Go figure

Thursday was about the best day we've ever had at Edgar's. Huge lunch crowd, I visit every table. Everyone was happy, then the afternoon was fairly brisk, as afternoons go. Huge after work crowd at the bar. Then a good dinner crowd. So I figure. Great!! Good weather, good sales, tomorrow's Friday, nice weather expected. So Friday comes around. 3 tables at lunch. Seriously. Not a soul, except for Greg, an across-the-street regular, who came in for dinner. NO ONE. I can't take that. I was a miserable ball of anxiety. Just standing there with nothing to do. I left at 5:58. There was no one in the restaurant.

At 6:45 michael the manger calls me at home (this never happens), my sister is there. I'd completely forgotten. I felt so ashamed and miserable. I tell myself it will be OK but am racked with doubt and misery. 

I came in this morning to do my taxes, well, organize them so someone else can do them. I look at the Micros system for the total from yesterday, it was whopping!!! They had a huge dinner hour that started at 7 and ended at 10.

Winter of anxiety

Today was a really good lunch in the restaurant. The place was full and it felt like a real restaurant. That's a big issue for me, feeling like a real place. But it's February 21st. These kinds of days are few and far between. That's going on 4 months of mostly feeling inadequate and anxious. And it's because of the weather (at least I hope that's the problem). There are other reasons, of course, no one eats out the day before Thanksgiving, no one eats out on a voting day, but really, no one eats out when the weather is bad or there is the hint of snow. And there have been a lot more than hints of snow this winter. The snow has been more along the lines of getting smacked in the face with the back of a shovel in your face than a hint. My balcony one morning. One of many mornings with new snow.

Dead or dying

My 20+ year old bay laurel tree is either dead or dying. I'm sick about it and it's my fault. It died of neglect since I have been so busy with the restaurant. It was nearly 7 feet tall. I noticed the leaves were shriveled up. Like so many things in my life I've had to neglect a lot to make this restaurant work. I'm not sure how I compensate for the things I've left behind in the frantic pace of what I am doing. In the meantime, I cut the tree back and hope it's still alive and will get new leaves. This is what it looks like now. You can see all the detritus on my dining room table in the background. Poor thing.

The wait

It is just a waiting game. I think the food is good. The interior is really nice. I painted it myself. the service is mostly good. Though it's hard to know to know for sure since I am mostly wringing my hands worrying about the service. When I went out to dinner earlier this week in the end-of-the-world weather, the service was iffy at best. I had to ask a different server to get me another glass of wine. It can't be that hard to see if people are done with their drinks and ask if they'd like another, though apparently it is since it is an ongoing problem at most restaurants. So now I'm waiting for customers to come in. I'm not sure if it will be good or bad. I'd hate to be overwhelmed with people who were then unhappy because it took 2 hours to get dinner. or worse, lunch. Gotta have a prompt lunch.

This is the interior.

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.