Marche Gourmet

by KERSTIN KÜHN

Tucked between the Ojai playhouse and the Barbara Bowman boutique, it serves an all-day European café menu as well as dinner on weekends. but these women have run restaurants in Ojai for a lot longer than 10 years, having previously owned the garden terrace restaurant, and catering operation, which they operated for almost two decades.

Ojai Magazine’s Kerstin Kühn speaks to them about the past 30 years of running restaurants in Ojai, how things have changed, and the secret to their long lasting success.

OM: You’ve been in Ojai for almost three decades. What brought you here all those years ago?

Pat Cluché: I had been running a catering business in Palm Desert for many years called Behind the Scenes Catering, and although I was very successful — I did events for Oprah Winfrey, among others — I wasn’t very good at the business stuff . I mean, I would write proposals on a typewriter with white-out. Gay and I had reconnected after meeting at summer camp many years prior, and she had all this experience working with the Wine Society and office management and computers, so I convinced her to come and work with me in the desert and help me run my business there.

Gay Martin: We did that together for two years, and then the crazy people who owned the place didn’t renew our contract and instead gave it to one of their relatives. So we started looking around Palm Desert for a new restaurant space but couldn’t find anything. Then I brought Pat up to Santa Barbara for her birthday, and while we were there, I thought we should look in Ojai because it was a small, sweet little rural place, a bit like Palm Desert used to be. So we drove into town and saw a building on Ojai Avenue that we instantly felt would make a great restaurant. When we walked into the Realtor’s office and asked about it, she said that while it wasn’t officially on the market, she knew the owners wanted to sell. It wasn’t easy to secure the lease as the banks wouldn’t touch restaurants with a 10-foot pole back then, but we got lucky. I always tell people if you’re meant to be in Ojai, everything will work out for you, but if you’re not meant to be here, you won’t be able to get in for anything. OM: So you took on that building and opened The Garden Terrace Restaurant in 1993. Can you tell me a bit about this?

Gay Martin: We had a very big operation — in the space where both Ca Marco and the Bamboo Creek massage place are now — with a restaurant, catering business, banquet room, bar, tearoom, and two rooms of gift shop. We had a huge menu, with a whole page just with daily specials. We did eggs for breakfast like eggs Benedict Arnold with avocado instead of ham; we had great pizzas like shrimp and feta pizza or Thai chicken pizza; we did amazing sandwiches fish and chips with a light tempura batter, pommes frites and a malt vinegar aioli. When Larry Hagman lived in Ojai, he would come in and say Pat was the best chef within 100 miles.

Pat Cluché: Our menu had a little bit of everything, nice fresh things. We made a ginger-cashew stir-fry that you could order with chicken, shrimp, or tofu, and we sold a lot of that. And we did small weddings and big buffets, and one Mother’s Day we served 400 people — breakfast, lunch, and dinner. OM: Why did you decide to close The Garden Terrace Restaurant?

Gay Martin: We saw a need in Ojai for an events venue, and in 2007 we expanded and added a banquet room. Of course, that’s when the recession hit. We saw a 5% drop in business between 2006 and 2007, and between 2008 and 2009 it dropped another 40%. So we lost almost half of our business right when we had expanded, and that was tough. The landlord didn’t cut us any slack despite what was going on with the economy and increased our rent every year, plus we had [a] triplenet [lease], so our overheads were astronomical.

Pat Cluché: We su ered for a while, and eventually I said: “I’ve got to get out of this big restaurant scene and open something small, a little sandwich shop.” So we got this place, which we opened in July 2012.

OM: Pat, how would you describe your cooking style and the food you serve at Marché Gourmet?

Pat Cluché: I guess it’s quite eclectic, but if I had to defi ne it, I’d say it’s classic continental cuisine, with Italian or Mediterranean fl avors and French techniques. We do a lot of sandwiches, salads, and quiches at lunchtime, and I always use fresh ingredients so the menu changes every week depending on what’s around.

Living in California we’re really lucky because everything is so abundant. Right now [July] we have chilled gazpacho soup, quiche, ratatouille, Basque chicken with peppers, grilled lamb medallions with Greek salad, and crème brûlée on the menu, so it’s a real mix. I also love cooking wild-caught fish, although it’s not as easy to get these days and it’s a lot more expensive than it used to be. I like to be reasonable with my prices. Gay’s always pushing for me to up the prices, but I don’t like to gouge people.

Gay Martin: That’s why I write all the proposals. She cooks the beans and I count the beans [laughs]. OM: You’re open six days a week from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and only serve dinner from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. two nights a week, on Friday and Saturday. Why such limited hours?

Pat Cluché: We used to be open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day, but we realized over the years when we’re busy and when we’re not. So now we’re only open when we know we’re going to get good business, which is mainly lunch and dinner on weekends. Our clientele is very faithful and we have regulars who come for dinner every Saturday night.

Gay Martin: We have people who drive up from Santa Barbara every week to stock up on quiches, tamales, and things, and we get a lot of people from the Ojai Valley Inn, who walk past and stay for lunch. They always say: “Your food is twice as good and half the price, which makes it four times better!”

OM: So after 30 years in Ojai, you’ve seen it all and you’re still here doing your thing. Do you still enjoy it?

Gay Martin: Yes, we like what we do, and we are very grateful to have a business in Ojai that after all these years is still solvent. Over the past 30 years we’ve been through the El Niño in 1997, the recession in 2008, the Thomas Fire in 2017, and now Covid, and we kept our doors open through all those events. And if nothing else, if it’s just the two of us, we know that together we can do it.

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805.340.0494 judith.pugh@att.net DRE 0947569