Paulie’s Counter Culture – Tim Martin

Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Tim is a huge Cardinals and Blues (World Champion Blues that is) fan. He began his restaurant career in college at a Sushi bar, fell in love with food and beverage and decided to change his major to Hospitality Management.

Emphasizing on the back of house, Tim started his first out of college gig with Hillstone Restaurant Group as an assistant culinary manager. That job landed him in New York City, the Hamptons, New Jersey and Memphis before eventually transferred to Houston, all within 2 years!

In Houston, Tim decided to make a change go back to smaller locally run restaurants and become the General Manager of Drexel House in Highland Village. The owner of Drexel House was opening some new concepts in San Antonio and Houston (First Course Salad Kitchen and Merchant Houston respectively) and Tim was able to help by moving into a management consulting role and overseeing each location.

This transition lead to more front of house time which ultimately led to Tim’s passion for wine. Tim had known Chris Poldoian from their days together at Hillstone here in Houston and Chris happened to have an opening at Camerata @ Paulies Wine Bar. One thing led to another and now he’s working at both Paulies and Camerata.

The next chapter for Tim will be helping open the second location of Camerata in the Garden Oaks / Oak Forest area. But until then he’ll be slinging coffee and pasta at Paulies as well as fine wine and charcuterie next door at Camerata!