Catering for every taste

RESTAURANT owners have a lot on their plates at the moment. There's the rising price of food and diners' shrinking wallets for starters.

Time for the bosses to tighten their belts until the sour economic news turns a little sweeter?

Not for Edmond Davari, who has been there, done that and bought the tea towel during 24 years of economic booms and busts while running successful restaurants in Devon's two cities.

As he sips a glass of mineral water at a table in The Fish Market, his newest eaterie overlooking Plymouth's Sutton Harbour, he talks calmly and confidently about the challenges of adding two more to the five he owns in the city and in Exeter.

He might lack the gift of timing. But he is loaded with business nous, enthusiasm and perseverance topped with a thick skin and a winning sense of humour.

“You know I opened Al Farid (a Moroccan/Middle Eastern eaterie) in Exeter on 9/11?” he says. Economies around the world went into shock as consumers stayed at home following the Islamist terror attacks on the United States in 2001.

“Not just any restaurant, but a Middle Eastern restaurant! It went down like a lead balloon at the start.”

Business in his restaurants is down because of the current economic slowdown, but he is not running scared.

“I think I am one of the luckier ones who is able to sustain a business because I believe I am good at knowing what people want,” he says. “I like to think I offer value for money.

“We are full many evenings in the week but people are not spending as much. Instead, say, of having two glasses of wine, they have one.

“It will change. It will turn around. Christmas will come and people will forget the damn recession. We have had so many inquiries for Christmas now.”

The Davari offer in Plymouth is Zucca! (Italian), The Souk (Moroccan) and The Fish Market, all on Sutton Harbour, which will be joined by Asia Chic (Japanese, Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese) and Rocco and Lola (Spanish) next month .

The timing is hardly perfect but the location could not be better, Mr Davari believes. The restaurants have customers on their doorstep, in the high-value flats and smart offices that line the waterfront.

More are on the way with new offices for solicitors Foot Anstey well advanced and the BBC South West HQ under construction.

“Sutton Harbour is becoming a destination,” says Mr Davari, confidently. “It is the gourmet dining area for the city.”

Mr Davari's other Plymouth restaurant, American-style diner Fat Mama's, taps a less wealthy but larger and just as hungry market – the student population around North Hill. Al Farid, which is close to Exeter Cathedral, completes his line-up but is for sale as he concentrates his energies on Plymouth, where he and his family live. Two other restaurants he owned in Exeter have already been sold on.

Mr Davari first came to Plymouth in 1984 to run the catering operation at the Theatre Royal, a role he revelled in as a showman – he is never shy about seeking publicity – and a fan of the arts.

When he moved out of the theatre and opened his first restaurant, Sardis, he found a different Plymouth, one that wasn't used to 'proper' coffee, had conservative tastes (gammon and pineapple rather than trendy European) and preferred dull decor to the cheery brasserie look.

Customers weren't the only problem. The city council couldn't stomach Sardis either.

“I put tables and chairs on the pavement but the council said 'no way' because they said I was obstructing the pavement,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief at the council's opposition

“I couldn't understand it. I had come from Oxford where civilisation had already arrived, and here the council kept threatening to fine me.”

After a planning appeal he won a battle with officialdom over changes to the shopfront of another venture, Shoeless Ed's, a Mexican restaurant in North Hill, and went on to transform Plymouth's dining scene with a succession of eateries: Papa Joe's (another Mexican, in the Barbican Theatre), two Spanish- influenced, Cuba (North Hill) and Lorenzo's (near the ABC cinema) and Bougie, later The Painter and then Showbar (Princess Street), which specialised in French and Mediterranean dishes.

But the feeling Plymouth was not an easy place to do business stuck and he shrank his operation in 2001 to expand into Exeter instead.

“I opened Al Farid and the city council there sent me a letter welcoming me and saying that I was an asset to Exeter,” Mr Davari says. “What a difference!”

Within 18 months he added two more in Exeter: Cohiba in South Street and Havana on the Quay.

But now he is concentrating his business back in Plymouth, citing the difficulty posed for independent restaurateurs by the Princesshay centre and the influx of national chains as some of the reasons for leaving Exeter.

He fells pulled rather than pushed, though, attracted by the improved business climate in Plymouth and most of all drawn back by family.

His parents, Farid and Seda, and his in-laws live here as do his three sisters. One of the three, Elenora, works with him in management while another, Eiren, runs her own restaurant, Havana in North Hill, with her husband, Mark. The trio is completed by Eivett who is married with a family in Plymouth.

Mr Davari's toing and froing across Devon is dwarfed by a much longer journey that shaped his life. He was born in Iran and came to Britain to study computer management at what was then Oxford Polytechnic when he was 18.

He came from a comfortably-off family but was left penniless when the Islamic Revolution in 1979 cut off young Edmond and his siblings – also studying in the UK – from their parents.

He got by through a series of menial jobs, including scrubbing toilets and washing dishes in restaurants.

“I could not go back because of my religion,” he explains. “I am Christian although I don't practise. “My parents and I did not see each other for 16 years.

“My father had been financial director of an American company in Iran. After the revolution came in 1979 it was mayhem.

“The Americans were thrown out and anybody with anything to do with the (Shah's) regime or with foreigners was being shot. Friends of my parents were shot at the door.

“They took my father's passport away to investigate why he had worked for the Americans, but nothing happened. The passport was never returned and they were too scared to ask for it back.

“Sixteen years later they managed to get themselves to Pakistan and they called me. I went there and got them.”

Mr Davari relays that story quickly and with apparent emotional comfort, even managing a joke his father is now so settled he goes to bingo.

The fear and stress caused by the long period of separation from his parents and the country of his birth are not far below the surface, though.

Asked whether he would ever like to go back to Tehran, his usual poise and joviality suddenly vanishes.

“I would like to see my old school and my home in Tehran, but ....” Mr Davari's voice cracks and he can't continue.

He takes a few moments to compose himself, then adds: “I'm sorry, I don't know why... that's never happened before.

“But why would I go back? My friends and family have all fled the country. I am a British citizen now so I would have to get a visa and I think my happy childhood memories would be spoiled because it (Iran) is all changed now.”

To lighten the tone I ask about what he does when he isn't working. Mr Davari beams.

“For the last few years I have drowned myself in my son. I am so, so lucky. I was 49 when Rocco was born,” he says.

“Everything I do is for him. There is nothing I want to do for myself. My wife, Eleni, is just the same.

“We used to go on holiday four or five times a year. Now we go once, and it is geared for Rocco.

“Cars and clothes, they mean nothing for me.”

His business is worth a six-figure sum, enough a few years ago to earn its owner a place in a regional ITV series about the South West's millionaires.

Mr Davari dresses smartly but buys his suits from design discount store TK Maxx and his only vehicle is the company VW van. His only vice is 'a glass of wine maybe once a month'.

“I thought about retiring three or four years ago but Rocco changed things. He rejuvenated me. I want him to be well provided for when he grows up,” he says.

His ambition is for Rocco to 'do something creative' when he grows up. If so, he will be following his father who is as concerned with the look of his restaurants as he is with the food they serve.

He counts Habitat founder Sir Terence Conran as a hero and says: “People start eating before the plate arrives at the table. I want the restaurant to be very attractive, to draw people in. I do all the designs myself and source the materials and the fittings.

“When the customer sits down, I want them to spend time analysing all the details that I have spent time doing.”

The results are diverse, from the clean lines and cool and calm of The Fish Market (dark wood and white linen) to the colour and clutter of The Souk (mimicking a Moroccan market) and the sleek and modern air of Asia Chic.

A common factor is the art on the wall. “I love to paint abstracts,” Mr Davari says. “I did 18 paintings for Showbar and sold them all. It felt fantastic.

“My best friend, Paul Somerville, who has the gallery in Mayflower Street, did a promotion with Coutts Bank.

“He invited 40 of their wealthy clients to see Lenkiewicz paintings and then they came to Zucca! for a meal where there were more Lenkiewicz paintings.

“There were lots of inquiries but nothing was purchased on the night.

“At the end, when there were only a few people left, a director of Coutts said to Paul that he wanted to buy a painting.

“Paul's eyes lit up, thinking he had a sale. The director showed him which painting. It was down a corridor on the way to toilets – one of my paintings.

“Paul started laughing and I started laughing, and then we told him that I had done it.”

The Davari personal touch extends beyond the decor. He does the rounds of his Plymouth restaurants most nights, with Rocco in his arms.

“People love it. It softens the image of the rich bastard business owner taking their money. They see I have a heart and feelings,” he adds, breaking into a bout of laughter at the joke which he makes at his own expense.

Such a relaxed air comes from contentment both in his personal life and in his business, underpinned with the feeling that despite his ambivalence about Plymouth in the past he regards the city quite differently now.

“You know when I came back to Plymouth so many people – whether they were nice or just wanted to flatter me – stopped me in the street to welcome me back. I am only a restaurateur!

“Plymouth now feels like home,” he says, sounding delighted but a touch surprised.

“After all these years I feel I am a Plymothian. Whether that's a compliment to me or a compliment to Plymouth, I don't know.”