Mashama Bailey & Johno Morisano

There’s a certain type of person who dreams about opening a restaurant in Paris. Then there’s the type of person who actually does it. On this episode of Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with Mashama Bailey and Johno Morisano of The Grey and L’Arrêt to talk about what it really takes to open a restaurant in one of the most romanticized, bureaucratic, intimidating, and food-obsessed cities in the world. They share their Five Rules for Opening a Restaurant in Paris. We get into neighborhood politics, learning enough French to survive a conversation, battling condemned hood systems, and why your lawyer might become the most important person in your phone. It’s a conversation about hospitality, identity, stubbornness, and understanding exactly who you are before trying to introduce yourself to Paris.What I love about this conversation is how open they are about all of it. There’s no mythology here. No pretending the process was glamorous. They talk honestly about the stress, the delays, the absurdity of getting yelled at over ventilation systems, and the emotional weight of trying to earn trust in a city that takes food very seriously. But there’s also so much laughter throughout the conversation. The kind that only comes from people who survived something difficult together and can now look back at the chaos with perspective. You can hear how much they love restaurants, how much they respect Paris, and how even in the hardest moments they never lost sight of why they wanted to do this in the first place.Five Rules for the Good Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.TranscriptHello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life.I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz.Today, my guests join me from all corners of the world, Mashama Bailey and Johno Morisano, whose company, Gray Spaces, made its mark with The Grey in Savannah. Now, their new restaurant, L’Arrêt in Paris, has made a splash in the city.They join me today to chat about their Five Rules for Opening a Restaurant in Paris.They talk about the importance of practicing your conversational French, how to integrate yourself into the neighborhood, and why you should always have a good lawyer on standby. Even if you aren’t planning on opening your own little bistro in Paris, it’s a great conversation for anyone looking to start their own restaurant and understand the mindset you need to succeed.So let’s get into the rules.Opening ThoughtsThank you for crossing continents to be with me today. So great to have you on the show.Happy to be here.Thanks for waking up at the crack of dawn to do it.I got two young kids. I was up hours before we chatted.When the opportunity came to open L’Arrêt in Paris, what were your thoughts about the culinary connection between Savannah and the through lines of both cities?I thought in the beginning, you know what? We’re going to France. Pack our bags. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s do what we’re gonna do.Really trying to figure out what food the neighborhood wanted to do. I think we got caught up in the idea of it all, at least I did, and not really hunkered down and realized, oh wait, we’ve been doing this for 12 years and we should absolutely bring some food from Savannah to France.Also not realizing how nuanced our food is in Savannah and how it doesn’t always read as Southern. When you’re in Savannah, it feels very Southern. It eats very Southern. But when you’re in France, they need the hits. They need the things that overtly reflect Southern cuisine so they can understand what you’re doing because it’s such a melting pot here.Southern food and Black American food is so entrenched in African ingredients that it almost reads African before it reads Southern.That’s how we started off. And now we’re really embracing the fact that we’re coming from Savannah, we’re coming from the South, and we’re cooking grits and using cornmeal, lima beans, all these really delicious Southern ingredients. We’re braising and we’re frying and we’re putting it on a plate.And I think they’re really like, “Oh, okay, I understand what this restaurant is now.” But I think before, showing up as The Grey, it was a little confusing because we weren’t overtly Southern.Becoming Part of the NeighborhoodFor anyone who’s spent time in Paris and gotten to know Parisians, it really is all about neighborhoods and local communities. How did you integrate yourself with the people there beyond the food, showing that you really wanted to be their neighborhood spot?The Seventh Arrondissement is a place where I have been going with my wife for 30 years. I love that.We actually found L’Arrêt because it was just a spot that I frequented called Les Parisiens. I kn