A chef who'd rather be scuba diving

If the 17th Street neighborhood hadn’t taken so strongly to six-month-old Jack’s Restaurant & Bar, owner/chef Herbert Kerschbaumer would be off scuba diving.

“Since the very first, it’s been packed fully every day,” he says with a faint twang that gives away his Swiss-German origins. The Bern native, a longtime Washington resident now living in Bethesda, emerges from the kitchen with his chef’s jacket splattered and streaked, evidence he’s been at the stove himself.

Trained at a culinary school in Switzerland, Kerschbaumer left home at 20 “in search of a little adventure” and flew straight to New York. But he found it a little too much adventure. “Too much culture shock!” he says.

He lasted a week, then took the advice of a guy he met who told him there were a lot of restaurants —  and opportunities — in Washington. “So I landed and looked for a job in the Yellow Pages. There was an ad for a little restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue that said, ‘Swiss cooking, American beer.’ And I thought, I can do that. So I call the owner up and he says, ‘Yes, I have a job for you.’” The owner turned out to be Swiss-German, too. “What are the odds of that?” Kerschbaumer marvels. “Swiss, and Swiss-German on
top of that! And I didn’t speak any English!”

The little vacation he took to the States has stretched a long time. “I’m still on vacation 20 years later,” he says.

Aside from a year in a restaurant in Florida, it’s all been Washington-based. He spent 10 years as the executive chef of La Niçoise, moving with the company when it opened in Orlando. In 1993, he was back in Washington as executive chef at Café Promenade in The Renaissance Mayflower Hotel.

In 2000, he opened his own catering company, La Bernoise Catering, in the Palisades, followed by Bistro Bernoise, his first restaurant, also in the Palisades. Then came Sept. 11, 2001, and all parties were canceled. “We took a big hit. We were a small outfit. It took two-and-a-half years to get over that.”

But in 2005, he met his wife at the restaurant. She was a customer, a Brazilian (trained as a midwife, she now works in the front of the house at Jack’s). He was smitten. “I thought, ‘Restaurants and marriage don’t go together. First guy comes in wants to buy me out, I’m leaving.’”

Having divested himself of the business, he married her, and they set off right away on a two-year honeymoon, which has only just ended. First, they went to see his parents in Switzerland, where they had a second wedding ceremony, and then they continued to Brazil. He was totally seduced by the place. “There’s more beachfront property than anywhere in the world. Nothing but beaches and jungle!” They traveled the country, meeting her family and scuba diving. “It’s my hobby. I’ve been everywhere you can
cave dive. I’ve been to the Cayman Islands, Mexico, Jamaica, the Bahamas ... .” Then last April, their daughter Olivia was born.

He didn’t want to go back to work. But a partner in his old catering business got in touch and told him there was a great opportunity to be had back in Washington in buying the fading Le Pigalle. And Kerschbaumer couldn’t resist the challenge.

Compared with the Palisades, moving into the Dupont Circle spot was, he says, “like moving from the suburbs into the city. It’s a totally different clientele. In Palisades, the top 1 percent high-income [earners] are coming to eat at your restaurants. This area, it’s burgers and ribs.”

While both of those are on his menu at Jack’s, he wants the place to be more of a European bistro. “I want them to eat more than just hamburgers. The thing about this area is that educated people who live in this neighborhood travel round the world and they know about food.”

So he cooks lamb shank, served on a bed of risotto. A chicken breast stuffed with goat cheese is very popular. He sells mounds of mussels steamed in white wine and served with french fries, Belgian-style. At the same time, he says he’s trying to “avoid upscale.”

A dining room painted black and pink and filled with French woven bistro chairs sets the casual tone. But the essential cooking isn’t casual. In classic European tradition, his demi-glace, chicken and beef stock take three days to make from scratch.

Kerschbaumer, who named Jack’s after a friend’s German shepherd, loves his customers, he says, and finds his work very satisfying. “But my dream is moving somewhere to the beach and have a small bed-andbreakfast and scuba-diving shop. I take a few people, spend the whole day diving with them, then take them to the bed-and-breakfast and feed them a nice dinner — or morning breakfast. I would like that very much.”

In a gamble that has paid off, Kerschbaumer priced Jack’s menu low in the hope that he would get high turnover in this young quarter. “At this point in my career, I want it to do well. I want quality of product, want to have it recognized and established so that hopefully it can run by itself.”

Then you’ll find Kerschbaumer strapping on his scuba tanks and heading for the caves.

Jack’s Restaurant & Bar (202-332-6767; http://www.JacksDC.net) is located at 1527 17th St. NW. Main courses cost $9 to $21.

This article by Julia Watson first appeared in the NorthWest Current. 

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