Memorial service set for Five Spice Cafe owner who helped create Burlington's foodie era

Cheryl Herrick paused for a moment when asked to describe her father, Jerry Weinberg, who owned the Five Spice Café in Burlington.

“Profane,” she said of Weinberg, who died Jan. 2 at age 79.

“He really liked to swear,” Herrick said, “but part of that is speaking directly and honestly. He loved hospitality in a sort of New York and old-world way that made the restaurant a special place for reasons far beyond the food. It was this sense of really wanting to be connected with people - and more, that food was the vehicle for doing that.”

Five Spice Café, the Asian restaurant that Weinberg and his wife, Ginger Hobbs, ran from 1985 until they sold it in 2006, preceded – and one could argue, helped create – Burlington’s reputation as a foodie town. A memorial service for Weinberg will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 26, at the First Unitarian Universalist Society in Burlington.

Jerry Weinberg, ‘a passionate person’

The obituary for Weinberg that ran in the Burlington Free Press touched upon that complex personality his daughter alluded to, calling him “a sling-shotter of squirrels, movie fan, radio show caller, teacher, writer, labor organizer, iconoclast, profanity-spewer, lover of jazz, generous spirit” and many more descriptive terms.

Another obituary that ran on the website of The Revolutionary Communist Progressive Labor Party noted that Weinberg, who died after nine months in hospice care, “was known for his withering sarcasm directed against all the agents of the ruling class.”

Herrick, a former freelancer for the Free Press, said her father had a rough life growing up in Brooklyn and ran away from home as a young man. That experience, she said, made Weinberg sensitive to the plight of the homeless. He and Hobbs were known for welcoming those down on their luck into their restaurant to use the bathroom, get a cup of coffee or enjoy a hot meal.

“I think I’m a better person for being homeless,” Weinberg told the Free Press in 2003. “I’m a passionate person when it comes to causes. I try to stand up for the right thing.”

Five Spice Café shaped palates

Weinberg got into Asian cooking after Hobbs bought him a wok when living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the late 1960s. He studied with influential Chinese chefs in New York, including Florence Lin, who The Washington Post referred to upon her 2017 death as “the doyenne of Chinese cooks in America.”

Herrick grew up in New Jersey, and her parents regularly came to Vermont for vacations in Mendon, near Rutland. She said her father dreamed of opening a restaurant in the state, and when a former coffee shop on lower Church Street in Burlington became available, they pounced on it and moved the family to Vermont.

Soon after the Five Spice Café began in the mid-1980s, Herrick said, residents of all backgrounds came in to find Asian food items such as tempeh and now-common spices to augment their home cooking. Weinberg’s new restaurant, it turns out, was helping to shape the palates of people living in a state that a generation later is known for its adventurous cuisine.

“He was aware that we did that,” Herrick said. More importantly, she added, Five Spice was run by friendly people who knew how to translate the meaning of the food they were presenting.

Weinberg thought back on those early days of educating Vermont diners in another 2003 Free Press article. “We even had an ad that said, ‘What the hell is dim sum?’” he recalled.

‘Bonnie Raitt called me honey’

Situated around the corner from the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, the Five Spice Café became the de facto after-show hangout of concert attendees and, often, the performers themselves.

“Bonnie Raitt called me honey once,” Herrick said.

Customers, she said, were devoted to the restaurant. “People who worked there, people who ate there, there was some very special thing that happened there,” according to Herrick.

In 2006, Weinberg and Hobbs, who by then were divorced but remained amicable, decided to sell the Five Spice Café.

“They were just ready to be done,” Herrick said. “It’s a long time to run a restaurant.” The building that housed the Five Spice Café burned in 2007, and the new building at 175 Church St. is now home to the Istanbul Kebab House.

Herrick expects Saturday’s memorial service to have a complex tone not unlike that of her father’s life.

“I think that people will laugh and cry,” she said. “Then we’re going to feed them some good food.” Herrick plans to bring the peanut sauce.

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at 660-1844 or bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com. Follow Brent on Twitter at www.twitter.com/BrentHallenbeck.