Food and Motion

How a five-store restaurateur keeps everything in balance.

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It’s tempting. Melad Stephan could draw an “L” between the ME and the AD on the Mead Street sign outside his three Old Town dining establishments, and it would all be his. Then again, it might as well be. When the restaurateur opens a wine and tapas bar across the square this month or next, he’ll count at least four Old Town addresses as his own.

In a game of Monopoly, he could practically trade up for a hotel. Uptown Bistro, corner of Second and Mead. Bellini’s Pizzeria, a couple of doors north. Egg Cetera, two short blocks east, on North Mosley. Nouvelle Café, out east on Rock Road (which he recently sold to former partner Georges Youssef). Each of Stephan’s unique dining concepts has quickly become favored among Wichitans searching for something different.

The Bistro is a great place to hook up over the noon hour with a client or colleague. Bellini’s has the kind of toppings no one else thought to put on a pizza—peanuts and pears, for example, as well as that famous house concoction calling for Champagne and peaches, the Bellini. Egg Cetera is so popular with the weekend breakfast crowd that people are sometimes turned away, leaving them to crave eggs benedict and salmon all day long.

And Nouvelle? That’s where it all began. Stephan opened the Lebanese café as a deli in 1989, leaving behind a tenured position with a restaurant-management company. “I had it made,” he recalls. “I was making great money in my thirties, but didn’t want to be the person at the top of the management chain who suddenly dropped off. So I opened a 1,500-square-foot deli. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done—besides marrying my wife!”

Embracing opportunity
Born in 1958 in Beirut, Lebanon, Stephan came to Wichita at age 19. “I had $292 in my pocket, and spoke no English,” he says. His father’s relatives, Joe and Esther Steven, took him in for a year while he adjusted to life in the West.

He learned the restaurant business at the hand of his father, who oversaw catering for Middle East Airline in Beirut, but Stephan’s first job in America had nothing to do with food. Instead, he worked at the Steven’s family business, Joe’s Seat Cover and Car Wash.

That was just temporary. He became a Pizza Hut line cook, and then in 1983, a local restaurant-management company hired him as a fourth assistant manager. Two years later, he was the top general manager, making five times as much as his starting pay. Sometimes he traveled states away to troubleshoot other restaurants and whip them back into shape. By the time he decided to go out on his own, Stephan was training managers, developing research for recipes and helping maintain the company’s food quality.

When he opened Nouvelle Deli seventeen years ago, he welcomed the opportunity to take a risk. “Most Lebanese people succeed because they’re not afraid to take a chance,” Stephan says. “They know that when you make a mistake, you just learn from it and move on.”

The new venture was far from erroneous. After eight years he expanded, moving into a space two or three doors south with twice as much room. He called it Nouvelle Café.

Balancing family life
Melad, which means Christmas in Arabic, was born on Christmas Day. Like most people with yuletide birthdays, he jokes about getting gypped. “I do get cheated. I get a right glove for Christmas, and the left one for my birthday,” he says with a laugh.

He’s been married twenty-four years to his wife, Jamie. They have four children between the ages of 10 and 20: Jordan, Jason, Zanna and Ronia. Soon after each child’s birth, the couple made pilgrimages to Lebanon, baptizing them in St. George Catholic Church where Stephan and his parents were baptized, in Gib Janine, the village of his parents’ birth.

Sundays are family day. And twice a week, the Stephans eat together at one of Dad’s restaurants. He may be busy spinning plates, quite literally, but this father knows where his priorities lay. “I go to all of my kids’ functions. I even coached my 12-year-old daughter’s volleyball team.”

His wife, he says, is very understanding. Jamie may share his love for food, yet she has every right to wonder what possessed her husband to take on so many ventures. “She says I must be having a middle-age crisis. I tell her, at least my restaurants aren’t women and cars!”

A propensity for boredom has followed Stephan his entire life. He seems to master things quickly, then looks for something new. His father told people, “My daughter sits for hours and studies in the night. Melad only looks at a book five or ten minutes and says he’s done, then gets better grades.”

But as much as Stephan loves food, loves the business, he doesn’t want the same life for his children. “It’s a hard-working, long-hours business. I want them to have professional jobs so they can be with their families on nights and weekends.”

They may apply the lessons he’s learned to any vocation. For instance, when he worked at restaurants that weren’t his, he treated them as his own. “So I tell my kids, whether you play sports, sweep the floor, become a trashman or dishwasher, do your best, and good things will come to you.”