Meet Robert Houde: TTP’s Board President and Sommelier Extraordinaire
Robert Houde is president of the board of The Trotter Project and president of Robert Houde Wines, his own wine import and distribution company in Illinois.
If you ask Robert Houde, he’d say running a wine import and distribution company and being part of a non-profit are a lot alike—you have to want to do the nitty gritty work. Robert is president of the board of The Trotter Project and president of Robert Houde Wines, his own wine import and distribution company in Illinois. Read about his journey to Charlie Trotter’s and beyond below!
Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us today, Robert. Can you tell us a little bit about your background, when and how you first got interested in wine?
Wow, that goes back to before I was allowed to drink wine. I was always hanging out with older people because my family was involved in the arts, so we always had a lot of people involved in theater and music and people that were in restaurants, as well. So, I got to taste some wines before I was supposed to have tried them. I got my first fine dining job when I was 19. I went to work at a great hotel in San Antonio near the riverwalk in Texas, where I grew up, and it happened to be a tremendous American restaurant with a great American wine list, and I realized pretty much as soon as I started, if I wanted to make any money, I needed to learn the wine list.
I started reading outside on my own. Getting a couple of books on wine. Oz Clarke's was probably my first one. And first just studying the areas, but then once I started tasting notes, I started tasting and comparing.
I was already comparing my own taste with what the people in books were writing, which is what I recommend everyone do is to taste on their own. That was the first experience. And once I started doing it, I kind of just had the knack for it. The study was fast. I learned it sensorily.
I didn't ever do things by the book. I was always doing it by how things feel. And that interplay between the customer and what they're looking for versus what I knew about the wines and what I think would inspire them.
And so I kept going. I worked four years with that hotel. I then came up to Chicago in 1989 and worked with the Fairmont Hotel for four years. That was great because I got to work both with the Italian restaurant and the French restaurant. I had the Italian list and then I got to go and work with the whole French list, which is my family background.
So that was a lot of great diverse experience. And alongside of that, I had some high volume restaurant jobs too. It wasn't just about working in this slow, fine dining atmosphere. Actually, everything was pretty fast. I got used to being very quick as well in service. The more you knew the wines, the faster you could be with the service at the table. So I had done it for about nine years before I saw an article, I think, in Food & Wine on Charlie Trotter’s. This was back in 1994, and when I saw that article, I thought, I need to go there. That's where I need to be.
And it was lucky timing because when I got there—one of their great servers was leaving and I got to get in at the right time. It's ironic, I actually started there the same time French Laundry was opening. It was right at that time in 1994, in that summer.
Three months into that you've increased your knowledge about 300 percent.
So I mean 1994, obviously the summer of greats. You've been a sommelier about nine years at that point. Tell us more about that first meeting with Charlie and how you got started as his sommelier from there.
The first meeting with Charlie is always uncomfortable I would say for most people because you never know what he's thinking and what he's looking for. I actually had sort of gotten the job before even talking to him because one of the things we did back then, which was great, is everyone had to observe. You had to come in when the shift started at three in the afternoon and observed the entire shift until they close, which would have been one or two in the morning. And most people backed out before that was over. The joke at that time was if they had to go put change in the meter, we knew they weren't coming back.
Luckily though, I thought it was incredibly exciting. I was pumped the entire time I was there and I was already helping out by the end of that night. I kind of had already gotten the job, but then Charlie just wanted to talk to me about my experience. And I told him I didn't have a lot of experience in a lot of the Asian elements that he had, because I never had seen someone combining the Asian minimalist type, Japanese type into foodstuffs ever.
I'd done Italian, French, American, but I hadn't seen the Asian influence yet. I said, “There's some words on here I don't even know what they are.” But he just kind of asked me what I had done before. And I was confident about what I had done. I knew it wasn't at this level. I worked at a high level, but this was the highest. I knew I could do it, and that's kind of what I tried to portray to him. I don't think he likes it if you get too confident. It was one of those conversations that kind of ended with, “Okay then.” Anyone who knows him knows that phrase.
When did you become head sommelier from there, and what was your tenure like? Any special stories you wanna share about that?
That was definitely later on. Joe Spellman was head sommelier and Renée-Nicole Kubin was the assistant. That was the best experience I'd ever had. Besides, you know, as well as working with Charlie in the kitchen to learn the foodstuffs, was having Joe and Renée there not just teaching, but just watching them. Watching the interplay on the floor.
Joe was so great with the people on the floor. He was so classy. He was obviously so educated and experienced, but it wasn't stuffy. And I think the thing that people who never went there didn't understand, they thought it was very expensive place and very snooty. And that was the last thing Charlie wanted.
Charlie wanted it to be friendly. In fact, when he opened, I don't know if anyone ever saw the prices of the first menu. It was really cheap when they first opened! It wasn't until after I started when the tasting menus started becoming $120-$150 a person for the menus, but it was always meant to be friendly.
And so that's one of the things that I really took from Joe especially was knowing the wines is one thing. It's how you're able to deal with people and be able to take what they give you and take them on the ride. That was really the challenge. That's what was exciting about it.
You had this 1,500 wine selection list to deal with. So when I started, I started as a server, but we had wine classes back then. So I started scoring well on all of the tests for the classes. I did go and take the first level of the Master Sommelier exam. And Joe never gave me the pin.He still owes me that by the way.
In 1998, I took over at that point. So I was in it from like the beginning of ‘98 through the end of ‘99. Before that, I was assistant sommelier and also helped served because in the restaurant you basically did everything, you were never just one job.
Did you end up remembering a tasting menu you thought was really special?
Not all the courses. You figure we changed that so many times. In the beginning, there was an a la carte option also. That was actually more challenging because we had two menus of a la carte plus a tasting menu. There was a time when actually there were some people I think, allowed to do the tasting menu on their own, but there was a point where we said, if you're gonna do the tasting menu, the whole table has to do it just because it's uncomfortable having people sit around waiting for people while they have four courses while you're having one.
Now, I can't remember all the courses, but I think the menu that they came up with when we did the Vera event in 1997, that's the greatest event I've ever been a part of for culinary and wine because we had Vera and his team there. The courses were amazing, and we had lots of stars from the restaurant world there as well, and then a whole table of collectors, with wine ranging from ‘59 Margaux and ‘82 Montrachet all the way back to 1811 d’Yquem, that type of thing. The big wine that night was the pre-phylloxera Lafite magnum. That was the one everyone was waiting for. And Larry Stone was helping on that event too. You had power everywhere on the culinary and the wine teams. And it was also, I think at that time, I always felt like ‘97, that was the best team in the world. I mean, you could literally do things without saying anything. Everybody just knew what to do. And it was great. It was hard, but it was fun at the same time.
So, you're in the top position for wine, at the top restaurant, probably some would argue, in the world at that time. What then inspired you to decide to start your own business and get that going?
It's one of those things where you know when you walk into the room and you don't feel the 100 percent energy like you've always had. It was a split second. I'm like, “I gotta go. It's time.”
And you can't be that way in that place. And I told Charlie the next day, I said, “I gotta get out of here. It's time.” He's like, “Well, what's wrong?” There's nothing wrong. It's just the time. It's time to move on. And I knew from that experience and with all the people that I had met and known, especially in Chicago, it was a time to transition. I wanted to be able to take more of the wines and the things we learned there to more people out there and be more in the mix. And so I felt like going into the import and distribution side allowed me the chance to reach more people.
We decided it's time for us to do our own thing, you know, and we're focused on European. That's kind of our deal.
So when was the official launch of Robert Houde Wines, the beginning of 2009?
We formed it at the end of 2008, but the first shipments came in March of 2009. I mean the time has flown.
How do you feel like your time at Trotters helped inspire you to get on this path?
It's everything. There isn't a place that ever felt like it pushed you to the next level. A lot of places, you're kind of kept in your box and you do this and that’s all you're going to ever do. I mean, you could become a manager, I suppose, but there weren't any places that were taking you to the height of what could be done, not just food and wine, but service, like this.
And Charlie always said the service was the most important part. You can go to a restaurant and have okay food and great service. And you'll always be back. You go to a place and have great food and terrible service, you’re pretty much never coming back. And that's why service of the pillars of food, wine, service, and ambiance, service was number one over everything.
Luckily, Charlie was also the biggest supporter of the wine program. It wasn't a secondary thought. It wasn't something that was put behind everything else. It was put up on a pedestal for everyone to see, and a lot of great people worked in that program. That definitely pushed you, it pushes you to want to take it to more people.
That's kind of what happened. It was that dedication to a level of excellence that I hadn't been a part of. I think I had it, but I hadn't worked in a place that demanded it. There's one time he told the whole group, “I'm going here. If you want to come with me, come along. If not, you should just get off the train right now.” That's kind of what you had to decide.
Jumping forward just a couple of years—2014 is when the Trotter Project is founded post Charlie's passing. I mean, you've been with it since the beginning. So tell us the story of how the organization all got started and really what made you want to be such an integral part of it.
Well, we really owe that to Chef Homaro Cantu. We were all at the funeral and we had a gathering of Trotter alumni and family at Omar’s restaurant iNG right after the service. It was for everyone to get a chance to see everyone, first of all, because we've all split off into different parts of the country and parts of the globe.
So it was great to see everybody. But during that time, Omar just started talking and managed to get a group of us in a circle saying we need to do something about this. We need to continue what Charlie was doing, particularly with what became his passion at the end, which was bringing excellence to kids.
One of the things Charlie started doing at the restaurant was bussing in kids from schools all around the area to come experience the tasting menu. And so we'd set this thing up before service—three o'clock in the afternoon, we'd have a group of 20 come in on a bus and they would get a five-course tasting menu with the chefs explaining the dishes.
And probably the most important thing he did during those was have the chefs come out and talk about how they got to where they were and what it takes to do this, to be committed and committed to this level of excellence, and commit to yourself. It was very powerful and that was what really in the end, is what he enjoyed the most, was those days.
It started where we were doing it once a week, twice a week, he had a group there. It was incredibly generous for these kids, and you can see these kids leaving, and obviously not everybody gets it. You get two out of that group—you've made it, you've accomplished something.
And so Omar's idea was to continue those thoughts, to create a charity to do that. His thoughts were big. He wanted to expand all over the world. And I think the early going of the project was more about these event spectacles and raising money to then fund the charity to do its mission. It's kind of evolved over time to more community-based work. That's really where the work is. The events are great. They’re a lot of work, and they cost a lot of money. You find out there's a lot of money that gets spent on things that aren't actually what we want the money for. We want it for the projects. We want it for the kids. We want it for the schools. We want it for after-school programming, gardens, food sustainability. These are the types of things that we're trying to do.
What has been your favorite part of the last 10 years since 2014? What type of programming or what type of initiatives have really spoken to you? Why does this mission matter so much to you?
You have to want to do the work. I mean, it's not about having your name on something. You actually have to enjoy doing the work and seeing the reward of the work.
And so for me, it's seeing the kids succeed. Or even if it's just seeing them get the idea, that's the reward. I've physically helped build a few gardens at a couple of these schools. To see that it actually helped the teachers, it helped the program, the kids had a new garden to go physically work the garden.
Being there and seeing that happen. That's what's great. I don't care about the star-studded events and all that kind of stuff. I've done those. It's the work that the people actually appreciate and you actually see something happening from it. I think that the more that we can get the programming into the schools, expand to more schools, more after-school programming, which involves nutrition, where your food comes from, food sustainability, these types of things. These kids have no idea, and, and it's not their fault, because a lot of times the parents, through no fault of their own, they don't know either. That's where we see the void that needs to be filled.
And what would you like to see from the Trotter Project in the future?
At least at first, to expand more schools here in the Chicago area. If we end up getting this done well enough to where we can go to other areas and do it. We have worked with other charities in other towns to help them along. But the idea first is here. There's so much work to be done here. When you look at it, it can be discouraging because it's so monumental. But that's why you have to enjoy the day-to-day. You have to be happy plugging away at it and not seeing the reward tomorrow. It comes down the road. Again, it’s having more schools know about us and what we have to offer, and hopefully as it becomes more known, more chefs and more people will be wanting to help with the mentoring, teaching, and the gardening and the food sustainability, and all those types of things.
There is one exciting thing coming though, in the near future that we've been doing all this work. We’re installing a hydroponic freight farm in the Austin community. It finally got electricity and water hooked up to it, so we will finally be growing hydroponic vegetables for the Austin community out there in Austin Grows. It should be coming out in the summer by the time the stuff is ready to go. So that's a pretty exciting thing. Especially when you're in food deserts, you know, places that don't even have a grocery store to buy lettuce. So this could be an amazing thing for them.
What's a piece of advice you would like to share with anyone looking to get into the type of businesses that you love. We've got wine and we've also got an amazing non-profit.
My advice would be get ready to work. You have to love the work. It's the same for both, actually. When on the wine business side, I think a lot of people see the glamorous side, but the tastings and the vineyards and the wineries and everything, that’s beautiful and that's just not the way it is. That's part of it. And that's the great part of it. But it's the everyday work, a lot of organizational work including dealing with government entities, which you also do in the charity, dealing with the government everyday logistics.
Not to mention the myriad of details you have to deal with accounts and shipping and all these kinds of things. It's tons of work besides the tasting of the wine. That's the fun part. I will say though, with either of them, you just have to just go out and get involved.
Thanks so much for sharing your story with us, Robert, and for your strong leadership of The Trotter Project’s board! To support our scholarships and other programming, be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date and check out our donation page here!
