Boozefish owner Maija Diethelm-Floyd is bound for France, selling her restaurant

No one expects to find Paris along Westport Road, especially as it bends away from the night lights toward the state line. But for 12 years, Maija Diethelm-Floyd has made her address along this stretch an unlikely portal to the 7th arrondissement. Boozefish Wine Bar (1511 Westport Road), with its cozily narrow space and dark woodwork and moody lighting, is as close to Left Bank leisure as midtown (or any part of the metro) gets – casual in the afternoon and seductive at night.

Diethelm-Floyd and I have the room mostly to ourselves the afternoon that she tells me about her own Parisian vision: one that includes her living there.

“In the next five years,” she says, “I see myself in the south of France, Aix-en-Provence to be exact, with Steve [Floyd, her husband], having lots of new adventures, reconnecting with family, and eating local foods and drinking fabulous French wines.”
Diethelm-Floyd has thrown open the bar’s back door to let the day’s waning sunlight flood a table spread with papers and bills and notes. Sipping a cup of coffee, she picks up a folder and shows me her original business plan. It’s a good plan, one for a bistro that would become vital to a circle of neighborhood regulars. Now she’s writing a denouement for that business plan. She wants Boozefish’s evolution to continue – she just doesn’t need to see it for herself.

“This has been an incredible journey for me,” she says. “But I’m ready to start another adventure. I’d like to help another young restaurateur come in here and create his or her own vision in this space – someone who is ready to start his or her own story.”

Not that a buyer would much mind simply writing herself into Diethelm-Floyd’s tale. She celebrated Boozefish’s 12th anniversary last October, an occasion that – given that this address defeated the efforts of its previous two tenants – was as much a triumph as a milestone. Over those dozen years, Boozefish (“The name comes from a word we used in college to describe students who drank with fervor,” Diethelm-Floyd says) became a reliable destination for people who like good wine, eclectic cuisine and no pretense.

As she recaps her original business plan for me, Diethelm-Floyd credits local veteran restaurateur Forbes Cross (founder of the Michael Forbes Grill) with giving her advice and confidence back then. “At that time, I had a three-year plan to open my own wine bar,” she says. She was 25, a recent graduate of Kansas State University. “And suddenly I was opening a place far ahead of my schedule.”

A few basics were in place: that business plan with, she says, a logo that she’d designed in college. “But I was so naïve,” she tells me. “I thought I’d just find a space, get a liquor license and open the doors.”

But that’s essentially what Diethelm-Floyd and her original business partner, Caine Kreimendahl (she later purchased his interest in the restaurant), did, having leased the former O’Connor’s Pub on the outer ring of Westport.

“The interior had this beautiful antique bar and some beautiful fixtures,” Diethelm-Floyd says. “But it required a lot more work than we expected. We had to rip up carpeting, tear out a rotting wall. We did most of the work ourselves.”

Diethelm-Floyd’s vision for an intimate, sexy boîte emphasizing a wide variety of wines called for a level of sophistication foreign to the turn-of-the-century version of this neighborhood, with its function-over-style mix of hair salons, gas stations and Budweiser bars. But Boozefish was an immediate success. “For the first seven years, we were far exceeding our expectations for sales,” Diethelm-Floyd says. “And then the economy tanked in 2008, and it took a few years to get back in the groove.”

To do that, Diethelm-Floyd refined her business plan, with an eye toward becoming, she says, “more committed to being part of the community.”

“We began using more locally sourced ingredients for our kitchen,” she says. “And I developed partnerships with local artists and started hosting ‘shop local’ events at the restaurant, where customers could dine and purchase locally made jewelry and art.”

Two years ago, however, Diethelm-Floyd began formulating another three-year plan. This time, the goal was to leave behind midtown, the Midwest – the United States. By then, a regular named Steve Floyd, who stopped into Boozefish for a drink shortly after the restaurant opened and never left, had become her husband. After the couple’s 2008 wedding, they traveled to France, where Diethelm-Floyd’s father, Alsace-born Yves Diethelm, lives. (She was raised in Hutchinson, Kansas, by her mother and her stepfather.) Yves and his second wife fêted the newlyweds at a reception in southern France. “It was an amazing experience,” Diethelm-Floyd says. “Everything was done in traditional Provence style.”

The opportunity to spend time with her father and his family led Diethelm-Floyd to an epiphany. “I realized: This is where I want to live now, and this is the time to do it,” she says. “I wanted to reconnect with my European roots, and I had to be determined enough to take that next step.

“I have a few ideas of what I can do when I move there,” adds Diethelm-Floyd, who holds dual citizenship. “My degree is in hotel and restaurant management. I’d like to stay in some facet of the hospitality industry. I love being around people and developing relationships. That’s been one of the greatest benefits of my years at Boozefish, developing friendships with my customers. That will be the hardest part about leaving.”

First, though, there’s the not-easy matter of finding a new owner. Not just any buyer will do. Diethelm-Floyd is proud of the food served at her bistro, and she says it’s time for someone to take the menu to the next level. “This place really needs to have a chef-owner to put his or her own stamp and identity on the place,” she says. “After 12 years, I feel like I need to let someone else have that opportunity.”

No buyer has come knocking yet, but Diethelm-Floyd says she’s “not on a serious timeline.”

“I don’t need to start packing now. But I want to put the word out there that I’m ready to start the next part of my journey, so that someone who wants to own their own bistro can begin the next step of theirs.”