Mashama Bailey & Johno Morisano
There’s a certain type of person who dreams about opening a restaurant in Paris. Then there’s the type of person who actually does it. On this episode of Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with Mashama Bailey and Johno Morisano of The Grey and L’Arrêt to talk about what it really takes to open a restaurant in one of the most romanticized, bureaucratic, intimidating, and food-obsessed cities in the world. They share their Five Rules for Opening a Restaurant in Paris. We get into neighborhood politics, learning enough French to survive a conversation, battling condemned hood systems, and why your lawyer might become the most important person in your phone. It’s a conversation about hospitality, identity, stubbornness, and understanding exactly who you are before trying to introduce yourself to Paris.
What I love about this conversation is how open they are about all of it. There’s no mythology here. No pretending the process was glamorous. They talk honestly about the stress, the delays, the absurdity of getting yelled at over ventilation systems, and the emotional weight of trying to earn trust in a city that takes food very seriously. But there’s also so much laughter throughout the conversation. The kind that only comes from people who survived something difficult together and can now look back at the chaos with perspective. You can hear how much they love restaurants, how much they respect Paris, and how even in the hardest moments they never lost sight of why they wanted to do this in the first place.
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life.
I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz.
Today, my guests join me from all corners of the world, Mashama Bailey and Johno Morisano, whose company, Gray Spaces, made its mark with The Grey in Savannah. Now, their new restaurant, L’Arrêt in Paris, has made a splash in the city.
They join me today to chat about their Five Rules for Opening a Restaurant in Paris.
They talk about the importance of practicing your conversational French, how to integrate yourself into the neighborhood, and why you should always have a good lawyer on standby. Even if you aren’t planning on opening your own little bistro in Paris, it’s a great conversation for anyone looking to start their own restaurant and understand the mindset you need to succeed.
So let’s get into the rules.
Opening Thoughts
Thank you for crossing continents to be with me today. So great to have you on the show.
Happy to be here.
Thanks for waking up at the crack of dawn to do it.
I got two young kids. I was up hours before we chatted.
When the opportunity came to open L’Arrêt in Paris, what were your thoughts about the culinary connection between Savannah and the through lines of both cities?
I thought in the beginning, you know what? We’re going to France. Pack our bags. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s do what we’re gonna do.
Really trying to figure out what food the neighborhood wanted to do. I think we got caught up in the idea of it all, at least I did, and not really hunkered down and realized, oh wait, we’ve been doing this for 12 years and we should absolutely bring some food from Savannah to France.
Also not realizing how nuanced our food is in Savannah and how it doesn’t always read as Southern. When you’re in Savannah, it feels very Southern. It eats very Southern. But when you’re in France, they need the hits. They need the things that overtly reflect Southern cuisine so they can understand what you’re doing because it’s such a melting pot here.
Southern food and Black American food is so entrenched in African ingredients that it almost reads African before it reads Southern.
That’s how we started off. And now we’re really embracing the fact that we’re coming from Savannah, we’re coming from the South, and we’re cooking grits and using cornmeal, lima beans, all these really delicious Southern ingredients. We’re braising and we’re frying and we’re putting it on a plate.
And I think they’re really like, “Oh, okay, I understand what this restaurant is now.” But I think before, showing up as The Grey, it was a little confusing because we weren’t overtly Southern.
Becoming Part of the Neighborhood
For anyone who’s spent time in Paris and gotten to know Parisians, it really is all about neighborhoods and local communities. How did you integrate yourself with the people there beyond the food, showing that you really wanted to be their neighborhood spot?
The Seventh Arrondissement is a place where I have been going with my wife for 30 years. I love that.
We actually found L’Arrêt because it was just a spot that I frequented called Les Parisiens. I knew the owner of that place and I know the guy who runs a little cafe around the corner, and I got to know some of the people in the neighborhood.
So when we did buy L’Arrêt, we did a lot of outreach to the neighbors. Here we are, these folks from New York City and Savannah coming into a very, very old and independent neighborhood in Paris.
We would set up at our friend’s cafe around the corner. We would invite the people who lived in the neighborhood, who worked in the neighborhood, and we talked to them about the plans for the restaurant.
We did a lot of outreach to the building, the folks who lived in the building we’re in. We invited everybody to come hear the planning and we had to go in front of the co-op, the HOA.
We were successful in some of it and we weren’t very successful at all with the building, in that they still wanted to put us through the ringer to get approvals. Which we ultimately got. It just took two years and a lot of lawyers and a lot of money.
Integrating yourself into the neighborhood, serving the community, is so great.
On the flip side, getting to know an area of Paris as intimately as you are, you find your own spots. What are some of the local institutions that you’ve made yourself a regular at as a way to show that you want to be a part of the neighborhood?
Rosarito Heap on Boulevard Saint-Germain. I can walk in there and they’re like, “Oh, madame.”
Also, there’s an Indian restaurant right around the corner from L’Arrêt. It’s called Ravi’s and they’re great there. It’s super small, quiet, only lit by candlelight. The food is really solid and it’s a great place to let your hair down and have a good meal.
La Flores is my local cafe on Rue du Bac, but I’ll go to Les Ambassades. Le Fontenoir is the little cafe on Rue du Bac. I’ve known Alex, who owns that place, for 20 years.
Lao Tzu, Chinese restaurant, New York City style. He would kill me if I said that because I told him once that Wo Hop is one of my favorite places. He’s like, “This is not Wo Hop.”
It’s funny, we were sitting in La Flores one night having a drink. I don’t even know if we were open yet. The waiter brought us over two glasses of wine and we said, “Oh no, we just came for one.”
And he said, “No, the people behind you want to buy you a glass of wine.”
They were just restaurant owners. She owns a restaurant right up the street and he owns a restaurant over by Tour Montparnasse. They just recognized us and bought us a drink. I’m now super friendly with both of them.
Restaurants are communal in all cities and there’s camaraderie. You just gotta make the rounds and say hi to everybody.
When you become a regular at a restaurant, that’s the best thing about it. They cater to each individual and how they want to experience that space.
So few people have been able to come from outside of France and open a spot that has regulars and feels like part of the city, which is why I’m so excited to talk to you about your Five Rules for Opening a Restaurant in Paris.
Rule #1: Practice Your French
If you’ve never been, especially when you go to a city like Paris, the second you start attempting to speak the native language, they will switch to English for you immediately.
But that doesn’t mean, look, if you’re there for a week that’s one thing. But if you’re setting up shop, it’s important to do as Parisians do, which is a big part of your Rule Number One: Practice your French.
I have been trying to learn French since high school, so I think it just may not be in the cards for me. I will continue to try.
I think I just have this huge intimidation factor when it comes to French.
Being able to be cordial is the most important thing. You don’t have to speak it well. You just have to be able to say hello, introduce yourself, ask someone how they’re doing because that’s just table stakes in France.
“Bonjour” is really like, hello, have a good day. Then it’s followed by “comment ça va?” And it could be a stranger on the street. You’re literally just saying, “Hello, how are you? I see you. How are you doing?”
That’s the basis. Then everything else depends on how much they want to help you out. It depends on how fast they talk or how slow they’re willing to talk and bring you along. But they’re very interested in immersing you into their culture.
Learning the language becomes easier.
Rule #2: Have a Sense of Humor
You have to have a sense of humor about it.
For a lot of situations and in a lot of instances, it’s just not funny. But you have to be able to see the humanity in a situation.
Culturally, everyone here is so different from Americans. So you do have to approach it with a sense of, I can’t take myself too seriously.
The folks here, they work to live. They don’t live to work. That’s a sensibility that is nice to adapt, especially for people like Johno and myself where you kind of have to slow down a little bit, enjoy yourself a little bit, laugh at yourself a little bit in order to get through the things that are really tough, like not being able to open up a restaurant for a year and a half.
It wasn’t very funny, but now we can find moments in those times that were humorous and we can let it go. We don’t have to drag it along with us.
For me, this is a dream come true. Having a neighborhood spot in Paris is something I’ve dreamed about since I got in the restaurant business.
You have to keep your head above the weeds and realize that even though it was f*****g hard, it’s great.
Rule #3: Know Who You Are
Having gone through all of the steps, no shortcuts, convincing the building, convincing the neighborhood, convincing the courts, you have to have a firm backbone, a clear idea of who you are and what you want to be, which is a core value of your Rule Number Three.
It was a lot of pressure. We’re going to one of the greatest food cities in the world. How are we going to show up?
You can’t forget the North Star.
Southern food is on the move. We’re taking Southern food to places where Black Americans found refuge over the course of the 20th century, Black American creatives.
We’re taking food that started where the Great Migration and all of the roots of food and culture came out of the South.
We just decided that’s who we are. That’s what we’re doing. We’re bringing Southern food to a city that has provided refuge for people that wanted to express themselves for a really long time.
And I think that’s when the epiphany happened.
Rule #4: Understand the Infrastructure
It’s one thing to have those epiphanies. It’s one thing to have the right attitude.
But for anyone who’s ever opened up a restaurant, there is the physical nature of having a running kitchen. Knowing how to build one in America is different than any other country. And once you get into their rules, it’s a completely different ballgame, which makes up your Rule Number Four.
Make sure that the hood system hasn’t been condemned by the city of Paris.
The space has been a working restaurant, everybody says in the neighborhood, for 100 years. I don’t know if that’s true or not true, but the last time the restaurant was renovated was in 1970.
The one thing we had to do when we bought the restaurant, the only cooking implement was a four-top range with a small oven in it.
We gutted the restaurant. When we gutted the restaurant, we actually did a preservation project.
For example, the comptoir, the cafe counter, our contractors removed the marble facade, which is so Brady Bunch 1970s that you could never replicate it again. We put it back on the new comptoir that is structurally sound.
We did very similar things at The Grey.
But the extraction pipe that vented the hood goes up through the core of the building to the roof. It’s like a pipe that’s maybe two inches in diameter.
When the city came and inspected it, they were like, “Oh, you can never use that.”
And we’re like, “Okay, what do you want us to do?”
They said, “Just run a new modern hood under the full platform, the drop ceiling, and you can run it out the bike room here into the courtyard and go up the side of the building and vent the hood.”
Well, the neighbors thought that was the worst idea.
They literally picketed in the street.
They literally tried to use that as a way to prevent us from reopening a restaurant.
Every Parisian loves food and loves restaurants. They just don’t want them in their building.
We got in a big battle over the hood system and we will never make that mistake again. Everybody in Paris has had a battle over the hood system, frankly. It’s a rite of passage.
You don’t want to obviously overrun any of the neighbors, but at some point you go, you know what? We’ve checked all the boxes. We’ve done everything right.
Rule #5: Have a Good Lawyer on Standby
Your fifth and final rule deals with this one person you have on speed dial to make sure that you can open the doors. What’s your Rule Number Five?
Have a good lawyer on standby.
And for anyone who wants to open a restaurant in Paris, her name is Rebecca Cohen. Give her all the praise.
I will send you her number. And Olivier, more of our corporate guy.
The French love a battle, right?
They love a battle.
Do they respect you more if you beat them in battle?
Duh.
Honestly, that’s a really good question.
For the most part, yes. But Madame Cotina, who I love in the building, I’m very kind to her. She hates me with a passion post-battle.
For the most part, you earn respect, but you could just as easily be dead to them and they not have a problem.
I like that binary option. I’m going to eat at your restaurant every day or you’re dead to me.
Closing
If people want to stop by L’Arrêt or if they’re in Savannah and want to go by The Grey, or just see what you two are up to, where you are in the world, what’s the best place for them to check you two out?
Websites for both restaurants. 36 Rue de l’Université in Paris and downtown Savannah, Georgia.
Next time I’m in either city, I’m going to swing in. Congratulations to you both. Good luck with the next six months of operation. I can’t wait to see what you continue to build.
Thank you.
Thank you so much. We really appreciate you taking the time for us.
Really great, thanks Darin.
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