Caption: Free Press Staff WriterYvonne Gill, the chef from New Zealand, had a simple ambition: to cook and serve delicious, fresh food in warm and welcoming surroundings."I don't want the most elegant, elegant cuisine in the world," Gill told the Free Press in 1980. "My concept of running a restaurant is to have the most comfortable, convivial type of place."In the past 12 years, Gill became a major culinary influence on this meat-and-potatoes town - by popularizing quiche, crepes, a dazzling array of pastries, the ? cafe and gourmet musicales coming a wondrous ? with chamber music or jazz.She also trained some of Detroit's best chefs.But she wasn't content to cook and teach. According to one of her former associates, Gill wanted all of Detroit to taste her cooking and to know ti was made by Yvonne.Her dream failed.TODAY, THE SUM of her efforts are a list of debts in radish-red file folders at U.S. Bankruptcy Court in ? and two abandoned businesses in Birmingham - Twee? Cafe, her celebrated restaurant, and around the ? Yvonne's Magasin de Cuisine, her glittering little store ? sold gourmet carryout food.Last week, Gill filed for bankruptcy. Efforts to sell ? restaurant and store failed. (Restaurant owner John Laffr? says Gill wanted $300,000 cash for Tweeny's alone). Her assets - the most valuable is probably Tweeny's liquor license, estimated to be worth about $100,000 - will be sold to the highest bidder to repay, in part, at least $778,000 of debts.Gill, a chick, imposing woman of 39, gambled everything on the success she wanted so badly, even her beloved blu? frame house in Beveryly Hills, built in 1897. In January 1982 she pledged the house and all of the equipment, furniture and inventory at Tweeny's toward a $225,000 loan to the store that opened in July 1981.Friends say there's no story in what happened to Gill, that the bankruptcies are just another statistic in this long bitter recession. After all, pheasant under glass and homemade raspberry vinegar at $16.50 a bottle are expendable in hard times. Michigan restaurants will show the lowest sales growth in the country this year, according to the National Restaurant Association.
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