This story was originally published in Coast Reporter's fall edition of Coast Life.
Nestled in the heart of Roberts Creek is a special village-within-a-village. It encompasses the Gumboot Café, the Gumboot Restaurant, Temporary Utopia shop and the Tiny Farm. Together, they are emblematic of the welcoming community of Roberts Creek.
When Laurie and Brock O’Byrne moved to Roberts Creek in the early ’90s, they weren’t planning on becoming restaurateurs. Sick of big city life, they were looking for somewhere with a more rural feel to raise their daughter Ryley. When the Gumboot Café came up for sale in 1994, Laurie convinced her sister, Shelley Dales, to buy it with her.
From the start, the café was community oriented and people really felt a sense of ownership—a fact Laurie found both fun and frustrating because “everybody’s [always] telling you how you should be doing everything.” With only a few part-time employees, the sisters tried to keep up with demand, but their partnership dissolved after a couple of years. Just before it did, they found Joe.
Joe DeLeo was originally from Kitchener, Ont., where he ran the kitchen for a bar and music venue. At twenty-two, he moved to Vancouver where he continued in restaurants and foods. After an extended backpacking trip and ready for his next big adventure, a message waited for him: there was an opening for a cook at the Gumboot Café. “It was good-bye Vancouver, hello Roberts Creek!” recalls Joe.
Joe met his wife here and they’ve raised two daughters with the café as an extension of their family kitchen, both swinging by for a bite of pizza and eventually working shifts, just like Ryley O’Byrne. She washed dishes by age twelve and worked front of house by fourteen. Joe became an owner in 2000.
Meanwhile, the café added dinner service. Guest chefs, some with more formal restaurant experience than others, would make authentic Mexican or East Indian dinners. Laurie describes it as intense, fun, messy, and also a challenge. While some nights seemed like total disasters, somehow they got through and everyone got fed.
In 2004, the owners of the Creek House restaurant next door to the café retired. They were originally from the South of France, and the restaurant was both their home and business.
“The windows were tiny, the lamps were small and hung at forehead height, and the whole place was surrounded by this tall, almost impenetrable hedge. [It all] seemed very mysterious,” says Joe.
Laurie and Brock bought the building, converted it into a larger restaurant and moved the dinner service there from the café. Joe quickly realized he couldn’t manage both venues on his own. Fortunately, David Owen came along.
David had a storied career as a restaurateur and sommelier spanning more than forty years, and ironically, moved to the Coast to retire from restaurant life.
“Clearly, that didn’t work very well,” he says with a laugh.
He initially approached the O’Byrnes about the little shack between the restaurant and the café, which hosted many small start-up artisan businesses.
David thought, “I could make like little wooden ornaments and things out of rocks.”
Laurie asked about his background. He told her, “I did lots of fine dining in the city and ran a couple of restaurants.
They said, ‘Oh you’re a restaurateur. Cool. We need somebody to run [our restaurant].’ I’m going, no, no, no, I don’t want that.”
Laurie recalls, “The first day I met David, I jokingly asked him if he wanted to buy a restaurant. He said no, he didn’t, but a year later he came back and said, ‘Maybe.’”
David became an owner and took over the restaurant in 2012, while Joe managed the café. The funky vibe and eclectic take on family favourites (like a miso-based substitute for hollandaise in their Buddha Benny) better suited Joe’s personal style.
David found the Coast very different from table-turnover obsessed city fine dining. Here, you have to stop fixating on how fast or slow the food arrives. “You have a cold beer and you’re sitting out in the sunshine— why should you care how long your food takes?” says David. “As long as it’s good!”
He added more high-end fare like steak and duck to the restaurant menu, alongside traditional handheld favourites like burgers, and uses local ingredients wherever possible. Much of the produce is brought in from local farms, as well as greens and veggies from the Tiny Farm behind the restaurant. Almost all the menu is gluten-free, or can be made to order that way.
But then covid forced a complete pivot and reset. David is proud they kept take-out going through the entire pandemic.
With inflation, staffing and housing concerns, however, the restaurant has been unable to resume indoor sit-down dinner service in the aftermath of the pandemic. Instead, David focusses on the four Bs of the Gumboot: Breakfast, Burritos, Burgers and Bowls. Customers can get either take-out to enjoy in the outdoor picnic area, or entrée to heat fresh at home along with a bottle of wine from David’s carefully curated all-B.C. wine selection for “a great night out, in.”
After Brock’s death in 2023, Laurie has focused more on music and other projects. She also helps her daughter Ryley with her floral apparel label, Strathcona Stockings, and her Temporary Utopia shop located at the back of the restaurant building. Laurie remains the steward of the Gumboot projects—its knowledge and history keeper.
Laurie, Ryley, David, Joe and their staff are clearly loved and cherished by their community. During our interviews, people stopped on their way to grab food from the café or restaurant, or a shaved ice from the latest incarnation of the shack that sits between the two venues. They exchanged pleasantries while we sat at a shaded picnic bench in the central courtyard, and watched the flowers nod in the breeze and the suncatchers twinkle in the sun. They have each helped nurture the Gumboot into the magical central hub with deep community roots it is today—the true heart of Roberts Creek.
