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Thestar.com

Jun. 16, 01:20 EDT

Leo Lecours loved food, wine and words

Marion Kane

Leo Lecours could charm the birds from the trees.

And last Tuesday, as friends sat around the patio table of the sprawling Beaches home where he lived with his wife Pasqua Amati and the beloved 6-year-old son he called "Crown Prince Julian," a particularly persistent sparrow kept swooping down as if to share our colourful stories, heartfelt laughter and the occasional tear.

Leo died early Monday morning, June 10, after a two-year battle with cancer, four days after his 47th birthday.

His death was a shock to most who knew him because, although obviously in failing health, he talked, to the end, like a man with a rosy future.

And Leo knew how to talk.

Raconteur, bon vivant, joker, thinker, reader, talker.

These words kept coming up as those gathered around that table shared tales of the tall, gangly Scarborough lad with the spiky red hair, off-kilter grin and wonderfully rich radio voice.

Leo lived up to his dramatic alliterated name, the result of what he called his "mongrel" heritage that was mostly French and Irish.

"Leo loved words," says Amati of the original, sometimes difficult but never boring man she met 15 years ago and loved "at first sight."

She attributes much of that to the mother he adored who died when he was 14.

"He got a lot of praise from her for his vocabulary," Amati says. "As a child, he would literally memorize words from the dictionary."

This natural and nurtured gift of the gab would serve Leo well in his career of choice.

After two years at university, at age 23, he started his own Toronto-based hospitality recruiting firm with a couple of partners. Soon, Green, Busch and Lecours was growing along with our city's burgeoning restaurant scene.

It was in those early days, that I, a fledgling food writer, first encountered Leo.

In 1982, I interviewed him for an article called "Consultants: The Men Who Save Restaurants" for the now defunct trade magazine Canadian Hotel & Restaurant. Little did I know, as we chatted at length by phone, that interviewees as amusing and articulate as Leo would be few and far between in the years of food-writing to come.

Those in the food industry, many of whom are mourning his loss, noticed his unusual skills. Some, like Scott Willows, owner of the excellent downtown restaurant Patriot, became his friends.

Willows was looking for work when the two first met almost 20 years ago. "Leo got me a job as general manager of a Mother Tucker's in Winnipeg," he recalls with a chuckle.

"He was very, very intelligent," Willows is quick to note. "Leo could predict the outcome of both personal and professional situations and how things would happen, step by step."

The two often got together with their families over good food and wine.

"Leo was wise and extremely eloquent," Willows continues.

"It was beautiful just listening to him. He loved to travel, schmooze, eat well and enjoy good wine. He was very enthusiastic about those things."

Peter Oliver, co-owner with Michael Bonacini of five important Toronto restaurants including Jump, Canoe and Biff's, had a professional relationship with Leo for more than 10 years.

"He was our search person of choice," says Oliver, who used Leo's services mainly to find managers but also chefs. "In fact, he was one of the most acute minds in the industry."

Like Oliver, Leo was fascinated with "what makes restaurants tick." But it was more than that. "Leo was an intellectual who was a keen observer of the human condition," notes Oliver. "He could see through smoke and mirrors. He thought more acutely than most people and about everything."

`Leo was an intellectual who was a keen observer of the human condition. He could see through smoke and mirrors. He thought more acutely than most people Ñ about everything'

Peter Oliver, restaurateur

and friend

In 1991, when Norm Wolfson and Leo became partners after working together for several years, the company was re-named Lecours, Wolfson.

"Leo launched a thousand careers," says his former partner. "From entry-level managers to the presidents of organizations. He was one of the prime movers who brought Toronto from being a meat-and-potatoes town to what it is today."

Wolfson was managing a midtown restaurant called The Daily Planet in the mid-`80s when he first met Leo.

"He would come in for lunch," Wolfson recalls. "He was this big guy with big feet and a carrot top wearing a suit with red suspenders and red gym socks and loud colours that didn't match."

Somehow, eccentricities like this added to Leo's charm.

"Leo had a way of talking out of the side of his mouth," Wolfson recalls fondly. "He fancied himself as a gentile version of Duddy Kravitz."

Over the years, when I would call Leo about an article I was writing or meet him occasionally for lunch, I noticed his predilection for things Jewish.

"I'm a bit of a wannabe Jew," he admitted when I questioned him on this.

"Actually, he usually mangled his Yiddish words," says Wolfson, laughing gently. "He learned most of them from a bartender called Marty."

But Leo had a brilliant mind and a photographic memory, Wolfson adds. "Someone would phone him from Asia after five years and he could remember every detail of their résumé."

Leo was a headhunter who loved the thrill of the chase. "He was a sales guy," Wolfson continues. "Sometimes unbridled. He loved the deal. He thrived on it."

Leo's favourite deals involved placing talented chefs. Among those recruited by him at some point in their careers are Michael Potters, Didier Leroy, Chris Klugman and Martin Kouprie.

Brad Long, executive chef at the Air Canada Centre, was a friend and fellow musician. "We used to play guitar together at his house," says Long.

"He had a great singing voice. And, of course, we both loved talking about food."

Leo also loved to write.

During the 1990s, he regularly penned articles for Foodservice And Hospitality magazine. Its editor and publisher, Rosanna Caira, enjoyed working with him.

"I found Leo very honest and forthright," Caira says. "He knew everyone and everything in the industry and always had good gossip and a great story."

The most memorable one was his idea and pure Leo.

In 1995, he turned the tables on The Globe and Mail's longstanding restaurant critic in an article titled "The Trouble With Kates." It appeared in Caira's mag as a two-page spread opposite the reviewer's response: "Kates Bites Back."

Leo, not one to mince words, called Joanne Kates "as sour as a crate of lemons," "a fresh disappointment every week" and more proof that "bitchiness sells."

She, in turn, charged him with "conflict of interest," "fake objectivity" and "sour grapes."

In the past three months, realizing though not admitting he did not have long to live, Leo wrote what he called a thinly disguised memoir.

He was keen for me to read it. After a long chat at his home, during which he took frequent breaks to inhale oxygen, he handed me the manuscript. Three days later, he was dead.

Part Damon Runyan, part Kitchen Confidential but mostly Leo's inimitable take on Toronto's often cut-throat headhunting and restaurant scenes, it is a brilliant read.

It's by a man who called himself "an artist who wore a suit."

Lovely, loquacious Leo Lecours, who died too young.