"It was a disaster from the beginning," he recalls. "We never had a
business licence, we never had a health permit - who knew you needed
such a thing? The walls started closing in and we began running out of
money."
In less than a year the restaurant had closed.
"But no doubt I learned more in that ten month period than I would have learned in four years at college," he says.
That
proved to be true. Over two decades later Mr Armstrong, now 46, runs
Eat Good Food Group which operates Restaurant Eve, Eamonn's and Society
Fair as well as a bar. The firm has an annual turnover of around $10m
(£6.5m) and employs almost 150 staff.
With the restaurants
located in Alexandria, Virginia just a few miles from the United States'
capital, he has ended up cooking for film stars, presidents,
millionaires and a host of other celebrities. He has also represented
the US in Thailand, promoting American cuisine and sustainable food and
has been named by the White House as a champion of change for supporting
healthy school meals.
Luck of the Irish?
So how did a
college dropout and self-described bottle washer from Ireland end up
becoming one of the most sought after chefs in a region obsessed with
success, power and money?
Listening to Mr Armstrong describe his
career it would be easy to attribute his rise to the luck of the Irish
and a few chance encounters along the way. But the self-deprecating
humour and easy-going charm disguise a steely business sense and a
thorough knowledge of the restaurant industry gained by hard work and
stamina.
Born
in Dublin in 1969, Mr Armstrong grew up in a family that relished food.
His father did most of the cooking and grew his own vegetables in the
back garden. Dinner was an obligatory event that always included an
appetiser, main course and dessert.
When he was seven-years-old Mr Armstrong was sent alone on an
exchange visit to France to learn French. The trip became a summer
ritual and over the years he developed a passion for French cuisine.
He
was less enthusiastic about college where he spent two months studying
computer programming before dropping out. That's when his family decided
America might be a good experience and packed him off to stay with
friends in the Washington suburbs where he got a job at an Irish bar.
'I had no clue'
One
thing led to another and after ignoring a summons home from his father,
and winning a Green Card in the annual US government lottery, he was
taken on at Vidalia, a high-end restaurant in the heart of Washington
where he began learning the art of "serious cooking" and worked his way
up the kitchen ranks.
"I really had no clue what I was doing," he
says. "So many restaurants sear a piece of meat, put it onto a hot plate
and then it goes into the oven. You take it out when you think it's
cooked and hopefully you get medium rare or medium or whatever was
ordered."
Vidalia had much higher standards as Mr Armstrong found out during his first New Year's Eve in the kitchen.
"At
least 60 steaks were sent back over cooked. The chef finally gave up
screaming at me because it was a disaster. Thankfully I wasn't fired.
And sometimes an experience like that can be the best learning
experience you're going to have. You just learn to figure it out. I went
back in the next day, got back on the horse and started figuring it
out."
He figured things out so well that in 1998 the owner of Vidalia asked
him to be the chef at Bistro Bis, a landmark restaurant on Capitol Hill
and a favourite haunt of lawmakers and lobbyists.
"Over the
course of my almost four years there I cooked for Hilary Clinton,
Martina Navratilova, Tony Curtis and a long list of celebrities. When
Michael J Fox and Mohammad Ali came to talk to Congress about
Parkinson's disease, I fed them. It was a pretty amazing experience."
When famous American cook Julia Child turned up unannounced, she was so impressed she returned the following day.
"Cooking
for all these celebrities, I started meeting people who had money and
were interested in investing in me so we started looking for properties
where we could open a restaurant."
Expensive not overpriced
But Mr Armstrong was cautious. When asked to borrow $4m as part of a finance package he balked: "I needed to sleep at night."
Eventually,
in 2004, he and his wife Meshelle, a restaurant manager, opened
Restaurant Eve in Alexandria, Virginia. Backed by a group of local
businessmen, they have taken on a more modest debt of $2m.
"In its
heyday, before the bottom fell out of the economy in 2007, Restaurant
Eve was fabulous and virtually ran itself. But the luxury dining
industry took a relatively big hit with the drop in the economy and
hasn't really recovered that well.
"I find myself having to
explain to people the difference between overpriced and expensive.
Overpriced is paying $2 for a can of sugary water. Paying $200 for a
fine meal in a restaurant is not overpriced - it's expensive."
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