So here I am at the Le Chalet Basque in San Rafael and I 'll be interviewing Patrick Jean Minhondo
so we'll do that here in just a few minutes
Chalet Basque was opened in 1962 by Raymond and Eugenie Coscarat
and they had it for about eight years with their chef that they started it from with an original small menu. It was a three
entree menu. It was a nice Beef Bourguignon, a Poulet Basquaise or a pate sandwich and you got a little
iceberg lettuce salad with it and fast forward to 1969 and my father who grew up in the Basque
Country, who went to culinary school in Biarritz was living in Paris. He was 20 years old at the time,
working at a German restaurant, in fact in Paris, trying to get his green card to come here and
finally got his green card. And at that time, when you came here with a green card you had to have a
sponsor his sponsor was Raymond and Eugenie Coscarat who owned the Chalet Basque here in San Rafael.
They knew their families from generations before in the Basque Country. And so my father had the
opportunity to come here with a sponsor, flew here in 1969 into SFO and came to San Rafael
And lived in the little house on the property here with Raymond and Eugenie and worked as their head
chef in 1969, 1970. And by 1971, my father was able to save up a little money after working here for
two years and he had the opportunity to open his own restaurant. So he left the Chalet Basque here
to open up a restaurant called the Normandy and the Normandy was on Miracle Mile (Los Angeles). He had a partner
there and everything was going great, except he wanted to kind of branch out completely on his own
and so he had the opportunity to buy a restaurant in Sausalito at that time in the early 70s. And so
he bought a restaurant right on Bridgeway as you're entering in beautiful Sausalito
called the Guernica. The Guernica he ended up having for 26 years
really successful, many many beautiful years. I grew up, my childhood was running around that restaurant.
Upstairs we had this beautiful banquet room that he would have and we'd
play under the tables and play hide and go seek. And when I was 14 in the year 2000,
30 years after my dad first came here this restaurant the Chalet Basque was for sale.
At that time, it was owned by a couple Francisco and Antoinette Oroz and so my father always
loved this place. It was the first place he ever worked at, so it was a dream for him
when he found out it was for sale. It came with two houses on the property and the restaurant.
And so he decided to do it and so he bought this restaurant in 2000 and never looked
back. He sold the Guernica to.. actually to his maitre d' at the time Gary. Anyway, so my dad kept
the name Le Chalet Basque here but brought all of his recipes, his staff, his cooks, everybody
with him here. And so he spent a good 14 solid years here before he was diagnosed with cancer.
When he was diagnosed with cancer in in 2014, at the end of 2013, I was myself just living in France
at the time. I was actually living in Biarritz, where he went to culinary school all those years
earlier. I was working at a hotel restaurant there and so when I moved back he was diagnosed with
a cancer called multiple myeloma. And so at that time he had to pull back and stop working
and I was at the age where I was really deciding I wanted to go into this industry.
Before he got sick, I was going to possibly go into the hotel industry. But I was working here,
kind of figuring out what I was going to do and unfortunately he was diagnosed with that cancer. So
I started working here, you know, really close with him as much as he could work at the time.
And it was just kind of a slow transition from my father Roger running the restaurant to me.
Unfortunately he got sicker and sicker as time went on and I was at the age where I was
able to do it on my own at that point. And so I've been fully running it myself for about seven or
eight years now. My father passed away two years ago and the last few years he was pretty much out
of the business for the most part, except coming here and enjoying holidays still and seeing all
his friends and customers and friends he's had in this business for 40 years. But yeah for me it's a
beautiful story for our family. It's a full circle story from my father, a real traditional immigrant,
came here with no money in his pocket. Just an opportunity, a beautiful family that
gave him an opportunity, gave him a job and he took it and created a beautiful life for our family.
I have two older brothers and we all grew up working as bus boys and dishwashers and...
They're both in their own careers, but I fell in love with it from when I first started working here
when i was about 14. So, yeah that's kind of the history of our family and Le Chalet Basque.
Yeah, I mean we're very lucky here. ...Since it's been here since 1962, we have generational
family customers that have been coming here for years. Kids who grew up coming here now
bring their kids and grandkids. We do very little advertising here. Mostly it's word of mouth. We do
a lot of banquets and private parties and every time we do those banquets and private events we
seem to get new customers who've never been here before. But we love, we love new people to come down.
It's what makes us grow. It makes this restaurant continue. We're a neighborhood restaurant.
We're in the middle of Santa Venetia, here in San Rafael and there's no other businesses, so you know
we get very little guests and customers that are driving by saying, Oh we should go try the Chalet
Basque sometime. Really you're only in this area specifically if you're going out to beautiful
China Camp (State Park) to go hiking or mountain biking or if you happen to have a friend who lives out here.
So for us to get new families and new customers is a really important thing and most of that is
done by word of mouth. So doing this with you hopefully will bring us new people
Here at the Chalet Basque we're a traditional French-style Basque restaurant
Real traditional French Basque restaurants have long tables where it's fully family style dining
We have a little modern twist on that. So when you dine with us, you will order your own individual
entree, but with that entree, most people have five courses. So we do family style pate appetizers to
start. We make a wonderful homemade pork liver paté here that's been a traditional Basque paté
passed down for generations really. After that, we do family style soup which will come with
your entree, as well as salad that comes with your entree. And then everyone's individual
entree will come to the table after that we also do individual desserts for everybody.
So most traditionally here is a five course dinner traditional to French
Basque style eating. It's so funny. I always like ...with stuff like this...One time I did this before with a
guy and I always pride myself on like being a good public speaker and good with people, but with with this
individual stuff, I always feel like I'm so terrible at it. No you're... I was just telling
them, I was like...Supernatural. After the whole time, I was like "Should I have been looking at
you the whole time? I'm like looking into the camera and then back at him which is probably
the worst thing you can do with this stuff. Yeah. After I've already done all this.
Okay I want to say thank you to Euskal Kazeta for coming here and interviewing me and taking the time to
listen to the history of my family and this restaurant. And for all of you who watch this,
we look forward to seeing you here in the future to come try us and dine with us and really get to
experience what it's like to eat at a French Basque restaurant here in the United States.
Throughout the years I've gone to Le Chalet Basque it's been around for
six decades, so I've been there for many occasions, mostly with family.
And on this particular Saturday, I was there with family and we were
celebrating the life of JB Camino, my mom's first cousin. It was really special to have it at the Chalet Basque, because
for me it's synonymous with fine dining and also in a familiar place, a place that is
a family place, a neighborhood, just like Patrick said, a neighborhood restaurant.
So it was really special to have it there and you might notice in the video you might have seen
Francisco Oroz and his wife Antoinette and their daughters and also Pierre (Giazina) who was the previous
cook under the Coscarart family. So that was kind of special to see him also there.
So as always if you like this video and you want to see more like this, then please,
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