Chef at ‘Harvest’ experimenting with locally grown produce

MEDINA – Medina’s newest eatery – a farm-to-table restaurant – is scheduled to open next spring on the ground floor of Bent’s Hall.

The historic building at the corner of Main and West Center Street has been undergoing restoration for three years, and two culinary experts have already been hired as chefs in the restaurant which will be called “Harvest.”

Chef Lionel Heydel plates the main course of beef bourguignon at a private tasting dinner for 12 guests at the Big Barn, a 1905 barn in Middleport restored by Roger Hungerford into a club/guest house. Heydel and sous chef Jose Ocasio are experimenting with dishes using locally grown foods and looking for input in planning their menus for the new restaurant scheduled to open in the spring at Bent’s Hall.

Lionel Heydel of France and Jose Ocasio of Puerto Rico met the building’s owner, Roger Hungerford, in Florida. Hungerford was impressed with each of their credentials.

Heydel, 44, grew up in Strasbourg, near the Rhine River, and studied at culinary school in France. He came to the United States at the age of 22.

He is a third-generation chef, although he did not want to be a chef, he said.

“I wanted to be a mechanic,” Heydel said. “I was also big in soccer and was drafted to be part of the city team, but I always loved cars and motorcycles.”

But his father kept hounding him that he was going to get hurt and the job was so dirty.

“He asked me why I didn’t go to culinary school, so I finally enrolled,” Heydel said.

After World War II, his grandfather took an American flag and waved it in the street, Heydel said.

“That was a hint for me and my future,” Heydel said.

His grandfather owned a brewery, which the family converted into a bistro. His father served in the Algerian War, and when he came back he entered hospitality and management school in Switzerland. Then he told Heydel’s grandfather if he didn’t pass the family business down to him, he’d leave town and start one somewhere else. Being an only child, the grandfather didn’t want to see his only son leave, so he agreed.

Heydel’s father built on a 26-room hotel and fine dining restaurant with a lounge and small bistro in back. At 13, Heydel was working in the restaurant, helping in the baking section.

“I also washed dishes and worked wherever they needed me, as long as it was away from the stove,” Heydel said.

Photo by Tom Rivers: Chef Lionel Heydel joined other chefs and food service workers from Medina restaurants for the Aug. 8 Farm to Table dinner on Main Street, where about 225 six-course, gourmet meals were served.

After he finished culinary school, he worked as chef at Michelin Star Restaurant, but it was mandatory he serve in the military, so he joined the Gendarmerie (SWAT team) for 18 months.

Then he decided to come to the United States and arrived in Orlando, Fla. in April 1998. He got a contract with Hilton, which sponsored him for 18 months. He returned to France for a year, but returned to Orlando in 2000 with an investor’s visa and opened a restaurant in Winterpark.

In 2017, he was approached by Hungerford, who asked him to come to Medina and work on his restoration project.

“He didn’t realize he would fall in love with the project,” said Tessa Hartway, director of marketing with Hungerford’s company, Talis Equity.

Lisa Tombari, director of historic restoration for Talis Equity, said Heydel fell in love with the town because it felt like back home.

Heydel said here in the United States is very similar to where he grew up – the same seasons, grapes and farm crops.

While Heydel said although he was trained in classic French cuisine, he is open to dishes from all cuisines.

He has already spent months searching out recipes and identifying local farmers who can supply produce for his recipes. The menu will change with the seasons, and he will utilize what is in season, Heydel said.

“We will always stress quality over quantity,” Heydel said. “I have done that in everything in my life.”

Photos by Ginny Kropf: Scaffolding can be seen on the front and upper stories of Bent’s Hall at the corner of Main and West Center Streets, as restoration work on the historic building continues. A new restaurant called Harvest will be located in the lower left corner.

Ocasio was born and raised in Puerto Rico, a child of a military family. His dad was in the Navy and an uncle served in the Navy. His grandfather was in World War II and had a coffee farm, where Ocasio grew up. His grandma had a small business, running a bar and cooking for construction people.

“I fell in love with the kitchen,” he said.

He was working in the kitchen at 14. He knew he would some day enter the military or culinary school.  When he entered technical school, the class he wanted was full and the professor said he had to choose a second course. Culinary class was available and he entered it.

“I loved it,” Ocasio said. “The instructor at school was a chef at the Marriott and said I had talent. He also had a private catering business and asked me to come and help him. When the Culinary School of Puerto Rico had a culinary competition, I joined his team representing our country. We won, then flew to Chicago in July 2010 to represent Puerto Rico in the international competition. We won a silver medal.”

Chef Lionel Heydel, left, and assistant chef Jose Ocasio pose in the street across from Bent’s Opera House, the sandstone building at the corner of Main Street and West Center, in which a farm-to-table restaurant is scheduled to open in the spring.

In the competition they had to prepare a pork chop, apples, potatoes, salad, appetizer and dessert in one hour and 20 minutes. Ocasio made braised pork chop with applesauce, potato hash, fruit tart and a salad of mixed greens with berries and champagne vinaigrette.

Back in Puerto Rico, Ocasio finished culinary college. His dad had retired and Ocasio decided to relocate to the United States. He arrived in Orlando seven years ago and entered Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School, where he met Heydel, who was a professor there.

“I recognized Lionel’s talent and wanted to learn from him,” Ocasio said. “He was willing to teach everybody and share what he knew. I graduated and told Lionel the day he opened his own restaurant, I was going to work for him. I didn’t care if it was washing dishes. Six years later, I got the call.”

Ocasio in the meantime worked for a farm-to-table restaurant in Orlando as a line cook. In less than a year he was promoted to sous chef, then to executive chef. He was there three years when the restaurant was sold and he went to DFRG Steak House. A year and a half later, he was promoted to corporate chef and sent to open new restaurants in Texas, Atlanta, Raleigh, N.C., and Chicago.

He prides himself on his ability to cook everything and whatever is available. At one restaurant, a farmer would come to the back door with whatever he had that day, such as a bucket of green beans, and Ocasio would have them on the menu that night.

When the call came from Heydel about opening a restaurant in New York, Ocasio, 26, asked, “New York City?”

Heydel replied, “No, Medina,” and Ocasio went online to find Medina.

“It was always my dream to work for Lionel,” Ocasio said.

Ocasio is thrilled with the small-town atmosphere.

“The first morning in the area we had breakfast at Darrell’s and I saw how people treat each other,” Ocasio said. “I immediately fell in love with the area. After a tour of Bent’s, I realized what a great opportunity we have. I am anxious to see what we can do with food to bring people to Medina.”

(Editor’s Note: This is part three of a series on the restoration projects in downtown Medina spearheaded by Roger Hungerford and Talis Equity.)

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‘It would have been a shame to see it knocked down.’ – Roger Hungerford, developer of project

Charlie Spencer, project manager of the restoration of Bent’s Hall for LeChase Construction, shows how the second floor has been reinforced. Spencer said the Bent’s project is the most challenging of his 12-year career in construction

MEDINA – In hindsight, Roger Hungerford might have thought twice about purchasing Bent’s Hall.

“I had no idea what I was getting into,” Hungerford said. “What I expected to be a several million dollar project turned out to be much more. Still, it is on a key corner of my hometown and I knew I could develop multiple businesses within it that would result in it being economically rebirthed.”

Bent’s Hall was built in 1864-65 by well-known sandstone builder and Medina native, Patrick O’Grady. Built at the height of the Civil War and the Lincoln presidency, it is one of the oldest surviving opera houses in the United States.

It was named for a local farmer who owned the property and had the structure erected. For many years it was a prominent venue for concerts, plays, shows, commencements, elections and other public functions. P.T. Barnum and “Buffalo Bill” Cody were among the hundreds of touring performers who entertained on Bent’s stage.

With the advent of movies, the opera house as a performance venue gradually fell into disuse. Over the years, Medina Elks Lodge had quarters on the second floor and beginning in 1970, the first floor became home to the first of several banks, the last of which was Bank of America.

By the early 2000’s Orleans Renaissance Group had taken an interest in the building, particularly the third-floor opera house, and began correspondence with Bank of America to take it over. In 2010, BOA announced it was leaving Medina and agreed to donate the entire building to ORG.

“We immediately set out to determine the condition of the structure and what might be needed to restore it, and to do an extensive study of its history,” said Chris Busch, president of ORG.

They completed some basic engineering assessments of the structure and discovered the building was in severe distress. It was in need of substantial and extensive structural remediation, Busch said.

The most pressing need was the rapid deterioration of the main beam carrying the entire Main Street façade, most notably the southeast corner of the building. The beam had deteriorated to a point where the corner was visibly shifting and in danger of collapsing. With help from the Preservation League of New York and a “Seven to Save” designation, ORG was able to secure funding to address that issue, stabilize the façade and prevent collapse temporarily.

“However, we were fully aware that there was an enormous amount of additional structural work that would be needed in the future,” Busch said. “This project had only scratched the surface.”

‘We’ve watched the project unfold with untold gratitude and joy. Bent’s Opera House is arguably the most important building on Main Street and certainly one of the top five in Medina.’ – Chris Busch, president of ORG

ORG had also begun developing concepts for adaptive reuse of the structure in the hope a developer could be found to complete the restoration. ORG is a 501(c)3 arts and cultural organization and did not have the resources to undertake a project of the magnitude required.

There have been about 20-25 construction workers at Bent’s for more than a year. “It’s like a city inside here,” said Tessa Hartway, director of marketing for Talis Equity. Contractors have been doing demolition, structural repairs, framing, plumbing and electrical work.

ORG arrived at the conclusion that what might be the best use for the venue would be an event center with restaurant and hotel space or office space. In seeking a potential developer, the most obvious choice would be Roger Hungerford.

“His love of the community and its history are well known, and such a person would have more than just a business interest in the Bent’s project,” Busch said. “It would be a labor of love for his hometown.”

Tessa Hartway, director of Marketing for Hungerford’s medical technology venture capital firm, Talis Equity, said they never intended to be involved in historic restoration.

“It just evolved,” she said.

Bent’s Hall is a dominant structure at the intersection of routes 63 and 31 in Medina’s historic downtown business district.

A conversation was initiated with Hungerford and the sale of Bent’s Opera House came to fruition in 2016, Busch said.

“Since then, we’ve watched the project unfold with untold gratitude and joy,” Busch said. “Bent’s Opera House is arguably the most important building on Main Street and certainly one of the top five in Medina. But its historic significance goes far beyond our community. The people and events appearing on that stage were of vital importance to our nation’s history and culture – not just one person or one event as is usual for any given place – but dozens. As such, this preservation effort by Roger Hungerford is without equal. Among the many historic places in Western New York, Bent’s Opera House is among the few that matter most.”

Since buying the building Hungerford has discovered it is an engineering nightmare. A structural engineer said a section of the building (the southeast corner) was within a decade of falling into Main Street.

“However, the repurposing things we are making it into are a delight,” Hungerford said. “It would have been a shame to see it knocked down.”

This stairway was built in Bent’s Hall for construction purposes, and will be replaced with a grand stairway when renovations are complete.

Hungerford praised the talents of builder Patrick O’Grady. O’Grady lived in a sandstone home at the corner of Catherine and West Center Street. Within two blocks of the former O’Grady home, Hungerford is restoring an 1865 Medina sandstone mansion, as well as his former 1922-built high school. The mansion is to be a bed and breakfast guest house and the high school will be higher-end loft apartments.

“O’Grady was an incredible builder,” Hungerford said. “I can’t account for how he got those huge beams at Bent’s Opera House up three floors using horses and pulleys.”

Hungerford said their first effort in restoring Bent’s Hall was a design phase which started three years ago, and getting approval from the New York State and Federal Historical Restoration Agency approvals. Actual restoration work has been ongoing for a year and a half.

Le Chase Construction was selected by Hungerford’s team to be the general contractor. Charlie Spencer of Clarendon is project superintendent.

“This is the most challenging job of my career,” Spencer said. “I’m honored to be involved in this project, but I wake up in the night thinking about it. This is a great community and Roger is a great client to work for.”

He said their plumber was working outside and two girls stopped by, handed him a bottle of water and said, “Thank you.”

The second floor will be a boutique hotel with 10 rooms.

Recently, media were given a tour of the building by Hartway; Lisa Tombari, director of Talis Historic Restoration; and Kaitlyn Delamarter, marketing associate and graphic designer with Talis Equity.

Hartway said they have uncovered evidence of restoration from all periods from the 1940s to the 1970s, some of which have contributed to the decline of the building.

Delamarter said the history of the building had disappeared over the years, and they want to bring it back.

“We could write a novel on the lessons we’ve learned here,” she said.

While masonry restoration continues outside, work continues inside. All the floor joists in the building have been reinforced or replaced. The entire roof structure, including new steel beams, have been installed, a process which took six months.

“The things we’ve done should last 100 years,” Spencer said.

Photo by Ginny Kropf: The rafters have been reinforced with wood and steel.

Hungerford has also purchased the 10,000 square foot building adjacent to the 20,000 square foot Bent’s Hall. A corridor will connect the buildings.

On the first floor of Bent’s, there will be a farm-to-table restaurant called Harvest. Chefs Lionel Heydel and Jose Ocasio have already been hired and are planning their menus for a late spring 2020 opening.

Next door, a gourmet food store is planned.

A grand stairway will lead to a boutique hotel on the second floor.

An elevator is being built where the bank vault used to be. A dumbwaiter will accommodate catering staffs to transport food and drink to the third-floor Bent’s Opera, which will be an event space.

Spencer said all the time-consuming things are behind them, but there is still a lot to be done. No firm completion date has been identified yet.

Editor’s Note: This is the second article in a series on the redevelopment projects in Medina led by Roger Hungerford and his companies, Talis Equity and Talis Historic Restoration.

The door is open for the many construction workers who have been working to save the Bent’s Opera House and transform it into its new purpose as a restaurant, hotel and events center.

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