First of two parts

Sandy D'Amato has been at the top of his profession for so long that many Milwaukeeans already know his story.

D'Amato grew up in Milwaukee, where his grandfather and father operated a grocery store for nearly 80 years. After attending the Culinary Institute of America and working for a time in New York, D'Amato returned to Milwaukee and made his mark as the chef at John Byron's restaurant in the First Wisconsin Center.

In 1989, D'Amato and his wife, Angie, opened a restaurant -- Sanford -- in the building that formerly housed the family grocery store at 1547 N. Jackson St. The restaurant quickly became regarded as one of the best in the Midwest. In 1999, the couple opened Coquette Café, 316 N. Milwaukee St., and has since added Harlequin Bakery.

We caught up with Sandy during a recent lunch hour at Coquette and talked to him about his hometown, his establishments and the restaurant industry. Enjoy part one of this Milwaukee Talks interview with Sandy D'Amato.

OnMilwaukee.com: When you opened Sanford late in 1989, Downtown looked a lot different than it does today. Did you envision the boom in businesses and condos that has taken place over the past 15 years?

Sandy D'Amato: Not at all. We've thought of ourselves when we opened as a destination restaurant, which we were. Downtown was in flux at that time. I don't think at that time it would have been a good thing to be, necessarily, Downtown. That wouldn't have ensured people coming in because there wasn't a lot of tourism going on.

OMC: Most people know that Sanford is housed in a building where your father and grandfather once operated a grocery store. What most people don't know is that you had a lot of problems -- zoning and financing -- before you opened. What was that period like?

SD: We took that space because of the availability of it. My dad was going to close the store. That was the only way we thought we could swing a deal to open something up. We didn't have the money to do it and we didn't want partners.

We had to go through a SBA (Small Business Administration) loan. At that time, the Board (of Zoning Appeals), with (Robert) Pleva on it, was horrible. It was almost like them saying 'We don't want you to do a business. But, If you're willing to go through all this stuff for months and months and sometimes up to years, then yeah, we'll give it to you, but you're going to earn it.' They were not business-friendly at all.

OMC: Do you think that attitude has changed?

SD: When we opened Coquette, we saw the difference between the two. We had Sanford, so we were established, but working through the city at that time, well, it was just night and day.

OMC: In the time that you were trying to get financing, did you ever think 'Well, this wasn't meant to be.' Did you come close to giving up?

SD: We went through 13 banks, trying to get money. We had the building as collateral. I don't think it had to do with the money that we had to put into it. It had to do with the fact that we were opening up a business that, to the SBA, is probably the worst thing you can open up. It was a small, non-ethnic, fine-dining restaurant. People were looking at this and thinking 'This is the worst thing you can open up.'

I had a good reputation in the city at the time. There had been a big article about me in Bon Appetit. I don't think people doubted that I knew how to cook, but can you run a restaurant? Angie was not a part of it at all. Nobody put her into the equation. We were looking at it --here we have someone who is a chef coming into this and his partner is a manager. They've managed and run a successful business in the city for the past nine years in John Byron's and they've done that and brought up the revenue.

(Angie) was not a part of it, and I think a lot of it was because she was a woman. The banker that actually gave us the money was a woman. She looked at it and said -- she was interested in food, too, which helped --- she looked at it and said 'I don't see where you're going to fail.'

OMC: A lot of restaurants fail. How were you able to make it work?

SD: We basically were debt-free. We sold our house to go into this. We moved in above the restaurants, so we could literally live on nothing. We figured if we did five people a night, Angie was at the door and I'm cooking. We won't have a staff. That's fine. We can live on nothing. Our business plan was pretty good. That's what I didn't understand. A lot of banks wanted 125 percent collateral. Well, if we had 100 percent collateral, we wouldn't have been going to a bank.

OMC: How long were you open before you knew it was going to work?

SD: We were in the black our first month. We had our numbers right. It's funny, because you could take someone who had never run a restaurant before and they would have been more likely to get the loan. We didn't do anything else. This is our life. Even if we'd failed with a restaurant before, we'd have had a better chance. If you have a track record, even if it's bad, you're almost better off.

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