After The Breakup -- Firnstahl And Mchugh Find Success After The Split

The breakup of the Tim Firnstahl-Mick McHugh family of restaurants years ago resembled in many ways an amicable divorce.

Which is so say, no matter how amicable it appeared to others, internally it had to hurt. A period of recovery had to follow.

Then, too, there were offspring of that business union - buildings and properties they had acquired and nourished and developed - that had to be managed and cared for in a lingering, perhaps lifelong, joint custody: Jake's, McRory's and others.

Well, what happened to Firnstahl and McHugh? As a team, they were Seattle's most visible restaurateurs since Ivar's demise. Did the breakup of the dynamic duo wreck their individual dynamics? As it happened, no.

New interests, new prospects, new excitements and new affections occurred for both of them.

They were and still are both profoundly engaging: Firnstahl with his Germanic, entrepreneurial drive; McHugh with an Irish charm that emanated from his very genes.

As partners they affected people as a team. They still do as individuals. But they had to adapt - and to grow. Firnstahl was the business mind and the consummate technical manager. McHugh was the front man - the "people" person. And no business needs interpersonal skills more than the restaurant business.

McHugh admits it took him more than a year to learn to run the " . . . systems. It was funny, kind of lonely, really, during that year and a half, when you are used to having somebody always there to bounce ideas off of."

Firnstahl had to acquire some front-of-the-house skills. Over time, he did. "We had to find ways of increasing the `joy' levels of our restaurant," he said of his newest venture, Sharps Fresh Roasting near Sea-Tac Airport. "We had to make the whole operation more fun."

At the time of their splitting of the balance sheets (decided by the flip of a coin from the top of the Space Needle), Firnstahl and McHugh had accumulated six restaurants: Jakes I and II, F.X. McRory's, the Leschi Lake Cafe, The Kirkland Ale House and Roaster and the rights to a new spot on the water in Kenmore that eventually became the Lake Washington Grillhouse and Taproom.

Firnstahl retained the original Jakes on lower Queen Anne, the newly complete Kirkland Roaster and the rights to the Kenmore waterfront site. McHugh took over the Bellevue Jakes, McRory's and the Leschi place.

Neither paused to ruminate. Firnstahl threw himself into building two new restaurants: Von's (officially Von's Grand City Cafe and Martini-Manhattan Memorial, 619 Pine St.) and the roadhouse-reminiscent Grillhouse.

McHugh scooted east to Issaquah and built what was initially to be called Cooper's Roost (after Isaac Cooper, an Issaquah pioneer). He immediately ran into legal trouble when the proprietor of a Lake City ale house named Cooper's claimed Mick was trading on his tavern's name. Astonished (and unwilling "to make any more lawyers richer - life is too short"), McHugh dropped the name Cooper from the Roost and gradually began to prosper.

Firnstahl, meantime, was trying to open Von's with massive glass tanks on the bar to hold about 40 gallons of martinis and another 40 of Manhattans, only to discover that in an era of white wine, Perrier and local ale, he probably didn't need even one gallon a night of either. Just about the time that got resolved, the city shut down Pine Street for construction and, as he lamented, "You had to walk on planks laid over the mud just to get in the front door."

The martini and Manhattan tanks eventually got disconnected, and Firnstahl zipped his Porsche daily out to Kenmore to get the L.W. Grillhouse and Taproom up and running. It was steadily filling up with boat-racing memorabilia and hundreds of beer-tap handles from six continents.

Installed at the end of the foyer was a large glass fish tank that looked suspiciously familiar. In it were a couple of dozen large, plump, pan-size Idaho rainbow trout swimming happily. A few days later, however, the morning crew came in and discovered the trout had expired.

The deaths were attributed to a faulty oxygenation system. But skeptics maintained that the belly-up rainbows expired with a faint but distinctive scent of British gin in their gills. This was of course denied, but speculation ran heavy that the trout would have been delicious sauteed with green olives, pickled onions and/or a twist of lemon.

At that time, friendly observers began to wonder if Tim Firnstahl and Mick McHugh may not have needed each other more than they knew.

McHugh and Firnstahl began their partnership with a dance club, 92 East Yesler, while they were college students in 1963. Five years later they opened their first restaurant, El Nido Inn in east Bellevue. After three troublesome years, it failed.

"We sat down and tried to figure out what we could learn from that. If we do it again, what would we do differently?" McHugh said. "We knew we would never again rely on the leadership of some unknown chef. We realized we would have to figure out the recipes and the systems that could be followed.

"Tim's job was to set the systems. Mine was to find better sites and better people. I'm a real people person."

Firnstahl indeed set the systems. The "book" for the first Jake O'Shaughnessey's was 400 pages of systems and standards and employee instruction. Included were menus, recipes and training schedules. It was a formula restaurant so intricately structured and so finely tuned that the formulas were seamless. It worked.

After that, it was a matter of repeating the formula, the elements of which could change: 100 bourbons instead of 100 scotches; saloon box beef instead of roast beef; trout instead of salmon, etc.

Both of them went on to do just that, but not always with immediate results. Firnstahl's rotisserie restaurant near Sea-Tac, Sharps, opened during last winter's snowstorm.

"The first night we opened we had two customers. Two! There were 60 people on hand, and 58 of them were ours," Tim recalled.

"The second night, the same two people showed up. And they brought a friend with them. They were all cops."

The snow melted, the clientele grew. "Now Sharps is serving more entrees than the Kirkland Roaster and the Grillhouse," he said.

McHugh chose to link up with previous managers who became operating partners at T.S. McHugh's.

"I need partners I like," he said. "I am still a people person. If I can link on with these quality younger professionals, I found that a good majority of them could become partners. And I also found that if these people have a piece of the business action, it does remarkable things for motivation.

"I am sure there are going to be more on the horizon."

McHugh then "linked on" with a not-so-young professional, the semi-retired Victor Rosellini, the dean of Seattle restaurateurs who had given McHugh a job (as a bartender) after the failure of the El Nido in Bellevue.

Together they opened Rosellini and McHugh's at 910 Second Ave. "One of the wonderful things in life," McHugh said, "is to be able to hook back up with your mentor."

Firnstahl, meanwhile, has Sharps cooking on more cylinders than is common. The restaurant employs three kinds of heat: a horizontal spit roaster, a fruitwood smoker, and a radiant, infrared ray roaster. The results are impressive, especially the oldest of the techniques, the spit roaster, used primarily for chicken.

It seems likely Firnstahl has finally found what his meticulous formulas were reaching toward: impeccable and predictable food quality at affordable prices (most items under $10) and the magic key.

"It is repeatable," he smiled.

Down separate paths they have walked carefully. Ultimately they found success ("We do everything from scratch now, including the jam on the breakfast croissants," Tim said. "There's not much in the way of boxes and cans in that kitchen").

I'll bet you $10 that within 10 years, they will start another one - together.

JOHN HINTERBERGER'S FOOD COLUMNS AND RESTAURANT REVIEWS APPEAR SUNDAYS IN PACIFIC AND FRIDAYS IN TEMPO. HE ALSO WRITES A WEDNESDAY COLUMN FOR THE SCENE SECTION OF THE SEATTLE TIMES. TOM REESE AND BARRY WONG ARE TIMES STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERS.