Chef Elliot Bell’s path from a small town in Iowa to the Napa Valley city of St. Helena is a series of one door closing and another opening — and Bell walking through each with little hesitation. Opportunities sprung up from conversations with professors at his hospitality management school in New Hampshire to chefs in New York and Boston, which eventually led him to world-famous Napa Valley chef Thomas Keller. Bell worked his way up to executive sous chef at The French Laundry in Yountville, staying with the restaurant for almost 11 years.
Now, Bell is taking on a new challenge by owning and managing his own restaurant in downtown St. Helena.
Bell, who balances family life with working as a chef and a St. Helena firefighter, opened Charlie’s in October to much fanfare from the local community. The location formerly housed Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen — the brainchild of local chef Cindy Pawlcyn who still checks in on Bell from time to time. The Railroad Avenue restaurant hosted many special occasions for locals over the years and Bell hopes to add to that legacy with Charlie’s. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity and space.
What inspired you to open your own restaurant?
It’s always kind of been a goal or dream of mine. I’ve worked in so many different types of restaurants and learned a lot of great things, learned a lot of stuff that I wouldn’t want to do, and it’s always been a goal to have that culmination of being able to really direct what I know to be right and what I want to see as a restaurant and how I want to treat employees and how I want to purvey food. It’s always kind of been a goal to have that independence in doing that and being able to support others to do the same.
What challenges have you faced in opening Charlie’s? What has surprised you the most about this process?
There’re the obvious challenges of the pandemic. Staffing was a challenge at the beginning but has kind of sorted itself out a bit and has become better. It was definitely something I was nervous of when we first started talking about the concept. That was like right in the middle when there were a lot of the unemployment benefits and people not really coming back to work, which led to a lot of challenges for a lot of other restaurants. But as we kind of phased out of that, we’ve had a lot of eagerness of people to work. Staffing was a challenge, but it is starting to get better. The construction and just the restraints of funds and financing is a challenge, but it has also built this restaurant into what it is. And being able to work within those constraints. But fundraising money is definitely challenging.
I’d say the construction and that (financing) was probably the two biggest challenges. The town’s been super supportive, the community has been super supportive so that’s been amazing and really helpful in the process.
And then the surprises just of running a small business, not being able to spend as much time at the stove as I thought or would like to. It is a lot more time on the computer.
So your hospitality/business degree, is that coming in handy at this point?
It definitely came in handy, and I’m glad that I have that basis and understanding, like the economics of running a restaurant. It is probably the first time in my career I’ve really knelt back on that and really been able to dig into it. It’s been great; it is not the funnest work to do, but it’s definitely necessary, and I’m glad I have the experience.
Tell me about your “sliding scale” approach to the menu
We tried to really, in having this restaurant be approachable and something fun and interesting tried to kind of give the opportunities for the guest to have these different experiences. We want to be a restaurant where the locals feel comfortable coming in two or three times a week. But also somewhere where somebody can really come in for those special occasions to celebrate. As we were doing the construction so many people stopped by and were like “Oh my God I had my wedding reception there” or “we had our anniversary there” and everyone has these very fond memories of Cindy’s and these special occasions so we want to be a place that can provide that as well. And people can really come and have this great experience and have white truffles if they want to or try caviar for the first time and have that accessibility with some of these ingredients that people may not be familiar with and at the same time people feel comfortable to have Coors Light and fried chicken at the bar and hang out. We’re tried to really hit both of those and be a comfortable and approachable place but also offer a unique and exciting dining experience.
What were the goals in reimagining the space, which was home to Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen for so many years?
We wanted to, since it has been through its many iterations as such an iconic space in St. Helena, we didn’t want to wipe that clean and do something different. We wanted to keep — and just being this older building it kind of lends itself to that familiarity — so we wanted to keep a lot of the iconic parts of it and have that feeling when guests, because everyone is so excited to reopen, that they didn’t feel like they were coming to something completely new and all those memories of those birthdays and anniversaries are wiped clean. But we also wanted to give it a fresh update. This piece of wallpaper back here, that was the original wallpaper that was everywhere in this room. We got to keep that, and we have some pieces up of the old building. We kept a lot of it similar, but also updated it to the times. A lot of the renovations in the bar are pretty different from what it was but still keeping that comfortable feeling.
How would you describe the menu?
It’s approachable, comfortable food that people are familiar with but has maybe some different techniques or something that’s a little exciting about it, really focused on local purveyors and local food, but at the same time providing an experience for the guests that’s approachable but interesting trying to make things successful like caviar, truffles, like Wagyu beef that maybe everyone doesn’t try. A lot of staff has never tried some of the things before, but trying to create it in a way to get guests in.
Do you have specials during the week?
Yeah. It’s fun, and it is a good way for us to test out like we just put on the menu a new pasta dish, and we ran that as a special last week to kind of get the staff familiar with it, get some interaction with the guests from it and then put it onto the menu. We always run a special or two.
What has the reception been like since Charlie’s opened its Doors? From locals? Visitors?
The opening from harvest time into the holidays, when it is not the tourist season up here, we’ve really been able to open our doors to the community and have great support and that’s really helped us in January, which is typically a slower month out here, to be really busy. The local community support has been amazing, and it’s been really fun especially with that bar — it’s a horseshoe and it really makes this communal feeling in there. And we still get buzz from tourists and get people coming up from San Francisco just to try us because they have read about us. But we’ve gotten a lot of comments like “it has been really great to have this community-centered restaurant” and I am sure once we get into the tourist months, we’ll get a lot of tourists as well.
How did it feel when you first opened the doors to Charlie’s?
It was a lot of anticipation, which led to a lot of nerves. We did a big open house before we opened for actual service, which was really fun. Everybody supported us through opening and just the local community, We kind of invited everyone in and it was a couple hundred people and that was really fun and a relief to see everyone in here. There was a lot of anticipation from the community about it.
What does Cindy Pawlcyn think about this restaurant?
She’s been in a couple times, and she’s been really supportive. It’s been fun throughout the process. She now lives in town, she used to live up the hill a little
bit, but now lives in town, so she’ll stop by every once in a while and say “hi” and check in on us, and she’s been extremely supportive, which has been amazing.
Do you feel like there’s a lot of support between the different restaurants for each other? Is there camaraderie?
I think everybody, especially in St. Helena and the bigger Napa Valley, the restaurant community is really tight and supportive. We’ve had a lot of restaurants reach out to see how they can help and see what we need, so that’s been a great feeling.
Charlie’s is located at 1327 Railroad Ave. in St. Helena. Visit charliesnv.com for more information.
Golden Harvest razed; Italian-style restaurant coming
With surprising ease and speed, the 1960s-era building that once housed the Golden Harvest restaurant in St. Helena was reduced to a pile of sticks.
The demolition on Jan. 16 clears the way for a new building that will house Capo 29, a sister restaurant to Bruce Marder’s “Italian-style” restaurant Capo in Santa Monica.
Courtesy Photo
Golden Harvest closed in July after 27 years in business on Highway 29. Marder closed escrow on the property a few months later and won the St. Helena Planning Commission’s approval to replace the 2,807-square-foot Golden Harvest building with a 3,597-square-foot, 76-seat restaurant.
Construction is scheduled to take 10 to 12 months, with Capo 29 opening sometime in 2025.
Marder is chef, manager and partner at the Santa Monica Capo, one of 100 restaurants in the world to win a Grand Award from Wine Spectator for the 3,000 choices on its wine list.
Marder apprenticed at the Dumas Pere School of French Cooking in Glenview, Illinois, and returned to his hometown of Los Angeles to work at the Beverly Hills Hotel. He was chef/owner of Café California, West Beach Café, DC3 and Broadway Deli before founding Capo in June 1998.
Marder envisions Capo 29 as a “comfortable, elegant, hospitable, everyday dining choice presented in a way not currently available in the valley.” To maintain a consistent staff, it will be open five days a week, for dinner only.
“Napa Valley is a tourist destination year-round now, yet there are NO sophisticated Italian restaurants in the Valley. ... Capo is straightforward, not fussy, with the best food products and tabletop amenities available,” Marder wrote in a business plan he provided to the Star.
