Bernard Perron: the host to the most

Published July 4th, 2008

By Diane Feen
Special to the News

Bernard Perron walks around Boca Raton (and Palm Beach County) quite anonymously. Yet, many of us have been charmed by his cooking, seduced by his hospitality and tended to by his staff.

If you saw Perron walking down the street you might notice his tall lean frame and Cary Grant charm, but you still wouldn’t know a thing about his love of baking and cooking. You also wouldn’t know that he left his homeland of France in search of a more lucrative culinary career at age 19.

But things didn’t turn out as sweet as this baker hoped for. From Quebec (where he worked for a hotel as a cook) he traveled to Vancouver. But instead of cooking or baking, Perron ended up planting pine trees high above the mountain range of Newgate, British Columbia.

After tree planting season (when he was down to his last dollar) Perron found a job as a cook for a lumber camp in Vancouver. The genial French fellow had a roof over his head and an endless supply of food.

“For the first time in three days I had a bed, a brand new sleeping bag and a pillow with a clean pillowcase. In my warm bed that night - basking in so much luxury - I knew I had to learn English to survive.”

So, that’s what he did. He read comic books, “Reader’s Digest,” “Life Magazine” and also found an incentive to learn the language that had eluded him for so long. “After Canada I got a job as a as chef at the Emerald Beach Hotel in Nassau. Two years later I found the ultimate reason to learn English - I met my English-speaking wife Cathy.”

Perron not only found a wife, he found a soul mate. “Never have I felt like this with a girl before,” he wrote his parents. “Never have I known the excitement of being with someone, the joy of belonging and at the same time the peace and calm that stability brings. I was a gypsy who had found a safe heaven.”

Perron and wife Cathy settled in the Bahamas, opened hotels and restaurants, but soon found themselves ready to move to Florida. After scouring the East Coast of Florida, Perron settled on a piece of land in Boynton Beach that was once a gambling site for Al Capone (and a house of prostitution in the 50’s).

The restaurant, known as Bernard’s when it opened in 1975, is now called Benvenuto. It’s grown in size and stature (from 2,500 to 8,000 square feet) and is known as the best of breed for parties and deluxe dining. Its Addison Mizner heritage and lush environs (that Perron and his son-in-law labored to re-build) are legendary.

In 1981 Perron set his sights on a new venture in Deerfield Beach called Brooks. It is there that the Perron brood put their heads and hearts together. Daughter Lisa, son Marc and son-in-law Jon create the Brooks legend (with dad Bernard), while daughter Anne and son-in-law Jean- Philippe tend to Benvenuto.

In all Perron has been at his craft for 63 years (he started at the age of 12) and he still seems delighted with its motive and magic. “I enjoy the flexibility and creativity of cooking. When compared to music, pastry making is like playing a sonata, beautiful but restrictive, but cooking is like Jazz, free and innovative. So much is left to your imagination and skills,” said the Boca Raton resident.

It is that enthusiasm and humility that follows Perron around like a shadow. He is well known among town as a generous, loving and kind man who has mastered the art of fatherhood, restaurant ownership, peace-maker, art connoisseur, horse lover and all around good guy. His restaurants have won awards (The DiRoNA, the Golden Spoon, the Golden Spoon Hall of Fame and others) but for Perron it’s the art of the culinary dance that makes him whistle.

“Restaurateurs must be gamblers. In what other business does one invest their life savings and pledge all future earnings for fifteen or twenty years? In what other business do you start in the morning, not knowing how many customers will come, how much you will pay for food and how many of your employees will show up?”

But it is that juggling act that Perron has perfected for so long that makes him a rare breed. His success has never gone to his head (“Life teaches you to be modest you never know what is going to happen”) and his years of struggling to survive have taught him endless compassion.

”We are cheerleaders – we have to pacify everyone. I shake hands with each employee every day and if someone is in a bad mood I try to pacify them and fix their problem. You can spend millions of dollars on a building, but it’s the staff you see when you enter the door,” said the father of four and recent widower.

According to daughter Lisa, Papa Perron is more than just a behind- the- scenes peacemaker. “My father cares about everyone – the customers and the employees. He treats everyone with the same respect, from the pot washer to the billionaire who comes through the front door.”