...with Ron Salverda

BY LINDA GARSON

PHOTO BY DONG KIM

At the age of 22, Ron Salverda knew he was going to be a restaurateur. His parents immigrated from Holland to Montreal in the mid-1950s, and his father cooked in CN Rail dining cars before becoming Executive Chef for Air Canada, in the mid ‘60s. “This is when you had to wear a suit to go on a plane,” he laughs. “My father would go around the world promoting Canadian food; he cooked for Queen Elizabeth and for Trudeau (senior), so I was brought up in the industry, and I traveled Europe before I was 10 (years old). My father was a great provider for us. He was a detailed, hardworking man; the hard work ethic came from him.”

At 12 years old Salverda washed dishes in a ‘greasy spoon’ next to his high school, then in a racket club, and became a bus boy, then a waiter, and a bartender. He was also a skier. “I'd work four days a week, and three days a week I'd be out in the ski hills,” he says. He moved out to Alberta for the mountains, and worked in Sunshine Village for a year. “It's the only job I ever got fired from, and it was all my fault. It was the extracurricular activities.”

After a short stint in Edmonton, he moved to Toronto, and two years later, in 1983, he got his big break as a manager at Bemelmans, a high-profile bistro. “I used to keep a diary saying, what do I need to accomplish this year, in three years…? And I'd be living to that goal,” says Salverda. “I'd write, ‘I need to open restaurant or run a nightclub’, these things were on my to-do list, but I knew I had to learn a lot before I can own something.”

Salverda worked with a number of restaurants in Toronto: Malibu Jack's, The Loose Moose, and helped develop Alice Fazooli's concept. He bought into it, his first time owning 10 percent of a business. From there he was hired by a big organization and became Vice President of Hard Rock Cafe Canada. “I got paid really well, but I traveled 200 days a year,” so in 1996, with his new wife, Shirley, moved west to Calgary.

He opened Jack Astor’s as a joint venture partner, consulted on a few projects, and started looking for a location for his West Coast-themed bar and grill, Murietta’s, which he opened in 2001. “I started construction, but I didn't have a name,” he says. Murietta was the Robin Hood of El Dorado; he was a thief and a train robber, but for the right reasons. He robbed and then gave back to his people. “We give a lot back to the community. We do a lot of charity work, but we don't rob them first,” laughs Salverda.

Murietta's Canmore opened in 2003, followed by Edmonton, the Tribune, The Cellar wine store, and most recently, Borough Bar + Grill in Calgary's University District. “I've been fortunate, I’ve had crazy good chefs - I have a solid corporate chef, Daniel Pizarro, and good chefs in the restaurants. I’m going to be 63 this year, but I have no interest in slowing down. I'm already looking for another location.”

What bottle is Salverda saving for a special occasion?

Vérité is a small winery owned by the Jackson family. “What's great about them is they keep their wineries small and selfrun,” he explains. “They only make three wines, and ‘La Joie’ is their cab. We went down to California, and I picked stems off their grapes on the conveyor belt, I loved the wine. We had lunch in the wine room, and I bought all my team a bottle of Vérité, including the guy who was hosting us. I was impressed how they kept things real, and it really shows in the wine.”

“Every year I get a bottle of Vérité from friends, not all La Joie, dating back to 2011. I'm not a special occasion person, I don't celebrate my birthday, and I’m not going to retire. I'm frugal, I wouldn't spend $300400-500 on a bottle of wine for myself. You need some special people to share it with, so I guess one day it will be, ‘Hey, let's open that bottle.’”