Charm still on Michel's menu
By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor
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| Ninety-five-year-old Michel Martin founded Michel's restaurant and co-founded The Patisserie.
Photos by Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser |
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| French onion soup prepared by chef Stan Ikei |
Hawai'i Culinary Hall of Fame dinner Honoring Michel Martin, Martin Wyss, Jimmy Sueyoshi 6 to 9 p.m. April 11, Pearl Restaurant, Leeward Community College Tickets: $60. Call 455-0392. Also: "Taste of the Stars" benefit, a grazing event and silent auction with entertainment, 6 to 9 p.m. May 3 on Leeward Community College campus grounds. Tickets: $100. Call 455-0392. |
Martin was 7 when World War I broke out, and he vividly recalls Maman making onion soup because onions were cheap and available, unlike most other foods. His native Nice had been overrun by wealthy refugees from the German-occupied north who bought up anything edible. "You do not understand, darling," he says in his still-thick accent, tres charmant. "We were sooo poor, we were grateful for onions!"
Thirty years and thousands of miles later, when he opened his first cafe in Wahiawa during World War II, onion soup became a specialty, for much the same reason. Martin had taken over the little bistro on Wilikina Drive literally without money to make change for a $5 bill: When a soldier gave him a fin for a Royal brand beer — his first sale — he had to run next door for change, he recalls with one of many laughs that punctuate the story of his life.
At first, Martin did all the cooking and serving, so his menu at Chez Michel was built around dishes that were easy to prepare but gave the impression of luxury without breaking the budget. The soup, which was made in advance and needed little last-minute prep, was perfect for this.
As the decades of 14-hour days were met with increasing success, he moved from Wahiawa to Michel's at the Colony Surf Hotel in Waikiki, then to Chez Michel on Hobron Lane. Martin's onion soup became ever more elaborate and expensive, built from a rich consomme with good bread and fresh cheese.
So it is fitting that Martin's signature soup is on the menu for an April 11 benefit dinner at the Pearl Restaurant at Leeward Community College. Martin will serve as host for the evening, greeting guests by name, something for which he was famous in his restaurants. Throughout the '60s, '70s and '80s, you hadn't arrived in Honolulu until the garrulous restaurateur knew your name and saved you a table. He and his guests were fixtures in the three-dot columns.
At the upcoming event, Martin also will be welcomed into the Hawai'i Culinary Hall of Fame being established by LCC's culinary program to recognize pioneers and innovators who act as role models for its students. A prestigious advisory board of community leaders and culinarians made the selection.
The other inductees are:
- Retired chef/restaurateur Martin Wyss, who with wife Jeanne founded the popular Swiss Inn in Niu Valley.
- Retired chef-instructor Jimmy Sueyoshi, who worked with Martin at Michel's and started Leeward Community College's Food Service Department in 1971, retiring in 1989.
Martin trod a circuitous path to his present lifestyle, which includes several months a year at his home in Nice, several months at his Honolulu condo and two trips to Alaska to fish for salmon with a group of 10 friends with whom he purchased a cabin on Kodiak Island some years ago.
His papa went to war in 1914 and returned, his health broken by exposure to gas weapons. The young Michel went to work as an errand boy in a bank at age 10. He recalls his first cooking experience in the French equivalent of the Boy Scouts, boiling potatoes and onions over a wood fire.
At 16, he left France, looking for better opportunities. He found them at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, from which he was recruited by the general manager of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel as maitre'd. It was 1938, and the Royal Hawaiian was one of just a handful of hotels on Waikiki Beach. He recalls tables being set up outside on the grass, dances every night, guests staying two weeks because that's how often the cruise ships arrived and departed.
When war broke out, Martin was given the option of returning to the Mainland or taking a job with the Army. He chose the latter, and was sent to Kahuku, where an airfield was being built. Although he was no chef, he had to concoct meals for 1,000 men a day out of whatever supplies were sent to him. This he did for a year, until the manager at Kemoo Farms told him about a little cafe for sale in Wahiawa.
He managed to wrangle a loan from a local bank manager, and soon the elite of Honolulu were driving the hour and a half along Kamehemeha Highway to dine á la français. In a manner that would later be adopted by today's Hawai'i Regional Cuisine chefs, he formed partnerships with small farmers in the area and persuaded them to grow the vegetables he preferred. He got a friend to bring in the French wines he wanted to serve.
Martin worked 12 to 14 hours a day, and his top entree cost $4.50. He served omelets, sauteed chicken livers, onion soup and filet mignon or chicken with a classic sauce.
"I was by myself in the kitchen, except for one man to wash the dishes, and I was no chef. I had to learn," he said.
For 17 years, from 1942 to 1959, he made this unlikely location work, until he was invited to take over the restaurant at the then-new Colony Surf Hotel in Waikiki. The room he helped design there is still arguably the most beautiful waterfront dining space in the area. For 11 years, Michel's reigned supreme, but "I had a man above me," he recalls. "I was not the proprietor. I didn't like that."
He left to open a small bistro next to Canlis, and his faithful followed him. Seven years later, the landlord raised his rent, and his friend Bob Magoon wooed him further 'ewa, to a new, larger restaurant in the Hobron Lane development. Again, the regulars followed, but financial security did not. "I did not think," he says now. "I need more employees but I don't get more business."
He took in a partner, but that didn't work. To the stunned dismay of Honolulu's dining community, Martin left the restaurant abruptly in 1985. (Both Michel's restaurants are still in business, but he owns no part of them.)
Some years before, in 1969, he had joined with baker Rolf Winkler to found The Patisserie, wholesale and retail outlets baking French and German breads. This successful enterprise offers an outlet for the restaurateur. Now, whenever Martin is in Honolulu, he can be found at the Kahala Mall outlet between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., serving customers, grumbling volubly about this and that, clearing tables.
"I am just a working stiff, that's all," he says. "I can't stay home and do nothing. I want to prove that even at my age I can do a good job."
He rises early, putters around, comes down to the restaurant, carries home a late lunch and reads the newspaper, snoozing. "I don't eat dinner. I don't drink. I go to bed early," he said.
And he doesn't cook at home. Ever. The first time anyone ever prepared a meal in his condominium, he said, was when he had a live-in nurse briefly after surgery last year.
"Why should I cook?" he says. "I have cooked for almost 50 years!"
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- 4 medium-size onions
- 3 tablespoons butter
- 6 cups beef stock or consomme
- Salt and pepper
- Four slices day-old French bread
- Freshly grated Parmesan cheese — about 1 cup
Slice the onions and break into segments. Melt butter in large, heavy-bottomed saute pan, skillet or Dutch oven. Cook the onions over low heat, stirring occasionally, until they achieve an even light copper brown. Add beef stock and bring to boiling point; reduce heat to medium and simmer for 10 minutes. Taste, add salt and pepper as desired; then set aside to allow flavors to blend. (Refrigerate if you're allowing it to sit for longer than an hour or so.)
Shortly before serving, pre-heat oven to 325 degrees. Place pan of onion soup on stove and heat to piping hot and stir in a half-cup or so grated Parmesan. Arrange dishes on baking sheet or jelly roll pan. Spoon soup into dishes, arrange bread slices on top and scatter more cheese generously over bowl. Place in oven to brown cheese slightly.
