Owner of Edmonton’s SABOR Christian Mena hits a high note

Interview by Megan Cole

It’s no secret that musicians make up a large percentage of the professional kitchens and bars workforce. Whether it’s because of the flexibility that a job in the restaurant industry affords, or because it’s ripe with material for endless numbers of songs, there’s common ground between the music and food worlds, and the life of Christian Mena, owner of Edmonton, Alberta’s SABOR Restaurant, highlights where the lines blur. We talked to Mena about the commonalities between the two worlds, his experience touring with Afro-Cuban/Brazilian, funk/R&B band Maracujah in the ’90s, and his time sharing the stage with Neil Patrick Harris in the popular musical, Rent.

How did you get into music?
My father was a professional musician. You know that guy who always takes a guitar to the party and everyone is always asking him to play? My dad was that guy. Especially because we are Chilean, and in that era when I was growing up it was big deal for him to take his acoustic guitar to all the parties. My parents aren’t like me, in the sense that they were very young when they had children, so they were 21 to 23, dragging a two-year-old behind them, as opposed to now where I’m 44 and I have a 10-year-old and a seven-year-old. My dad played in bands, so my earliest recollections of sitting around with my dad and singing went as far back as I can remember.

Do you remember the first time you went on stage?
The first time I was actually on stage was when I was three, but I didn’t really do anything with it until I was in high school. I was a bit of a jock, and I had been playing basketball. The way it works in Edmonton is there was a mall very close to the high school I went to and we would all go to this mall and hang out after school. My teammates and I would go there after a game and get burgers, you know, the typical stuff. One day we were walking through and it was about 1985, and there was a guy there singing on the first karaoke machine that I ever remember seeing.My buddy was like, “That’s cool,” and there was a crowd gathered around because there was a guy singing in the mall trying to lure people to one of the stores. I said, “That guy sucks,” and my buddy was, like “No, he’s not he’s pretty good. You couldn’t do any better,” and I said, “I could certainly do better,” or maybe not in those exact words, I’m sure there was an f-bomb in there somewhere. Anyways, it was like $4 to record a song, and I didn’t have the money so my buddy paid for it, and I recorded the first song I ever sang, which was “Cuts Like a Knife” by Bryan Adams, which is funny because I still have the cassette, and my mom kept it in an old box because it was a big deal to her.

How did you end up playing in a band?
About a week later I injured my knee playing basketball at school and I actually couldn’t play that year. Another high school in Edmonton had just transferred to a school for the arts. I grew up watching Fame, so in my mind that’s what I was going to get into. I’m going to be in the cafeteria and everyone is going to break into song immediately. I ended up transferring to the other school because I couldn’t play sports at all, and I knew already that I could sing. I went there and that’s where I met the people that would be would my friends and bandmates later. Those guys were the best jazz musicians in the city when we were like 19 or 20, and I was a pretty good singer at the time, and eventually we were scooped up by Dave Babcock, who probably doesn’t mean a lot to you, but meant a lot to us; he’s a professional musician who played with the Rolling Stones and other people. He snapped us up and made an R&B/funk band out of us. That was the break for all of us to get into that kind of music business and we eventually went out on our own and became Maracujah, which was this really popular band in Canada.

What was that experience like to play in a band like Maracujah and tour North America?
It was awesome. It’s one of those things I don’t think you appreciate when you’re doing it, but when you look back, you realize those are some of the best times of your life. You are on the road with your best friends in different cities, playing every night. Somebody asked me once what it is about music that is so great for me, and when I’m playing music I am in the moment. I’m not thinking about anything else, I’m in that moment. I think, in our lives right now, so much time is spent planning or, worse than planning, looking back. Being in this moment can be so hard.

What was it like to tour with Rent, compared to touring with a band?
When push came to shove, I don’t thing the experience was much different. The first difference is that you’re on tour with people you don’t really know, but as you tour more and more you develop great bonds with them. Because I was a musician first, I always related more to the band that played for Rent than the actual actors, who eventually became great friends as well. Some of the connections I made with the musicians in the band for Rent were awesome. Like my friend Matt Beck was the musical director for Matchbox 20, and plays with Rod Stewart, and he’s one of my best friends. Alan Childs plays drums with Rock of Ages in Vegas, and he played drums for Bowie. As a musician, to talk with the musical director of Rent at the time, he was the musical director for Chaka Khan… it was like these guys have done what I want to do. At the end of the day, I think the difference was when I was on tour with Rent the hotels are much better [laughs].

Did you watch Doogie Howser as a kid? Did you know who Neil Patrick Harris was when you started?
Oh yeah, for sure. I remember looking over at him in a trailer. I wasn’t a musical theatre actor, I was just a musician. A lot of these people had gone to musical theatre school, and Rent was a big deal for them; I didn’t even know what Rent was. I figured it out on my way, but there was no internet, so I got there and they started teaching us this music, and I realized everyone there knew everything. I was so ill-equipped because I had no idea. I leaned over to the guy beside me who happened to be Neil, and I said, “I have no clue what is going on here, you have to help me out here,” and he said, “No big deal man, I’ll help you out.”

It’s been interesting to watch his progression as a performer, from Rent to How I Met Your Mother.
He’s a stellar performer. In my opinion, he’s one of the most prolific actors of his generation and a good singer as well.

Do you watch How I Met Your Mother?
I watched a lot of it. I’m starting to watch more of it now on Netflix, because I own this restaurant so I couldn’t be at home to watch TV.

How did you decide to make the transition to the restaurant industry?
Like every musician/actor in the world, or at least 90 percent of them, I had worked in restaurants. I started as a bus boy in a hotel, my partner and chef of SABOR Restaurant, Lino [Oliviera], he and I worked at Victor’s, which is one of the best restaurants in the city, when we were 16. We both came from modest, immigrant families, living in not great parts of the city. If we wanted spending money, we had to work for it, and the restaurant industry is a great place to do that. Lino and I had been working in the restaurant industry for years, and when we were 20 and 21 we went backpacking through Europe and we talked about opening our own place, and this was way before I had considered a career in music. Our goal was to bring this European vibe with a little outdoor cafe back to North America. We had talked about it for years and years and eventually, about four years after that, Lino went to Portugal and I was doing Rent. I had a little bit of investment with him and he had three different restaurants in Portugal that all did really well. When the economy turned in Portugal I said, “Come back to Edmonton.” Eventually he came back and we opened up this place.

What do you think it is about the restaurant industry that draws musicians? There seems to be so much overlap between the music and restaurant industries.
I think the flexibility is definitely a huge consideration. If you want to play a gig at night, it’s easy to work a lunch shift. It’s funny because I’ve had many musicians work for me. But I think there is more to it than that. I think it’s the hanging out, or as we call it in the restaurant, “the hang.” The social aspects cross those lines so much. Where do you hang out with your friends? You hang out at the restaurants. I totally believe they are interconnected. I can’t tell you how many musicians are cooks or servers. I think those social skills I am referring to are learned in the restaurant business and transfer them easily to the music business. Not to mention the unbelievable amount of food for thought when it comes to the actual songwriting that you can gather in a restaurant. How many deals are sealed in restaurants? Or relationships end or begin in restaurants? I’ve seen some of the happiest things in my restaurant and some of the most devastating things.

Maracujah recently reunited to play Taste of Edmonton, the city’s annual food festival.

SABOR Restaurant is located at 10220 103 St. NW in Edmonton, Alberta.