Well HELLO there!!!  What a week, or maybe more...

The new restaurant is open. The test services went well, the opening went better than expected. Its been ugly at times...like throw yourself off a friggin bridge ugly through some of the lunch services, and most of the staff is solid, some are not...but that'll all work itself out i the next couple weeks, the criticism backlash has not begun yet, WIN!  Overall I'm liking the store, I'm digging the crew and I'm feeling pretty positive. Not to say we havent had some hurdles throughout the week.....like a manager going MIA, having to replace 3 others on the fly, a huge event or 2 coming up in 3 weeks at another store. Oiy. What doesnt kill you makes you stronger.....right?!? Lets hope so anyway...

But I did not come here to talk about work...I came here because something Mister said to me the other night and the way he said has been lingering in my melon...so I wanna let it out.

Since leaving The Wizard Mister has been holding down a bar/serving gig he really doesnt particularly care for, but its money.  The idea was for him to do that while he found something else.  He kind of stumbled upon an upstart opportunity as a brewer that on the surface looked promising and intriguing.  Long story short I dont believe it is. And we have gone back & forth about it a few times, I still just see FAIL written all over this thing. His argument is that its experience. Mine is experience at what cost if you & your name are tied to a failure. They want to put him under contract and the terms were just absurd, they have not at this point been able to show him any kind of sales forecasts or estimated revenues and I just generally believe the people doing this are completely in over their head and not in a way that will end in anything positive.  I generally have a pretty good gut about these kinds of things too. But regardless we were talking about this some more because another opportunity came up back in good ol restaurant management and we were adding that option and blah blah blah we came back around to what WE want to be when we grow up....

We and another friend of ours want to open a brewpub. Adding this friend into the mix makes the 3 of us pretty much a brewpub all-star team if I do say so myself. With Mister brewing, me cooking and B running the bar...its the perfect combo, proven at that. And we may have someone interested in financing us as well.  Very preliminary, very very, but we have to start somewhere, right? But the potential for this chance over shadows this FAIL brewery idea. At least to me it does anyway...

Which brought us around to the "experience" aspect of this whole dilemma...my suggestion was to tell them he would test batch their beers at $XXX per batch, outline exactly what they would be getting for their money, when he got the beer as they wanted it he would finalize the recipe and sell it to the for $XXXX or something to that effect. I'm NOT saying to completely ditch them, I AM saying do not hop into bed with them...just make out with them in the parking lot. His counter was blah blah blah commercial brewing experience- but its being contract brewed elsewhere, so I fail to see the relevance of that argument. Then I think I really heard him for the first time. In not so many words what he was basically saying was he was intimidated by the idea of working with beer on such a huge scale.  Like not the product, the equipment. 

So wait...he can make fantabulous beers 5 gallons at a time. And the process doesnt change with the increase in volume...like the principals stay the same, its just a matter of having to do some different things with different equipment but all of this equipment comes with bazillions of manuals and shit like that. So I didnt understand the problem, this, to me, seems a minor inconvenience, but far from an insurmountable one. Pretty minor actually.  So I broke it down a little different...I know how to make a gallon of marinara, which in turn means I can make 5 gallons of marinara pretty easily, which also means I can make 5000 gallons of it given a large enough pot and the ability to figure out how to get it hot and cool it all down. And he looks at me and says I'm an asshole.

I'm an asshole? Why am I an asshole? I'm just pointing out that as intelligent human beings it cant be all that difficult to learn what is necessary to large scale produce beer. No harder than me learning how to use full scale production equipment at my production kitchen...I had no clue what half that shit was or how to use it, now I do because I learned.  With this incredulous look on his face he calls me an asshole again, laughing mind you, and then says something to the effect of "is there anything you think you cant do?!?!? If someone said Mindy build a fucking rocket youd just build a fucking rocket and I have no doubt youd make that fucker fly one way or another!" and I was all like well, yeah?!? I still didnt get it until he said something about my confidence and how if I want to do something I just do it and keep doing it until I figure it out and get good at it, and then I was all like aaaaaaahhhh *DING*. So to me what seemed a minor inconvenience but not really an issue was apparently a larger hurdle for him, and to hear it somewhat trivialized like that was helpful to him...I think, I hope.

I cant even imagine the awesome that would be our bar. I really cant. And that makes it even better. Of course there are a bazillion things to talk about & figure out but none of them insurmountable, all of it important and every bit of it exciting.  But this is the idea that feels right, so we shall see where it goes...it would be my effing dream job!!  And I think the bit of perspective I lent to Mister also helped him realize that he's just as capable as me and can learn how to do what he needs to to have his dream job...win win win! Now if only I had a magic damn wand to bibbity bobbety boo us to when its all real life & not a cloudy mass of undefined ideas.

Moral of the story - sometimes even a HUSBAND can say something brilliant....when more drunk than sober....and when horribly annoyed with his persistent wife ;-)

My Current Whereabouts ;-)

So I really should be working on menus for the mock service in 48 hours...but I'll get there eventually. Its been awhile and after a truly shitty day I had an epically awesome day and wanted to share.

I'm in the midst of opening a new restaurant.  Its not mine by money, but it is by job title.  I'll be fair - I'm loving this. This is the part of what I do that I dig. There are parts of it that blow goats, and parts that are an adrenaline rush and parts that put me in a blind rage...and I LOVE it. I am constantly moving, I am organizing, overseeing, bossing around, training and dealing with it all.  And I am good at it. Very good at if I may say so myself, and I think if you asked anyone who has done it with me they would agree. I dont freak out, if I am unhappy you know why and exactly what must be done to fix it, its the only place in this world that I can juggle (i can barely walk & chew gum at the same time in real life) but there I can juggle a gazillion things.  Ask anyone who has ever been in charge of a restaurant opening...there is nothing like it. There are so many things that must be perfectly conducted with so many people the stress is unreal...but in my opinion healthy stress to a point in that its see a problem solve a problem stress. Either way I love it. So as miserable as I have been over the last year and as far behind as I am falling with the other 4 restaurants at the moment and the bullshit HR shit awaiting me at the end of this opening I love it now, and thats enough for me.

So about 2 weeks ago the boss handed me the reigns. It was my turn to do my thing. Hence I haven't been around a whole lot.  Through the course of every project there is the first month or so that is his. Its his job to get it built. He has to provide me a space...and I am very involved in the development of the space - it just do it via the walk into a meeting and say "yeah I dont like that, move it over there and give me one more fryer, that isnt enough burner space and that oven is ridiculous.  Get me this oven, add this over here and move that to that wall to make this flow better." along with gems like "thats hideous and there is no way we are using that fabric on booths" & "well I can understand why you would think that is a good idea but as the human responsible for making that happen i disagree and think we should....." and with an amazing designer he builds me a space.  About 3 weeks out he starts to back off and let me turn it into a restaurant.  He gets to keep playing with the contractors & builders, I have to get the staff, stuff & rest of it all together.  I handle everything but the bar menus.  And we are 48 hours from our first Mock service....KAPOW!!! We haz a restaurant!

And I'm excited. The Wizard let me go a direction with the menu that I didnt think he would.  Its not a complete departure from our menus, but it is definitely a departure.  I opened up the vegetarian & vegan options a lot which I think is great, I cut back the boring pizza menu & dressed it up, I took traditional yinzer salads & made them more yinzer-chic with some less traditional options and changed our more normal meat/starch/veg entrees for a more tapas style-small plate with the majority of it being chef driven and rotated out often with fresh, seasonal, local items.  The menu is markedly smaller than any of the other restaurants and tends toward a more foodie feel while still maintaining our core.   I couldnt believe he took the first draft and said great...fix some formatting issues for me and we are good. I was prepared to have to work for this drastic of a change; The Wizard is nothing if not stuck in his ways generally. But he liked it. And didnt make me do much tweaking to it at all. Stunned. Still. And the damn things are printing as I type. I think we are going to knock his socks off. And I cant fucking wait. He did the same thing with some of the smaller pieces of equipment. Whatever I wanted I was allowed to get. Granted I didnt take severe advantage...but I got a ton of really nice pots & pans and a few toys for the kitchen that make me happy. I almost wish this kitchen was mine. Almost.

We start our first service Friday at 2pm. We are having 4 invitation only mock-service seatings on Friday & Saturday, we are closed Sunday and open for business Monday at 11am. 98% of everything will be perfect (Frigging cable company is refusing to do the install until next week. Thanks Comcast...way to make it easy to do business) and we will be about 10 weeks from demolition to opening the doors. I am sure Ill take some pics, or have the Mister anyway, over the weekend.  The place is beautiful. It takes the best features of our last 2 stores and combines them in a beautiful space. With but 1 exception. And anyone who follows me on twitter knows about the fucking chairs. We are going to have a lounge area in the front and these hideous pink floral apolstered ugly ass chairs appeared there that are a part of this furniture grouping.  Im unhappy with just about every piece of furniture in that area.  There is this awesomely tacky 70s gold couch that is so awful its fabulous...but everything else is total garbage. I had my tantrum about it. I blatantly called it all ugly and just ridiculous. I plead my case. I got mad...I laughed at him. Didnt matter. I know when to stop, so I agreed on a compromise. We would revisit the area in 6 months. Hes afraid we are going to need it for additional tables, I disagree.  If it is going to stay a lounge we pick out some new pieces, if its needed as tables we get the tables. That was the only compromise I was going to get...so I took it. I apologize to everyone who has to look at this furniture...but it really wasnt my fault.

Ill prob post some pics after the dinners. I'm nervous...its always nerve racking for me to make a new menu and have to deal with the feedback. I've eaten it, I know if it is good or not...but its still trying on the self assurance those first few nights out of the gate. I think my KM is going to be a bundle of nerves, I think hes going to freak out a little...I can fix that. I think my GM & AGM are also going to loose it a bit, but they'll snap back, they both will just be reminded that what we are doing is the easy part...running restaurants is what we do, and I picked them to do it because they are good at it. All the getting ready shit is the hard part...and then they'll remember and we will trudge through the questions & confusion. Honestly cant wait...this is the pay off for all the work...seeing it all work the way it is supposed to.

Oh what a crazy trip the last month has been...but its almost here.

We also have one hell of a garden rolling at the moment....Im gonna have to remember to post some pics of that too. We haz a broccoli!!! And tomatoes, brussel sprouts, peppers, basil, lettuces, asparagus, garlic, shallots, potatoes, cauliflower, a bunch of herbs....its a very happy garden!

Hope you all have a great weekend...Ill be hollering myself hoarse & loving every minute of it I hope in a busy restaurant kitchen! Woot!!