Great weather!

Utter panic on the weather deck on Tuesday night. The world was close to coming to an end. White-outs, blizzard conditions, billion-mile-an-hour winds, the grim reaper, eskimos. Nothing happened. It got cold. Not a soul goes out to restaurants in winter weather when all of the helpful weather people are shrieking like madmen at their various weather desks/storm centers. Thank you Mark Baden for keeping us up-to-date weather-terrorized.

For the record, I did go out to dinner that night with my mother to a restaurant in Delafield. We lived to tell the tale. No one died in the ensuing not-a-storm-at-all. I had chicken vesuvio. I could have made it thousand times better myself.

Saturday after crappy week.

As everyone who has an opinion will tell you, January is a bad month for restaurants. They will also tell you that downtown has bad parking, that you aren't advertising enough, that no one knows what Caribbean food is, that you aren't giving enough free food away, that the fries are cold (OK, valid point) and on and on. Got a tepid review in the online press on Monday. Tuesday morning my mom's best friend of 54 years died. Coinciding with those 2 things were the worst 2 days, dollar-wise, at Edgar's. I put up the banana palm tree to an assortment of criticisms from the staff, so much so that, as I've said, I moved it to behind a roof where it seems happy. Or at least, the staff is. I had, also, to look forward to an off-premise restaurant event on Friday night where one stands behind a table and doles out food for free to crowds of, what I was sure would be, critical and complaining freeloaders. In fact, by Friday, restaurant numbers were better customer-wise, and despite some difficulty getting the entire preparation done and over to event, it went very well. No one was critical, in fact, our food was very popular. We had people in line for seconds and thirds with people running up as we were closing down.

When I got back to Edgar's that night business had been good and a man and woman and their daughter were there asking for me. He, it turned out, was the GM for a large restaurant group in town and he and his wife were exceptionally flattering and positive. They loved the interior but were amazed particularly by the quality of the food.

So the week ended well. But now I have to go to a funeral.

Sunday morning.

Well, it's Sunday afternoon now. Spent the day in the restaurant. Made vegetarian lasagna, pepper pot soup. Finished the banana tree. It might be not the strongest thing in the world, It's held together with coat hangers. And as it turns out, not the prettiest. I hung the damn thing on Tuesday (it's now Wednesday) and it really didn't look so hot. (Picture to come) and I ended up putting it sorta behind a hut. Fortunately there is a lot of room for things that might not make it front and center in a normal place. The Caribbeany edge to this leaves a lot of that kind of room. Sloppy and not so nice. But still somehow works.

The pepper pot soup was awesome.

Painting as a life style

I started painting in August. With every stroke, the project got more grand, or rather it was the same size, I had just realized how big the place and idea were. At some point early on, I realized I as going to be painting the entire umpteen thousand square feet of wall with a little paint brush meant for canvases. It's OK, I liked the painting part. I started out painting the walls after work for a few hours. I put my life on hold. I'd work, then go downstairs and paint. Gradually, I left work upstairs earlier and worked downstairs later. Until, near the end, I was getting up at 5 and working in the soon-to-be restaurant until 10 at night. I thought that it was hard but that I was nearly done with that part, the restaurant would open and I'd be done.

The manager had hired cooks, bussers, hosts, servers, cleaners. He'd bought plates, pans, pots, silverware, glasses, napkins. Some things I thought were odd but what did I know. I'm not a restaurant guy.

So I had some concepts

And I thought about them for a long time. When it came down to it and I signed the lease I really had nothing on paper. I went into the place the day I signed and drew something on the wall. I felt like I was about 90% there.

That was in the near the end of August.

I had advertised for a GM in July but no one wants to take a job when there is really nothing there but a concept. I had 3 people take the job but disappeared immediately. After I signed the lease I hired someone who would get things going while I painted.

Not getting a thing done

My days are roughly all the same. I go work in the kitchen in the morning. I do prep work since I can't afford to have someone else do it. It turns out that I am fairly good at this and may need to get a second job doing it in retirement when I am flat broke.

I have to follow recipes since these dishes require huge amounts of things and, for instance, a half cup of cinnamon dumped into a vat of BBQ sauce looks like 2 cups to me and that sort of thing can make your food taste differently which is a problem for customers who have come to expect just the half. So I follow recipes and use measuring devices. Once I've made the soup, the sauce, all the desserts, chopped the salads, I am good at covering, labeling. cleaning, too. Then lunch begins and, depending on how many people are there (lately not many being the beginning of January and all) I work the lunch shift. This terrifying exercise is getting less so but still, I work through that pandemonium and after that, grease-coated, go upstairs to my design studio to work on the marketing concepts. Creativity seems so far away from me.

Banana leaves in progress

Spent Sunday making banana leaves to hang from the ceiling. Took considerably longer than I anticipated, not done yet. Could be sorta cool looking if I get them done soon. I can't imagine life without a glue gun.

Lessons learned:

And not in any particular order. Snow means no one in your restaurant. Packers game means no one in your restaurant, unless you're a sports bar, which my restaurant is not. Though, I did have the game on and there were people eating, no one was watching except the servers and the bartender. Anyway, I'm pissed at the Packers since they lost to Chicago which is irrelevant here, I understand, but hey, it's my blog.

In the beginning

The restaurant below my office was going out of business. I knew why. It had bad service. Really bad service. The food was OK. But the interior had absolutely no style whatsoever and the logo sucked bongwater.

So the landlord asks me if I want to open a restaurant. No thanks, I tell him.

Foolish choices

I opened a restaurant a little more than 2 months ago.

It's very difficult. I had no idea.

Starting a restaurant

Everyone says "This was always your dream," it's a nice thought but it wasn't. Not that I didn't want a restaurant, I just didn't want it to be like this. This was not my dream.