Phoebe Bright, an award-winning chef, returned to Vermont last month after spending a week in Saudi Arabia with her friend and mentor, Michelin star chef Anita Lo. Two days later, on Feb. 5, she stepped back into the kitchen of the South Hero restaurant she co-owns, Blue Paddle Bistro, and discovered a waterfall cascading from the ceiling and onto the kitchen floor.
“I went running down into the basement, and before I knew it I was in three feet of water,” Bright said.
The bistro’s heater had broken the day before, which had caused pipes to freeze and then burst, flooding the kitchen, Bright said.
The restaurant has been closed ever since. Repairs are underway, and the owners hope to reopen May 4 in order to be ready for the busy summer season.
“We’re in the drywall phase,” said Rory Cardinal, owner of Construction Management Direct, which is coordinating the repairs. “We’re starting to put the walls back together.”
Next, Cardinal said, the crew expects to paint the walls and replace the flooring, then add the finishing touches.
Although Bright and her co-owner Mandy Hotchkiss said they are disappointed by what happened, both said they are optimistic about the restaurant’s future.
“We have to start as if we have a brand-new restaurant, right?” Bright said. “Which is exciting.”
Divided by the senses
Hotchkiss and Bright — who have been friends for 37 years — run the business together in distinct ways, divided by the senses. And though over the years they’ve had their share of “cat fights,” as Bright describes them, the two friends have worked out separate management practices that keep Blue Paddle afloat.
Hotchkiss said she handles the website, social media and customer outreach for the restaurant, while Bright handles the food.
“Everything that you see is Mandy; everything that you taste is me,” Bright said.
Bright said Hotchkiss’ work on social media during the winter closing has been essential. Since the day of the kitchen flood in February, Hotchkiss has been updating the Blue Paddle’s Facebook page — which has accumulated over 16,000 followers — every step of the way.
“Because of Mandy and her marketing skills and using social media, she keeps them engaged,” Bright said.
Hotchkiss posts progress updates, positive shout-outs to workers involved in the restoration, contests in which followers can win gift cards and, of course, photos of the “paddle pups” — her dogs, whom customers have gotten to know well over the years.
March 14 was the Blue Paddle’s 18-year anniversary, which couldn’t be celebrated in-person at the restaurant because of the closure. Even so, Hotchkiss highlighted multiple customer shout-outs on the Facebook page as the Blue Paddle community wished the owners a happy anniversary.
“She’s sort of built this community over the last 17 or so years,” longtime customer David McKay said. He likened eating at the Blue Paddle to going to a friend’s house for dinner.
“You’re just sort of made to feel immediately welcome and you just relax,” he said.
While Hotchkiss’ genial personality has helped build strong customer relationships, it is only half of the equation. Bright, voted best chef in Vermont in Seven Days’ 2022 Daysies Awards, designs a simple yet refined menu that gives customers’ taste buds a reason to return.
Bright describes her cooking as “delicious yet unpretentious,” according to the Blue Paddle website. She said she wants people to taste her food and feel as if they’re at home.
“I also really feel that a customer shouldn’t be your guinea pig,” she said. While Bright occasionally changes the menu, she does so in slight, purposeful ways to ensure that customers have the tastes and familiarity they need.
“It changes enough so that you don’t get bored,” McKay said, but not so much that the menu feels too different the next time around.
The menu offers a variety of options — pub fare like the all-American burger and the panko- and almond-crusted chicken sandwich, and entrees such as gorgonzola-stuffed meatloaf and lobster risotto.
Bright said she’ll look at a recipe, but she never follows it all the way through. She describes the crafting of her recipes as a balancing act between flavors.
“There’s nothing more complimentary to me than somebody sitting at a table going, ‘What is that flavor?’” she said. “That’s kind of a cool feeling, right?”
Friends, not customers
The Blue Paddle restaurant on Route 2 in South Hero looks like a house. Customers say it feels like one, too.
“The customers are very loyal and faithful,” said longtime customer Lisa Lewis of Plattsburgh, New York. “It’s akin to very close friends, or family, and that’s been fostered by Mandy and Phoebe.”
Because of their bond with customers, Bright and Hotchkiss said the restoration project is far from the biggest challenge the Blue Paddle has faced in 18 years in business. Even from the beginning, they said, the customers have always been there for them to lean on.
“I don’t even call them customers,” Hotchkiss said. “They’re all friends.”
One challenge occurred in the restaurant’s early years, in 2008, when Bright found out she had tongue cancer — stemming from radiation treatment she received when she had lymphoma at age 29.
Bright was told she had squamous cell carcinoma and needed surgery to remove it. Doctors would cut away at her tongue to remove the cancerous cells.
“I said to my doctor, ‘Am I going to be able to talk after this?’” Bright said. “He’s like, ‘We’ll see.’”
Though she was ill, Bright said, the cancer was also Hotchkiss’ challenge because Hotchkiss had to pick up the slack while Bright was sick.
At the time, Hotchkiss said, Bright lived around the corner from the Blue Paddle and Hotchkiss described running over to her house during dinner service to change Bright’s feeding tube and make sure her bed was made.
“My best friend was so sick and we had just opened up the business for two and a half years,” Hotchkiss said. “I had to keep it going.”
Customers stepped up. “People came in more, because they’re like, ‘We understand. We want to support you,’” Hotchkiss said.
A year ago, two of Hotchkiss’ dogs died, including Wynott — pronounced, “why not,” which was Hotchkiss’ reply when Bright asked why she wanted a new dog. Wynott had made friends with many customers, she said.
“She affected a lot of people,” Hotchkiss said. And when Wynott got sick, she said, “I had over 2,000 people email me pictures.” Hotchkiss said the outpouring of support was a testament to how the dogs had affected people over the years, but Bright politely cut her off.
“I think it’s a testimony to you and the customers that come here, and why people keep on coming back,” she said.
The symbiotic customer-restaurant relationship remains 15 years later during this latest challenge. Customers comment regularly on Hotchkiss’ Facebook posts, promising to return to the Blue Paddle for dinner once it reopens.
‘This is an opportunity’
Bright says challenges like the flooding are nothing out of the ordinary for her and Hotchkiss. “There are obstacles every day,” she said. “Being a restaurant owner is an obstacle.”
But simultaneously serving as head chef can be relentless, Bright said.
Blue Paddle has a small kitchen, which rules out some of the items she’d like to put on the menu. All the dishes are washed by hand because there’s not enough space for a dishwasher. She doesn’t have a heat lamp and isn’t happy if an entree isn’t delivered to the table within 15 seconds. It can be hard to deal with employees, Bright said, especially since the pandemic. She can’t stand looking at her kitchen floor and said no matter how much mopping she does, the crumbs remain.
She said she’s had to take breaks from the kitchen in the past, working off and on for a period between 2017 and 2020. But, as Bright looks ahead, she’s reflecting on how she’s changed.
“I’ve grown up a lot,” she said. “I mean, I don’t think one should ever grow up, but in terms of my stress level and being snappy and being more patient, I’ve come a long way for sure.”
Bright said she sees an opportunity in the forced renovations. She and Hotchkiss agree that she hasn’t been this excited to step back into her kitchen in a while. She used her battle with cancer as a metaphor for what the Blue Paddle is going through.
“It’s kind of like almost having cancer in a weird way,” she said. “Going through chemotherapy and coming out the other side and having a brand new body to work with, that’s kind of what this is all about.”