Eatdrink Waterloo & Wellington #5 February/March 2019

8 | February/March 2019
eatdrink.ca |@eatdrinkmag
Restaurants
Waterloo/Cambridge Pioneers
A Brief History of Cerny Hospitality Group
Blackshop Restaurant • Solé Restaurant and Wine Bar • Melville Café
By ANDREW COPPOLINO
With a 35-year history that
began at the Blackshop
Restaurant in the community
of Galt in Cambridge, Cerny
Hospitality has the distinction of being one
of the pioneers of food entrepreneurism in
Cambridge and Waterloo Region.
“My mom and dad, Jan and Eva, opened
Blackshop in 1983 as a 32-seat bistro on
Ainslie Street North. I was about ten years
old,” says their son John Cerny.
The young Cerny started washing dishes
and making salads and desserts in a family
business that has grown to three restaurants
in two cities: Blackshop and Melville Café in
Cambridge and Solé in Waterloo. In building
the hospitality group, with three different
restaurant concepts, one thing Cerny has
learned is that a restaurant has a soul. “It
takes its own direction in a way. You can try
to control it, and you can try to guide it, but
it’s like a kid in a way. When customers ask for
a certain type of food or wine or experience,
you try to provide it,” Cerny says. At all
venues, though, virtually everything served
is made in-house, from demi-glace and breads
to cheesecakes and other pastries, in-house.
Overseeing it all is Dan Potter, Executive Chef
of the group of restaurants, who joined the
company in 1998.
A Tale of Two Environments
The Cerny tradition of paying attention to the
details of food and hospitality service started
6,000 kilometers from Cambridge. Jan Cerny
went through formal hospitality training
in the Czech Republic and began his career
tending bar and managing restaurants. In the
family’s last few years in the Czech Republic,
Jan managed a ski resort and hotel in the
Krkonose Mountains. “The family lived at the
hotel,” John Cerny says. “My brother Alec
Blackshop — where Jan Cerny started the tradition of
hospitality in Canada for the Cerny family