have Jonathan with us to talk about what it means to be a great chef at one of Maine’s restaurants.
Thank you for coming in.
Jonathan: Oh, you’re very welcome. Thank you for having me, and thank you for those kind words. You know the White Barn Inn is a special, special place. It’s a place I’ve been there for 18 years, and when I first came there, it was just as you explained there. It took my breath away. It took my heart and kept it there, and it really is a beautiful, beautiful setting with a great vision of an owner that was Laurence Bongiorno, that I came to work for, who was an Australian.
We tried to continue the vision of what he had for the place, and that is really to everybody do their job and to make people just have a couple of hours of happiness and away from the world that we live in. Transported to relax, to have conversation, to enjoy good food, enjoy good wine, and to have a wonderful experience here in Maine.
Dr. Lisa: Now, Laurie Bongiorno had passed away, and I think that the timing must have been pretty close. How long had you worked for him before he had passed away?
Jonathan: I came in 1995, Laurie passed away in 2007, so we’d been about 12 years together. He was a wonderful boss. He was a fantastic friend. He was a workaholic. He really poured his heart and soul into the White Barn Inn and what he created there, and other properties here in Kennebunkport. But I got to say, he was the most genuine, passionate, hospitable person that you would ever meet. He could make the most humble person, the person that stretched to come to the White Barn Inn, because it’s obviously not cheap to come there, and it’s expensive what we put on, but he would make someone that would save a long time for that experience and want to come for a special occasion feel so at home and so welcome and so special. He was an amazing chap.
An honor to work for him, and I was so lucky. I always feel that in life you go around and sometimes you wander and you look for a job, and you look for something that pays well and takes care of you and can handle your standard of living. But when I found Laurie or he found me, that connect that was so wonderful and the White Barn Inn stage to perform on is so special, so I was so lucky. I was so blessed to meet him; so sad that he passed away so young, and really is missed. What a great guy. Still at the White Barn Inn, many things that we continue to do and strive to do are all based on his vision and his passion for the business.
Dr. Lisa: He was somewhat of a visionary because I know that having spent quite a lot of time in Kennebunkport myself, now Tim Harrington and a lot of people are behind this wonderful revitalization that’s happening. But the White Barn Inn came before all that. I remember driving down to Kennebunkport and just the property sort of opens up and there’s this beautiful house that’s there, and this beautiful restaurant, but it came before this resurgence that happened. I wonder what that must have been like for him to kind of want to create this award-winning hotel and restaurant in the middle of the woods.
Jonathan: He was an amazing chap. You’re right there. A visionary. An entrepreneur. He was very passionate about what he did. He worked for a large company, worked for Hyatt Hotels, here in America, and he’d been to Kennebunkport, and he’d seen the White Barn Inn, and he’d said to a local Realtor that if that ever comes up for sale, I want to buy it.
He had the vision to become a Relais & Chateaux member, which is an affiliation of hotels. They’re all privately owned, but they all come together as members of Relais & Chateaux to market themselves and to promote what individual hotels do, so the Relais & Chateaux brand, the organization, the affiliation comes from Routes du Bonheur, which was the route of happiness in France, which were four little auberge on the way from Paris down to Nice to the Cote d’Azur for wealthy Parisians to take vacations. The White Barn Inn has a history that really, really blends into that, and really is, it was a little auberge for people to stop off on their way from New York to go up to Bar Harbor or to spend summer in Kennebunkport, things like that. He had the vision, “Okay, I’m going to refine this. I’m going to make it a grand little hotel, a little gem in Kennebunkport, when things were a little old-fashioned, to say the least.
Now it’s very modern, as you mentioned Mr. Harrington is doing a fantastic job with livening the place up, and keeping it alive, really. Keeping it alive, because it is very much alive and it’s a wonderful place to vacation, whether you’re young or old. We have a wonderful town gentleman called President Bush, our 41st president, and he’s a great guy, and he really put Kennebunkport on the map. He’s a great supporter of all the businesses in Kennebunkport, and the restaurants in particular, and a lovely chap.
I think now we have a wonderful town really built around him, and I think Laurie had that vision that Kennebunkport was a destination, a place where many, many Americans and international people want to come and vacation. And President Bush, in his tenure at the White House and other things has really put it on the worldwide map because the media cover him so much, and it’s a wonderful, wonderful place. I can’t say just about the restaurants and the fun things to do. It’s a wonderful area to bring up the family. I have young children, and it is a beautiful, beautiful place to have a family and have a life. It really is. He was a great guy, and sadly very missed.
Dr. Lisa: You’re obviously not from around here. People who are listening, I hope that they’ve gleaned that perhaps that you have a little bit of an accent. You’ve come from across the pond, shall we say. What made you decide that Maine was going to be your home, at least for the last, I guess you’ve said, 18 years?
Jonathan: 18 years, I’ve been here. Yes. Well, that’s a very good question. I’m a very lucky chef that came from England, that came from a town called Sheffield that is quite famous for its steel, in particular, its cutlery, silverware now. More recently, more famous for the movie “The Full Monty” where some male strippers decided to make some money after the mines and steel industry went a little south.
But, what made me come to Maine? I’ve been to America, and had the fortune to work for the Savoy Hotel in London. I’d been to America on a promotion. We did New York and Los Angeles, and I really enjoyed my time in America and honestly, just felt, “Wow. What a great place.” I thought, then, this was ’89, and I thought this was, “Wow. You know, the food is very good but it’s got a long way to go.” I think America is really now, the fastest moving food place on earth.
I haven’t been everywhere in the world, but I think our customers really appreciate good food. We have a good customer base all around the country. I’m not just talking about Kennebunkport. We have wonderful, wonderful restaurants that are advancing so quickly compared to France, Italy, Germany, England. England’s not so well-known for it’s food, but we have wonderful restaurants. It’s very historic industry, and restaurants are landmarks, and to make a mark in America, it’s much more understanding and young people open restaurants and they’re wonderful and they really understand their customers and we get great customer feedback, I think, in America. So, it’s a wonderful place to cook and to work in.
Going back to the real question, how about Kennebunkport and Kennebunk. I’d been to America. I really wanted to come back. Visas are very hard to get, and I had worked in Lenox, Massachusetts, at a place called Blantyre, another Relais & Chateaux member. I had to leave because my Visa ran out.
I went back to Switzerland just to do a winter season, and lucky enough, on virtually the last day of my Swiss contract, the phone rang and an Australian chap was on the other end. It was Laurie Bongiorno, and he said, “Hey, I heard you want to come back to America.” I said, “How’d you get my number? How’d you get a list?” It was so funny and you mentioned coming across the pond. I said the funniest thing to Laurie, and I’m sure knowing him now and getting to work with him and everything, he probably took three or four puffs on his cigarette and thought long and hard about the answer and probably thought, “do I really want this crazy guy?” Because I said, “How about meeting me half way?”
I don’t know. He was just like, puffed on a cigarette and went, I’m not sure I want this guy. Does he know … “What do you mean by half way, Chief?” He said. And I said, “Well, I’ll get to Boston, can you pick me up?”
I came on the 19th of April, 1995, had dinner at the White Barn Inn. He sent someone to pick me up, he welcomed me in his usual way, very hospitable and wonderful chap. I sat down on a table that I still consider my favorite table in the restaurant – I have many funny stories about that too – and I just looked at the window, looked at everything, felt what you explained when you first opened up the show today. How nice and warm the feeling of being taken care of and the quality of the food was amazing. I was like, I just looked to sort of out the window and whispered to myself, “Okay, Smarty-Pants. How are you going to improve this if you get the job?”
And, you know? Laurie and I hit it off and a kinder guy you could not meet. A fairer boss you could not have, and always wanting to push and really strive to go forward and to … If yesterday was good, we can be better tomorrow. If yesterday was bad, we gotta pick ourselves up and really buckle down and fix everything up, and make sure that, he wanted everybody to love their experience and enjoy it, and that’s still the motto right now. Try to take care of everybody, and it’s really enjoyable when it all goes right, and when it goes a little wrong, it’s very disappointing, but you know you have to stand up and face the facts and be really kind to those people and make them want to come back.
It’s a great business and he was a great guy, and I was very lucky to end up here. It’s beautiful being in Maine because of the wonderful farmers we have, the wonderful fish that we have here. Foragers, everything, the product that we have is wonderful. You only can cook good food with great product. You can’t make a good dish out of something that’s bad, and Maine has got that. The wonderful thing for being a northern European person, like me, is that we have the distinct four seasons here. It’s great to cook through that.
That was my background when I spent some time in Puerto Rico, a winter in Puerto Rico, when it’s very, very warm, 95 degrees every day. It’s very difficult to apply cooking techniques and ethic from northern Europe in that kind of weather condition. Maine is beautiful and it’s really a great place. It’s my home. I was very, very fortunate to meet Laurie and to have that opportunity to come to the White Barn Inn, because it was a fantastic restaurant before I ever set foot in it and that first meal was amazing.
Dr. Lisa: I believe it seems as though food has become the new religion. It seems as though here, in America, we’ve somehow elevated the things we put in our mouths to this much higher level than perhaps ever before. I don’t know If you have that sense, and if you do have that sense, I wonder if you can answer why that might be. Why has food become so important to us?
Jonathan: Wow. Very, very difficult question, but good questions. I think Americans have always traveled. They’ve always gone to places to … Paris has been very popular for Americans and it’s very well-known for its cuisine. Italy is very popular for Americans and the cuisine there is fantastic. I think now Americans want it on their doorstep. They don’t want to have to go so far to get it. So there’s now a great market for that, and that, as in America, the country embraces it and feeds the market. Therefore, it is really down to a customer base, and the willingness of people to try new things and wanting to have that on their doorstep that does that.
So, yes, I think it is a great place – I mentioned that earlier that I think it’s growing very fast and that it’s down to our customer. Why have that? I think they’ve always searched it further a field, but now they really want to spend time at home, want to do it on their doorstep, and when you think about here, in our little part of southern Maine, how many wonderful, wonderful restaurants we have and how many customers we have at those restaurants is always amazing. We just want a little part of America.
You go around America, you find every little village because the customers really, really enjoy that. I think the media has helped us immensely and spread that around. Like President Bush putting Kennebunkport sort of on the worldwide map, I think food is being put on the American map by the shows on television whether you like them or not. But people really do. I mean, we do. People that really want to come and buy a couple of hours in the kitchen just to see what we do is amazing and it’s so popular right now, and they understand about food and have questions.
When we do a cooking class, you mentioned coming to one with a guest chef of ours, but I’m always amazed about the people putting up their hand and asking questions about where do I get this from? And it’s like, have you ever had this? Have you ever had that? I’m thinking, Wow. That’s not just supermarket general food that you buy. That is really interesting stuff, and I think they’ve seen it on television or they’ve read it on menus, they’ve had it at other restaurants that they’ve traveled to, and really want it here in America. That’s why it’s a wonderful business to be in, it’s wonderful to listen to the customer feedback.
There’s nothing greater than when a guest comes in the kitchen and the bartender invites them in the kitchen to have a tour around or something, and they say thank you, thank you. The young kids hear that and really makes their day satisfying and worthwhile, and there’s a goal at the end of it. Really don’t know truly why we have these great customers in America, but it is a great country. And food, I think, was suppressed a little bit for some years. They are now, seems to be the boom things, and I think eating, dining out, entertaining is really, really important.
I think you wanted to talk about Share Our Strengths. The schooling system, I think, needs to catch up to where we are in the dining and the hospitality world and put that as part of the curriculum for children. Lunch breaks are too short at school, and they’re not embraced. They’re not a part of the schooling system. It’s in, out, you need to eat to have energy to go off and do something else, to do your schooling, which I think was cuisine many moons ago in America.
But, think about how much business, how much work, how much life is done over the dining room table out of that. If you teach a six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen-year-old child what food is, what the values are of that, and also how to sit at a table, not fidget around, not run off, have that conversation. Who trains you for a cocktail party? We go to many cocktail parties. You’ve got one glass in one hand and someone’s trying to give you food, and you’re trying to have a conversation at the same time and not have food around your mouth and look … I mean, it’s so difficult, but if you train that at a young age or had those kind of sessions at school, they’d think much more healthier about snacking, about things to do. And really, I think we would solve a few of the problems we have of children being hungry or eating wrong, binging on wrong things.
You know you should eat everything, of course. I love food and I cook a lot of food that perhaps isn’t the healthiest if you eat a lot, lot, lot, lot of it over and over and over again, but you need to try things. You need to know the path and the cause of that, and what will happen, and I think if I put that in as a curriculum for young children, we’d have a … I mean, I wish we did it at my school. Maybe I wouldn’t have wanted to be a cyclist, I probably would have wanted to be a chef from a very young age rather than from, well, lost and not knowing what to do in life.
Dr. Lisa: Well, I’m glad you brought up Share Our Strength because I did want to make sure that people are aware that in addition to being a high end, maybe one of the highest end restaurants in Maine, and being a special occasion place for many, you also support the organization Share Our Strength, which is a hunger-relief organization for children, not only here in Maine, but across the United States. This has been a priority for you for many years. In fact, I know that Billy Shore was at your restaurant, having a meal in honor of Share Our Strength, the proceeds of which went to Share Our Strength. So, ending childhood hunger is very important to your organization as well.
Jonathan: It most certainly is. I mean, Mr. Logothetis is a wonderful man and we have committed, as a whole company with the Grace Hotels worldwide to donate a certain amount of our proceeds from certain dishes and certain cocktails and room stays to go to local charities and our Rhode Island property and our Maine properties. The money goes to Share Our Strength. And I think, you know, for me, I have young children and I could not imagine it. I’m fortunate and Kennebunkport, the White Barn Inn, Laurie Bongiorno has been very kind to me, and Mr. Logothetis is very kind to me as well, but there’s some things we have to say to the children, no we can’t have those. You’ve got to go without, but I could not imagine putting my two little girls to bed hungry and night.
I think that is so sad in a country where we have so much and we do so much for relief of anybody in the world that gets into difficulty, anybody in the country, but we don’t look out for our little children that are our future, that are everything. I mean I’m not sure that my children will be chefs, but they will be something in the country, and they will contribute to the growth of the country and the continuity of America, and hopefully they will do it always with a good meal in their tummies. I think that’s very, very important and I’ve always had the good fortune of being well-fed and had the opportunity to try a lot of things.
I really couldn’t imagine how to do life, to continue in life to be positive about life if you were hungry every day or for days on end. I think it is really, really important, and again, I go back to school and I think I do funny things at my daughter’s school because they ask me to do those things and I really, really enjoy that. I really think that we should focus on from a young age, really teaching children about dining and the importance of that, and the importance of a meal.
And the importance of that time. What you can discuss, what you can do. Feelings over that, and I think going back to the White Barn Inn, that’s the great thing about it. You can be on a little table in our restaurant with many, many people going around. You can people watch, or whatever. But also you can go with a partner, a friend, a relative, a parent or something, and really just have that time where … enjoy food, enjoy the atmosphere, but enjoy each other. And I think if we taught that to children at a young age so they respected what they eat or what they harvest and everything, then I think we would stop a lot of it.
Definitely supporting Share Our Strength. Billy Shore, an amazing chap and again another visionary, a great man and the people that work for him and carry out this and do all that and try to spread the word and everything. We’re still a long, long way to go and I think he’d be the first to admit that, but we’re trying a little bit, and we’re happy to support that and we’re proud to support that, and I think we are getting somewhere. Really.
Dr. Lisa: Jonathan, how do people learn more about the White Barn Inn?
Jonathan: Ah. Well, now we have the World Wide Web, so definitely we have a wonderful website with a lot of information on there at www.whitebarninn.com. We also have a US hotels website. We also have Grace Properties on there, and you can find them all on the Web, and we’re expanding around the world with that. We’ll probably we will most certainly bring the Grace Brand into Kennebunkport, Kennebunk soon. That’s high on the priorities of the Logothetis family and we can really learn about the White Barn Inn on there.
But the best way to learn about it is to come on down and talk to one of our staff, really, and enjoy a meal and find out some of the history and some of the things that go off. You want to really learn a lot more about it, come and do a cooking class with us. A day in the kitchen is also a lot of fun for those people that are passionate about food and about hospitality in particular.
Dr. Lisa: We’ve been speaking with Jonathan Cartwright, the Executive Chef at the White Barn Inn and also with his new restaurant, Amuse, by Jonathan Cartwright and the Vanderbilt Grace Hotel in Newport. I do encourage people to spend some time in your restaurant. I’ll have to go down to Newport. I haven’t been there yet, but the White Barn Inn is truly … It’s beyond just having a meal. It’s an experience, so I hope that people have a chance to go down there and eat the food that you prepare for them and have a chance to really experience the hospitality that you put out there.
Thank you for bringing this delicious cuisine and experience, wonderful experience to the state of Maine.
Jonathan: You’re very kind. Thank you very much, and thank you for today. It’s really nice to chat with you and to be here. Please, I hope everyone comes to the White Barn Inn and has an enjoyable time. Love to meet everybody.