Peter Michael Yagjian, a restaurateur whose Mount Vernon Stable and Saloon brought baby back rib platters to Charles Street, died of a heart attack Tuesday at his Fells Point home. He was 64.
Customers said that at his restaurant's peak, lines would form at its door on weekend nights. Mr. Yagjian, as the host and greeter, would dart around tables trying to accommodate one more party in his crowded and noisy bistro that featured a reproduction Egyptian mummy case and other eclectic decorations.
Born in Roxbury, Mass., he attended the Boston Latin School and earned an English degree at Northeastern University. Family members said he wanted to meet author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. so he looked him up in a Barnstable, Mass., phone book and wound up having coffee with him.
His first job was selling Smith-Corona Marchant typewriters. He was assigned to be Baltimore's district sales manager and later worked for the old Maryland National Bank with its early automated teller machines. By the late 1970s, he formed a head-hunting business, Alexander & Michaels.
In a 1979 Baltimore Sun article, he described himself as an "academic of the 1960s who would like to lead a blue jeans lifestyle." While recruiting executives to work in Baltimore, he said he ran his business like the television show "Mission Impossible," "assembling the right mix of lawyers, bankers and accountants to make recommendations to help keep a failing restaurant or store afloat."
After doing this type of consulting for the old Sh'nanigans restaurant in Cockeysville and becoming its general manager, he abandoned the head-hunting job and fulfilled a dream to open a stylish French bistro in the Mount Vernon section. He and a partner, Steve Brennan, opened Pinocchio at 909 N. Charles St. in 1984.
"We had been on a vacation to St. Maarten and fell in love with a little restaurant there called Pinocchio," said his wife of 30 years, the former Lorraine Bieger, who worked alongside him and plans to keep the business open.
The French recipes and white tablecloth concept brought food reviewers' praise, but the restaurant did only fair business.
"It was ahead of its time for where Baltimore was then," his wife said. "Food was Peter's conduit, but his occupation was to make people happy and give them a respite from their day."
