Joe and Whitney Kiatsuranon in My Noodle & Bar with their children, (from left) Joah, 2, and Anya, 4 (Photo by Jay Paul)
The beginnings of love stories are endlessly fascinating. So many couples meet so completely by chance that it makes you marvel that it ever happened. The ones that last can endure even the rockiest starts, whether you’re keeping your relationship secret from your boss or overcoming a language barrier. Add the stress and uncertainty of a life in restaurants and you’ve got the makings of a Nora Ephron screenplay.
Richmond has its fair share of restaurateur power couples who agree that the key to success is a partner who understands the demands of the job. Take the owners of Church Hill’s Dutch & Co., Caleb and Michelle Shriver, who met working in a restaurant in Chicago in 2008. Now chef and front-of-house manager, respectively, Caleb says pursuing Michelle was “definitely a chase.”
“I said, ‘Man, I’m gonna marry that girl one day,’ ” Caleb recalls telling a friend at work. But Michelle was having none of it. “I was focused,” she says. “I wanted to learn a lot. But he was determined.” They spent a year together in secret; Michelle would drop Caleb off three blocks away from work in the morning, and walk in separately. Their chef only learned about their relationship after Caleb admitted he was leaving the job to follow Michelle to another city.
They ended up in Richmond, married in September 2012 and opened Dutch & Co. the following January. Michelle says their work relationship is almost unspoken: She’s the steady one, Caleb is the dreamer. “We’re a very good balance,” she adds.
Acacia mid-town owners Aline and Dale Reitzer’s meet cute was likely more expletive-laden. Aline came to Richmond 24 years ago from New Jersey to work at the Frog and the Redneck under Jimmy Sneed, and caused a scene when she left a hot aluminum pan out without a towel. Dale grabbed it and shouted. She apologized, “and off we went,” he says.
They had a date that night, and later Dale took her on an epic adventure of skydiving, a party in Williamsburg, then dinner in Virginia Beach. With only one day off a week, they had to pack in their time together while keeping it a secret from Sneed. (He eventually figured it out.)
“The industry is pretty difficult,” Chef Dale says. “Even though we have a lot of things that are different, our true passions we share … One of the greatest things is when you have success as a business, you get to share it together.”
For Whitney and Joe Kiatsuranon, owners of My Noodle & Bar, Mom’s Siam and the forthcoming YaYa’s Cookbook — Joe is also a co-owner of Sabai — it all began when Joe cut Whitney off in traffic 10 years ago. Fortunately for him, she thought he was cute. “I was pissed,” she says. “I followed him and then confronted him. Then I asked him what he was doing later.”
Although he said he wasn’t interested, Joe apologized by taking her out to dinner. But he dropped sushi in her lap, so he took her on another date to apologize for that. Today, they’re married with two kids. At the time, Whitney was teaching English as a second language, but she now helps run the family business, managing social media, payroll and other paperwork.
“We’ve been very busy,” Joe says. “I’m trying to get her to do more. One day she can run her own [restaurant].” Whitney shoots him a sly side-eye. She says she’s the chill antidote to Joe’s big ideas. “When we agree on something, we know it’s right,” she says. “It’s that collaboration, as partners in the business, when we’re on the same page we know we’re [heading] in the right direction.”
That collaboration, partnership and respect is vital to a restaurateur marriage, especially when you meet abroad and don’t share a common language. But it has worked for Paige Healy and Gregorio Spinzo, who together birthed the idea for Dinner in the Field.
Paige was living in Gregorio’s hometown in southern Italy as part of a culinary program, but what she loved was learning from families in their homes. That’s how she met Gregorio’s cousin, who introduced the couple. It didn’t take long for Gregorio to sweep Paige off her feet and onto his motorcycle. They created their own charades-like language and communicated the best they could. The couple then began cooking for his relatives. “[We thought], ‘let’s bring that concept to Richmond and really treat it like a big extended family,’” Paige recalls.
The two divide and conquer their tasks, and their specialties complement each other. His calm balances her bouts of energy. “He’ll keep me centered, heading in the right direction,” she says. “Dinner in the Field would never be in existence if we never teamed up. We really feel like it’s a special, magical thing that we’re able to do.”
