Photograph by Robert Scheer
Sent Sovi's co-owners are manager Aimee Hebert and chef David Kinch.
BY SUZANNE CRISTALLO
The quiet graciousness of Los Gatan David Kinch belies the fierce work ethic he has developed over the past 20 years, as he progressed from a teenage dishwasher in New Orleans to executive chef and co-owner, with Aimee Hebert, of Restaurant Sent Sovi in Saratoga.
In 1981, Kinch graduated from Johnson and Whales Culinary Academy in Rhode Island. Then he worked in New York as a sous chef before traveling to France, where the work ethic that has stayed with him ever since was imprinted by laboring six days a week, 12 to 18 hours a day as a stagier, or apprentice without pay.
"There were no tricks learned, just hard work and dedication," Kinch reflects.
Over the next 10 years, Kinch served as chef at a four-star New York restaurant, washed barrels and harvested grapes at Mount Eden, opened a hotel restaurant in Japan and served as executive chef at Silks Restaurant in San Francisco. He backpacked through 28 countries in a year, cooked throughout Germany, France and Spain, and returned to San Francisco, where he was chef at the venerable Ernie's Restaurant.
It was in San Francisco that he met Aimee Hebert, a restaurant marketing and management consultant. It was the beginning of a partnership that evolved into their purchase of Saratoga's former Adriatic Restaurant, which they opened as Sent Sovi--loosely translated as "sweet taste"--on Bastille Day, 1995.
With Hebert running the front of the house and Kinch managing the kitchen, the partners have created a cozy country dining experience centered on vegetable-oriented, contemporary Franco-American cuisine.
They have added Annabelle Lenderlink to their staff to serve in the unusual position of "forager." It is Lenderlink's job to acquire the fresh produce the restaurant emphasizes on its menu. Working as a Gilroy farm representative in six farmers' markets each week, she is in a position to spot the best produce for the restaurant.
Lenderlink also cultivates an acre of land in Bolinas, where she grows her own shallots, potatoes, leeks and beans that diners might enjoy as a ragout or a side dish to a braised lamb shank.
Starters such as wild fennel cake with oven-dried tomato sauce run about $6, and main dishes like poached salmon are about $19. Desserts, or "rewards," are $5-$6.50.
Restaurant Sent Sovi, 14583 Big Basin Way, Saratoga. Dinner: Tue.-Sun., 5:30-9:30 p.m. 867-3110.
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, September 25, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.