By Laura Richardson
Restaurateurs Kristen Onderdonk and Tommy Quartararo with their son, Truman, and daughter, Teagan.
Mr. Quartararo grew up in Westchester County, New York, where he started his 20-plus-year career in the restaurant industry after his older brother and brother-in-law opened landmark restaurant Le Jardin du Roi in Chappaqua, of which the younger Quartararo was involved from the conception. “He was made for the industry!” Ms. Onderdonk says.
The spark of the future Key West restaurant dynasty was lit when Ms. Onderdonk and Mr. Quartararo met in New York in 2004, but it took a chance reunion in Key West years later for them to recognize their combined potential. “I officially moved to Key West in 2006,” Ms. Onderdonk says. “My family had been coming to the island since I was 2 years old, so it was always a second home for me. Tommy and I had met in New York through old mutual friends while we both lived there and, five months after I moved to Key West solo, he coincidentally came down on a fishing trip and we connected on a whole new level. We fell in love over the course of that year while he was still living in New York and he finally quit his job and moved to Key West in 2007.”