‘I started losing myself’

Qui brought in world-class talent and attempted to chase ideas he had encountered on his travels. Chef Jorge Hernandez is one of the chefs Qui hired to help guide his first restaurant. The Texas native, who worked for celebrity chef Jose Andres for seven years in Washington, said Qui’s tremendous talent, vision and desire to experiment excited him.

“He made us all believe in the best possible way what he saw was the potential for that project,” Hernandez said. “He wanted to be unique and be the best. When you hear him talk about his belief in his team, it’s hard not to love him as a chef.”

But Qui’s explorations had sent him down winding paths that led him further from himself. Visits to some of the world’s best restaurants left him confused, not inspired.

“I started losing myself more and more. I didn’t know what or who I was supposed to be in a way. For a long time I associated myself with what my food was and working and cooking and being a chef,” Qui said. “I started resenting because I felt like I didn’t like what I was producing. It wasn’t good enough, or I thought I wanted a certain thing at Qui but it was things I didn’t understand.”

You could see Qui’s indecisiveness in the restaurant. The menu bounced from elevated a la carte dining with nods to his Filipino heritage to a fixed menu, then back to more casual offerings. One month there was an elaborate tasting menu with dozens of offerings; the next would see an emphasis on happy-hour snacks. Qui’s confusion and struggle were apparent to Hernandez.

“He almost didn’t believe how good he was. I know that sounds weird. But ultimately I know he had a lot of self-doubt,” Hernandez said. “We weren’t able to find our true voice because he wasn’t able to find his true voice.”

Instead of staying in the kitchen cooking food with personal meaning, Qui spent much of his time performing the expected duties of a celebrity chef and taking on more and more projects as his insecurities grew. He drifted further away from his staff and his restaurant. Hernandez said he eventually felt like he was simply working at Qui’s restaurant, not working with him. That’s when it was time to leave.

June Rodil joined the Qui team in 2012 and served for two years as the director of operations at Qui and East Side King. She said she saw the strain all of the obligations were putting on Qui. The changes were jarring, and the staff had difficulty staying motivated and believing in Qui’s vision.

“I felt like he was pushing so hard to be able to do everything and still be regular Paul,” Rodil said. “With the onset of everybody knowing who he was from winning ‘Top Chef,’ he had to be Paul that was on all the time, no matter what.”

Rodil, who also worked with Qui at Uchi from 2007 to 2010, describes Qui at that time as eager and a hard worker who took criticism well. She said she noticed signs of trouble earlier in his career — “I would say yellow lights, not red lights. He kept it separate from his work.” But things progressively got worse as Qui was opening his restaurant. The chef followed 18-hour workdays by going out at night.

“A normal body does not go that far. I could definitely see the stress,” Rodil said.

Rodil, who recently opened her own eponymous restaurant on South Congress Avenue with the McGuire Moorman Hospitality group, knows the strains of the industry and said outside forces combined with Qui’s own expectations to create intense pressure on her friend.

“A lot of Paul’s personality is that he wants to be appreciated and he wants to be loved and do well but he doesn’t think that he can actually make people happy,” Rodil said. “If you don’t have the inherent knowledge that you have the ability to do that, you are not going to be happy, and you are going to continue to push, push, push.”