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Pomona College Magazine is published three times a year by Pomona College
550 N. College Ave, Claremont, CA 91711
Online Editor: Mark Kendall
For editorial matters:
Editor: Mark Wood
Phone: (909) 621-8158
Fax: (909) 621-8203
PCM Editorial Guidelines
Contact Alumni Records for changes of address, class notes, or notice
of births or deaths.
Phone: (909) 621-8635
Fax: (909) 621-8535
Email: alumni@pomona.edu
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The Rise and Fall of Bistro 47
For seven months, Jamie Leonard ’93
offered a small Iowa town the best food and service he could give. But
he held one thing back.
By Mark Kendall
Restaurateur Jamie Leonard ’93 wasn’t trying
to push anything too frou-frou or overly exotic
on the folks in snowy, sleepy Newton, Iowa.
He knew he was dealing with a meat-and-potatoes Midwest
town, home to the Maytag appliance factory, the Iowa Speedway
and the International Wrestling Institute and Museum.
 All Leonard wanted to do was to serve up classic American
cuisine with a twist, the food we all grew up eating—“just made
better.” His hand-cut sirloin steak was crusted with cracked
peppercorns,
grilled and served with roasted garlic sauce. His bone-in
pork chop came topped with a mouth-watering rosemary
sauce and cranberry compote on the side. Even the macaroni and
cheese was made with smoked gouda and extra sharp cheddar.
Tired of cooking in other people’s kitchens, he had planned
to open an eatery in Grinnell, the college town where his wife,
Yvette Aparicio ’94, is a professor. But rents were too high.
Then he saw a sign.
He was passing through Newton, a city of 15,000 people
between Des Moines and Grinnell, when he noticed the “for
lease” sign outside a brick building that had previously housed an
Argentine restaurant. Located a block or two off the town
square, the place was spacious and the price was right.
Deal. He signed on for a 12-month lease. As the topper,
Leonard came up with a perfectly magical name.
Bistro 47 was packed for its opening on Feb. 3, 2006. So
many people showed up that he had to turn some away, but all
in all, it was a good launch.
And Leonard found that he loved
running his own kitchen. His feature menu is where he really cut
loose, serving up such creative fare as apricot-glazed chicken
meatloaf. Sure, he got the blame if things in the kitchen went
wrong, but “if things went right, I got all the credit,” he notes.
Still, other aspects of entrepreneurship were tougher than he
expected, from the endless paperwork to the “tricky task of managing
food-service personalities.” He started work at 9 a.m. and
was still at it into the night. The roof leaked. Servers didn’t show
up. (Aparicio often had to fill in.) And there were gripes.
Customers complained about the lack of parking, a big deal in
snowy winter. French fries were another sore spot. He had decided
to leave them off the menu because the place had only one tiny
little fryer, and he didn’t want steaks getting cold while the cook
tried to catch up on fries. It was his no-smoking policy that set
off the bigger culture clash, costing him plenty of customers.
Then came bad tidings from the rough-and-tumble-dry world
of appliance manufacturing. The town’s Maytag plant was closing
down. (The wrestling museum eventually left for a larger town,
too.) Leonard’s sales started to skid.
Bittersweet news followed: the county wanted to buy the
building. Instead of fighting for a business that had yet to turn a
profit, Leonard accepted the payout from the building owner to
end the lease early. He would close quietly by summer’s end.
But before that, Leonard would experience his greatest
moment as a restaurateur. The Des Moines Register’s Annual
Great Bike Ride Across Iowa brought thousands of cyclists to
town in July. Leonard and his crew were overwhelmed, but the
out-of-towners understood—and they liked his food. “I was
cursing every minute. It was hell,’’ he says. But “right afterward,
I was like, I’ll never experience anything like that again.”
Actually, he may. Leonard,
now a sous chef at Grinnell
College, hopes to open
another restaurant someday.
“I would do it again
in a heartbeat,’’ he says.
“You never know—after
I pay off the loan ...”
Aparicio, however, is
more tentative about the
experience. “A lot of
people think it’s really
cool and romantic” to
run your own restaurant,
she says. “I don’t think
they know how much
work it takes.”
But Leonard insists
he’ll do things differently
next time: “It’s going to
be more of a one-man
operation and if nobody
shows up, I have a wonderful
dinner for me and
my wife.”
And Leonard certainly
has proven his mettle by
one important measure.
Through all the pressures and strains of running his own place,
he kept his Sagehen secret, never revealing to his customers why
the place was named Bistro 47. Some got downright angry—
waiters would come to the kitchen saying so-and-so really wants
to know. But Leonard wouldn’t budge, politely brushing off
their inquiries by telling them it would ruin the mystique.
They wouldn’t have understood, anyway.
From Jamie Leonard ’93
Apricot-Glazed Chicken Meatloaf
2 apricots, peeled, cored and roughly chopped
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
18 slices capicolla, sliced paper thin
½ cup cooked polenta, cooled
¼ cup heavy cream
1 pound boneless skinless chicken
breast, ground
1 egg, beaten
¼ cup red onion, finely diced
1 tablespoon kosher or sea salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Make a jam with the apricots in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium
heat. Cover with sugar and simmer until the apricots have released their
juices and the mixture starts to become syrupy. Mash, remove from the
heat and set aside.
Preheat oven to 350°. Line 8” x 4”
loaf pan with thinly-sliced capicolla.
Crumble polenta and let soak in cream
until the liquid is absorbed. In the meantime,
combine ground chicken with beaten
egg, onion, salt and pepper. Add
moistened polenta and mix well. Press
mixture into a capicolla-lined loaf pan.
Bake 30–45 minutes or until an
instant-read thermometer inserted into
the middle reads 165°. Three-quarters of
the way through baking, brush on apricot
jam. When it’s done, remove from the
oven and let cool five minutes. Remove
from the pan (this is most easily done by
running a table knife around the edges to
loosen, then inverting the pan onto a
cutting board until the loaf pops free,
then re-righting the loaf on another
board). Slice and serve. |
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