Update on Soleil and XO Lounge
Surprised no one has posted this but here goes:
Sun shines on brothers' plans
French heritage will show in Soleil restaurant, Boucherie Meat Market
By Sharon Dowell
The Oklahoman
Brothers Alain and Michel Buthion will always have their culinary roots firmly planted in their home country of France. But since settling in Oklahoma City during the 1980s, they've put down firm roots in Oklahoma City's ever-changing culinary landscape, too.
Along the way, they've introduced Oklahomans to French culture and culinary traditions and created some remarkable Oklahoma food traditions — with a French twist, of course.
This month, they'll add to their list of culinary accomplishments by opening Soleil, a continental restaurant, and XO, a sophisticated lounge, within the historic Colcord Hotel. And the brothers are opening a neighborhood-type meat market next door to their flagship operation, La Baguette Bistro & Bakery, that will continue a family tradition begun in south France by the brothers' family.
Michel, 47, the more outgoing and gregarious of the two brothers, much of the time can be found at the front of the restaurant, greeting guests as he moves from table to table, acknowledging regulars by their first names.
Alain, 43, is more soft-spoken yet has a refreshing, understated sense of humor.
For years, Alain was content to be in the kitchen, supervising, out of sight of guests. Recently, however, he's become more comfortable mingling with clientele in the dining room. He admits he's slowly becoming at ease with the notion that guests want to see him step out of the kitchen.
"Every chef should be in the kitchen," he says. "A chef should be saying hello and goodbye quickly and then get back to the kitchen."
And how will the chef divide his time between the kitchens at La Baguette, 7408 N May, and Soleil in the downtown hotel? He says he'll spend time in both restaurants' kitchens.
"There are some times I will need to be at La Baguette. For example, Friday night is a La Baguette moment."
As for Soleil, which will seat about 136 diners, Alain will spend plenty of time there, too, especially in the coming weeks. But he has help from a French-born sous chef he's worked with previously who has recently returned to Oklahoma City. He also has several additional chefs for Soleil's kitchen to handle the load in his absence.
Right now, he's ready for the increased workload with 21 cooks in the Soleil kitchen and 16 cooks at La Baguette.
"I have a good feeling about my team," Alain Buthion says.
Michel Buthion was the first of the brothers to visit the United States, in the late 1970s. He made several trips between France and Oklahoma and also visited other states. His voice becomes softer and more serious when he explains, "Well, in California, I came very close to staying. But I knew more people here, so I came back, and now I have been here for 26 years."
Michel related how, as a child, he lived for a time with relatives in Beaurepaire in southern France. There, his relatives owned a grocery store, cafe and neighborhood meat market, all connected. The meat market is where Jean Buthion, Michel's and Alain's father, now deceased, was a butcher.
Michel Buthion trained for two years at the Clos D'or hotel and restaurant school in Grenoble and apprenticed at the Monte Carlo restaurant there. Later he worked at the Wessex Hotel in Winchester, England; the L'Ambassade D'Auvergne and Hotel de Paris, both in Paris; and the Grand Hotel in Grenoble. He focused on running the front of the house, while brother Alain attended the same hotel and restaurant school, to train in the kitchen. Alain completed a one-year apprenticeship at restaurants in Grenoble, then worked in the Rhone Alps and Provence to acquire further experience in the kitchen.
Michel, who had acquaintances from Oklahoma, settled briefly in Norman in 1980. His eyes light up and he becomes quite animated, talking with a heavy French accent as he describes that first job in Oklahoma. "I was the first and the last sommelier at Legend's restaurant!" The job lasted just a few months, then he returned to France.
"At Legend's," he continues, "I tried to sell the wine, and three out of four people thought my accent was fake!"
When he returned to Oklahoma, he became food and beverage director at the Skirvin Hotel from 1980-88. "I hired Kurt (Fleischfresser) as chef de cuisine for the Skirvin; he'd been working at a resort in Arizona. And now Kurt is one of my best friends."
Alain joined his brother here in 1988 after visiting Oklahoma three times, and he became chef at The Coach House, which Fleischfresser now owns. When the Skirvin closed that same that year, Michel and Alain opened La Baguette in Oklahoma City. Through the years, the tiny restaurant grew to include more seats, expanded the menus and gradually gobbled up more space in the shopping center where it has remained. The meat market, the brothers say, will add a necessary component to their customers' needs.
The brothers were also co-owners of Cuisine 43, a cafe, deli and banquet hall in the Will Rogers Theatre in the early 1990s. And they had a La Baguette outlet in the basement of the Journal Record building that was open for a couple of years for lunch only before it was lost in the Murrah Building bombing in 1995.
"It was a very difficult business," Alain recalls about the downtown La Baguette. "It was difficult to get people to come into the basement of that building, to get them to come there to eat."
When not working in their restaurants, the brothers have interests that take them in different directions. Alain loves flying a plane and is working toward his pilot's license, while Michel is active in furthering culinary education through the Oklahoma Restaurant Association, of which he serves on the board of directors. Michel and his wife, Diana, have two young children, and his older son and daughter, in their 20s, have experience in the food industry. Alain and his wife, Julie, have a 14-month-old daughter.
The brothers savor the opportunity to increase Oklahomans' knowledge of French culture through annual festivities they have organized. Those include a pajama party to mark the release of the first shipments of Beaujolais Nouveau in November and a competition each July 14 among a dozen local independent restaurants' employees to celebrate France's Bastille Day. The daylong event includes contests such as waiter races and ladle tosses as well as wine tasting. Michel also organizes and leads wine-tasting trips in Oklahoma and to various wine-growing regions in the world.
October will be a busy and exciting month for the brothers. Their mother, Suzanne, who lives in Grenoble, France, is visiting her sons this month. She is here to share in the excitement of the openings of Soleil, XO and Boucherie Meat Market, all of which will carry on the Buthion family's dedication to an industry it has given so much to in France and in Oklahoma.
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