Over 30 years ago a mother made a painful decision and left her nine children in a one-room shack in Kitty in search of a better life in the US.
Today, nine years after she left this earth, what she started in her Brooklyn home is now a chain of restaurants that provide a piece of Guyana to homesick Guyanese through its food and pastries.
Sybil’s Bakery & Restaurants – two located in Jamaica, Queens and another in Brooklyn – are widely popular for their breads and pastries and if you throw in some pepperpot, cook-up with fried fish and dhal and rice you would understand why Guyanese in New York flock these restaurants.
“I think what keeps me going is pride, knowing from where we came and how hard my mother worked. To keep it going in her memory is really what keeps me going,” Viburt Bernard, better known as ‘Cookie’, told Stabroek News in a recent interview.
As soon as one enters his Liberty Avenue, Richmond Hill, New York, restaurant the aroma that greets you immediately brings thoughts of Guyana to your mind.
Speaking to Stabroek News in his office located above the restaurant, Bernard related that the woman behind the success story of the restaurant chain is Sybil Bernard-Kerrutt who migrated in 1969 leaving her nine children behind.
‘… with just a grip’
“She left Guyana with just a grip [suitcase] you know… leaving her children behind, it must have been hard. I was her second oldest and I was just 11 years old so you could imagine how young the others were,” Bernard said with a faraway smile on his face.
At night, sometimes when he lies in his bed he would remember that Kitty home from where they and think that God has been good to them.
“You see that [pointing to a photograph of the one-room shack they lived in], that is what we lived in… I burnt it down only last year because the neighbours said the junkies had taken it over but that is where we come from,” he said.
And although the house was tiny Bernard said they shared it with a woman named ‘Miss Baby’ as she had nowhere else to go and his mother did not have the heart to put her out.
He recalled that when his mother left them there was no adult around but she had to make “that sacrifice.” In the end his younger siblings were taken in by their grandparents and he and three other brothers went to Linden to work in their uncle’s bakery.
“We have been blessed by the Lord,” Viburt said, adding that three years after his mother migrated she sent for him and his older brother and as soon as he arrived he attended school and also worked to help his mother make ends meet.
One year later his other siblings arrived in New York and it was not easy going for the family of ten.
Surviving on food stamps
Shortly after his other siblings arrived his mother lost her job and the family was forced to survive on food stamps. (Commonly known as the Food Stamp Program, the federal-assistance program provides assistance to low-and no-income people and families living in the US.)
His mother was a good cook and some of her sons were good bakers so following a visit to Canada where their relatives were selling freshly baked products to their neighbours the family decided to follow suit.
Selling bread
In 1976 they started making bread and pastries which they sold to people around and sometimes their relatives would take some to their neighbourhoods and sell.
“It was out of desperation really that we started doing that and no one would have thought that it would turn out to be what it is today,” Bernard told this newspaper.
Just two years after they started their business at home the very first Sybil’s bakery was opened on Church Avenue, Brooklyn and it is still standing there today some 30 years later.
“My mother use to throw box-hand you know and that is how she get to open that bakery,” he said.
Today, Bernard is proud of his very own restaurant that he opened 20 years ago on Liberty Avenue where he employs some 30 staff.
“Everything is done here, all the baking, cooking everything and it is all Guyanese,” he boasted.
He feels that his staff members have a lot to do with his business being strong because as he puts it, “I have been blessed with very good staff. God has sent me some good people.”
While all are not Guyanese most of them are and they represent the six races from the Land of Many Waters.
Liberty Avenue and its surroundings better known as ‘Little Guyana’ and Sybil’s combine to afford Guyanese a nostalgic feeling, with the restaurant in Guyana’s national colours and the food being ‘just like back home’.
“What makes me proud is to see people waiting for 15 and 20 minutes and when they are finally served to see that smile on their face is really, really good,” Bernard said as he gave Stabroek News a tour of his bakery and kitchen.
From the time the restaurant opens its door in the morning to closing time at night there is always a stream of customers, Bernard said, but with the economic recession business has “slowed a bit. “But I have not laid off any staff, I keep my staff because when business going good I making money so if it goes a little bad sometimes I will take the loss… my staff have family and so on,” he said.
He is not too worried about the economic difficulties though since he is confident that the community needs the service he provides with Guyanese always longing “for a piece of Guyana and anyway they could grab it they would.”
Bernard feels that even after he would have departed this earth his business would continue. Probably through his children? He would not say.
“We bring them [the customers] a chunk of Guyana you see and they long for it,” he added.
But he also noted that it is not only the Guyanese community they cater for as generally people from the Caribbean flock the restaurant.
“Imagine we sell Cream Soda from Guyana, you know how people long for that?” Bernard remarked, with a little laugh “and then we have real tennis roll and cheese and egg ball, black pudding and souse.
“When you walk into Sybil’s here you are getting to see the beauty of Guyana and I want to give my customers the best, we are talking quality.”
This month makes it nine years since the woman behind the Sybil’s chain of restaurants passed away and Bernard said he is happy to know that should his mother be looking down she would be proud to see that what she had started is continuing.
