Photograph by George Sakkestad

Jeanne Beaulieu-Wang, manager of Sur La Table in Old Town, shows a copper turbot fish poacher, one of many unique items in the shop.

New business offers many good things to put on table

Kitchen shop has opened in Old Town

By Suzanne Cristallo

It's all about food and taste and cooking in the home and the knowledge and tools it takes to do it. That sums up Sur La Table, the cooking store that just opened in Los Gatos' Old Town.

Located above the new underground parking garage on University Avenue, the store is the 10th to open in a series started four years ago in Seattle, Wash., by Renée and Carl Behnke.

While the store offers professional kitchen gadgets, knives, books, small appliances and linens to the chefs and restaurateurs who constitute 15 percent of its trade, the majority of its customers are cooking aficionados seeking cooking classes by well-known chefs and unusual and hard-to-find items.

"We carry about 15,000 items to buy," explains Renée. Sur La Table--which means "on the table" in French--provides a monthly catalog of dishware and other items to its customers and a yearly one on tools to chefs, small restaurant owners and caterers.

A search is on for local chefs to augment the roster of famous cooking professionals who will conduct cooking classes in the 800-square-foot store kitchen. "We need people who not only can cook but who can teach--even write books," Renée notes. She says the school will be open to groups of 45, who sit at a round table with the chef as he or she prepares and explains a meal. The students and the chef will work as a team on pastries, sushi and chocolate items.

"We'll also have classes where parents and their children can make cookies and sandwiches together for tea parties," adds Renée, "and special cooking camps where parents can drop off their children for four hours. We'll take them to a store, and they'll learn how to pick ingredients for kid food menus and how to use them." An example is a Fathers' Day dinner the store in Seattle helped children prepare in groups spanning ages 6 to 14. The store also is available for private parties and fundraisers.

Renée, 51 and a Portland, Ore., native, comes from a professional background including stints as a buyer for Nordstrom, a caterer, a wholesale florist and a cooking instructor. She and her husband, Carl, now president of the Seattle-based company they own with Carl's parents and his children, bought the original Sur La Table in their hometown after the family sold its Pepsi-Cola franchise covering Alaska, Hawaii, Washington and Oregon. They also sold a Caterpillar Tractor distributorship.

Renée says the family bought the first Sur La Table in Seattle's historic Pike Place Market after an acquaintance knowing her interest in food directed them there. This led to the financing of five more stores before the family offered friends the opportunity to invest. Four more stores are opening this year, with an eventual goal of 30 stores and an expanded international mail order catalog.

"We make a good team," laughs Renée, who traveled to Los Gatos to help oversee the store's start-up--uncrating and arranging store items along with a local staff of 16 and manager Jeanne Beaulieu-Wang, a new Los Gatos resident. "Being here is like being at the beach!" she declares, reveling in the sun she says tends to elude her at home. She's also basking in town friendliness. "People seem happy to see us here."

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Sur La Table, 23 University Ave., Los Gatos. Open Mon.-Sat. 10 a.m.-7 p.m., Sun. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. 395-6496.

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