Photograph of Estera and Henrich Brestowski courtesy of the family.
Henrich Brestowski, the eponymous proprietor of Chef Henry’s Cafe, a well-known Japanese European restaurant, died January 9 at AdventHealth Winter season Park Hospital. He was 69.
Brestowski and his wife, Estera, opened the cafe on Howell Department Road in Winter Park in 1999. He was chef de delicacies and she was the pastry chef, mentioned for her strudels. In my assessment of July 25, 1999, in the Orlando Sentinel, I wrote:
“I really don’t know what the inhabitants near Howell Department Street east of Semoran Boulevard in Winter Park did to are worthy of Chef Henry’s Cafe, but it must have been a little something superior.
“Chef Henry’s Cafe is a exceptional locate, and permit me say from the outset that I didn’t locate it on my personal. Various audience set me on to the position with passionate letters singing the praises of the small cafe run by former Slovakia people Henrich and Estera Brestowski. They were the sort of letters that make me roll my cynical eyes and go through in between the traces.
“’Authentic European cuisine,’ they explained. Bratwursts on a hot pet bun, I thought.
‘Made from scratch,’ they wrote. Scratch is most likely the model identify for a frozen foods corporation, I mused.
“But I decided to shell out a pay a visit to. Heck, I like brats as much as the upcoming person.
“What I uncovered was reliable European cuisine, built from scratch, geared up and served by a relatives committed to marketing the food items of their homeland. And they are winning converts one particular plate at a time.
“They experienced me with my first spoonful of leber dumpling soup[.]”
Prior to opening Chef Henry’s, they experienced Cafe Max at Lake Eola and Blue Danube I an II in Titusville. But their story started decades ahead of in what was then known as Czechoslovakia. Brestowski was born on March 12, 1953, in Sokolov and grew up in Lucenec in Slovakia. He satisfied Estera Bilkova at a disco in 1972 and they had been married a 12 months afterwards. They experienced three daughters, Evelina, Simona and Mimi. His wife and daughters endure him.
According to an obituary published by his loved ones, Brestowski grew to resent dwelling beneath the strictures of the communist occasion, and a single day in 1987 beneath the pretense of earning a searching vacation to Hungary, the household escaped, traveling to Romania and Yugoslavia and then to Austria, wherever they lived for two decades.
The spouse and children immigrated to St. Louis in 1989 and Brestowki obtained a job as a prep cook dinner at a Sheraton resort. They moved to Central Florida in 1991.
Chef Henry’s Cafe operated till 2008 when the Brestowskis marketed it, stating at the time a want to return to Europe. The new owner altered the name to Chef Hans Cafe.
The pair also owned Chef Henry’s Suggestion-Top rated Bistro, which opened in 2001 just a few miles away on Howell Branch Road. It was intended to be a fantastic-dining Jap European restaurant but it was quick lived.
A new Chef Henry’s opened in early 2010 in the Longwood Village Shoppes in the place that experienced been Journeys. Although Henrich and Estera have been included – they had moved to Slovakia but returned to Central Florida – the restaurant was owned by their daughter Simona. It closed in 2014.
The family members has set up a GoFundMe account to assistance pay for burial prices.