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Food and Drink

Spotting the Quinny
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He’s the crazy guy with the fake moustache and huge Mexican sombrero in the ads often found at the bottom of this page, promising free goodies if you spot El Quinny. Make that just plain Quinny, in maybe a top hat, if it’s not Mexican week.

He’s the crazy guy languishing like a bathing beauty across the café countertop, inviting you to enjoy a latte — which, incidentally, was voted tops in town again in this year’s Best of Whistler picks — or the good food/good vibe combo that permeates Behind the Grind.

But Chris Quinlan, owner/operator of aforementioned local institution and the Mountain Hound Lounge, where leather sofas are for the dogs, is also the serious, straight-up guy who contributes huge amounts of time and energy to the community through a variety of venues.

The serious Quinny uses his business to support things he believes in, such as worthy students he gives bursaries to, and another local institution near and dear to his heart, WORCA (Whistler Off-Road Cycling Association).

As well, he’s a Whistler Health Care Foundation board member who is part of the ongoing effort to get a CT scanner for the community, a Chamber of Commerce director and committee member, plus he’s active on four community task forces focused on issues such as healthy living and affordable housing. In his spare time, he’s also run twice for council, all because he wants to “…create something that would allow us all to stay here in Whistler, and keep it real.”

These are not so irreconcilable, these two Chrises, for after all he’s a Gemini, and what some might call a typical Whistler icon, doing what he loves and accomplishing things at the same time.

Chris first hit town in 1991, fresh from his 10-year high school reunion in Nanaimo, turning down an offer leading to law school to come to Whistler instead. This after pursuing a Commerce degree, years working as a faller/logger, topped up with more years in Nanaimo tending bar and managing restaurants.

His choice had everything to do with his hometown’s milieu as mining/fishing/logging/mill town, where you could “…find the same people sitting on the same barstool 20 years later…”, vs. Whistler, a siren’s allure.

“At Whistler you can start fresh, make something happen. You can do whatever you want in this town — it’s like the Wild West all over again,” he says. “If you want to create something, this is the place to do it — you just have to know what you want to do.”

For Chris, that took 10 years to coalesce.

Did you ride the first run of the first transit bus in Whistler back in ’91? Chris was your driver. He also might have sorted things out for you when he was the manager at Johnny’s Grill at the base of Blackcomb, or at Hoz’s Pub, or while waiting on you at Pascal Tiphine’s Les Deux Gros (now Le Gros), or Umberto’s Il Caminetto.

In between, there was his stint owning and operating the Glacier Café with a partner, ever so briefly, which ultimately, when combined with all of the above plus the inevitable insights that can arise from cognac shared at 4 a.m. with local restaurateurs like Pascal, Mario Enero and the late Joel Thibault, led to that special something he wanted to do.

“Behind the Grind — that’s my lifestyle,” he says with a rush of enthusiasm. “It allows me to live in the greatest place on earth and work with great people, play with my friends and have all the amenities I could possibly want. But I also have opportunities to be involved with the community and to actually make a difference.”

Besides, he loves coffee and couldn’t afford the kind of espresso machine he needed — “so you have to have a coffee shop” — all of which fits Chris’s temperament like a snap-on take-out lid.

“I’m the kind of person who needs to have immediate results, quantifiable results, at least that’s what my guidance counsellors told me,” he says, laughingly comparing what would have resulted from his earlier pursuit of that Commerce degree and subsequent career in middle management to what he’s doing now.

“But I walk onto the floor of the restaurant, and it’s rock and roll time.”

And rock and roll it is, set to his own authentic beat, even when Behind the Grind moved last October from its original location and into its new space in the Hilton Resort and Spa. That doubled the floor area and added a huge patio, translating from a staff of two or three — including chief cook and bottle washer, Quinny — to one of 20 or 30.

But even with the expansion, Chris has been able to maintain the kind of place that’s an extension of himself and what he believes in.

“It’s unique, it’s independent, and it’s real — real food, real service, and real pricing,” he says. In short, the type of place that attracts local residents as much as visitors, who are after “…a quaint little local spot, where the locals are hanging out, where you get a real feel for the place.”

So how does he create that vibe?

The crazy ads have played no small part, with people spotting the Quinny on his mountain bike on Westside road, on the dance floor at GLC, on the slopes — just about any place is fair game except Behind the Grind itself, or maybe his house.

Then there are his ingrained ideas about running a successful owner-operated café — that the business, personality and hospitality angles are equally important. But there’s a key reference point he hangs it all on, which has everything to do with hospitality.

“You walk into a room — and I refer to a restaurant as a room — and you should feel welcome, enchanted, curious, and well-received all at the same time,” he says. “And when you leave you should feel like you want to bring all of your friends back there.”

Finally, the other side of his Gemini self, his unwavering belief in giving back, no doubt comes into play.

“That’s what makes you a human being, that’s what makes everything work,” he says. “You can’t just take money and work and ideas from people, and not give anything back. You have to give back, otherwise it just doesn’t work, at least not for me.”

 

Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning freelance writer who would take a latte anytime from Behind the Grind’s 15-grand La Cimbali machine.