We didn't have friends. We were very limited moneywise; he made just $3.75 per hour, and I made $2.50 per hour. We had a grownup daughter. We weren't hungry. We had enough food, but it was hard to go through such a transformation. Morally we were very down, but at the same time we were free! We felt like if we worked hard we could accomplish a lot. And that's how we started—day and night, sleep a few hours a day, but the main thing [was] our daughter did go to school and that was our main happiness, you know?
She graduated high school and then went to West Valley Community College. At the same time, she worked, and then she got married quite young. She was in her early twenties when she married a Jewish boy who also came from Russia, but after that she did go to San Jose State University, and he went there too and graduated, and that was our happiness and we could forget about all the difficult times. And, again, as I'm saying, it wasn't the same like people who went through Ellis Island, where nobody helped them—you know they just got there and that's it. But emotionally I would say it was an absolutely different atmosphere for us than Russia because we were free and we could do whatever we want. We knew if we worked hard we will get everything. But in Russia it didn't matter. You could work hard and get nothing, and if you were Jewish, you got less than nothing. You felt like a second-class citizen.
The first time when I went back to Russia with my husband was in ‘79. All my relatives came to talk to us, and we said, “You have to immigrate right away,” and actually the same year all my cousins from my mother's side, Isabel's aunt and all our cousins and children, they are all here now in San Jose, except for two cousins who are in Israel. We have no relatives anymore in Russia.
My husband went on to work for the city of Palo Alto for twenty-two years, and he did very well and was well known and respected in his field. I have a swimming pool. When my husband used to come home from work, the first thing he did was go for a swim. He loved to swim…. [She pauses.] Then three and a half years ago, I lost my husband. He had cancer. He never knew he had cancer, and he passed away in four days. [She pauses again, more upbeat.] But I have my two granddaughters. I have a beautiful house, and my daughter has a house, and my daughter paid for her children to go to private school and then to private university, and my daughter and her husband both work very hard, and I still work.
In America, if you work hard and you want something, you will get it. I am so happy we came here.
She comes from an affluent family of restaurateurs in the Gascony region of France. By the time she was nineteen, strainedfamily relations led her to America to make her mark. She considered journalism and studied political science but eventually returned to what she knew best: the food business. In 1985, with a partner, she started a company from scratch. It was a gourmet wholesale food company called D'Artagnan, named after the charismatic Gascony nobleman popularized by Alexandre Dumas in the novel The Three Musketeers. Today she has 123 employees and twenty-nine trucks, and she grossed more than $50 million in annual sales in 2009. She built a network of more than 250 farmers in ten states and abroad that supplies more than three thousand restaurants across the country, including virtually all the three-and four-star restaurants in New York, and is credited with being the first to make foie gras in America. She is the author of the book D'Artagnan in New York, which was recently published in France to rave reviews and recounts her travails in successfully building her business. “We started with $15,000,” she said. “The day we opened the door officially, we had thirty-five dollars left in the bank account.”
I come from Gascony in the southwest of France. I left to come to America for a bunch of reasons. I come from a family of restaurateurs. In my family everybody's in the food business. When they're not in the food business, they are in the farming business, or hunting or fishing. So ever since I was very little, all I learned about was food. In Gascony, everybody lives for food. So I wanted to see if there was something else in life. Also, my father owned a hotel/restaurant in Auch, the capital of Gascony, which got two Michelin stars. He's retired now, but he was a big figure in gastronomy and nouvelle cuisine. He invented how to cook the migrate, the breast of duck, and he was a big personality. I was the oldest child. My brother is a year younger and my little sister is seven years younger, and in the family it was never said, but it was clear that I was not going to take over the hotel area—that my brother was. He was groomed for it, but I wanted to show what I was worth. I was proud…so that's why I came here.
I like to write. So I thought maybe I would become a journalist. But I took political science at the university in Toulouse, and then one thing led to another, and I came to America and got a job as an au pair in Connecticut. I was accepted at Barnard College in political science, dropped out, and then worked as an employee at the Three Little Pigs, which was a charcuterie, a little store on Thirteenth Street in Manhattan. So I went right back into food. Why? I ran out of money. My parents and I were not really speaking at the time when I left to come here.
I would never have gone back to France because I didn't want to come back with nothing. I wanted to show that I could do something with my life. I really wanted to show that I could do something without my father's influence because I saw all the girls whose fathers were the same level as my father. They would end up in a public relations agency presenting champagne or something, and I would hear people say, “Oh, she's there because of her father,” and I really didn't want that. I wanted to show that I could do it on my own. I wanted to impress my parents—my father, in particular—and I was mad. I was the oldest, and I could have taken over the hotel.
But now I'm so glad that I didn't. I'm so glad that it turned out this way. I am totally thankful. Because I came here and I had to fight, and I ended up doing something that I love, starting a company that is my second baby and living a life that I really, really enjoy.
For five years, I worked at the Three Little Pigs. It's a retail store, but right away I said, “Instead of selling a slice of pate to the housewife, we should make the whole pate and sell it wholesale to Balducci's around the corner and all those specialty stores and gourmet shops,” and my bosses at the time, two French guys, said OK.
So I brought in a friend of mine I had met at Columbia University at the International House. His name was George [Faison]. He was in the dormitory there, and he was a Texan—everybody else was a foreigner; I guess they still think Texans are foreigners—and he was a young American who would come with us Europeans once a month. We would spend all of our money at a good restaurant, and he was the only American doing that with us. So we became friends, and he was finishing his MBA, and so he was ready for life and liked to live. And so I'm with those guys [at the Three Little Pigs] for a year now and we want to expand and do wholesale, and I said, “George, we need you,” and he joined us because the two owners were really overwhelmed. I was pretty good at selling, quality control, the new products; I was in charge of that, all the logistics and the finance. But the owners didn't have much of an education in France. They knew how to cook and they made pates, but soon it became bigger than them, you know?
I stuck with them for five years, and one day two guys arrived with foie gras in their hands. This was 1979, and I couldn't believe it: “What do you mean, foie gras?” I thought it was not allowed in America. They said, “What do you mean? There is no law against this.” They were Israeli and they came with American partners, and they had started a farm here for making foie gras up in Monticello, New York, and they wanted to see how they could sell the stuff commercially. Their forte was the processing and the slaughterhouse and the breeding and all that stuff, so I absolutely wanted to be a part of this. For me, it was historical. The first foie gras in America!
I started the negotiations. Then one day, my bosses and I went up to the farm in Monticello, and on the way up they talked with each other about it really for the first time. They knew where I stood on this. And along the way, during the two-and-a-half-hour drive, they became more and more agai
nst signing the exclusivity agreement.
I was so pissed off and sad, beyond belief! I had worked on this for three months to convince those farmers that we would be the only ones carrying their product, and what we would do with the rest of the duck—the breast, the legs, etc.—because the foie gras, the liver, was the most valuable, but you can't throw away the rest; this is where the money is, where you make it or not, you know?
But the father there who owned the farm threw us out, and that was that. They found an excuse not to sign. They insinuated that there was something fishy, and the father got really upset and said, “You're in my office—get out!” [She laughs.] And my two bosses were saying, “You know, it's a good thing we didn't go into this,” because they had built a good business. They didn't need to take any risks. They had six pates; life was good. When one was on vacation and came back the other one went, and so everything was cool. So they didn't want to risk it.
It was on the way back in the van when I knew I was going to start my own company. And I talked with my friend George, and after more than a couple of lunches with margaritas, I convinced him and he said, “OK, let's do it!”
Meanwhile, by the time I convinced him, we had already started looking for a place and put together a business plan where it wouldn't be only foie gras, because we couldn't survive. We needed game and poultry and good food for restaurants. By the time we did that, the farmers in Monticello had panicked already and started selling to butchers and meat wholesalers in Manhattan. So we had to convince them that they needed one more, which they really didn't, but they went for it. We had to pay COD. George resigned from the Three Little Pigs. I stayed. On Sundays I would take the van, go to the farm in Monticello, check the foie gras, and choose them. During the week we would sell them, organize everything, and then after three weeks, I also resigned and we started D'Artagnan!
We started at the beginning of ‘85, and it went truly well for several years. It was very hard every day. And every day for the first three years, either George or I would come and say, “OK, I'm not coming tomorrow. I leave you the company; it's too hard, too much,” and every day, one of us would say, “One more day, just one more day.” The company was located in Newark, New Jersey, because it's close to the airport, near Manhattan, good highways in the northeast corridor from Boston to Washington, DC, for shipping. We started with $15,000. The day we opened the door officially, we had thirty-five dollars left in the bank account. Because we had to pay three months' rent, we had to find a truck. The truck was a lease we took over from a guy who wanted to do some orange juice thing that didn't work out—it had to be a refrigerated truck—but we needed a logo to paint on the truck.
We discovered the logo at a bistro in Greenwich Village and the bartender overheard us. We were deciding the name of the company, and I said, “D'Artagnan, it has to be D'Artagnan,” and then the bartender overheard and said, “You know, in my native country in Russia, I'm a graphic designer.” So we explained the company and it's going to be called D'Artagnan, named after the musketeer, and in two seconds on a cocktail napkin he drew the logo that we still have today! We took our last $2,000 to paint the logo on the truck. At the time I was living in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, which was not as civilized as today, and I parked the truck. The next morning, there was graffiti all over it. I cried on the sidewalk….
George and I eventually had a big breakdown. He tried to buy me out…. We had a clause between us. It's called a “shotgun clause.” We were partners fifty-fifty, so we had to take out life insurance—one partner on the other partner—that if something happens to one partner and they die, the other partner has life insurance for half the value of the company. In that way, the company doesn't suffer the loss of one of the partners.
The shotgun clause also said that if one day one partner doesn't agree with the other, they have the right to put an offer on the table—any offer—and the other one cannot say no. The value is set by the first partner, and the second cannot go lower or higher—the value is already set. It's either, “Yeah, I take it” [sell you my half at that price], or “No, it's me” [buy your half at that price]. So George did that to me, [but] as part of the terms he said, “Thirty days.” In other words, the terms in his letter were the amount of money and thirty days. But the amount was so enormous, there was no way I could raise it in thirty days. It was impossible.
In the meantime, my daughter and I were supposed to leave on vacation for three weeks to China, and everything was organized with friends of mine. So that weekend I called my daughter, who was at my parents' in Gascony, and I said, “I don't think I'm going to be able to come to China because I have this thing that's happening with George, and I'm sorry.” She was fifteen at the time. “Do you still want to go to China?” We were to go with a friend of mine and his boy. They all knew each other, and she said, “Yeah, I want to go to China,” and then she realized that I was not going to come, and then she realized what I just said—that I may lose the company—and she said, “But what if I wanted to work at D'Artagnan one day?”
And that's when it hit home. That was the thing that made me want to keep it at any price. Over the years she went to demos with me. We did cooking classes together. We were attached at the hip, you know? And I'm not married, but that touched my heart. Because up until then, I was thinking, “What do I do? It's a lot of money maybe I should just forget it and go back to France, open a little restaurant, and that's it.”
But after what she said, I was resolved: “I have to get it! He's not going to do this to me after twenty years of business together. I cannot let that happen. I have to find that money!” I cannot say how much, but it was several million dollars for me to buy him out.
So I knocked on doors and realized in July everybody was on vacation and it was going to be very difficult. And I was at the Fancy Food Show in Manhattan, and I had three bankers who came to visit me at the booth, which was very difficult because George was there. We were both looking at each other. The employees knew something was dead wrong; it was so bad. And one banker, a French banker, said, “I'm going to help you,” and he did. He went to France. He called me. I remember it was Bastille Day, and he said, “Yesterday I had a meeting with my guys, and it's a goahead!” That was July 14. George had given me the shotgun clause on June 17, so I had to declare my intention on July 17—so I made it by three days, just in time. I remember I was in front of Provence, the French bistro [since closed] in the meatpacking district, and I bought a drink for everybody and nobody knew why. [She laughs.]
My father and I made up. When the company started to stand on its own and I started to have good publicity, he became very proud of me, but he never said anything to me. Never! He doesn't talk. Even this year, our twenty-fifth anniversary, we did a big party. I invited two thousand people to Guastavino's, under the Queensboro Bridge. We had a big plane full of Gascony people who came to the party—chefs, rugby players, musicians, friends, family, my parents. We asked everybody to dress in red and white, which are the colors of D'Artagnan but also the colors of Auch, my hometown. And the next day people said, “Wow! Your father was so proud!” And I didn't know. He never told me. Even then, he never said a word.
I got my green card in 1986, and I literally just got my citizenship certificate the other day [June 2010]. I passed the test last month and took the official oath of allegiance. I could have done it a long time ago because I love America, but it was time. Now every time I go to France and come back, Customs cannot look at me like, “If you're not a citizen, why are you here?” Which I can understand.
I love France, of course. And when I went on the book tour in May [2010] in Paris, every journalist at some point asked me one question: “And where are you going to end your days?” But they said it in a way that [meant] I better stay in France because that's what they were expecting to hear. And frankly, every time, I said, “I don't know,” which was the truth. I have deep, deep roots with my region of France. I'm not French; I'm Gascon. That's why I name
d my company after D'Artagnan. He was a hero who really lived in Gascony, was very loyal to his friends, to his family, and, of course, to the king and, especially, the queen. He was a guy who wanted to do things with panache, and that's what I wanted in my company. I wanted to do things with panache. And to this day, I think we've been pretty successful at doing that. Doing it the right way for the beauty of it, not for the “What's in it for me?” It's a totally Gascon way of seeing things, I think. We all think in Gascony that we're descendants of D'Artagnan—the panache, the loyalty, the grand gesture. [She pauses.] But I live here. I love it here. So I decided to become a citizen. I decided this is my country now.
His is an amazing story of faith and recovery. He grew up in the outback of western Ontario, Canada, until age twelve. He emigrated to America when his father accepted a position as pastor at a Baptist church in rural Kentucky. Like his father, he, too, became a pastor. He was twenty-eight, in the prime of his life—newly married, in a new home, having just accepted a new job as pastor of a church, his wife pregnant with their first child—when a fluke car accident revealed he had cancer and had less than a year to live. Against all odds, enduring a remarkable test of faith, he somehow survived the ordeal and eventually returned with his family to his native Canada, a living, walking miracle of a man.
My father was a pastor, so I guess it makes sense that I would become a pastor too. My family is Scots-Irish. Over the centuries, my family historically migrated from Scotland to the west of Ireland, then to Nova Scotia in the Canadian Maritimes, and finally to Ontario, Canada. I grew up in a small rural town in western Ontario. I lived there for the first twelve years of my life. Then my father was offered a job as a pastor at a Baptist church in Kentucky, and we moved there. It was my parents and me. I was an only child.
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