It is no small achievement that the Calico Restaurant and Patisserie, a seven-table dining establishment in Rhinebeck, is celebrating a decade of successful operation. This past year, four of New York City's legendary French restaurants - La Côte Basque, Lespinasse, Lutèce, and La Caravelle - closed, and here in the Hudson Valley, Cripple Creek, one of Rhinebeck's finest restaurants, also shut its doors. The closings are a reminder of the difficulties restaurants face in today's competitive environment. "Closures" do not necessarily mean the inability to make money, but for the restaurant owner it must be anxiety-provoking to know that six out of ten restaurants close within their first three years and that of the half million restaurants in the US approximately 10 to 15 percent fail each year.

Calico owes its success to the skill, vision, and hard work of its two owners and chefs, Anthony and Leslie Balassone, a husband and wife team, who both grew up in Poughkeepsie and went to Arlington High School. Their culinary backgrounds reflect two different approaches to becoming an accomplished chef. Anthony was formally trained and distinguished himself as a student at the Culinary Institute of America. After graduating in 1981, he gained further cooking experience by working at Le Pavillon in Poughkeepsie under chef-owner Claude Guermont and management experience working at the IBM and Westchester Country Clubs and at restaurants in Indiana.

Leslie's training as a pastry chef was modeled on the apprenticeship system. She developed an interest in pastry-making while working in a local bakery. During college, she worked in a French patisserie in Boston and after graduation acquired advanced French pastry-making skills from a master French pastry chef in Marblehead, Massachusetts. Having made the decision to become a pastry chef, Leslie moved to Armonk, New York, where she expanded her repertoire to include Austrian approaches to baking.

Anthony and Leslie's friendship blossomed during these years, and they came to share not only a love for each other but a dream of co-owning a restaurant where they could each focus on personal specialties. They envisioned combining a restaurant with a patisserie. In 1994, they married and also rented restaurant space in Rhinebeck that had two kitchens, one where Anthony could design the menu and exclusively do the cooking and another where Leslie could focus on creating and preparing her pastries, cakes, and other desserts.

Restaurant size often correlates with profitability: a large restaurant means that people generally do not have to wait for tables when the restaurant is busy, that those who wish to celebrate a special occasion with a large party can be easily accommodated, that an enlarged bar area can rake in substantial revenue, and that the entertainment factor of eating alongside a crowd of others may be enhanced by the noise, energy, and excitement they produce. Larger restaurants, while they have higher overhead and food supply bills, also have more buying power with suppliers. But bigger is not always better. Anthony and Leslie were not concerned about the small size of their restaurant because they believed it would allow for a high degree of quality control, low labor costs, and minimal food waste.

While they both work 75 to 90 hours a week and rarely take vacations, they insist that they love what they do. Leslie begins her day preparing pastry around 6AM and works the front of the house during dinner. Anthony starts his day around the same time as Leslie, doing prep work and preparing sauces. Their hard work has paid off: over the years they have built up a loyal clientele and received significant awards, including being invited five times to prepare dinner at the prestigious James Beard House in New York City.