Mark Gray was so enthused about the restaurant in Dartmouth he was cooking in, he bought it.
And after creating an avantgarde menu for the original owners of The Watch That Ends the Night, Gray is coming back to the regular people, replacing a selection of cured, fermented and pickled items with dishes like steak frites, tuna tataki and sticky pork ribs.
It was only six months ago that Joe and Bethany Gurba opened The Watch, in a unique space built as an homage to their favourite book.
“It was a passion project that he delivered on quite well, and for someone that didn’t have any experience, he did a fantastic job.
He just didn’t have the support system that I have,” Gray said of Gurba. “I’ve said, probably since I was 20, that by the time I’m 30 I want to own my own restaurant.
And it just so happened that a week after my 30th birthday, Joe approached me and we had the first conversation.”
Gray will remain the titular head of the kitchen as executive chef, but Janie Bogardus will run the line and take on the title of head chef. And in keeping with The Watch’s birth as a boozecentric spot, the three-person team of Riley Maggs, Coady LeBlanc and Griffin Cox will curate the restaurant’s beer, spirits, wine and cocktail programs.
“I’m not a drinker, so I would say that would be my biggest challenge, that aspect of the business, the alcohol side. Now I’ve put the right people in place so I can delegate those tasks to them,” said Gray, the new president, director and secretary of The Watch That Ends the Night, Inc.
“A lot of it I’ve done, financials and that kind of stuff. It’s now a broader responsibility to pay the bills to Canadian Linen, to manage the bank accounts, to do payroll. I’ve done lots of those tasks, but not all the way through.
The responsibility has expanded quite a lot.”
Gray is about to become a father for the third time so his fiancee, Alissa Maloney, is a little busy, but eventually she will have a significant role at the restaurant.
“She’s super supportive, she’s excited, she wants to have more to do with it but she’s going to be on maternity leave soon. When she’s done with that she will be more a part of it. She’s already helped with beer menus, wine menus, using her front-of-house knowledge of 20-plus years,” said Gray, who has so much support he hasn’t felt a single qualm about becoming a business owner. His dad, who’s the CAO of a small town in New Brunswick and commutes back and forth from Halifax each week, will also be on board.
“I said to him the other day in a text ‘get ready for reviewing spreadsheets and looking at invoices on your days off.’ He’s going to love it, and is super excited himself. I’ll get to work very closely with him, which is amazing.”
The Watch has a large bar area, and a tiny kitchenthat now has to do more than it was designed for, with a mandate to appeal to a broader audience.
“You need to have traditional fare as well, so we started to push ourselves,” Gray said. “So how we produce the plates is unique to this place because of our space limitations. And every day or every week we see just how far we can push it, how many large entree- style plates we can have. As I say, limitations breed creativity.”
“It’s the smallest kitchen I’ve worked in, but it’s the most fun I’ve ever had in a kitchen.”
