With 32 years of experience in restaurants around the Kootenays, Dennis Munro is as well known as, well, his caesar salad.
“That’s the first thing people usually mention when they talk about my food,” he admits. “Caesar salad and steaks and roasts.”
Munro was born and raised in Vancouver, but it was in Calgary as a young man that he began to develop his skills in the kitchen.
“It started at home on Sunday nights — friends would arrive and we would sort of have a potluck dinner. I would work in the kitchen, putting dishes together.”
He left Calgary, where he had been in sales — waterbeds and cars — and headed for Kaslo in 1980.
His first job was cooking breakfast at the Treehouse Restaurant, which still remains a Kootenay icon today.
“It was the first job I could find,” he said.
And he hasn’t been away from the restaurant and bar business since.
After being laid off from the Treehouse, Munro moved over to the Mariner Inn, where he worked as a bartender, cook and did night security, a task that provided him with a room in the hotel.
“Then I met Terry Jones (of Jones Boys Marina fame) and he said he was opening JB’s Pub in Woodbury, at the marina. That was the first time I actually had control, producing my first full menu, hiring staff and working long, really long, days.
“If you aren’t prepared to put in 70-hour weeks you shouldn’t even think about getting into this business. But I guess it’s in my blood. My wife, Debbie, doesn’t understand why I do it, but she’s always been a great support.”
In the 1985 he ventured back to Vancouver to open a cafeteria-style restaurant downtown, in time for Expo 86.
A year later, Jones called to put another bug in Munro’s ear. He was purchasing Mountain Shores Resort on Highway 3A and asked Dennis to open a restaurant there. Soon he was back in the Kootenays, building a lounge and renovating the kitchen.
It was a short-lived experience. Mountain Shores went into receivership in 1988 and the restaurant’s lease wasn’t registered. Munro sold his equipment to the receiver and bought Sirdar Pub.
“The first thing I did was buy a shuttle bus — I was way ahead of the curve on that one,” he said.
For years, a 15-seat Dodge Maxivan shuttled Sirdar Pub patrons back and forth from Creston.
His good friend, Tom Browne, backed him by putting in dining loft as an addition to the pub. What once was a pub that offered only a few food items became known for its menu and atmosphere. The view from the loft, overlooking the lake, was nothing to sneeze at, either.
Munro owned and operated the pub for 13 years, but he began managing the Creston Golf Club restaurant in 1996, too, after a sale of the pub fell through.
“I was committed to running the golf course restaurant that spring, so I had to run it and the pub at the same time,” he says.
Three years later, the chance to create a fine dining establishment beckoned, and he took on the lease of what had been operating as Kelly O’Brien’s on Canyon Street. And Munro’s was born.
“Fine dining — that was my goal, and it was a learning curve,” he laughs. The restaurant was successful during the tourist season but it was a tough go in the winter.
Opportunity knocked again during a Sysco Canada (food distributor) golf tournament.
“I met the general manager of the Prestige Inn in Cranbrook and he said the food and beverage operation was for sale.”
In 2004, he took over the restaurant and pub in Cranbrook for a six-year run. Then, as if that and keeping Munro’s running in Creston wasn’t enough of a challenge, he added the restaurants in the Nelson and Rossland Prestige Inns to his portfolio.
How did he manage all that?
“I’m still not sure,” he smiles. “You just put your head down and keep going. And it helps to be stupid!”
In 2009, the bottom dropped out of the hospitality business and he got out of the restaurant industry for a while.
“I took a year off and I didn’t think I was going to go back into the business,” he recalls. “But I couldn’t think of anything else I’d rather do.”
Munro takes a moment to think about what really keeps him going in an industry that can consume one’s life.
“I love the challenge of a big event,” he says. “Seeing if you can pull it off and see people leaving happy at the end — it doesn’t get any better than that.”
He thinks back to running the food service for the second Kokanee Summit, and having to serve 11,000 meals in five hours.
“We lost our electrical power right before we started,” he says.
A mad scramble led to a rewiring project, all while guests began to get more and more hungry.
“We were in the weeds for sure,” he laughs. “We ended up with nine food lines with about a hundred people in each one. But we got it done!”
In the last few years, Munro settled into a routine, running the golf course operation for about eight months a year, until once again came that familiar rap-rap-rap sound of opportunity knocking.
“Tyler Hancock (a real estate agent) mentioned that Joan and Robin (Morris) were wanting to retire after 35 years of running the Broaster House,” he says. “We found a way to make a deal that benefits both sides in the long term.”
Getting involved with yet another business was made easier when he convinced his former chef and manager at Munro’s to become a partner in the Broaster House.
“Brad Sutherland was my ace in the hole. I know what he’s capable of and he’s one of the few people I would have considered.”
“If it’s not broke, don’t fix it,” is how Munro explains his approach to his latest venture. “People have grown up with Robin and Joan’s Broaster House — customers’ sons and daughters are now eating there. You can’t change it.”
The constant among the many changes over Munro’s career in restaurants and pubs has been his wife, Debbie.
“You have to have support from your spouse to survive in this business,” he says. “Debbie has been with me for seven moves and supported every one.”
As for his well-earned reputation?
“I hope people know they are getting home-made food and that they get flavours they don’t get anywhere else, “ he says. “And, after 30 years, hardly a day goes by that I don’t learn something — that’s what keeps me going.”