Hello food world!! I want to apologize for not being very active as of late to all 4 of you. As most of you know I run a restaurant in my spare time...... Spare time meaning I would love to spare some time to have more of a devotion to this blog. You see running a restaurant takes time.. It takes effort. It takes passion, patience, dedication, energy, love, tears, blood, thick skin, tolerance, urgency, seeing the big picture while being focused on the most technical details, picking your battles while raging a war, fighting a war while maintaing your peace and being at peace when well.... You basically crawl into bed and start all over again. The restaurant industry is for crazies. You cannot be a sane person in this business. It can be a total contradiction from one moment to the next. I mean it's like naming your dog stay, and telling to come here. You have to be head strong to make it. You have to have the perfect balance between hard work, performer, situation awareness, multi-tasker, bull-shitter, baby sitter and care giver. You must be confident while humble, because this business will humble you. It will curse the day you were born and crush you. It will bring you to your knees...... and while you are on your knees you will thank God for this amazing job. Because moments later there is a smile that gets lit up by a slightly dim dome light as you see heat rising from a ceramic bowl filled with pasta. You catch a conversation about a great report card that was brought home. You see a table celebrating a return visit to a Dr.s office that broke the great news of another year cancer free. Birthdays, engagements, anniversaries, babies, promotions, graduations......LIFE. Life happens inside restaurants. It's a huge responsibility to run a restaurant. I mean besides the food and service aspect of it. It's a huge responsibility because our neighborhood and community depends on us to make thier special day.......well special. I mean not just a birthday or a wedding day. I mean just an old fashioned Monday special. Personally I cannot tell how many amazing people I have had the honor of meeting just from running a restaurant. I'm not talking about (enter name dropping here). Yeah, there are lot's of country stars and athletes, song writers and producers that I've met. But I'm talking about Ruth, who is 86 years old and eats angel hair with garlic and oil with a glass of merlot and has stories that will have your stomach aching from laughing so hard. How about Joe who was the conductor for Elvis and the Rat Pack. There isn't any one cooler then Joe. I met Matt who is a world war II vet that has been to 40 countries and loves Sausage and meatballs. I actually got the chance to tell a World war II vet thank you for thier service and sacrifice.. Or how about Anita and Dan married for over 45 years. They came in every Sunday at 4 pm on the dot like clock work. They would sit at Table 44 which is right in front of our pizza oven . I would tease and flirt with Anita about her hats. I loved her hats. You see Anita was fighting cancer for a long time. She had beaten it before and was doing great. Anita loved red sangria. She loved when I would bring her little samples of new things we were working on. She had the best spirit and just wanted to hear about my family and how my day was. How amazing is that. Anita is going through chemo and she wants to hear about my day. She had the best laugh and spirit. If I was having a rough Sunday lunch shift I could always count on them to come in and kind of get me going again. What an amazing woman Anita was. This went on for years and then one Sunday afternoon Dan came in alone. I had hesitated when I asked Dan, where is Anita? Dan put his arms around me and sobbed Anita is gone.. My heart was broken. We both stood there in the lobby crying as I was holding up this 84 year old man who had just lost his world he had said softly to me that coming here on Sundays was what Anita always looked forward to every week. It was her special place. There are so many people, families that running a restaurant has enabled me to meet. Life happens everyday in between those four walls. What I always knew finally came to light. This is more then just a job or a career. We make memories. We are a distraction and time out from everyone's day and we owe it to them to create an amazing experience. That's what these people have done for me. They have created amazing memories that I will never forget. Life in this business moves extremely fast. I have been inside of a restaurant for more then half of mine.
So, this wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I decided to return to blogging on here again. This part of the blog is really for other experiences and healthy dishes that are offered at other restaurants. I'll get to that. This one was about soul food. Bon Appetite.
