Marie-Louise Friedland: Improving Wine Culture With Better Communication

For 28-year-old Marie-Louise Friedland, restaurants run in her blood. As the granddaughter of immigrants, she’s fighting to continue the family tradition of spreading knowledge, challenging people, and celebrating food that began when her Spanish grandfather and French grandmother moved from France to Texas and brought their culinary ambitions with them.

In her current role as assistant beverage director and assistant general manager of two San Francisco restaurants, every day she works to help customers discover new wines without intimidating them.

Before coming to the US, Friedland's grandparents had owned a restaurant in France. When they eventually settled in San Antonio, they opened a French fine dining establishment named Chez Ardid, and the whole family worked together to run it. Friedland remembers growing up there: When other kids went to daycare, she went to the restaurant.

But serving French cuisine in Texas in the 1970s wasn't exactly easy. Chez Ardid wanted to serve food the way that Friedland's grandparents had experienced it in France, without compromising to appeal to local palates: Sometimes this meant taking back dishes that customers weren't comfortable with, but it also meant exposing diners to new dishes that they truly loved (Friedland's grandfather was the first person to serve frogs' legs and veal in San Antonio). At an early age, Friedland learned from her grandfather that even if people don't understand what you're doing right away, you have to persevere: "You need to have faith in your own vision," she says, in order to keep pursuing it.

Even though she loved Chez Ardid, Friedland didn't always know that this path would lead her to the restaurant industry. She received a degree in advertising with a minor in art from the University of Texas, and imagined a future as a painter or working on the creative side of an ad agency.

While in school, Friedland spent her summers working with food: She worked as a cheesemonger, she travelled and tasted wine and cheese across Europe, and one summer she ended up as a hostess at Uchi, a small Japanese restaurant in Austin, that would prove to have a profound impact on her career. Like Chez Ardiz, Uchi stands out in its surroundings.

When asked about the menu, Friedland described it as authentic Japanese cuisine. "You have to dig your heels in and say ‘Yeah, we're going to serve sushi in the middle of Austin, and we're going to serve it the way that they do in Japan. We're not going to give you soy sauce, and we're not going to give you wasabi.'" It was while working at Uchi that Friedland earned the title of certified sommelier and affirmed that her love of restaurants was not just a phase.

Armed with the confidence and defiance she witnessed firsthand at these two revolutionary Texas restaurants, Friedland is now the assistant wine director and assistant general manager at The Progress and State Bird Provisions in San Francisco, where she is on the floor every night. Although she loves interacting with customers, she doesn't believe that it's a sommelier's only role. She believes "sommeliers need to be leaders" in order for the industry to evolve.