THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 26, 1995 TAG: 9503230042
SECTION: FLAVOR PAGE: F1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL RUEHLMANN, SPECIAL TO SUNDAY FLAVOR
LENGTH: Long : 198 lines
The handsome, rugged-looking guy had a little wine, and pretty soon he was seated at the piano in Le Chambord, the urbane continental restaurant in Virginia Beach. He was belting out show tunes in an arresting baritone:
If ever I would leave you,
It wouldn't be in summer. . . .
Kodak moment: Necks craned. The general murmur sequed into swoons. One proper, blue-haired patron buttonholed onlooking owner Frank Spapen and fixed him with a flabbergasted stare.
``Why, Frank,'' she breathed, ``that man looks just like Robert Goulet!''
Spapen beamed even bigger than is his custom.
``That man,'' he informed his patron proudly, ``is Robert Goulet!''
The incomparable Bob - in Hampton Roads for the touring ``Camelot'' at Chrysler Hall - was performing gratis. It was an effusion of spontaneous bonhomie; Goulet showed up with his wife for lunch four days in a row. He well appreciated, as the title song confirmed, a ``congenial spot'' when he saw one.
So, over the years, have many other Le Chambord luminaries - like dancer Ann Miller, actor Donald Sutherland and popcorn patriarch Charlton Heston.
``Celebrities like it here,'' said Spapen, himself an authentic Belgian-born count, ``because we don't make a fuss over them.''
Or, at least, any greater fuss than the establishment routinely makes over every guest. Waiters at Le Chambord have been trained to disappear - or seem to; they don't keep showing up to inquire intrusively, ``Is everything all right?'' But they are almost preternaturally at one's elbow the instant anything is needed.
The attentive staff remains vigilant, but from afar.
Watching them watch the clientele is immaculately garbed, impeccably behaved Spapen, whose eagle eye could weld wire.
``I give 110 percent,'' reports the enthusiastic owner. ``If I could just do everything myself, all would be OK! Of course,'' he concedes without conviction, ``I am not perfect.''
``No,'' notes Luisa Spapen, his wife and business partner, ``you are not.''
But close enough. At the entry of Le Chambord, a distinguished member of the Confrerie de la Chaine des Rotisseurs, are three engraved plaques proclaiming the place a four-diamond establishment by the American Automobile Association in 1993, 1994 and 1995.
``Consistency!'' effuses Spapen.
The prestigious AAA evaluations come in recognition of ``a skilled, professional service staff, high level of hospitality and upscale facilities.''
The food is also sublime.
``Truly outstanding,'' testifies G. William Whitehurst, former congressman and longtime Le Chambord fan. ``Blue ribbon. It gets a 10 all around.''
One evening not long ago he made an offhand request at a table for a reservation two weeks hence, on the Saturday night occasion of his 70th birthday. No problem, murmured Spapen, typically in transit at speed, without giving any appearance of haste. Whitehurst noted the customarily busy owner did not write down the request, nor did he refer to it again - but the impending septugenarian resisted an overwhelming temptation to call and remind his host.
When Whitehurst showed up for the celebration, the 140-seat restaurant was packed and perking, as usual.
But his table was waiting for him.
``Frank and Luisa look after you,'' maintains Whitehurst.
He had the Norwegian salmon, a poached filet coated in white Dijon mustard sauce and sauteed with Savoy cabbage. Janie, his wife, had the roasted veal sweetbreads, trimmed with mushrooms and topped with diced lobster and a light red sauce.
``Absolutely exceptional,'' approves Whitehurst, pronouncing himself suitably fortified to embark on an eighth decade.
Another enduring Spapen fan is Norfolk attorney Peter G. Decker Jr.
``Bess and I go to Le Chambord whenever we have a very special occasion with very special friends,'' he says, ``and we enjoy it just as much when we have a not-so-special occasion with not-so-special friends. It's a wonderful experience to go to Le Chambord, from the time you are greeted by Frank and Luisa until the time they tell you goodbye.''
Le Chambord, named after a lavish Leonardo da Vinci-designed chateau in the Loire Valley, is a place for special occasions, white-walled, big-beamed and oil-lamp elegant. The rooms are adorned with simple pencil portraits of Latin American street children by Juan Omar Gordello. ``Art on the tables, not on the walls,'' explains Colombian-born Luisa, accounting for a generally understated ambience.
Art on the tables: thick French-cut venison chops and wild boar tenderloins, garnished with marinated dry figs and a hearty port glaze. Tagliatelli pasta, crowned with a steamed lobster tail and encircled by poached sea scallops in light tarragon and tomato cream. Sauteed center-cut tuna steak, resting on a bed of fresh spinach coated in white pistachio sauce and garnished with celery puree.
The lobster and shrimp bisque is beautiful.
Now Le Chambord is supplemented by a less formal, adjoining 172-seat Bistro & Rotisserie, a wood-and-brass-appointed area for dinner and Sunday brunch sporting duck sausages, spinning chickens and sizzling omlets made to order.
The restaurant complex has prospered and expanded since the main room opened in 1989 within the walls of what had first been a post office, then a Naval credit union. Before that, the Spapens ran Restaurante La Broche (The Skewer Restaurant) in Virginia Beach. When they began that establishment in 1980 as new arrivals to America, Frank and Luisa were proprietors and staff, working 12 to 15 hours a day, seven days a week.
``Frank was on the floor and I was in the kitchen,'' reports Luisa.
``When I opened the front door of my restaurant, I had $3.49 left after I invested all my money in the business,'' Frank once told photographer Mary Motley Kalergis, whose affectionate portrait of the Spapens appears in her book Home of the Brave: Contemporary American Immigrants. ``Our bridges were burned, we had to make it - there was no turning back. That can be a great inspiration for success.''
Now the couple employs a staff of 50, including three-star Michelin chef Alain Jacqmin; but Frank and Luisa still work 12 to 15 hours a day, seven days a week.
``I will die with my boots on!'' insists Frank.
He was 42 and owner-operator of seven restaurants on the island of Mallorca, Spain, when he met his future wife. She was 19 and a University of Palma de Mallorca student who would earn a master's degree in economics. They have been married 18 years.
Their dream was to come to the United States, create a business and build a house.
The naturalized American citizens have done just that.
``Complete with white picket fence!'' chortles Frank. ``And a mortgage, just like everybody else. Give me a break!''
Spapen, a former Belgian naval officer (the drafted Count of Riksinger, son of a Vilvoorde chocolate factory owner), first visited Hampton Roads in 1953; he subsequently built a following among the U.S. Navy's 6th Fleet with his port-of-call Spanish eateries. So he had friends here. Virginia Beach seemed a logical place for the Spapens, fluent in eight languages, to settle.
Their life is their work. They enjoy that dream house, nestled in a nearby area of Virginia Beach, but they are only in it to sleep and exercise between shifts in their home gym.
Routinely the Spapens videotape Peter Jennings' network newscast; that is their daily entertainment, if Frank can stay awake long enough to watch the entire half-hour.
``In Spain there is a saying,'' Frank observes, ``that the eye of the owner makes the horse fatter. You must be there for your business! It prospers because you are there.''
The Spapens are there, all the time, meeting, greeting and grilling. At 60 he is ebullient, white-haired and erect, looking rather like a fit Gert Frobe in ``Goldfinger.'' At 37, she looks 27 and could easily stand in for one of the exotic Bond women in that film.
``We have no social life,'' reports Luisa. ``Our social life is all here. Our customers are our friends.''
``It is like having a party every day,'' adds Frank. ``There is only one difference: We give our guests a check.''
The staff has two nicknames for Frank; one is ``Cujo,'' after novelist Stephen King's nightmare St. Bernard.
``I am very picky,'' Frank concedes. ``I am a very demanding person, that's what I am! But I am mellowing now.''
Sure he is.
``We know our business from top to bottom and can fill in for anybody, anytime,'' says Frank. ``I am the best dishwasher in the place. I am the best-dressed busboy in the city!''
The other staff nickname for him is ``The Diaper'' - ``because I am always on their fannies.''
Well, four diamonds means details.
Even the knife and fork that accompany the tableside-prepared Caesar Salad arrive beside the plate chilled.
``He's demanding,'' concedes Le Chambord manager Kathleen Faulhaber. ``But there is nothing he demands of anybody else that he does not demand of himself. It's a higher standard.''
``I believe in service!'' exults Frank. ``The customer is Number One! I am nice to him!''
Frank is quick to display Le Chambord's sparkling blue-gray and pink marble bathrooms. He regards a spic-and-span lavatory as a hallmark of excellence, his first stop when inspecting the competition.
``The bathroom is the soul of the restaurant business,'' Spapen insists. ``Think about it. If the bathroom is dirty, imagine what the kitchen is like!''
But life has a tendency to impinge upon perfection.
Restauranting isn't all Robert Goulet.
There was the night the admiral's wife stood up from the table, snagged her wrap-around dress and inadvertently unreeled every stylish yard of it on her way to one of Spapen's gleaming bathrooms, right down to her expensive panty hose.
And there was the night the Spapens approved a singing telegram for one of their patrons, a missive which was promptly delivered, in the midst of a taken-aback luncheon crowd, to the accompaniment of an exuberant striptease.
Only in America.
``We have paid our dues,'' acknowledges Frank.
Which is fine with the Spapens, who unequivocally declare the U.S. of A., with all of its well-known problems, ``the greatest country in the world.''
``My title and 95 cents gets me a cup of coffee, big deal,'' Frank shrugs. ``But in America, we are kings, we are rotten spoiled! We vote, Democrat and Republican!
``If I were president of the United States, I would send every young person out of high school direct for one month to a Third World country.
``When they come back, they would salute the flag, kiss the ground and join the Marines!''
Come to think of it, squared-away Frank Spapen would make a pretty fair recruit himself. Better than that. Four diamonds?
Certifiably, The Diaper's already drill sergeant material. ILLUSTRATION: BILL TIERNAN/Staff color photos
Luisa and Frank Spapen are at Le Chambord all the time, meeting,
greeting and grilling. Their customers are their friends.
by CNB