A taste of success - Dragonfly Cafe and Gardens

By Shannon McMahon
Staff Writer
The San Diego Union-Tribune

Isabel Cruz came to San Diego as a single mom without a college education, a car or an income. "I had nothing," she said. "I had been living with my mom and two kids." She wanted a change.

So Cruz borrowed $15,000 from her brother and decided in 1991 to enter the restaurant business, an industry with an 80 percent failure rate, according to the California Restaurant Association.

With her business partner, Billy Tosheff, Cruz created the Mission Cafe, which featured healthy food and a funky atmosphere.

Statistics say her recipe for success should have failed. Without professional experience or strong financial backing - Cruz had neither - analysts consider it nearly impossible for a new restaurant to succeed.

"But I had to cook," said Cruz, who lived with her children and Tosheff in a one-bedroom apartment above the restaurant. "I didn't know how to do anything else."

Today, the chef, restaurateur and author employs 45 waiters, chefs and managers. Her three San Diego County restaurants - Seaside Cantina in Pacific Beach, the Coffee Cup in La Jolla and the Cantina Panaderia in Pacific Beach - brought in revenue of $2 million last year.

Six weeks ago, Cruz and Tosheff, who married in 2001, opened their fourth restaurant, Dragonfly in Ashland, Ore. The restaurant plays off the Asian-Latin fare of the Cantina Panaderia.

Cruz sold the Mission Cafe in 1996 but still holds a minority stake in the Mission Beach business, which has expanded into North Park.

Critics, customers and Cruz consider her healthy comfort food the key to her success.

"It all boils down to her passion, her resources and her willingness to persevere," said Tom Penn, vice president of new business development of the Ladeki Restaurant Group and Sammy's Woodfired Pizza.

Cruz said her tenacity came on the heels of bankruptcy in the early '90s. She had been a housewife in Huntington Beach when her husband's construction business ran into financial trouble.

When the two of them split, Cruz felt like her main marketable skills were cooking and throwing parties. So she decided to try the restaurant business, despite the long odds of success.

"You learn that you have to take risks," Cruz said. "And you have to do it while you're young."

The child of Puerto Rican immigrants, Cruz learned how to cook as a 10-year-old, preparing meals for her younger brothers while her parents worked. She mixed ingredients on a whim and liked quick, simple recipes.

"I come from a big Latin family where food is a part of everything," Cruz said. "I always knew how to cook."

Today, Cruz is known on the food scene for meals that combine health and taste, with dishes such as lettuce wraps, scrambled egg whites with pesto, tomatoes and onion, and her trademark Buddha Bowl - a soup with mushrooms and a noodle cake.

Never one to deny herself something sweet, Cruz also enjoys coconut french toast and flourless chocolate cake.

"You shouldn't fight cravings," she said.

Cruz's most recent San Diego endeavor, the Cantina Panaderia, opened in summer 2002. The restaurant sits on Felspar and Cass streets. Inside, Cruz and Tosheff have created a calming and exotic atmosphere with a Burmese Buddha in the corner and wine-red curtains draped over Italian plaster walls. A typical breakfast costs $5 to $10.

The couple bought and remodeled the building, once a Devaney's Bakery, after gutting more than 100 tons of flooring, walls and old equipment. Tosheff, a builder by training, was the primary designer, constructing green-tiled columns, a relief dragon adorning the entryway and an exposed kitchen that features stainless steal counters.

Restaurateurs have to constantly rework their model to satisfy fickle consumers.

"It's easy to have a great restaurant and then two years later, somebody's in a better location and you're not making it any longer," said Penn, who overseas 19 restaurants in Nevada, California and Arizona. "It's more expensive to operate in California."

Cruz wants to hang new decorations on the walls, add cushions to the chairs and update the menu with her latest Asian-Latin fusion dishes.

She also wants to put her chef's table to use with cooking classes that feature recipes from her cookbook "Bite This," which will be available this year.

"We've had a few stumbling blocks, but I feel like I really know what I'm doing now," Cruz said.

The major obstacle for Cruz came in the form of regulation.

"San Diego as a town makes it so hard to open a business," said Cruz, citing taxes, workers' compensation and minimum wage laws for restaurateurs. "It's like they don't want you here."

The lack of a beer and wine license in the first 1 years of operation hurt business at the Cantina. The license was held up by an unofficial San Diego police ban on new liquor licenses in Pacific Beach. In 2003, the restaurant secured the license.

That same year, Cruz was complaining on the radio about taxes and regulations within the restaurant business when a campaign assistant for Arnold Schwarzenegger heard her.

"The next thing I knew, I was on Arnold's bus," she said, with her leg propped over the arm of her chair. "It was me with all these high-powered political men and women."

When Maria Shriver came to San Diego on the campaign trail, she stopped for lunch at Cruz's Cantina. She returned again last fall.

"Listen," Cruz said, "I'm a Hispanic single mother who grew up in L.A. If I'm voting Republican, something has gone wrong on the other side."

Fed up with what they consider overregulation within the state, Cruz and Tosheff have decided to start expanding outside California.

"We've moved into the Oregon market now. We can't do something like this again," said Cruz, who was sitting in the Cantina discussing the recent restaurant opening in Ashland.

Politics and legislation aside, food remains Cruz's first passion.

"I'm healthy, but I love food," she said. "I love simple recipes and excellent sauces."

Dragonfly Cafe and Gardens
241 Hargadine Street, Ashland, Oregon (OR) 97520
541.488.4855

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