Jesikah Stolaroff Of Vim Dining & Desserts: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became a Restaurateur
An Interview With Martita Mestey
Only open a restaurant if you cannot see yourself doing anything else. I’m an example of someone who truly couldn’t do anything else! I went the traditional college route at the request of my parents and even completed my bachelor’s degree as a test of how much I wanted to pursue this dream. And after four years of exploring other options, I still pictured this as my future and I was more sure than ever that owning and operating my own restaurant was the right choice for me.
As a part of our series about “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became a Restaurateur”, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Chef Jesikah Stolaroff.
Chef Jesikah Stolaroff brings the feeling of home together with local ingredients and refined technique to create food that fills the heart. She specializes in thoughtful, New American cuisine with a nod toward her family’s Italian roots, joined by unforgettable, innovative desserts. A native of Santa Cruz, Jesikah got her start as a teenager making incredible cakes for birthdays and weddings, before moving north to hone her craft.
She studied both the science and the art of food, with degrees in Nutritional Science from UC Berkeley and Culinary Arts from the Culinary Institute of America in Napa. Jesikah cut her teeth in the Bay Area food scene, catering high-end events for the likes of Google, Pixar, and Mark Zuckerberg, while learning precision, planning, and visual flair.
She practiced California Cuisine at Plum, part of the prestigious Daniel Patterson restaurant group, before taking a position as the opening sous chef at Oakland’s Michel Bistro. There, she helped the French-inspired restaurant win the Michelin Bib Gourmand award in its first year (and every year since). But opening a family restaurant has always been Jesikah’s singular dream, and so she returned to Santa Cruz to share her experience and passion with her friends and neighbors by starting Vim Dining & Desserts.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to ‘get to know’ you a bit. Can you share with our readers a story about what inspired you to become a restaurateur?
Simply put: I’ve always wanted to do it. This is especially apparent if you look at how I spent my time as a little kid. My sister Shaunah and I would “play restaurant” as a childhood game growing up. Included in this was writing up a short menu of items we could prepare on our own without adult supervision like ramen and cereal, then taking turns serving each other.
As I got older and gained more experience in the culinary world, the essential components of “playing restaurant” remained with me. I still love making people feel good through food, sharing my passion with my community, and providing a space for my diners to celebrate life’s biggest milestones and special moments like birthdays, anniversaries and graduations.
Do you have a specific type of food that you focus on? What was it that first drew you to cooking that type of food? Can you share a story about that with us?
I focus mainly on seasonal ingredients. I was very fortunate to have grown up in California and my heritage here has given me incredible access to fresh fruits and vegetables. The abundance of produce in California quite literally doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world and it influences my cooking on a daily basis.
Since I was a child, me and my mother have had a tradition of visiting the area’s local farmers markets together. It was at these farmers markets where I was first able to taste, touch and smell California’s exquisite produce when it’s at its peak, as well as interact with regional purveyors to learn about how their fruits and vegetables were grown and harvested. These initial experiences helped inform the menu at my restaurant and it’s an activity I return to again and again as inspiration for my career as a chef.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that happened to you since you became a restaurateur? What was the lesson or take away you took out of that story?
One night, a pair of regulars at our restaurant made a dinner reservation for their anniversary. Prior to the big night, one of them called ahead and said “I want to propose!” and asked if we could sneak out the engagement ring during the dessert course. A bunch of us who work at the restaurant are romantics, so we were very excited to help pull off a proposal.
But then we received a second surprise! Halfway through dinner service the other member of this couple brought a ring to the kitchen and confided in us that they also planned to propose that night! Their request was the same: please bring the ring out during dessert.
Needless to say, we made a big deal out of the double proposal and sent every dessert on the menu out to their table and wrote “Will you marry me?” on their plates in frosting. It was definitely one of the most exciting moments that’s ever happened at the restaurant and we were all thrilled to have played a small part in their memorable evening. It was a good reminder that life is full of joyful surprises!
Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? How did you overcome this obstacle?
To start, finding the correct restaurant space for our specific needs was surprisingly difficult. Part of that difficulty was that the first few realtors we met either weren’t experienced in finding spaces for women-owned businesses or they weren’t interested in trying. Those early real estate challenges set us back months.
Once we found a space, the amount of money, labor and resources we had to pour into it to rebuild was eye-opening. We didn’t realize that the building was in such bad shape when we signed the lease and we spent many long nights on tasks like scrubbing pots and pans and pulling up nails by the studs. Financially, it took all of our early stage capital. And the permitting process was equally frustrating, as it took seven months from finished applications to granted permits before we could open our doors.
But in that pre-opening period, we had one immense moment of reprieve when we were fortunate enough to win big in California’s liquor license lottery, which granted our restaurant a coveted full liquor license. That important win motivated us and kept us going during the more challenging moments.
In your experience, what is the key to creating a dish that customers are crazy about?
My ultimate goal is to make sure every dish is balanced. This is done by balancing the importance of a texture like creamy, crunchy or chewy with different flavors that can bounce off each other but aren’t always expected and never forgetting to include equal amounts of salty, sweet and acid into the dish.
Personally, what is the ‘perfect meal for you’?
My perfect meal is a big bowl of truffle butter pasta! I’m really comforted by buttery pasta that’s simple, easy to make and tastes amazing. And then a slice of the perfect chocolate cake to finish off the meal.
Where does your inspiration for creating come from? Is there something that you turn to for a daily creativity boost?
I keep my passion fueled by constantly exploring my craft. Probably the biggest example of this is that I chose my wedding location in Copenhagen, Denmark, because at that moment in time the best restaurant in the world was located there. Honestly, I never take a trip or travel without visiting the best eateries in each location. Witnessing what other chefs and restaurateurs are working on and seeing their experiments and innovations keeps me inspired and energized.
Are you working on any new or exciting projects now? What impact do you think this will have?
I’ve implemented a monthly afternoon tea at my restaurant in the traditional style of the British. It’s very fun to put on and our customers love it because it’s unique. Most of the teas are themed to holidays like Halloween or Christmas and this month we’re even doing our first ever seasonal tea for summer themed for a classic American country fair. Finding ways to diversify our business is important too, so I’m looking into developing a cookbook and I hope to introduce new revenue streams like cooking classes in the future.
What advice would you give to other restaurateurs to thrive and avoid burnout?
Listen to your body! It knows what’s best for you and will alert you when you’ve reached your limit. This is a physically tough industry and you need to take care of your body and mind or you’ll be incapable of thriving and will most certainly reach some level of burnout.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started as a Restaurateur” and why?
1. Only open a restaurant if you cannot see yourself doing anything else. I’m an example of someone who truly couldn’t do anything else! I went the traditional college route at the request of my parents and even completed my bachelor’s degree as a test of how much I wanted to pursue this dream. And after four years of exploring other options, I still pictured this as my future and I was more sure than ever that owning and operating my own restaurant was the right choice for me.
2. Don’t get into this business expecting to get rich and don’t go into any sort of debt to make your dream a reality. As part of my commitment to this dream, I’ve had to sacrifice the financial security that a lot of my peers have obtained at this age including being able to buy a home and having any sort of retirement savings. Truthfully, I’m an outlier because I was fortunate enough early on in the process to have my family put in the initial investments and be co-owners with me, so that enormous debt didn’t enter into the picture but I acknowledge that this situation is not common amongst restaurateurs.
3. Having people you can call for help is essential. Tap the various experts in your life and engage your broader network. You’d be surprised at what people in your life know how to do or have experience in! I wouldn’t be where I am today if my community hadn’t pitched in and helped me every step of the way. From building my website from scratch to upholstering dozens of chairs by hand to jumping in to wash dishes when our scheduled dishwasher calls in sick to holding a steamer over the coils of a freezer to defrost it. I’ve had help with it all! And they’ve all been glad to work for only my gratitude as compensation and the good food I feed them as a thank you.
4. Take your craft seriously and don’t sacrifice your own standards. People will constantly want to give you their opinions and while it’s great to hear them out, this is your dream and you need to do it your way and the way you believe is best. I’m a big proponent for trusting your gut and staying true to yourself. I know I could be buying cheaper ingredients or I could set my restaurant up with a less intricate service style but my high standards allowed my restaurant to become ranked №1 in our city. We’re not making a huge profit by any means but my standards remain high thus allowing for the plates we put out to be consistently great and that’s recognized nightly by our diners. In the end, that’s what matters most to me!
5. Take risks and don’t be afraid to fail in the process. Allowing yourself to fail will undoubtedly lead to your success. And keep an open mind about trying and trying again because if you’re not open to tinkering or you’re not willing to get creative in your problem solving, you may miss out on the very best version of whatever it is you’re working on. Personally, I’ll usually try a new recipe at least five times before it goes on the menu or I decide to fully scrap it for something else.
What’s the one dish people have to try if they visit your establishment?
Dessert. The menu is constantly changing but we always have multiple dessert options and I’m a firm believer that it’s always worth closing out any meal with dessert.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
You have to be willing to put time, money and resources into causes that you think will do the most good for the largest number of people and are also the causes that you most deeply believe in.
If I had an unlimited supply of time, money and resources, I’d put all three towards the work of the brilliant environmental scientists, like my brother Josh, who are dedicating their lives to making sure that our planet survives for the future generations.
Thank you so much for these insights. This was very inspirational!
