In Belgian author Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1908 children’s play The Blue Bird, Tyltyl and Mytyl, the son and daughter of a poor woodcutter, begins on a fairy tale-like adventure to find the Blue Bird of Happiness.
In Belgian author Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1908 children’s play The Blue Bird, Tyltyl and Mytyl, the son and daughter of a poor woodcutter, begins on a fairy tale-like adventure to find the Blue Bird of Happiness.
After many thought-provoking adventures that teach the young siblings about joy and envy, the pair return to their parents and discover that their pet bird looks a lot bluer than it did before. Being away for so long changed their perspective, it seems, and the children realize that what they were looking for wasn’t as far away as they thought.
Bronwyn and Aaron Linley swear the themes don’t line up exactly, but that’s a little bit like how they felt about returning to Stratford to open the Bluebird Restaurant and Bar.
“We didn’t mean it to be that cheesy,” Bronwyn said with a laugh after explaining the origins of their new restaurant’s name. “We weren’t unhappy when we left, (but) the blue bird was a symbol of coming home.”
The Linleys, longtime restaurant owners in Stratford, met at the Stratford Chefs School before they got married in 1998, two years after their graduation. Over the next several years, they would open Bijou Restaurant and raise a couple of kids.
At the same time, they were always drawn to 30 Ontario St. Aaron, from Stratford, used to live in an apartment upstairs. Meanwhile, Bronwyn – originally from Kingston – found her first job in the restaurant industry there when it was called Down the Street.
“This was our social hub,” said Aaron, who got his start in the industry at Rundles. “We just always liked the energy in this space. It always had a great vibe to it.”
After selling Bijou to its current owners in 2015, the Linleys did some catering in Stratford before moving to the Greater Toronto Area about three years later. They settled in Scarborough. Aaron took a job as an executive chef in Toronto’s Distillery District while Bronwyn worked as the general manager for a high-end pastry company.
“We decided we wanted a new adventure,” Aaron said. “We’d been here for such a long time we needed to just stretch our legs.”
The Toronto area’s multiculturalism – especially in its restaurant scene – was “eye-opening,” Bronwyn said.
“I think it was just the scale,” she added. “There’s so many different ideas to bring to the table.”
“I had a big team,” Aaron said. “We were (serving) possibly 600 to 700 people a day on the patio There was five languages spoken in my kitchen. It was just a chance to explore more parts of a career, really. It was … an interesting experience. Fascinating, honestly.”
Not long after the pair began pondering how they could work together again, however, 30 Ontario St. became available back in Stratford. Like Tyltyl and Mytyl, Bronwyn and Aaron decided to head home.
“We needed what ultimately turned out to be a reminder of what we were missing, so then we came back,” Aaron said.
The Linley’s describe the Bluebird Restaurant and Bar as bistronomy inspired. Like classic French bistros, the idea is to promote a neighbourhood-level charm and, of course, good cooking, but the menu is not rigid.
“It’s the kind of place we want people to come and dine in, but we also want people to come to the bar and have some french fries and a pint of beer,” Aaron said.
“You can go out on a date or you can come in with your buddy and (feel) equally at home,” Bronwyn added.
The ham and cheese croquettes have been particularly popular over the restaurant’s first several weeks, but Stratford foodies will also want to keep an eye on the menu for nods to the city’s culinary past. The tomato fondue is an homage to Down the Street’s bruschetta and the Naka-style chicken cutlet is named after the Japanese owners of the Elizabethan, another former Stratford eatery.
“We’re always trying to look for things that are very regional or very Southwestern Ontario, things that we grew up with,” Aaron said. “I think we have the most success cooking food that we like to eat, or that we have fond memories of.”
For now, Bluebird is open Wednesdays and Thursdays from 5 pm to 10 pm, Fridays and Saturdays from 5 pm to midnight, and Sundays from noon to 5 pm
“We purposely wanted to open up in the (Stratford Festival’s) off-season so that we could really make an appeal to the local population … which is very important,” Aaron said. “We’ve been lucky. We’ve had a great start.”