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Leanne Kelleher and Marylisa Alfalla are building a restaurant.  Don’t misunderstand.  The actual structure already exists.  It’s The Tides, the small, cottage-style place at the corner of Cardinal Drive and Camelia and it’s been open seven days a week since April.  What they are building is a staff of loyal co-workers, a growing pool of regular customers and a reputation for providing outstanding service, excellent food, and a pleasant atmosphere are a reasonable price. 

It that weren’t unusual enough, add in the fact that The Tides is the only restaurant in town owned and operated by women.  “There are plenty of women involved in restaurants, but as far as I know this is the only one in Vero Beach where a woman is running the kitchen and is solely responsible for the operation,” says Kelleher.

She thrives on it.  She considers herself a local.  “I graduated from Saint Ed’s and have lived here since 1982.”  Her father is a doctor in the area, and she is loyal to her community.  She’s worked in Vero Beach’s best restaurants and has learned from them.  She also graduated from the prestigious Culinary Institute of America near Poughkeepsie, N.Y.  When she attended the CIA, “Maybe 20 percent of the students were women.  Maybe not quite that many.”  She went on to earn her bachelor’s degree in management at the hospitality school at Florida International University in Miami.  Once again, women were the small minority of students.  “Most of the guys there were looking at getting into the management of large chain restaurants; not very many were chefs.  But I wanted the business background so I could do it all.”

Since Kelleher is the only woman chef/owner in town, most diners are somewhat taken aback when they ask their server to “tell the chef he did a great job” only to be straightened out as regards the correct pronoun.  “It really makes me chuckle in the back.  Most diners are really surprised when I come out of the kitchen to visit the tables.”

She recalls visiting a posh and very traditional manor house in England where the Grill Room was reserved “For Gentlemen Only.” It took some cajoling for her to convince the maitre d’ that she was a legitimate chef and deserved to see the exclusive gentlemen’s domain. There was at least one CIA instructor who clearly tried to reduce his female students to tears to prove that “Women don’t belong in the professional kitchen.”  Not true, says Kelleher.  “We have another woman in our kitchen, and really, there’s nothing we can’t do.”  At the Tides, Carole Bowers, a culinary school graduate, is extremely -creative and a real self-motivator, according to Kelleher.  “She can do everything.  We have two terrific men in the kitchen, too.  Shawn Campbell, who has been here practically since the beginning, graduated with a B.S. degree from the Johnson & Whales culinary college in Rhode Island and is a huge help managing the kitchen.  We’re also glad to have Kevin Deaney, who graduated from culinary school in England and does all the butters and dressings, as well as his cold specialties and the production of off-premises catering events.  Since he worked at Disney, he’s an expert in feeding a whole lot of people at a time.  Another CIA graduate who was a great influence on me and taught me a lot is Debbie Medkiff, who was in charge of the food at Disney when I worked there.”

According to Kelleher, “gender doesn’t really matter.  It’s hard work, and I’ve seen a lot of men crying about how tired they are.  It’s a matter of stamina and whether you have the drive inside to be a chef or just want to call yourself one. I worked at one place where I handled 200 pounds of pizza dough a night.  You do want to be careful, though; trying to do everything yourself can be dangerous.”

Women chef/owners may not be so uncommon in California, where Alice Waters pioneered the idea and where Mary Sue Miliken and Susan Feniger, with whom Kelleher studied, have become famous.  In small-town Florida, there’re practically unheard-of.  While the work is physically demanding, it’s not anything a strong, determined young woman can’t do, although it’s admittedly stressful.  (Having part-owned and cooked in a restaurant myself, I’d say it is undeniably the most relentless job on the planet.)

The Tides’ philosophy is simple even if the wok isn’t.  “Our success us based on the customers’ happiness,” says Kelleher, who cooks on the line at least six days out of seven.  “I try to make every dish as good as it possible can be.  Even with the menu items that don’t stretch me as a chef, the penne and the chicken, for instance, I still take pride in their preparation.  And, unlike some chefs I know, I don’t take offense when customers order something that’s not MY favorite.  I always try to make a good product.

Besides that Kelleher isn’t looking to “make back my whole investment in a single season.  We’re here all the time.  Year-round.  We’re not part-time; we’re involved in the community and want to support local people.”

To that end, they aim to provide a hearty welcome for visitors as well as a year-round place on the beach for people to go “without paying beach prices.  Our prices could be higher, but we haven’t raised them since we opened.  Most other places raised their prices this year, but we’d rather have frequent visitors than have people come here only on their birthdays or other special occasions.  We won’t raise our prices unless our costs go up significantly.  Then we’d have to.  We have a lot of regulars who come once a week or more and ask for a specific server of if we’re servicing a specific dish that night.

“This is not just a job to make lots of money.  If you’re looking to become an instant millionaire, don’t open a restaurant.  (She admits that she has nothing against money and will not turn it down.)  It’s a career, a passion where you can invite people in to share what you love to do.  We have to be patient.  We want people to feel they are getting a good value and to trust us.  Over my years of working in some of Vero Beach’s best restaurants, I’ve learned a lot of the do’s and don’t's of keeping customers happy.  It’s the difference between having a dream and having a life.

Both Kelleher and her partner, Marylisa Alfalla, have worked in the restaurant business for 10 to 15 years. Having worked in New York, Alfalla, in Kelleher’s words, brings a city experience to the restaurant and has a sophisticated perspective.  She’s the business partner who operates the front of the house, takes charge of reservations and seating, runs the bar, hires the servers, and sees to much of the administrative detail.  “We both do what we’re best at, but to whatever we have to whenever there’s a special need.  We’re both strong at our jobs, and neither of us tolerates slip-ups.  Our standards are high.” 

This is clear from the smooth operation on a busy night.  But while they demand excellence from their staff, they also treat each member with respect and expect and receive a great deal of loyalty.  “We don’t want turnover.  We want everybody to be happy and to stay with us for the long haul.  We’re like family, a cohesive unit.  They’re all professionals; we don’t hire anybody who isn’t.”

Kelleher cites area restaurants where she has worked which will remain nameless, where the servers are given a quota, an average dollar amount to be reached per check,

or else.  “We don’t work that way.  We don’t give parameters.  Our customers aren’t dollar bills, they’re people, and our staff treats them that way. And we treat the staff that way.  I feel education is the key to any success, and all the kitchen staff have been to culinary school -- either high school or college --  and we encourage and support them.  You have to study to have the tools to succeed, and if a server needs the night off to prepare for an exam or to do a paper, we do our best to accommodate his or her needs, Marylisa and I can fill in any temporary gaps, and the other servers are willing to pitch in, too.”   So far, no one has taken advantage and no one has resented having to take up the slack when somebody’s out.  “It’s not about the money," says Kelleher.  “It’s about doing the right thing.”

At The Tides they strive to hire only the best.  Because they have worked in many of Vero’s restaurants, “We know where the applicants have worked and we check their references.”  And, as a result, they don’t really have to train them.  “Of course, we go over specific procedures that we like to see here, but they’re already good servers.”  The bus people follow the servers’ lead, and they’re all smart, hard working and outgoing. 

The kitchen crew, too, is remarkable for a number of reasons.  The state mandates that at all times at last one person in the kitchen must be a certified food handler.  For safety and hygiene, Kelleher is a real stickler so everybody in the building is certified.  “They know how to handle food safely, the right way to handle silverware.  That sounds pretty elementary, but it’s important.  At the lowest common denominator, you can be sure at least the basics are done properly.  That’s the key,” 

Kelleher and her staff are all avid readers of food magazines and have frequent brainstorming meetings to come up with new ideas for specials and so forth.  Every day the pantry, sauté and grill chefs each get to do his or her own specials.  “We work in the classic brigade system where everyone prepares his own dishes.  We don’t have prep cooks, per se, somebody just chopping and dicing.  We do every dish from start to finish, which is one way we can count on consistency from the kitchen.

It appears to work well.  According to both Kelleher and Alfalla, they have about a 98 percent satisfaction rate. “We really work to get feedback from the customers.”

“People stop at the door to tell me not only that the meal was food, but to give specific details about what made it food.  We like that,” says Alfalla.

Kelleher agrees, “We have a small enough kitchen so I can see every plate that comes back, and I know if it’s clean.  If there’s a problem, I visit the table and try to help.  You have to kind of sound people out.  With some people, if you offer to take an item off their bill, they get insulted, others appreciate it.  Id there are frequent complaints, I’ll take the item off the menu and replace it. I do my best to accommodate the customers in any way I can.

“We don’t stockpile anything.  We don’t make big batches; we prep every day.  I don’t like food sitting around in the cooler.  I want it fresh.”  Freshness is provided by produce from Osceola Organics and Kenny’s Produce and by seafood from New England Seafood and from Gary’s, where they cut the fish right in the back of the refrigerated truck.  “Nothing here is frozen except the oysters, which we serve cooked.”

Kelleher’s personal favorites, “Well, if I were having fish, I’d go for the plantain crusted grouper.  For meat, I always enjoy our filet mignon with gorgonzola and onions.”

Recently they’ve added “The Chef’s Table” to their Friday and Saturday offerings.  It’s a set menu of five dishes plus a Chef’s Amusé Bouche and an intermezzo, plus a finale of cheese.  All eight courses are accompanied by wines specifically selected to compliment each dish.  This elegant meal, at $80 per person, must be reserved two days ahead, at which time any specific food allergies or dislikes should be mentioned.  “One guy called and said he’ll eat anything but lima beans.”  That gives Kelleher a pretty free hand – and in her words, “An opportunity to grow and push the limits,” and to offer even more sophisticated fare than regular menus.  They’ve gotten a very good response in part because, “A lot of people have gotten to know us and trust that the menu will be great, even though they don’t know in advance what it will be.”  A lot of people love surprises.

Despite the best of intentions, sometimes it’s really hard to uphold The-Customer-Is-Always-Right principal of good service.  Kelleher notes that kitchen disasters are occasionally inevitable, like the power failure at another restaurant that had her cooking in the glow of headlights from a car, or the time the gas company didn’t deliver on a holiday and there was a dining room full on people and no way to cook their orders.

At one private Christmas party in another restaurant, a diner stood up and shouted, “You’re trying to poison me!”  Repeatedly.  And loudly.  He insisted that the raw oysters were too warm to be safe and the cooks were out to get him.  Kelleher had take him outside and explain that the oysters had been handled appropriately and t was simply a function of the Florida’s climate that the water in which they had been rinsed after the shucking was warm, not the oysters themselves.  She admits that may be one reason she chooses to serve only cooked seafood at The Tides.

Alfalla recalls an episode when a diner had casually mentioned to his server that he hoped no one would be sitting next to his table.  She replied that she really didn’t know what the reservations looked like for that evening.  When Alfalla seated a couple nearby, the man stood up and screamed, “I told you I didn’t want anyone sitting next to me.”  She swallowed hard and said, “I’m terribly sorry, sir, I’ll be happy to seat you at a table in the corner of the other room if you like.”  He went on and on to the mortification of his wife and the embarrassment of the too-close diners, but finally quieted down at a remote table.  Alfalla admits,  ‘I had to go outside and take a couple of deep breaths after that one.  After all if you want to eat completely alone, why not stay at home?  This is a public restaurant and the tables aren’t even close together.”  She bought the couple at the next-door table some glasses of wine to help compensate for their embarrassment.

In the “all of the people, all of the time” category, one customer whined that the sea bass was bland.  Sea bass is loved for its mild flavor (I’m reminded of the customer who complained that the Gazpacho was cold).

There are times when the staff can loose it, too.  At another restaurant where they had recently installed computers for inventory control and billing, Alfalla heard one of her servers shouting at a table of diners, “This is a computer, can you see I can’t concentrate if you’re asking me questions?  This is a computer!”

It’s one reason there are no computers at The Tides.  There aren’t even any cash registers.  All the monetary transactions take place out of sight of the dining room.

The partners don’t like the “cha-ching” noise.  “We want everything to be customer friendly and elegant,” they say, and work hard to make it so.