Morgan M. Hurley | Editor

Local entrepreneur has a lot on her plate

Terryl Gavre has her hands so full one wonders how she can possibly get through her daily “to-do” list. Not only has the quirky Seattle native owned Downtown’s Café 222 since 1992 and Bankers Hill Bar and Restaurant since 2010, she recently opened Bake Sale in East Village and has plans to spin off a cooking school from the bakery. When she’s not running between her three restaurants, she’s taking care of her two children, ages 10 and 7, and tends to the garden at her Bankers Hill home.

The 40-something entrepreneur remembers when she was first negotiating the lease for Café 222, she told her future landlord, “If you think I’m going to be doing this when I’m in my 40s, you’re crazy.” But 22 years later, here she is.

When Gavre moved to San Diego from the Pacific Northwest after a short stop in Los Angeles, she found what she thought was the perfect location for her first restaurant, but the address was 202 Island Ave — just one digit off. There wasn’t much surrounding the location at the time, so she pulled some strings at the city and officially changed the address to 222, to match the name she planned to use for the restaurant, in homage to her great grandmother’s address, the woman she credits with instilling in her a love for cooking and baking.

Known for its breakfast and the savvy marketing photo of Gavre with a waffle on her head, her quirky little restaurant — which many say mirrors her personality — got national attention early on when celebrity chef Bobby Flay came to Café 222 during the first season of his Food Network show, “The Best Thing I Ever Ate.”

The meal the episode centered on? Her peanut butter and banana stuffed French toast.

“[The episode] runs every couple of years now, and I know when it runs because we sell 50 of them,” she said.

Much of the inspiration for the menu at the 75-seat café comes from her mother and great grandmother; many items are time-tested favorites and so popular, she even offers the recipes online.

“Some items I’d love to take off the menu, but we’ve been around so long that they’ve become an institution with regulars and out-of-towners,” she said.

After 18-months into her joint venture with Chef Carl Schroeder at Market in Del Mar, Gavre and Schroeder decided to open Bankers Hill Bar and Restaurant in 2010. As with Market, Schroeder handles the food and Gavre handles the front end; the naming, the hiring, the branding, and the marketing.

The rustic Bankers Hill eatery, once the home to “The French Side of the West” restaurant at 222 Fourth Ave., is a full service dinner restaurant. The interior is full of reclaimed wood and brick and a huge leap from Café 222, but it still has a great deal of Gavre’s personal touches.

A chandelier over the chef’s table was made by her own hands using wine bottles and goblets she’s collected over the years; a “plant wall” on the patio is something she and her mother started and grew in her backyard six months before the restaurant opened; the vintage artwork and antiques that adorn the walls are purchases she made from Architectural Salvage in Seattle; and though she’s happy to not be fully responsible for the menu at Bankers Hill, she said she definitely puts her two cents in.

One of her favorites is a staple on the menu — and not what most would expect.

“The menu changes every two or three days,” she said. “Things rotate on and off. The burger is always on there, and if I can’t find something I want, I always default to the burger. I probably eat them three times per month.”

The Bankers Hill chandelier is something that follows a theme for Gavre, handmade items she constructs from salvaged materials.

“It’s kind of my thing for each of my restaurants, I make one or two of the light fixtures,” she said.

At Café 222, the light fixtures are made from vintage cups and saucers and silverware and hang over every table, and at Bake Sale, she has vintage saucers and plates decorating a wall.

She said the restaurant, which she and Schroeder refer to as “little Market” after their Del Mar joint-venture, has done well and is often “bought out” for holidays and Comic Con. Four years after opening Bankers Hill, she wanted more.

“They start to do well and run smoothly and my managers — I hire really well and have great employees and I come in and just get in the way,” she said. “They don’t need me any more so I get bored.”

She decided to do something fun.

“It was always my fantasy to open a bakery,” she said, referring to the walk-up bakery kitchen she purchased at 814 F St. in East Village.

“Bake Sale was something I always wanted to do,” she said. “I really wanted to bring in some young, up-and-coming female chefs and bakers. It’s not about making money there — we’re selling things for $3. It’s more a passion project — and I can do that late in my career.”

Now that her kids are in school, she needs more time to be with them and accommodate their busy schedules. But once the kids are off to school, she looks forward to the bakery and meeting up with her head baker, Kathleen Shen.

“I go there in the morning, brainstorm, talk about cakes and baking classes, I don’t see myself doing anything else for a while,” she said. Although …

“We started baking classes in October, and we’ve had two per month, and they’ve all sold out,” she said.

The success of the cooking classes has made her reconsider slowing down. Now she is planning to expand the bakery into a cooking school, either on the premises or in a space around the corner.

“Holding the classes once per week would be one way to help the business to become more viable,” she explained.

With Restaurant Week keeping Bankers Hill busy round-the-clock behind her, the month of February will have Gavre charging between her two other business.

Bake Sale isn’t only about baked goods, it has chocolate and sandwiches, too. Starting on Feb. 7 through Valentine’s Day, they’ll be making hand-painted, heart-shaped holiday cookies that look just like Valentine’s hearts. And since Chef Shen is a skilled chocolatier, they’ll host a chocolate class on Feb. 10. At the end of the month, Café 222 will be offering a specialty sampler stack of pancakes, including their orange pecan pancakes, for National Pancake Day on Feb. 28.

There isn’t room here to go into the interesting story that is Gavre’s life before Café 222 — like those 10 years she ran her “The Surrogate Wife” business in Seattle that led to a made-for-TV movie she co-starred in with Pam Dawber of “Mork and Mindy” fame — but you’ll just have to read that on her website.

Catch up with Gavre at one of her three restaurants by visiting their websites; cafe222.com; bankershillsd.com; and bakesalesd.com. You can follow them on Facebook and Twitter, too, or stop in for a cookie before Valentine’s Day. She’ll be happy you did.

—Morgan M. Hurley can be reached at [email protected].