The Store
She remembers best the smell of the store: fresh and woody, with lingering smells of produce and food.
Her favorite time of day was early in the morning, unlocking the door, stepping inside, feeling the gentle give of the wood floor beneath her feet. Next, she’d turn on the lights, make a pot of coffee, do a little light cleaning, and get ready for any cooking demonstrations that day. Once they opened the doors for business, anything might happen. “I took the day as it came,” she says. But those early mornings were sacred.
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Mom never imagined herself a business owner. Growing up in small-town Brownwood, Texas, as the sheltered only child of older parents, she married my dad when she was barely 22, and took on what she thought would be a stable and predictable life of wife to a doctor and mother of two young girls.
All that ended with her divorce from my dad fourteen years later, when she found herself carving out a new life on her own. She was ill-prepared then for her newfound independence, but she managed, and her natural optimism is what, I’m sure, sustained her. The store was her salvation.
The opportunity to own the store was pure serendipity. She had been working as a volunteer waitress for the Austin Symphony League’s 1776 Tea Room and Cafe in the historic downtown Driskill Hotel when her soon-to-be partner, Betty, came in for lunch and told mom she wanted to open a cookware store. Without hesitation, mom said, “I’ll do it with you!” And so, it began.
They found a space in the 26 Doors Shopping Center and signed the lease right away. “We loved the adobe architecture, the casual neighborhood vibe, and central location,” she says, “and we were grateful that it was available and could be easily converted.”
The store’s design was inspired by a trip to E.Dehillerin in Paris, known for its knowledgeable staff and no-nonsense approach to retail design: two crowded stories of aisles and simple shelving, stocked full with every pot, pan and cooking utensil imaginable with no attempt at formal display.
Mom and Betty adopted this style, geared for convenience, and added beauty to the mix. At Bon Appetit, custom-made wooden bins lined the walls, and brimmed with utensils and gadgets – wooden spoons, wire whisks, long-handled tongs, rubber spatulas, and more. Gleaming metal racks hung from the ceiling, with pots and pans in stainless steel, aluminum, and copper dangling from their many hooks. Lacking a warehouse, the store’s staff simply stacked the packing boxes that the cookware was delivered in, and created displays on top of the boxes. As they sold inventory, they’d unpack new boxes and sell that merchandise, with new boxes coming in all the time creating new displays. This practical approach served several purposes: the simple design had an authentic appeal, and provided a blank palette for customers who could easily envision the cookware in their own kitchens and homes. It also made it easy for customers to pick up and handle the different pieces of cookware, to get a sense of weight and feel. “As long as it was plain,” mom says, “you could envision the cookware in your own home, in your own kitchen.”
“We wanted to convey a domestic feeling,” she says, which makes sense. Growing up in the 1940s and 50s, mom emerged into young adulthood in the 1960s, just when Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking was making its way through America. Mom was an early and ardent disciple, immersing herself in classic French technique as she cooked her way through the book in her tiny suburban kitchen. She cringes a bit when I tell her about Julie Powell, the modern-day blogger who cooked her way through Mastering the Art and then wrote about it in her best-selling book, Julie and Julia. “I could have written that book,” mom says, brushing it off with a little smile, maintaining the claim on Julia for herself.
Like Julia, mom and Betty were interested in bringing good food and classic technique to American home cooks in an accessible way. And they did it when this was still a revolutionary approach. In 1976, there were only two Williams-Sonoma stores, both in California. In Austin, as in most cities, there was no place to buy the high-quality brands of cookware — Le Creuset, Calphalon, Cuisinart and the like — that are so easily found today. Out-of-the-ordinary ingredients were hard to find in grocery stores; in-store cooking classes and demonstrations might mean a road trip to San Antonio to buy chiles, a venture to Dallas for good quality olive oil, or an excursion to Zabar’s in New York City for then-exotic spices.
Bon Appetit thrived as part of the food revolution dawning across the country, even though they didn’t think about it that way at the time. They saw it more simply: “We helped expand knowledge of food from small town fried food to more interesting, healthier food. But we maintained that homey small town feeling in the store. We got to know our customers.” On any given day, customers could come in and talk, get advice on a specific dish, a piece of cookware, a menu for dinner. “There was always coffee brewed,” mom says, “and people would love to hang out and we’d welcome that, even if they didn’t buy a thing.”
Looking back, it was an emotional time for mom, as it was for me. She was getting used to being divorced, raising two teenage girls, and learning finances on her own for the first time. I was navigating high school and forming my own identity; my older sister, Margaret, was off to board at school, and I stayed home with mom, often tending to our little townhouse while she was working late, or making meals for when she got home. Mom likes to say that she and I went through adolescence together -- me for the first time, her for the second. We evolved together.
The store began as a way for mom to make money to support herself and her family, and give her something interesting to do. But it became so much more: a place to learn about cooking, and food, and gracious hospitality — a stimulating oasis for many, and an early pioneer in the Austin food scene that continues to thrive today. The store was open just nine years, but its impact was a lifetime. For mom and for me, it was a threshold into our becoming, our welcome into life.
Mom taught me this: Make a recipe once exactly as it is written. Then, if you want to change something, adapt it on the next go-round once you know how it was originally intended to turn out. And be exact in your instructions.
Winter Salad with Walnut Oil Vinaigrette, from cooking class at Bon Appetit, with mom’s notes
Mom at a picnic, circa 1977