Chuck Hughes opened Garde Manger in Old Montreal in 2006 with Tim Rozon and Kyle Marshall Nares with an arrangement that was simple enough: one worked the bar, one worked the floor, and Chuck was in the kitchen. There were no grand plans beyond making good food, playing good music, and having a great time doing it.

Twenty years later, Hughes is still there, but Garde Manger has become something considerably harder to define: a restaurant with a serious wine list, a kitchen that wastes nothing, and still unmistakably just fun to eat at.

We sat down with Hughes on the occasion of Garde Manger's twentieth anniversary to talk about what nobody warned him about before opening night, how restaurant culture has been turned inside out, and what it takes to stay relevant without becoming a monument to your own past.

"I never had a credit card... I literally would work 49 days straight and then I would get one day off and cry because I'm like, they don't love me... 'you sure you don't need me?' That was my life."

Twenty years of Garde Manger. Nobody warns you about certain things when you open a restaurant. What's the thing you wish someone had?

That after day one, you have to do it over and over and over. We put all our efforts into opening night—bootstrapping, recycling, repurposing—to this one big moment. It was a success, it was great. And then we all kind of looked at each other and said, okay. Now we have to do this again. You focus so hard on that first day. And now it's twenty years later. It feels like yesterday and it feels like a lifetime.

What do you actually remember about that night? Because the restaurant you walked into then and the one someone would walk into now are pretty different places.

Two completely different restaurants. The essence, the vibe, the intention, the spirit—it’s all the same. But we were twenty years younger and we basically built a restaurant to party. Make good food, sure, but mostly at that time do our own thing.

Twenty years ago, restaurants were still a little bit generic… We wanted to play our own music, make our own food. We had bouncers, we were open till 3 a.m., DJs, partying like crazy. Then the clientele shifted as the food got elevated and the experience got better.

That evolution happened over twenty years. But the essence stays.

There's a parallel arc there—the restaurant's evolution and yours. You've been sober for nineteen of those twenty years.

I opened twenty years ago and I've been sober for nineteen. So we had that first year that was kind of really wild. Before that, I was another ten years at least in the industry partying and thinking that was the way, because everything around me, the culture at the time, was very different. It was more of a pirate mentality.

When I became the boss and the restaurant became what it was, it was clear I had to stop drinking, that I had to focus. Before social media, before cameras or pictures—kitchens were an underground scene. Being a line cook making seven bucks an hour with no days off wasn't exactly a prize.

But I loved every second of it. It was abusive. It was probably wrong. The hours were too long, the demands were crazy. And I would not change it for the world.

How does kitchen culture today contrast with what you came up in?

It's a real job now. You can make a living, and rightly so. I never had a credit card. I literally worked forty-nine days straight and then got one day off and cried, thinking they don't love me. Calling the restaurant at two o'clock: "you sure you don't need me?" That was my life.

Today it takes more people to do what you could do before, but the trade-off is way better. You have healthy, happy people who have days off, make money, go to other restaurants, live a life. Everything around cooking has completely changed. Brunoise is still brunoise. Cooking a steak hasn't changed in a thousand years. But everything around it has been hyperspeed.

Chuck Hughes opened Garde Manger in Old Montreal in 2006 with Tim Rozon and Kyle Marshall Nares with an arrangement that was simple enough: one worked the bar, one worked the floor, and Chuck was in the kitchen. There were no grand plans beyond making good food, playing good music, and having a great time doing it.

Twenty years later, Hughes is still there, but Garde Manger has become something considerably harder to define: a restaurant with a serious wine list, a kitchen that wastes nothing, and still unmistakably just fun to eat at.

We sat down with Hughes on the occasion of Garde Manger's twentieth anniversary to talk about what nobody warned him about before opening night, how restaurant culture has been turned inside out, and what it takes to stay relevant without becoming a monument to your own past.

"I never had a credit card... I literally would work 49 days straight and then I would get one day off and cry because I'm like, they don't love me... 'you sure you don't need me?' That was my life."

Twenty years of Garde Manger. Nobody warns you about certain things when you open a restaurant. What's the thing you wish someone had?

That after day one, you have to do it over and over and over. We put all our efforts into opening night—bootstrapping, recycling, repurposing—to this one big moment. It was a success, it was great. And then we all kind of looked at each other and said, okay. Now we have to do this again. You focus so hard on that first day. And now it's twenty years later. It feels like yesterday and it feels like a lifetime.

What do you actually remember about that night? Because the restaurant you walked into then and the one someone would walk into now are pretty different places.

Two completely different restaurants. The essence, the vibe, the intention, the spirit—it’s all the same. But we were twenty years younger and we basically built a restaurant to party. Make good food, sure, but mostly at that time do our own thing.

Twenty years ago, restaurants were still a little bit generic… We wanted to play our own music, make our own food. We had bouncers, we were open till 3 a.m., DJs, partying like crazy. Then the clientele shifted as the food got elevated and the experience got better.

That evolution happened over twenty years. But the essence stays.

There's a parallel arc there—the restaurant's evolution and yours. You've been sober for nineteen of those twenty years.

I opened twenty years ago and I've been sober for nineteen. So we had that first year that was kind of really wild. Before that, I was another ten years at least in the industry partying and thinking that was the way, because everything around me, the culture at the time, was very different. It was more of a pirate mentality.

When I became the boss and the restaurant became what it was, it was clear I had to stop drinking, that I had to focus. Before social media, before cameras or pictures—kitchens were an underground scene. Being a line cook making seven bucks an hour with no days off wasn't exactly a prize.

But I loved every second of it. It was abusive. It was probably wrong. The hours were too long, the demands were crazy. And I would not change it for the world.

How does kitchen culture today contrast with what you came up in?

It's a real job now. You can make a living, and rightly so. I never had a credit card. I literally worked forty-nine days straight and then got one day off and cried, thinking they don't love me. Calling the restaurant at two o'clock: "you sure you don't need me?" That was my life.

Today it takes more people to do what you could do before, but the trade-off is way better. You have healthy, happy people who have days off, make money, go to other restaurants, live a life. Everything around cooking has completely changed. Brunoise is still brunoise. Cooking a steak hasn't changed in a thousand years. But everything around it has been hyperspeed.