Every Sunday we "burn off" the grill, meaning we put a sheetpan on the grill face-down and turn it on high. This builds up the heat within the grill itself and burns off all the excess grease and little bits that drop down into the ceramic briquette area all week long. Once it burns off for a while, there's just some white powder left which is very easy to clean out. This keeps the grill running nice and hot and results in less white smoke coming off of it while we're cooking burgers all week.

Anyway, this morning, as I pulled into the parking lot, with my car windows up, I smelled the grill-burning-off smell and immediately knew that Oscar was inside and working, remembered that it's Sunday, and thought that the vent fan must be doing it's job pretty well for me to smell that all the way out here.

That momentary thought process, where I smelled something and drew a number of conclusions about what was going on in my kitchen is a perfect embodiment of what the job of cooking and running a restaurant is all about.

People think cooking is about following recipes well, but it's not. It's about being in touch with your senses and then understanding the signs they're telling you. I am constantly in touch with the sounds, sights, smells, and feels of everything in the restaurant.

I don't notice the ice machine above the fountain machine running, but if it stops running, things seem too quiet and I'll go investigate. I can tell from the sound when all the liquid has evaporated from a pan of sauteing onions or mushrooms and they go from stewing to frying. And I can hear it from across the room. While I'm talking to someone.

Not only have I learned to smell something burning, but I can usually tell *what* in particular is burning, just by the specific smell. Burning toast, or marshmallows, or grill-grease-burnoff have decidedly different burning smells.

This is the stuff that cooking and running restaurants is all about. Being very in touch with your senses and then being able to figure out what they're telling you before it turns into a problem (or shortly after).

It's a fact of life in restaurants. Stuff breaks.

A few days ago, at around 3pm, we all heard a crazy racket coming through the exhaust ducts, from up on the roof, and then the fan started making some very strange knocking noises. I went up and investigated and couldn't see anything obvious like a busted fan belt, so I called my guy, who promised to come early the next morning.

But, 9am came and went, and then ten, and he's not showing up. By this time, the fan wasn't working at all, so I've got all the windows and doors flung open to try and vent the place, otherwise it'll get up in the 90's very quickly in here.

As I was blanching fries that morning, I'm thinking about what I'll do if we have to get through the day without ventilation, and it would suck, but what can I do about it? So I just keep my head down and keep working, and try not to think about the fact that all the heat and smoke isn't going out like it's supposed to.

It got fixed. It always does, and it wasn't a big deal...but the point is that, really, this kind of stuff is just par for the course. Something always fails, breaks, leaks, falls apart...and all you can do is just keep slogging through the work, just keep making sure you don't run out of beef or potatoes or buns.

Then this morning, I go downstairs to receive a delivery of CO2 for the pop machine, and there's tons of water all over the floor down there. Coming from an active leak in the ceiling, right where my water supply for my soda machine is located above.

So, upstairs I go to scope it out, and there's water all over the place in the same spot, but I can't really locate anything that looks like an active leak. So...try to eliminate some possibilities...check floor drains, water supplies, nothing. There's a very slight leak coming from where the fountain soda machine connects to the water supply, but I can't figure out why it would've caused so much water to come down, and why it would've leaked throughout the night, but not be leaking right now.

So, again, what can I do, really? Mop up the messes, put a bucket on the floor under the spot, call Pepsi service to come out and take a look at it, and call the building super to come out and take a look at it. And....? Get back to work.

It's hard because this stuff is upsetting, takes time away from what I'm working on, and tends to rattle me and throw me off my game a bit, but I still need to crank out my beef and potatoes and specials of the day, so that's what I've got to do.

The first year of running a restaurant involves a lot of guessing. You try and keep good notes about why it was busy or slow, so you can plan accordingly for subsequent years.

I've guessed wrong about busy/slow so many times now that my employees joke that if I say we're going to be really slammed, then they know to plan for a slow day.

Our first week back post summer vacation was a busy one. And, as per the guessing-then-noting game described above, I'm not sure whether to chalk that up to folks needing their post-break fix, or if that's how it'll usually be the second week in August.

It's nice to be able to assess our situation as we approach the conclusion of the first year. My small annual rent increase kicked in this month, so that provided a reminder that it's been a full year since I've been in the space that is now Edzo's.

The POS system has been a great help during this past busy week. The lines move much faster now and the kitchen seems to be keeping up just fine, which has resulted in lots of busy days that don't "feel" quite as busy, since we don't quite get the huge crushes of people that we used to.

Due to this, I've also been able to accommodate many more called in to-go orders than I could take before getting the POS. I was surprisingly able to take 4-5 call in orders this past Saturday between noon and one. In the past, I'd often take the phone off the hook during that time span.

Last year at this time I was painting, surfing Craigslist, driving my rented red Ford F150 around looking for used deep fryers, and wondering when the time would come that I'd actually be able to cook some tasty food in the kitchen of my restaurant.

The restaurant was closed August 1st-10th so that the family and I could spend some quality time together, and I could do a lot more sleeping and sitting down than usual, and it was well worth it.

We spent a few days at this crazy waterslide place up in the dells, which was awesome, and I did a bit of burger research as well (Wisconsin is always great for that). All in all, it was a really relaxing, refreshing, re-energizing time. I'm so glad I did it.

I was anticipating taking a lot of flak from my customers about closing up for such a long spell, especially after reading some of the more negative things that people sometimes have to say about our hours on some of the review sites.

But, surprisingly, 99% of the comments I've received from customers have been super-positive. Nearly everyone jokingly said that they can't go that long without their bacon-double-cheese, their Nutella shake or truffle fries, but almost all of them also said stuff like "that's great, you deserve it, it's great that you put a priority on spending time with your family" and all sorts of nice remarks in that vein.

And, even better, we've been totally slammed the first two days back, with lines out the door for at least a couple hours both days. With the money worries that closing down for 10 days while still paying rent, utilities, and my employees brings, that's really great to see.

So thanks, everyone, so much, for supporting me and the restaurant, in so many ways! It's awesome to know that I can take time away and then come back to a busy, bustling restaurant.