Emily Mack smiles when she conjures childhood memories of her uncle Robert Fuller, whose middle name, Merrick, she gave to her son. “He was funny and playful and more than willing to get down on your level,” Emily said. She recalled her delight when her uncle played walrus, dangling two long French fries from his mouth; and when Robert steered his Saab with his knees, waving his arms through the sunroof as if on a roller coaster. The prolific Vermont restaurateur took business seriously but never took himself too seriously. One day, Emily said, the car’s interior was peppered with sticky notes all bearing a single word: “restaurant.” When she asked her uncle about them, the owner of several landmark local dining destinations responded, “I don’t know how to spell ‘restaurant,’ and I really think I should.” Robert serving one of his elaborate cake Credit: Courtesy Robert’s straightforward acknowledgment of his failing, and the practical solution, were characteristic. “He was a goal setter,” said Alison Parker, his wife of 30 years, “and he checked them off.” The approach permeated Robert’s personal life and his 40 years as a force in Vermont hospitality. He shepherded Pauline’s Café in South Burlington and Leunig’s Bistro Café in Burlington for almost two decades each, transitioning them successfully to former employees. Leunig’s marches on, though Fuller was devastated when the chef to whom he sold Pauline’s abruptly closed the nearly 50-year-old restaurant in April 2024. Closer to his Lincoln home, Robert marshaled community support to launch the Bobcat Café Brewery in Bristol and partnered on several other restaurants in the Addison County town. “I refer to him as the godfather of chef-restaurant owners,” said Vermont Coffee founder Paul Ralston, who met Robert in the late 1970s after the chef moved to Vermont to run the kitchen at Mr. Up’s Restaurant Pub in Middlebury. “He was hands-on in every part of his restaurants, not just in the kitchen.” From making his high school honor roll after almost flunking out to ending life on his own terms, Robert made a plan and followed it. After five and a half years of prostate cancer treatment, he took medication under Vermont’s “Death With Dignity” law to die at home on February 16. He was 79. Before his death, Robert checked off a long-standing item from his list with the publication of a 294-page memoir last summer. His goal, he explained in the book, was to show that determination and hard work can pay off. A Horse-Drawn Sickle Bar Cutter: Finding My Road to Felicity documents Robert’s life from birth in Ludlow, Mass., on June 8, 1946. He was the middle child of Douglas and Barbara Fuller and, with brother Doug and sister Karen, Robert roamed free-range on the family farm. Robert (left) and his siblings, Doug and Karen, in 1958 Credit: Courtesy Their father took over the family milk-hauling business at a time when the small dairies they serviced were starting to fold. He died in a motorcycle accident in 1959, a week before Robert’s 13th birthday. Robert and his brother had helped their father haul milk cans and taught their mother the route. The loss shattered Robert and also became intertwined with his lifelong passion for motorcycles. Riding behind his father, he wrote, had “carved the deepest, most profound crevices in my brain.” When Robert bought his first motorcycle around age 19, his sister, Karen Farnsworth, recalled that hearing the familiar roar again “was like a chunk of grief fell away.” The notable antique collection Robert later amassed included the same German model on which his father died. A cross-country motorcycle road trip during the Summer of Love in 1967 nudged Robert toward the culinary profession. Returning home, he and his high school buddy didn’t have 35 cents between them to pay the exit toll. Robert resolved to develop a skill set so he could land work anywhere. Robert Fuller on one of his motorcycles in the early 2000s Credit: Courtesy The following year, Robert traveled to Daytona Beach, Fla., and got his first restaurant job in nearby Ormond Beach. “I tried to make myself the best dollar-an-hour dishwasher they ever had,” he recalled in his memoir. When the cook quit, he talked himself into that position and found he liked it. Robert sold his beloved motorcycle to help pay tuition at the Culinary Institute of America, then in New Haven, Conn. He had never heard of lasagna or any sauce other than gravy, but that changed as he mastered classic culinary techniques and worked in high-end kitchens. In an Italian restaurant, Robert learned that lightly toasted garlic added depth to marinara. Under a French pastry chef, he studied the precise art of fine desserts. Another French chef divulged the secrets to steak au poivre, but only after the young cook proved himself worthy by producing buckets of perfectly minced parsley. Robert Fuller fishing in 1970 Robert also absorbed spoken and unspoken lessons on how to run a successful restaurant. Paying his way through school, he worked at a Yale University dining hall where the head chef’s cheerful support motivated everyone to do their best. Over his long career, Robert put that example into practice. “He was always kind and level-headed,” said Amy Bernhardt, an 18-year veteran of Leunig’s and its co-owner since 2024. No detail was too small or task too menial. Robert was the first to notice and change burned-out light bulbs. His niece Ivy Dickey, who worked for a time at Leunig’s, remembered him on his knees repairing cement steps to the kitchen. Bob Conlon, who worked at Leunig’s for 38 years, including a decade as co-owner, said Robert prioritized clear communication and positive vibes — both between employees and between staff and customers, whom he called guests. “Robert always said, ‘You can cook good food at home, but you can’t get that feeling of being in a happy dining room and having somebody wait on you and care,’” Conlon recounted. “He was a hippie who had a good sense of business.” He was a hippie who had a good sense of business.BOB CONLON Conlon was among those who benefited from Robert’s practice of self-financing the sale of his restaurants. In 1982, that was how Pauline Hershenson enabled Robert and his then-wife, Pat, to buy their first restaurant, then called Pauline’s Kitchen. The couple worked themselves to the bone six and a half days a week. They slept in the restaurant on Saturday nights to start prep early for Sunday brunch and barely paid themselves for the first few years. A decade in, Robert had built Pauline’s Café into an upscale dining destination with new ingredients and recipes, such as black truffles and tableside-flamed bananas Foster. He had learned the importance of location from five years of owning Déjà Vu Café on Pearl Street (now Three Needs Tap Room), then one of downtown Burlington’s most elegant restaurants. Meanwhile, Robert and Pat grew apart. Their marriage unraveled, and they eventually divorced. At a Christmas party in 1992, Robert saw Alison Parker across the room and immediately introduced himself. An avid cyclist and skier, Robert was impressed when Alison said she had recently biked from Seattle to Atlantic City, N.J. Robert soon moved into the Lincoln home where Alison lived with her tween son and teenage daughter. Robert never overstepped into a parent role, according to Alison’s daughter, Molly Kim, and he wooed them with crème brûlée from Pauline’s that he “let us torch right in the kitchen.” As he did for countless special occasions, including senator Patrick Leahy’s 50th birthday, Robert baked an elaborate tiered lemon-poppyseed cake for the couple’s wedding celebration in 1995. Even after Robert became vegan for health reasons around 2005, he continued to make “stunning, delicious” cakes that no one guessed were vegan, Molly said. The food lover’s choice to eschew animal products was another example of Robert’s “amazing kind of willpower,” she said. “Like, I will live longer if I switch to a vegan diet, and here we go.” Alison Parker and Robert circa 1992 Credit: Courtesy Robert and Alison, a nurse practitioner, shared a love of food, sports and travel. They skied in Vermont and New Mexico and cycled through France and Southeast Asia. Days of 30 to 50 miles in the saddle were rewarded with vineyard picnics or street-food feasts. The couple also traveled widely in Central America and Mexico, often volunteering. To go on a monthlong educational trip to Ghana in 1997, Robert took himself off the kitchen schedule at Pauline’s. Upon his return, he considered stepping back but instead decided to buy Leunig’s Bistro on Church Street, intrigued by the potential of one of the state’s best restaurant locations. Lacking the cash, Robert reasoned that if he could convince 10 investors to pledge $10,000 each for the down payment, the purchase was probably a good idea. He had no trouble raising the money and immediately embarked on a dining room expansion, which contributed to a 500 percent increase in sales over his 16-year tenure as owner. Similarly, when Robert hatched the idea of launching a brewpub in Bristol, he gauged interest in the concept, and raised money at the same time, by soliciting smaller community investments. He beat his goal almost threefold. The Bobcat Café Brewery opened on Main Street in April 2002 and is still chugging under its fourth set of owners. After Robert retired in 2013 at 68 and Alison a year later, the couple spent more time exploring the United States and Canada by camper van with their bikes strapped on back. They sought out quirky roadside attractions, such as the largest pistachio in the world in Alamogordo, N.M. Robert, who had always loved working with his hands, easily filled his days with woodworking, painting, photography and restoring his antique motorcycles. He taught himself how to weld and made benches from an old Leunig’s metal railing with black locust wood slats. He built his own coffin with butternut from the couple’s backyard. Alison Parker and Robert in 2013 Credit: Courtesy Over the past year, saddened by the negativity swirling through downtown Burlington, Robert took it upon himself to walk around, introduce himself, and photograph business owners and employees for a self-funded marketing campaign. Not surprisingly, he dubbed it the Burlington Better Vibe Coalition. A shared passion for motorcycles brought Robert and retired lawyer Crocker Bennett together. When it came to restoring their collections, Bennett deferred to specialists for some tasks, but his friend was always game to learn a new skill. “Every day for Robert was trying to do something new, either intellectually or manually,” Bennett said. “He really wanted to sink his teeth into everything.” The pair road-tripped around the country and to tracks where they could ride up to 120 miles per hour. “He was a bit of a daredevil,” Bennett said. Alison worried, especially after Robert had a serious crash about a decade ago on a Cooperstown, N.Y., racetrack. He landed in the intensive care unit with a collapsed lung and broken collarbone and scapula. “But he kept riding,” his wife said with resignation. An article about Robert in the 2002 Seven Days Food Issue Credit: Courtesy As always, Robert continued to invest time in his wide web of connections. His sister Karen’s daughters, Ivy and Emily, said Robert often shared books with them. Ivy, who worked in kitchens, treasures one of her uncle’s CIA textbooks with his margin notes. Emily, who studied architecture, said he would sometimes drop by with a book about an architect he’d found interesting. Whenever they got together, Emily recalled, he’d ask, “Is there anything I need to know? Anything you want to tell me?” Jed Davis, who owns two Chittenden County restaurant groups, called Robert a mentor for more than 20 years. Their conversations pivoted from vegan restaurants to religion to motorcycling in Arizona, Davis said. But always, the younger man said, Robert would ask him point-blank if he was making time for family. “I would say yes,” Davis recalled, “and he would say, ‘No, I mean it. Tell me what you’ve done with your family this week.’” Despite his failing health, Robert insisted on coming to Burlington in mid-December for his and Alison’s annual holiday tradition of martinis and oysters (a vegan exception) at Leunig’s. Around the same time, on Robert’s final visit to her Essex home, Karen said her brother was frail but in good spirits. When he saw she was having trouble switching pedals between two bicycles, he got to work. “Within a matter of minutes,” she said, the pedals were changed. Then, Karen said, Robert beat everyone soundly at Uno. A celebration of Robert Fuller’s life will be held on July 25 for family, friends, neighbors and colleagues of Robert and his wife, Alison Parker. Email [email protected] for details and to RSVP. “Life Stories” is a series profiling Vermonters who have recently died. Know of someone we should write about? Email us at [email protected]. The original print version of this article was headlined “Robert Fuller Was ‘the Godfather of Chef-Restaurant Owners’” The post Life Story: Robert Fuller Was ‘the Godfather of Chef-Restaurant Owners’ appeared first on Seven Days. ...read more read less