chicagomatic

can you describe the ruckus?

2012-01-18T09:47:00.005-06:00

Ok, so after my last blog post was published, a bit of a ruckus ensued.

To be honest, I wrote that blog post in one furious spurt, clicked 'publish', and then kind of forgot all about the whole thing. After I got it out of my system, I felt better. I knew that I'd handled it pretty much the way I wanted to handle it, and kind of just closed my mental book on it when I put the blog post up.

As luck would have it, Chicago's premier food blogger just happened to be in line with his kids at the exact moment that the incident went down. So of course he wrote about it in his daily column. So I saw that, and got a chuckle about it, but then noticed the links to Yelp embedded in the Grubstreet piece, went and checked out the couple negative reviews that were (presumably) written by the aggrieved Rude Woman or her proxies and got a bit of a chuckle out of those.

And then....I figured that'd be the end of it. A few folks were outraged on my behalf due to the Yelp reviews, but I wasn't at all concerned because Yelp routinely removes (or filters, actually) reviews that are clearly grudge-driven, or that contain insults, or whatever.

But, of course, that wasn't the end of it.

A flurry of *positive* posts followed the two negative reviews from Rude Woman or her proxies. Some of my regulars who read either the blog post or the Grubstreet article must've decided that it would be a nice idea to go sign onto Yelp and write a positive review of my restaurant. Or to respond to the claims made in the Rude Woman's (or her proxies') reviews.

Which was nice. I was honestly touched. I did not, of course, ask anyone to do that, nor did I go sign up with a fake name or do it myself. As I've stated, there's really no need for that, since I figured that Yelp would pull the two negative reviews (as they've now done). I recognized a few of the positive reviewers by name or face when I read through them, and made a mental note to thank them for the support but to also let'em know that what they did was completely unncecessary (although the thought was much appreciated).

But, of course, before I could do that (and before Yelp could pull some of the positive reviews that were clearly driven by a desire to respond to the negative reviewers), some folks read those positive reviews, assumed I was behind them, and wrote a negative review about me based on THAT assumption.

Whew! You following all that? Crazy...convoluted, and with lots of assumptions piled atop more assumptions. Not a great recipe for solid factual info.

Here's an example, from one of the original Rude Woman proxy reviews (by "Truth T"):

After giving this dive a one star review, I want to downgrade it to negative 100 stars. All in the same day, I got 3 Yelp messages from people that obviously own the place or are related to the owner. All 3 of them (probably one person using 3 different yelp accounts). They all sent me nasty emails and they all happened to sign up for Yelp today. Then they all gave this dump 5 star reviews. Funny how they all signed up today and the only reviews they have is for this dump. Now we know the owner of Edzos has violated the Yelp rules. Perhaps the owner needs a lesson in customer service, much like Soggy Paws. Oh and when Soggy Paws kept doing this, that owner was banned from posting on Yelp.

Interesting. "Truth T." seems to know quite a lot about Yelp's rules and politics, which makes sense considering the fact that the same day he wrote a terrible review about my restaurant, he wrote 26 other reviews on Yelp as well. Perhaps he knew that Yelp pulls one-star reviews written by people with very few other reviews and wrote a bunch of other reviews in order to try and ensure that his rants about my restaurant would stick.

They didn't, though. Yelp removed his posts, along with those from "Ed S." of Munster, Indiana, who made a clear reference to the Rude Woman incident. In fact, all told (and this is to Yelp's credit) they removed everything from Rude Woman and her proxies, and most of the positive posts from folks who came to my defense. A couple still remain, but I'd wager that they'll be pulled pretty soon as well. All told, six reviews posted in the wake of the incident were placed into the "filtered" area, and four more were erased entirely for violating Yelp's rules of content.

The review from "Ed S." just disappeared completely (perhaps he erased it himself), which is too bad because it contained one of my favorite lines from the entire episode. After going on and on about what a dick I am for trying to ensure that all of my customers get the opportunity to sit at a table while eating their food, he went on to talk about how horrible the food was, and stated that his burger "spurted blood and grease" at him as soon as he picked it up. I got a good laugh out of that visual along with some cognitive dissonance about the idea that lots of "blood and grease" is somehow a bad thing when it comes to burgers. One guy on Twitter quoted that, saying "is that supposed to be a bad thing? I'll take two!"

Anyway, here are couple of choice excerpts from the fallout of the whole thing from various spots out there on the internet:

Some people felt compelled to comment kind of offhandedly on the situation, within the context of an actual substantive review--

I kind of don't want people to know about Edzo's, simply because every time I go, there's a line out the door. And sometimes people grab empty tables before ordering (I'm looking at you, certain Northwestern kiddos. Also, stop riding your bikes on the sidewalk), which is majorly rude and I hate it. And rude people don't deserve Edzo's food. But they still get it, because our world is not a just place. --Jasmine R. (5 stars)

Some decided that responding directly to the Rude Woman (or her proxies') claims was the best way to go:

Sorry, Ed S. is full of it. Angered over slights largely imagined...In short, yes, Edzo's gets crowded. But I've never seen Edzo himself be anything but pleasant to his customers. If he was being rude, perhaps he was merely returning it in kind..
--Fill B. (5 stars)

Interesting that the last two posters had such a terrible experience when all previous reviews -- hundreds of them -- seem to be in the 3-5 range. I have a feeling that there's something else going on with them. Not sure of their motives. But here's the real story.... --Julie C. (4 stars)

Others just resorted to outright mockery of the entire Yelper phenomenon:

Okay look. Listen to me right now please. This place is the best place in the world and there is nothing better in the whole wide world I mean that I really do for real. Their burgers are so darn good oh my gosh. Their fries (whether truffle or garlic or crazy or cheese or regular) are so darn good oh my gosh. Their shakes (whether nutella or chocolate or whatever) are so darn good oh my gosh. Basically, this place is so darn good oh my gosh. I love it. Go eat there. You'll love it too I hope. --JJ B. (5 stars)

In addition to all that ruckus, there's also been endless comments from customers here in the restaurant, the overwhelming majority of them from some of my wise-ass regulars who walk in and put their coat on a six or an eight-top and then loudly ask if it's ok to hold a table before they order. But many were just folks who felt like it was important to note that they understood and supported my policy and my actions. Which is nice.

Anyway, I just thought I'd do a little re-cap, since I had some positive things to say about Yelp and the way they deal with their reviews and wanted to note that. Yelp gets a very bad rap from food media types and professional amateur diners like the folks that frequent LTH Forum, but undeservedly, I think. I believe that the sheer volume of reviews that Yelp generates, along with their system for vetting posts, results in a pretty fair picture of most establishments.

Truth be told, I found this whole ruckus pretty informative and educational. A big part of why it worked out that way, I think, was the fact that I vented my spleen in my original blog post and, after that, I wasn't very deeply invested in the whole thing emotionally. That allowed me to kind of step back and view everything more objectively, I think. Which was good. Laughing at this ruckus was really the appropriate response. The lessons I learned were a bonus.

I'm hot

2012-01-07T16:41:00.003-06:00

Ok, I don't usually do this because writing a blog post when you're angry about something is usually a really bad idea. But, whatever. I'm pissed and need to get this out.

We have 50 seats here at my restaurant. On a busy Saturday, like today, we sell about 400 burgers. About a third of the orders are placed as to-go orders. So, you can do the math. Long story short, it's damn busy and it is not an easy task to try and ensure that everyone who wants to dine in gets a place to sit and eat their burger.

So, long ago, for this reason, we put up a sign politely asking people not to grab tables and occupy them until *after* they've placed their food order. We find that, regardless of how busy we are, if people follow this rule, we nearly always have enough room to fit everyone in.

And don't think that because Edzo's is just a counter-service, order-your-food-and-grab-it-yourself-when-we-call-your-name kind of place, that I'm not paying attention to what's going on in the dining room. I am. I monitor everyone. I watch tables in order to make sure that the young mom with three kids gets a place to sit down, or that older woman with a walker doesn't get squeezed out, or to see if the guy in a wheelchair needs some help getting his drink out of the soda machine. To me, this is all part of the idea of providing hospitality to my customers. Serving them great food isn't good enough, if they're not provided with a comfortable environment in which to enjoy eating it.

Usually, I don't have to enforce the "no table-grabbing" rule. Folks either just know about it, or they see the sign, which explains that this is the best way to ensure that everyone has a comfortable place to eat their food, and, since it (hopefully) makes sense, there's usually not a problem.

Today was an extremely busy day, though. And Saturdays are often the day that we get the most new customers (who probably don't know the rules and maybe don't see the sign), and when it's so busy, folks start to stress about finding a table, and sometimes they can get a bit grabby. So it's not uncommon for me to have to go out into the dining room, politely point to the sign, and ask people to not save tables for their group until after they've ordered. When I do this, folks are usually extremely accommodating and even apologetic (which is unnecessary, I assume ignorance rather than malice).

One woman today, however, was simply not able to accept the fact that she shouldn't have grabbed a six-top before her group even ordered. When I asked the person who was holding the table to get up so that two other groups (who already had their food in their hands) could sit down to eat, the woman rushed over and tried to tell me about the many reasons why it was absolutely essential that her group be permitted to make an exception to the rule.

So she did know about the rule. She just decided that she was entitled to disregard it. As soon as I hear that, that's strike one. It's not that she didn't know. She knew, but decided that she was entitled to blow off the rule.

I tried to politely explain to her that these other people were standing with their food in their hands, but nowhere to eat it, and that this is the exact reason why the rule exists; to prevent a situation in which a group of people THAT HAVEN'T EVEN ORDERED YET are occupying a table for 20 minutes while others with food in their hands have nowhere to sit and eat it.

This woman wasn't hearing any of it. She, again, had a mouthful of extenuating circumstances that made her apparently inconsiderate behavior completely necessary. And, besides, she claimed, they were *almost* up to the front of the line.

I didn't have time to continue arguing with her, and the folks with food either found a spot to eat or graciously agreed to take their order to go, so I just shook my head, walked away from Rude Woman, and allowed her to get her way. I did not try to hide my irritation with her. The rest of her group was clearly embarrassed by her behavior as well. But she got what she wanted.

So they ordered, and then they got their food and ate. Comfortably. Unlike some of the other paying customers who got shut out of a comfortable table to sit at because of Rude Woman's selfishness. Ok...not ideal, but, again, folks were very gracious and understanding and I think they kind of got a sense of what was going on.

Later, after the group was done eating, Rude Woman came up to the register to talk to me. Nevermind that she'd already gotten what she wanted. Nevermind that there was a line out the door and I was already juggling twelve tasks at once. Rude Woman wasn't entirely pleased with how the situation played out, so she was determined to put the screws to me.

First of all, she says, it was rude of me to "embarrass her" in front of her group and the other customers. Seriously??? *I* embarrassed you? Because you chose to break a rule and you chose to be inconsiderate to your fellow diners and I had the nerve to actually call you on it? I do not think so, Rude Woman.

"No, ma'am", I said, "if you were embarrassed, it was because of your rude, inconsiderate behavior. Not due to the fact that I pointed it out."

She didn't like that.

Then, she countered, I didn't charge her correctly for their food. "Why was it forty-eight dollars?" she asked.

"I don't know, ma'am", I said, "lemme see your receipt".

"I don't have a receipt, you didn't give it to me."

Ok, then. So I go into the computer, find the name, and reprint her itemized receipt. Handing it to her, I say (irritation again evident), "ok, here's your itemized receipt, so you can go through that item by item and maybe you can find something to complain about."

She didn't like that either. But, at this point, it was pretty clear that she was just pissed about being embarrassed, she believed that her embarrassment was my fault, and she wanted to make me pay for it. I was not about to allow that to happen. Personally, the way I feel about it is that if you're going to be a selfish inconsiderate jerk, then any feelings of embarrassment you might have about being a selfish inconsiderate jerk are your problem, not mine. I left plenty of room at the beginning for her to back out graciously and she chose not to do so.

So she stood there and pored over the receipt for a few minutes. I ignored her and continued working through customers, taking orders, calling tickets and sending food out, trying not to let my irritation with this situation color my interactions with other customers. Her family, clearly embarrassed and uncomfortable, implored her to give it up and just leave, already. Eventually, she did.

If that were the end of it, I wouldn't be hot right now. But it wasn't. So I am.

A few minutes later, the phone rings. The caller ID tells me its a cell phone. I answer, and a very familar-sounding woman's voice asks for a manager. I respond that I'm the manager, and how can I help her.

"No, she says, you're the guy who took my order. I want to speak to an owner or a manager."

I chuckle, because now I know just exactly what this call is.

"Yes, I'm the guy who took your order. I'm also the owner. AND the manager. How can I help you?"

She keeps it up. "So, wait...you're the owner?"

"Yup," I said.

"Is there a manager?"

"Just me," I said. "How can I help you? I have a huge line of people waiting to order right now, so I can't talk on the phone with you for very long".

"......so you're the only manager, then?"

[click]

I just hung up. I explained it twice. I explained that many other people are waiting while you're asking me questions that I've already answered multiple times. Either tell me how I can help you or the phone call is over.

Obviously, she wanted to go above my head to get me in trouble. In my situation, that obviously won't work, but it really pissed me off to think about the fact that this woman was doing this. She was the one who refused to follow our policy about table-grabbing. She got her way. But that wasn't enough for her. She felt embarrassed because I didn't allow her to get her way without pointing out that she was being rude and inconsiderate, so now she was going to try to get the poor counter guy in trouble. The poor counter guy, who was just trying to do his job and ensure that all the customers have a decent chance to have a burger comfortably, is going to, if Rude Woman has any say in it, get written up or maybe even fired for it.

Nice. Really fucking nice. You can't let it go, can you Rude Woman? You got what you wanted, it's all over now, and you're in your car with a stomach full of freshly-ground burgers, hand-cut fries and great shakes, but rather than just be content, you've got to keep pushing it.

So, yeah, I hung up on her. Right in mid-sentence. Click. Bubbye, now!

She called back, of course. Multiple times. But thanks to the wonders of caller id, I could see when it was her and not answer. I let the machine pick it up a few times (after six rings each time--one thing you can damn sure say about Rude Woman, she doesn't give up easily).

I don't have a pithy wrap-up paragraph for this blog post. I'm still hot, although less so now, I suppose, that I've vented this all out. There's no lesson here (except, possibly, don't be an asshole, but don't we all already know that lesson already).

This incident put a real damper on an otherwise great day. We were super-busy, we cranked out tons of great food, and nearly everyone seemed very pleased with their Edzo's experience. So it bums me out that I'm dwelling on this one interaction and letting it get me down. I have very high standards and want every single customer to leave my restaurant super-pleased. Rude Woman didn't, and I suppose that was my fault. I could've done what was necessary to placate her and she would've left super-pleased, but I made a conscious decision not to do so.

Was that the right call? The wrong one? I'm not entirely sure. But it's the one I went with at the moment, and I feel ok about it, even though the incident left a very bad taste in my mouth.

blood

2011-11-16T09:19:00.004-06:00

Yesterday was by all measures a fairly normal Tuesday. A welcome respite of a less-busy restaurant after a weekend that included Veteran's Day, and the NU football game/parents weekend combo.

But a sequence of random events happened that got me thinking about blood, and the thought of it as it relates to food and eating. It's a strange and interesting phenomenon how blood is this taboo that repulses people, but they'll gladly eat nearly every other part of whatever animal they're consuming.

There is, of course, a deep multi-cultural history of rituals and beliefs relating to blood and the question of whether to partake of eating/drinking it. Lots has been written, including a really good article in Food Arts by Brad Farmerie.

When customers come into Edzo's and say something about "blood" with regard to the burgers that they're ordering, they're under the impression that the red juice that drips out of a nicely-prepared burger is blood. It's not, of course.

Now, I could try explaining to the guy trying to order a burger "medium, but with no blood" that all the blood is drained from the animal at the slaughterhouse and what he's seeing when he eats his medium burger is mostly just water that resides within the muscle tissue that is subsequently thrown off during the cooking process as the proteins in the meat tighten and shrink, pushing out the moisture.

But that's not very appetizing. So it's kind of a hard situation to handle.

Most of the time, folks that specifically talk about "blood" in their burgers want well-done, so it's not an issue that needs to be grappled with. They're just trying to tell me that they don't want to see any red or pink in their burger. Which, you know, I'm not in love with doing, but I'm happy to oblige for paying customers.

But the "medium, no blood" requests are more difficult. I usually ask something like "so, you want a pink center?", and often the person says "oh, no!", so it's clear that they just don't actually understand what "medium" refers to. Yesterday, a woman asked for "medium, no blood" and when I asked about the pink center, she said "yes", enthusiastically. So I repeated it back to her "You want it pink, but with no blood?"

"Yes," she said.

Ok. I didn't bother trying to delve into the question of what distinction she would make between juice and blood, although I considered it. I just called it out and rung it up as a regular medium char burger.

Coincidentally, this happened at a time when Rob and Allie Levitt from The Butcher & The Larder were in having lunch, so Rob and I were naturally chatting about beef as I bopped around the restaurant doing this and that.

At one point, Rob and I were up by the counter talking, and the "no blood" lady comes up, holding her burger up above the paper tray. It looks awesome and it's just dripping juice, but she's making this "I'm kind of repulsed" face and is clearly not pleased. I try and reassure her that what she's seeing is not blood, but juice, and is a good thing, a sign of how fresh the beef is. I start to swap out her juice-filled paper tray for a new one, and Rob and I chuckle about the fact that her burger was made with beef from Slagel Farm that Rob cut and I ground, and that the animal was alive maybe 5 days ago.

I tried explaining this to the lady in a way that she'd be able to understand, without getting into too much detail. This is an interesting thing that's happened as a result of this recent farm-to-table trend that's happening. Some people aren't quite ready to be so close to their food. Being closer to our food means sometimes seeing stuff that we believe we're supposed to be repulsed by.

If someone truly believes that all moisture in a burger is "blood" and they believe that eating "blood" is repulsive, then they're not going to enjoy a juicy burger. Anyone who's stubbornly forced a kid to eat something and then watched them truly gag on it (or been forced to when they were a kid) knows this.

But other people are ready. Or maybe they're close to being ready, and they just need a bit of education in order to be able to get past their hang-ups. Thankfully, that was the case with yesterday's "no blood" lady. I explained to her about how the Slagel Farm beef we get is free of hormones and antibiotics, and how it's sourced from a local farm that raises the cows using humane, sustainable methods, by a butcher who brings in one or two whole cows a week and cuts the meat himself, in his local butcher shop. And I gave her a brief glimpse into how we take care here in the shop to handle the meat minimally as we cut it, grind it and shape it into half-pound patties, waiting until it hits the fire to season it with just a bit of salt and pepper.

And I explained that all of those factors combined are the reason that the burger has so much juice, which most people see not as repulsive "blood", but as a delicious liquid--almost like a small quantity of freshly-made beef 'stock--that is created during the cooking process, and is something to be savored. I see customers dipping the remnants of their buns into the puddles in the paper trays all the time.

"Give it a minute to rest", I said, as I swapped out her paper tray for a fresh one. "Then cut it in half and take a look inside. If you want me to put it back on the fire and cook it all the way, I'll be happy to do that for you". She did as I suggested, and was over at her table quietly eating for a while. I went back and checked in on her after a bit and she seemed to be enjoying the burger, rosy pink center and all.

So that was nice. I'm not entirely sure if she saw the light, or if she just didn't want to deal with asking me to cook it more. She didn't come up and rave about having a revelation or anything, but I wasn't expecting that. Hopefully she'll be back in soon and it will be interesting to see how she orders her burger next time.

Helda

2011-04-15T22:08:00.003-05:00

I had a brief encounter with a customer today that has stayed with me.

I work the counter at my restaurant every day and while I do a pretty good job being nice to every customer, I can sometimes be short or impatient with people. I take all the food/drink orders, work the cash register, answer the phones, and expedite the food myself, so it gets hectic at times.

Today a woman walked in--a very short, older black woman with a wild frizz of hair. She looked like she weighed about 88 pounds. Wisp thin, gaunt. She seemed angry and suspicious, and somehow I felt like she was blaming me for whatever it was that she was so upset about.

She was kind of muttering under her breath to herself, and she took a while looking at the menu. I greeted her a couple times and helped a couple other customers while she was figuring out what she wanted.

When she was ready, she began asking me questions very tersely. Almost combative. Her lips were pursed with doubt and pessimism as she asked me what toppings we put on our hot dogs. She appeared to strongly disapprove of the way I quickly ran down the list of classic Chicago hot dog toppings. I got the feeling, via her facial expression, that if she were asked to name one term to describe me, the term she would choose would be "whippersnapper", and her use of that term would not be intended to be ironic. She looked me in the eye very intensely. As if her questions about sport peppers vs. giardiniera were of the utmost import and she had no patience for a fool like me who didn't view them similarly.

Once it became evident that she wanted to order a hot dog, I turned the questions back on her, getting her order ("no mustard. tomato, pickle, sport pepper, celery salt. NO! MUSTARD! understand?") asking her if she wanted fries (no), and then whether she wanted a drink.

She seemed shocked, and personally affronted that I would dare ask such things! My youthful impudence was clearly not appreciated at all. Yet she answered my questions quickly, tersely. Her inquiry about the price of my drink cup ($1.29) and whether said price included free refills (it does) felt downright adversarial. As if she, in the role of a consumer, had been taken advantage of many times in the past by shady soda fountain operators.

At some point in the ordering process, I realized that this was a customer that certainly presented me with the opportunity to lose my patience and become short or rude in my responses to her. But I also realized that I was better served to see it simply as amusing. I took a deep breath and smiled genuinely and answered her questions, resigning myself to kill her with kindness. I asked her what her name was (Helda), which of course led to yet another round of incriminating looks down her nose at me, and then I took her four dollars, returned to her eighteen cents in change, and said "thanks," giving her a big smile.

"When you fix me my drink, I want a Diet Pepsi with ice," she said.

I paused. She said it so disdainfully. Out of the downturned corner of her mouth. Her head casually tossed back, almost as if she was spitting at me as she turned away from the counter.

Now, customers help themselves to soda from the fountain here, but lots of people aren't aware of that, so they ask for "a Sprite, easy ice" or whatever, and I usually just let'em know drinks are self-serve and wave them over to the soda machine where they can help themselves.

Part of me wanted to do that with Helda. But another part of me remembered I was supposed to be killing her with kindness, so I quietly asked Tufo, my batidero, to go get her a Diet Pepsi with ice.

Then, as Helda turned away from the counter, I realized that she was using a walker. Somehow I hadn't noticed this up until that moment. And she was moving incredibly slowly. She headed over to a two-top just opposite the counter where I take customers' orders--only three steps away--but it took her at least three or four full minutes to move herself away from the counter and slowly make her way over to the table and into her seat.

We were busy, so I went right into helping the next customer. Helda got her hot dog and was quiet for a while. I was monitoring her but she seemed content. At one point as I passed by her table, I made eye contact and asked if everything was ok. She gave me a head nod signaling assent.

She stayed for quite a while. Rodolfo bussed her table at one point, I think. Finally, when she got up to leave, she made a point of coming up to the counter and saying how great the hot dog was and that she'll "come back again sometime soon". And she gave me a big smile.

Interactions like this one today with Helda make me happy to be in the restaurant industry. I'm gratified that I was able to improve her mood and hopefully her day, but I'm also grateful for the lessons that I get to take away from how the situation unfolded.

craziness, media and otherwise

2010-09-01T20:46:00.008-05:00

We have been awash in media coverage over the last week or so. As a result of a mini social-media coup that I managed to pull off, Edzo's was named to a list of nine great places for "cheap eats" in Chicago that Bon Appetit magazine published in their September issue. Truly, I'm honored to be mentioned in the same company as the others on the list.

And, as often happens with this sort of stuff, it's really steamrolled. The BA list is just grist for the internet food news/blog mill, and the only thing food writin' folks like more than checking out a new list is assessing and critiquing the lists of others. So as a result of BA publishing their list, we've been mentioned in subsequent articles in/at the Tribune, the Sun-Times, Huffington Post, NBC Chicago, and a whole host of others.

Then, as a result of posting some pics from my summer vacation on the Edzo's Facebook page, I got a call from Louisa Chu who was researching an article about chefs' vacations. The piece ended up in last week's Sun-Times food section and it was a really nicely done article (the online version doesn't do the stunning layout of the print edition justice). Plus, one of the pics I sent her of Henry chowing down on a burger made it into the paper. The PR for the restaurant is great, but making my kid's day by putting his picture in the paper is especially sweet!

And, then, hey, as long as we've got you on the line, Ed, could we ask you a few questions about your milkshakes? Um...sure. And, so, bam! This week's Sun-Times food section features an article about the old Multimixer we use to mix the shakes. And despite the fact that I'm quoted running down the quality of ice cream we use AND saying that our shakes are overpriced, the whole thing manages to come off as quite positive.

And, of course, all coverage is good coverage. Just get the name and address right! Thanks, everyone, for the interest!

the smell of the grill burning off

2010-08-29T09:00:00.007-05:00

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).

shit breaks

2010-08-28T11:53:00.002-05:00

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.

good first week back

2010-08-16T11:54:00.003-05:00

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.

vacation

2010-08-13T10:42:00.003-05:00

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.

POS

2010-07-13T18:13:00.003-05:00

Big news! Yesterday my new POS system was installed and today we went live.

It went really well. The first day with a new or updated POS system can often be a complete disaster, because everybody is re-learning how to basically do anything having to do with how we communicate in the restaurant.

But our menu is simple and the tech from the company that did the programming and I worked very closely to try and set up the screens and order tickets in a way that is very similar to what we were already doing, which was working ok, but this will speed things up significantly, I believe.

The system we had in place was effective, but somewhat slow and cumbersome. I would take the order on an order sheet that I made up in MS Excel, using a pen. I'd circle all the desired condiments, write in special requests, then write the person's name at the top and indicate whether the order was "for here" or "to go". THEN, I would ring all that into my cash register, tell the customer the total, collect the money and make change or process the credit card.

THEN I would take the register receipt, write the name plus "for here" or "to go" at the top of that, and pass the two pieces of paper into the kitchen, where one would go to the sandwich side and one would remain on the fries side. If they ordered shakes, I'd write a separate little slip for my shake guy, again writing the name and "for here" or "to go". Whew!

The new system will require much less time and effort. I am taking the orders directly from the customer and entering them into the computer via the touch screen. No writing anything. The order-taking process still takes a bit of time, but that's really the nature of burgers and dogs, since everyone likes them topped their own way.

But now, when I'm done entering the info, and I'm either collecting cash or processing the credit card, the printers in the kitchen start spitting out tickets, so the guys get that info quicker. Plus, they don't have to read my horrible handwriting.

It was somewhat difficult today, and, to be honest, my brain hurts from thinking so much and studying all the various touch screen menus, desperately searching for the right key combination to enter "easy salt" or "no bun", but I can already see that this is going to make things considerably easier and faster in the not-so-distant future.

Part of me is intimidated and overwhelmed by the sheer amount of computing power that this system offers me. Really the only reason I opted to buy a POS system was to make the ordering/ticket process faster and more efficient, but this thing can do everything; labor, time clock, reports of every conceivable combination, payroll, managing deliveries, invoices, food cost, etc.... I'm one of those people who always reads the manual, so I just printed all 27 pages off and am planning on geeking out to that tonight.

So? Growth. Progress. Good stuff. Please be patient with us for a week or so while we move through the learning curve process, folks. It might get a bit hairy at times, but soon enough, I believe, you will see shorter lines at peak lunch hours and the amount of time that it takes from when you enter my front door to when you have food in your hand will be reduced quite a bit.

grass fed

2010-07-08T17:03:00.002-05:00

Finally!

Ever since I started getting our Dietzler Farms beef and offering it as an upgrade option for the burgers, folks have been mistakenly referring to it as "grass-fed".

Of course, when someone tries to order it and says "I'd like to upgrade to the grass-fed beef", I feel compelled to point out the fact that the Dietzler Farms stuff isn't a grass-fed product.

There's a lot of confusion about what's out there and how to best refer to it.

The Dietzler beef, for instance, is local (they're about an hour and a half away), sustainable, humane, and natural (meaning they don't use antibiotics or growth hormones on the animals), but it's not grass-fed, and it's not organic.

In fact, the term "grass fed" is itself a misnomer. We should actually be referring to this type of beef as "grass finished". The difference is important.

All beef is grass-fed for most of its life, meaning that the cows either graze on grass or are given hay or straw as feed. Conventionally-raised cows, though, are "finished" on grain (usually corn and/or soybeans) for the last few months of their lives. This fattens them up quickly, allowing them to be brought to market faster, and results in the type of flavor and fat content that Americans generally associate with beef.

The downside of this grain-finishing, though, is that it makes the meat far less healthy for us to eat. The fat from beef that's grain-finished is saturated. Look at it at room temp and you can see this clearly--it's white, thick, hard, and dense. Eating too much of this type of fat regularly, habitually isn't healthy.

If you've seen Food, Inc. you know the scoop. Grass fed (finished) beef is not finished with grain. The fat in grass-finished beef is considerably softer, more yellow than white, and it's nearly liquid at room temperature. Clear visible evidence of the fact that beef from grass-finished cattle is unsaturated.

Even better, it's jammed full of beneficial Omega 3 and Omega 6 acids. These are the "good fats" that people seek out, often taking fish oil capsules to get them into their systems. They are thought to lower cholesterol and decrease cancer rates. They're the same amino acids that are often associated with wild salmon, except that grass-finished beef has TEN TIMES the amount of them per ounce.

Now, don't get me wrong, the Dietzler Farms beef, even though it's grain finished, is a fantastic product. It's locally raised and only fed with food that's grown right there on the farm, so it's got a low impact on the environment. They raise the cows humanely and do not treat them with antibiotics or utilize growth hormones like rGBH, and the Dietzler beef is also dry aged, so the finished product is just jam-packed with big, beefy, minerally flavor. Grain-finished beef also carries the flavors that Americans have come to expect from beef.

But I wanted to also offer a grass-fed (finished) option, for those who want to eat it for health reasons.

It's not been easy. I tried to set up something with a number of small farms here in Illinois or Indiana, but most of them couldn't commit to getting me what I needed on a consistent basis, and quite a few of them only deal with beef that's been frozen, which rules them out for me.

I tried a number of products, whatever I could get my hands on, but my standards made it difficult--I wanted only beef that had never been frozen, I wanted only whole muscle, not already-ground beef, and I wanted great flavor, which is sometimes not associated with grass-fed.

After exploring the limited options (the stuff I bought at the Whole Foods butcher counter was terrific, but at $7.99/lb., not economically viable) I went with the big player in the grass-finished market; Tallgrass Beef. It took me a while to set up the distribution channel, but we did eventually manage to get it done, and now I believe I've got a steady enough supply to be able to commit to carrying the grass-finished beef as an everyday upgrade option.

Today was the first day we used it. Butchered and ground it early this morning, and then we got to work cooking and tasting. It cooks a bit more slowly, due to the difference in the fat, and the color isn't quite that ruby red you expect in a medium or mid-rare burger, but I've got no complaints; the meat is very flavorful, quite juicy, and not at all a noticeable drop-off from the ultra-premium Dietzler stuff. I tried both a griddled and a char burger and was very pleased with both.

It's not cheap, though. I'm charging $3 extra per four ounces for the upgrade to the grass-finished beef, and that's kind of a stretch, even. I should really be charging closer to four. So that means that if you buy an 8oz. char burger for $5.19, the upgrade will cost you six bucks--more than the price of the burger in the first place.

So it's not for everybody. But for those that want to eat burgers and feel like they're not totally indulging and clogging their arteries, it's probably worth it, especially considering that the quality and flavor of this beef is so good.

Get in here and check it out!

happy fourth of july!

2010-07-03T09:33:00.004-05:00

Yes, it's been like forever since I made a blog post. So what? I'm running a restaurant here, as well as trying to also have a life.

Anyway, it's July 3rd and I am unapologetically coasting into a long (2 days) holiday weekend. Seems like a good moment to bring this blog up into the present.

We are nearly nine months into the life of this restaurant and things are going pretty darn well, I must say. I've been slogging out the six-day weeks of 10+ hours a day and have more or less gotten used to that routine, carving out bits of personal and/or downtime as is possible. My employees have proven to be extremely reliable and we've been blessed with nearly no turnover, and despite just having had to shell out nearly a thousand bucks for an air conditioner fix, I've been remarkably free of pricey maintenance expenditures as well.

So? Partly lucky, partly by design, we're churning right along. The burgers continue to wow the customers and I've added some fun twists, trying out beef from different local farmers and offering it as an upgrade option over the standard burger. We've been getting Dietzler Farms' fantastic dry aged beef for months now, and even won an award for it.

The other big thing I've been doing recently is canvassing the Evanston Farmer's Market every Saturday and then high-tailing it back to the restaurant to put together a market burger special and farmer's market shake with whatever produce seems at its peak. It's resulted in some fun and interesting combinations like a burger topped with a deep fried fromage blanc-stuffed squash blossom and a Michigan black raspberry milkshake. Fun stuff!

For those reading who might want to get updates about these kind of specials, you can follow me on Twitter @edlakin, or "like" us on Facebook to receive all the info about specials as well as loads of other blather from yours truly. Those two outlets for my musings are a big part of why this blog has been so quiet as of late.

We won another "best of" thing recently as well, this one from the Chicago Reader, whose critics honored us with their award for "best new burger", so my wife and I will be forced to attend yet another of these swanky cocktail receptions and pick that up in the coming week. Oh, the glamour!

Well, actually this is only the second swanky cocktail and passed hors d'oeuvres thing that we've been invited to, but we'll take it whenever we can get it. We are blessed to have an incredibly active and vibrant food and food writing culture in Chicago, and I thank my lucky stars every single day that folks like the burgers and make the decision to pay attention to us in any way, shape, or form, whether it's in print, on blogs, Twitter, whatever.

Looking back to a year ago, when I was sitting, waiting to see if the deal to purchase and lease this space wouldn't fall apart like our first deal did, I entertained zero notions that things would work out the way they have thus far. None. I hoped for far less, and would've considered myself extremely fortunate to be breaking even and paying myself on the day before the fourth of July, 2010.

So I'll be toasting my good fortune and all the wonderful people in my life that have helped me and continue to help me make this happen every day--our customers, my employees, my family, and my wife, who runs pretty much every other aspect of our family's life while my attention and energy is near-exclusively focused on running this restaurant. Thanks so much, I could not do this without you!

That said, happy fourth!

new post

2010-04-22T19:07:00.003-05:00

I think it might be univerally-known that if you title a blog post as "new post", you officially have nothing to say.

Nonetheless, I'm posting. It's been more than a month since my last blog post and my SEO maximization team informs me that blogs need to stay current and keep people interested in order to continue to be relevant, even when they're running restaurants that are crazy-busy almost every day and win awards (!) from local print media who we didn't even solicit or bribe in any way.

So...not much to say or time to write lately. Busy running a restaurant, nailing up fancy plates mounted to "genuine piano wood" plaques to my wall, and trying to enjoy the beautiful weather we've been having this Spring.

I'll try to not go another month between posts.

finger on the pulse (or not)

2010-03-20T16:13:00.003-05:00

Is it possible to be so insanely tuned in to your workplace that you notice a new or slightly different sound and figure out that a piece of your equipment isn't working properly?

Sure. Of course. But is it also possible to be so completely clueless that you walk right by something potentially catastrophic and don't even notice? And to be both of these things at the same time?

Yep. That was me today.

First, the patting myself on the back part. I had a problem with my ice machine yesterday, the one that sits on top of the soda machine. It serves the dual purpose of providing ice for the drinks, but also cooling the water as it runs through the lines and mixes with the syrup. So no ice equals warm pop. Bleh.

It was a minor problem, and the ice machine company was out here quick with bags of ice, and then a repair guy soon after, who said the problem was fixed and my ice machine was running A-OK!

But I worked late last night and when I was here by myself with just the sounds of my compressors and cooling sheet metal to keep me company, I noticed that I didn't hear the familiar sporadic crash of the ice cubes falling down into the bin. At all.

So I called the company again and scheduled them to come out this morning. Proactively. Just in case. So I didn't have to deal with a down ice machine in the midst of a busy Saturday.

The same guy came out and gave me a look, but I explained to him that I hadn't heard the cubes dropping, so he reluctantly went up there and opened it up again. He came down with some piece of electronic circuitry and told me that my sensor was bad. "Must've just failed last night, after I was here", he said. "Yeah, or you missed it yesterday", I thought.

Whatever. 20 minutes later, he's got a new one installed and I was hearing the familiar crash of cubes descending down into the bin. All was well and I was patting myself on the back for being so tuned into my restaurant that I sniffed that one out before it became an issue.

Now for the clueless dunderhead story.

The pilot on the oven often goes out overnight, and so when I crank everything up in the morning, the oven won't fire up. Sometimes I'm lazy and let Carlos or Luis lay down on the floor and hold the damn red button down for 2-4 minutes, but they just did it yesterday and had a heck of a time with it, so I figured I'd be nice and do it this morning.

Only, instead of using a twisted up piece of paper towel to light the pilot, like they always do, I grabbed my propane torch and fired it up. I laid prone on the floor, resigned myself to holding down the damn button far longer than I think I'd need to, and shot the flame in there, lighting the pilot.

After I finally let go of the button, the pilot stayed lit, I turned on the oven and it lit, and all was well. Again, I started patting myself on the back for doing it so much more quickly and easily than they were able to do it yesterday. I put away the torch and got to work.

Then, later, there was this smell. Something like methane or sewage gas or something. I kept smelling it every time I went over near the shake station, and I could not for the life of me figure out what it was. Every time I passed by there, it was driving me crazy. Eventually I just figured that the floor drains were giving off some smell or something and stopped worrying about it.

At about 11:00 when Tufo, my batidero (milkshake guy) came in, he said he smelled gas and started hunting around the same area. I dismissed his claim, explaining (somewhat patronizingly) that it was just the floor drains giving off some kind of sewer smell and not to worry about it.

He kept sniffing and hunting, and finally he pulls out the propane torch and proclaims "esta!".

And he was right. That was, in fact, it. I had left the valve open on the propane torch and after I put it away, it was just quietly, slowly, releasing all the gas, which was what I had been smelling all day. Duh!

Thankfully, the ice machine vindication happened after the propane torch move, so it made me feel a little better.

Signed,

Hyper-tuned-in-but-also-head-in-the-clouds-Lakin.

49-8 = Spring?

2010-03-09T19:00:00.003-06:00

Big difference between this Tuesday and last week. We sold eight shakes last Tuesday (Norberto and I always look to see how many we do on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, since those are the days we don't have a dedicated shake guy and have to split the duties), but today we did 49!

Crazy. Give Chicagoans a 40+ degree day and all of a sudden everyone thinks spring has sprung. More than a few guys with shorts and flip flops today as well.

cooks' quirks

2010-03-04T18:45:00.003-06:00

The fact that this is kind of a sidebar-type of post indicates that, overall, things are going pretty well. I've remedied most, if not all, of the breakage and equipment issues that I documented in my last post, and since then, we've been humming right along fairly nicely.

We've been busy, but haven't yet had another insane weekend like the one that followed the Tribune article, and once you get through a period like that, even fairly busy days feel calmer. It's the same with equipment, and employees, both of which I've had issues with lately. For me, the looming sense that something might go wrong is always worse than it feels when it actually *does* go wrong, and then you run around and fix it or work around it.

I was dreading dealing with the french fry cutter, but when I finally wrenched the failed plastic anchors out and relocated it, the whole job only took me about an hour, and now it feels much more solid.

Same with employees. Up until this week, no one but Rodolfo had ever worked my disher/busser position. He needed to take a little time off, so this week we've had three different guys there. As usual, I get all nervous about what effect that might have on how things run, but, ultimately, everything goes fine, and at times, perhaps, even a bit better than they might've gone with the normal guy in place.

Which brings me back to cooks' quirks. One thing that's always amused me is how different people have their own different little ways of doing things. This is one of the reasons why it's so difficult to attain consistency in restaurants; because cooks--the good ones at least--all believe that they alone know the one true best way to do just about every single aspect of their job.

Whether it's cleaning various substances, washing/processing produce, doing prep, cooking for service, or quickly breaking down a station, just about every cook worth his salt is always striving to innovate in order to increase efficiency, speed, and quality.

There's a lot of ingenuity going on in restaurants. Smart guys like Javier (who I worked with back at the old Nick & Tony's on Wacker) figure out cool ways of suspending a jug of canola oil with a plastic-wrap tether and then poking a hole in the bottom so it slowly streams oil into a bucket of vinaigrette fixin's and a running stick blender (which, more than likely, had its switch jimmied to allow for hands-free operation).

Norberto, who runs my fry station, is an innovator. He's a nearly everyday employer of the plastic-wrap belt, brought in a power drill to bore slightly larger holes in the salt shaker, and he's constantly moving stuff around, re-jiggering, thinking about how to make his job and the restaurant more efficient and economize the movements needed to produce the dishes on his station.

Sometimes it's obvious stuff. We were using three skinny bain maries in a countertop steam table unit we have, and we kept running out of the Merkt's cheese for the cheese fries and would have to heat up more during service. Finally Norberto suggested that we use third pans instead of the bains. Duh! Why didn't *I* think of that?

Lots of it is experience, too. I remember a guy I worked for who, when trying out a new employee, would ask them to empty a gallon jug of mayonnaise into a large stainless bowl, and then watch to see how they did it.

Guys with less or no experience (at least in the sort of prep work that this chef was interested in from his guys) would open it and start pulling it out of there with a spoon, rubber scraper, or whatever.

The more seasoned prep guys would open the top, flip it upside down over the bowl, then give the bottom of the jug a few good stabs with a knife. The air that went in would break the suction, and the mayo would more or less slide right out of the jug, all in one piece.

That's just one random example, but it shows the value of doing the mundane tasks over and over again, and learning how to do them faster, more efficiently, or better.

breakage

2010-02-16T19:35:00.004-06:00

Stuff is breaking.

In the last week or so, I've had issues of one kind or another with my meat grinder, my french fry cutter, the ice cream freezer, the stereo, and a bunch of other little things.

It's more annoying than anything else. I had to run around a ton on my day off to chase down a replacement part for the grinder, bought two, and now am thinking I should probably just go ahead and buy a whole 'nother grinder to have on hand as a replacement.

The french fry cutter is slowly coming unanchored from the wall it's mounted to, something I knew would happen eventually, so I shored it up a bit and then went online and bought a countertop model to have on hand as a backup.

A couple weeks ago, the amplifier I use to run the music for the restaurant suddenly stopped making any sound for its entire right side (two of the four speakers), so I had to switch it out with an old amp I had at home.

Sunday, the thermal pressure pot I use to keep the milk for the milkshakes cold and easily accessible shattered with a loud pop when I poured a half-gallon of cold milk into it, sending milk cascading majestically down the table onto my shoes.

And then, today, right before we opened, I checked to see if I needed to load more ice cream into the dipping cabinet and found it warm inside, with a few inches of watery melt at the bottom waiting to be cleaned out, due to a GFCI outlet that's gone wonky.

Hoo. Effing. Ray.

My immediate reaction, with every semi-serious event like this, is to first, in my mind, panic. I run around a little bit, freak out for a moment, and then start figuring out how I can best deal with the situation. My cooks get a kick out of seeing me flustered, I think, since I generally don't get too shook up by anything. Once they're done laughing at my overreaction, they're quick to jump in and help remedy the situation.

That's what happened today. I pushed the reset button, heard the freezer turn on, and then tossed what was in there and grabbed a new tub of ice cream from the walk-in freezer while Oscar bailed the water. We threw some towels in there, cleaned it out, and in just a few minutes, I had a nice, newly-defrosted dipping chest. No biggie.

I think part of the reason I get so panicky when I first realize something's not working is that this whole restaurant thing still feels somewhat tenuous. I still don't trust the equipment, the building, really--the whole set-up and still walk in every day expecting to see fire damage or a flood or something.

It's a totally irrational fear, I realize, since there have been restaurants operating out of this spot for years now, and they've managed to soldier through. But I can't help but extrapolate small, easily repaired, breakage to the point that it feels somehow indicative of a larger catastrophe that may or may not be imminent.

All things considered, this is probably a helpful impulse, since it drives me to obsessively check to make sure all heat sources are turned off and, until recently, that the crappy GFCI reset button on the outlet that the ice cream freezer is plugged into didn't trip. Lesson learned. Can't let up.

Anyway, I'm hoping that writing this post will stop the string of breakages.

media

2010-01-29T18:19:00.004-06:00

Media of any kind helps, so my mindset from the get-go was to make time to talk to anyone who showed any interest in writing about Edzo's.

I was hoping to get some coverage, and expected to get mentioned in maybe the Reader or Time Out, but it seems to have steamrolled and I've been lucky enough to get a ton of favorable reviews and features. You can check the Edzo's website's media page for a pretty long list, if you're interested.

No one piece gave us a huge bump, although the weekend following Steve Dolinsky's Hungry Hound piece on the channel 7 news was insane. Mostly, it's been a slow steady build where all the media coverage has kind of had a longer-term cumulative effect.

This week, though, was a little different. We were on the channel 7 show 190 North on Sunday night, and then in Thursday's Tribune. Tangible uptick in the number of people walking in the door this week.

It's interesting, with all the buzz that surrounds social media, to think about. I'm active in social media as a way to promote the restaurant (duh!), and put in probably 5-6 hours a week total doing Twitter posts, updating Facebook status, and blogging, and have been since the summer, before the restaurant was open.

It's been effective, I think. Not sure how much of the media coverage we'd have gotten if I hadn't done this stuff. But with all the talk about how important social media is, I'm quite surprised at how much more discernible and immediate an increase comes from an appearance in one of the more conventional forms of media, like TV or newspaper. The old, established media are still way bigger and more powerful.

It's easy to forget how many people watch TV and/or read the daily newspaper every day. For me, at least, because I almost never look at either.

Anyway, I thought it was high time that I wrote something about all the media coverage, which has been mostly very positive, and really...as long as they get the name and address correct.....

Another thing that's been very weird is when someone does an anonymous review and eats here a few times, once I read the review I can usually remember the reviewer based on what they describe ordering or whatever interaction I had with them, and it causes this whole "ah, so he's THAT guy!" moment. And then usually a second or two after, I'm thankful that I didn't come off as rude to them or we didn't screw up their order.

So, thanks, to all the fine media institutions who have talked about Edzo's, and also, anyone who watches or reads them. Keep it coming, every little bit helps!

p-trap

2010-01-20T19:05:00.007-06:00

Back when I was fresh out of culinary school, and was running the kitchen at a successful little cafe in Wrigleyville, my first wife called me at work, all upset because my life "as a chef" was so much more glamorous--yes, that was the word she used--than hers.

At the moment she called I was cleaning the convection oven and was actually wearing thick rubber gloves while holding the phone to talk to her, so I had to laugh at that one.

There have been some moments that have followed, of course, that have felt glamorous, but that certainly wasn't one of them.

I met with reps from Dietzler Farms and Niman Ranch this week, with both bringing me samples. I'm going to do a side-by-side tasting of the Niman, Dietzler, and our normal beef, which is standard issue IBP USDA choice stuff.

What I'd like to do is have a rotating menu of featured local, natural, organic, humane, grass-fed, whatever, beef producers and offer this meat as an upgrade option for the burgers.

So that felt kind of glamorous. They brought their glossy brochures and nicely explained all the benefits of their products (which I'll comment on at length at some point in the future), and I felt kind of cool. For a little while.

And then this afternoon, I met with a group of students from Northwestern University Kellogg School of Business Management, who have decided to use me for their class project, and so they're offering to do a whole marketing/demographic plan for me for for just the price of a few hours of my time. I'd be a fool to pass that up!

After my hifalutin marketing meeting with my team of very professional grad students, I'm thinking that, yeah, maybe my glamorous moment has finally arrived. But then I got started on my working-late list tonight and crawled up into the ceiling to clean compressors and change furnace filters, and then snaked out the p-trap with a wire hanger in hopes I can get the hand sink back to draining properly.

And I did, so now it does! And I actually got it back together without creating any leaks!

I prefer the small victories to the glamor, anyway, I think.

grilled onions

2010-01-15T18:42:00.006-06:00

Me: "You want that with everything--ketchup, mustard, pickles, onions?"

10-15 customers a day: "You guys got *grilled* onions?"

And, yes,of course, as any self-respecting burger and dog place should, I do have grilled onions.

They're usually referred to as "grilled", but they're technically sauteed. Most places do theirs on the flattop, which perhaps explains the moniker. (I've never understood why people would call cooking on a flattop "grilling", but that's a different post).

The thing about doing grilled onions, though, is that they should be allowed to cook relatively slowly, so that they can fully soften and then caramelize. I've been places and ordered grilled onions only to see them start cooking the raw onion after I've ordered. Not good. One time I even saw a guy try and cook onions in one of those conveyor toasters the sub places use. Blech. Those aren't grilled onions!

The slow cook allows you to coax all the sweetness out of the onions as they slowly stew in their own juices on the griddle and eliminates all the hot, crunchy rawness that onions can have. They're great.

We use our grilled onions in the patty melts, of course, on the portobello mushroom sandwich, on whatever upon request, and on the classic Maxwell Polish, which is scored and charred on the grill, then slathered with yellow mustard and grilled onions. It's a true Chicago original.

"Maxwell" refers to Maxwell Street, where the old market used to be, and two places down there are still churning them out as they have been for years; Jim's Original and Maxwell Street Express Grill, which are right across the street from each other.

Both do a great Polish as well as the somewhat-less-famous pork chop sandwich. My dad loves to talk glowingly about how good the Polishes used to be at one or the other of these places, and he swears up and down that one day, when he asked the guy working the griddle what made the grilled onions so good, the guy showed him; he pulled out the trough under the griddle where all the scrapings and excess oil ended up, and carefully poured it over the pile of onions that was sizzling on the back of the grill.

they're back

2010-01-05T17:47:00.007-06:00

...and they're hungry, apparently.

Between the NU students being on break and closing up for a week, it's been a while since we've seen some of our regulars around here. Many returned today, with a vengeance.

In a truly bizarre turn of events, the first six burgers we sold today were triples or bigger. Normally, we sell maybe one triple a day. Today, all told, six triples, a quad, and the pictured ridiculous stack of six patties.

The orderer and consumer of the sixer was a guy named Taylor, who's done this before. He's an ROTC guy and works out a lot and can seriously eat. Last time I saw him, prior to Christmas break, he got a quad plus an order of loaded fries, ate everything, and then came back up and ordered a bratwurst. For dessert, I guess.

The crazy thing about Taylor is that he actually eats everything. Today he destroyed his six-stack quickly, and also an order of garlic fries. His friend was timing him as well. Ah....youth!

Now, don't get me wrong--I'm not encouraging this kind of crazy gluttony. But I'm happy to sell people what they want. I did also clue a few of these guys in to another hot dog and hamburger place not very far from here, that's kind of got the market cornered on these sort of belly-busting displays, so we'll see what happens if Taylor decides to walk a few extra blocks and trys to tackle the "triple undisputed".

Be gentle with him, Gus.

varmint

2009-12-31T15:36:00.005-06:00

After being closed since the 25th, I returned to the restaurant today to receive deliveries, do some organizing and paperwork, and just generally get set up for the month to come.

I'd actually managed to resist coming back here to check to make sure everything was okay during my days off, so of course I had visions of fires and floods running through my head as I opened the door.

No water on the floor, no sign of fire damage, so that was good. But as I entered I noticed a lot of stuff all over the floor, menus, pens, cups...that kind of stuff, and my first thought was that we'd been burglarized.

But the register and other obvious targets for thieves were untouched. There were these plastic shavings everywhere, and as I looked around I found a jar of Nutella in the floor drain that had it's lid gnawed clean through by something. And just as I started to say "what the..." out loud, something furry whizzed by my head.

Squirrel!

It was scampering around up in the vent hood above the hot line, so I went around and opened all the doors and grabbed a broomstick with which to politely suggest that Mr. Squirrel go find another place to squat.

It became evident how the squirrel had gotten in as I tried to move him out. The lip under the front edge of the hood funnels air from outside up into the canopy to prevent the powerful fan from sucking out all the air from the dining area, and the squirrel had somehow gotten into the air intake on the side of the building, crawled through the vent tunnel, and come out the other side with a fierce craving for Nutella.

After a few good swipes with the broom, he seemed agreeable to the idea of going back the way he came. I heard him running around up in the ceiling for a minute, and then appeared to head out, although I didn't actually see him on the outside.

All day, of course, I've been listening to see if he comes back or emerges from some hiding place, but he's either gone or is a really quiet hider. I stuck the broom handle all the way up into the vent and set the flashlight nearby at the ready, but never got the chance to use it.

(Sadly I didn't have the presence of mind to take some cell phone pictures while doing battle with the varmint, and I half hoped he'd return just so I could snap a couple shots for this post. But I'm glad he didn't return.)

...my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit - ever. They're like the Viet Cong - Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower. And that's all she wrote. -- Carl Spackler

Off to Home Depot for some chickenwire or something to put over the air intake.

At least it wasn't a fire or flood! Thanks for reading. Happy New Year.

happy holidays

2009-12-23T17:34:00.003-06:00

We are winding down here at the ol' Burger Shop. Today was a very busy one--felt like a Friday--but we are conscious of the fact that we're going to be closed from 12/25/09 thru 1/1/10, so are running things out, trying to not over-prep and have to throw stuff away, ordering very little, and all that jazz.

I'll have to come in at some point that week to do inventory, set up next month's stuff, and receive some deliveries to start gearing up for when we get back, but I'm really excited to not work for a week. First time I'll have had a real day off since July.

Happy holidays all, and thanks for reading!

dedication

2009-12-18T10:09:00.004-06:00

Being a cook means having an enormous amount of dedication. The money and the hours suck. The work is physically demanding and never ends. You have to really be dedicated to the craft of cooking, the idea of doing it well, always improving, and have a silly amount of pride in what you do.

As I left work the other day, I encountered this guy, a sushi chef at the Japanese place around the corner from Edzo's, cleaning his sharpening stone on the concrete in 13° weather, scraping it against the pavement in order to get all the metal shavings out. Now *that's* dedication.

the sign

2009-12-13T16:45:00.005-06:00

In my mind, I've written a sign and taped it to the front door dozens of times already.

"Sorry, Edzo's is closed today due to xxxxxx. We apologize for any inconvenience".

I've never had to actually write the sign, but it keeps popping into my head, just when I least expect it. I wrote two of them today, mentally.

The first one was when I started grinding the meat this morning. I usually get in early and cut up the large pieces of chuck that I get, then let them sit in the freezer for a half an hour or forty-five minutes before grinding them.

Today, due to the fact that I was having printer issues, the beef sat in the freezer longer than usual. And then, when I started grinding it, I nonchalantly tossed in a piece that was almost all solid fat. The grinder, which has never skipped a beat, didn't seem like it could handle the job. Of course, I forced the issue, jamming the pusher down hard on the stuck piece of fat.

The grinder made a god-awful noise and then just.....stopped.

Arrgh. Fear! Scary empty-stomach feeling. I realized that I had no backup plan for a busted grinder. No beef = no burgers = Edzo's closed. As I disassembled the grinder, my mind started wondering how much ground beef the nearest Dominick's would have in stock at 7am on Sunday morning, and then started writing a sign; "Edzo's is closed today due to mechanical problems".

Disaster averted. Took the grinder apart, removed the frozen chunk of fat, put it back together, and it started right up, good as ever. Lesson; have a backup grinder on hand just in case.

Later, as 9am rolled around and only Oscar had shown up and clocked in, I started to worry (as I always do when employees are late) that the rest of today's crew wouldn't show up. Luis and Norberto were both ten, then fifteen, then twenty minutes late.

In my mind, when this happens, I always fear the worst. No call, no show, they're quitting. And then I start to figure out what I'm going to do once they don't show up and don't work for me any more. And sometimes, I compose signs in my mind, since if two of the three scheduled employees fail to show, we're going to have a heck of a time operating that day.

Handling late employees is a weak spot for me. Managers of small operations like Edzo's live in fear of employees (especially good ones) not showing up for work, because with so few employees, one no-show can really make the day (and subsequent days, weeks, whatever) difficult.

So when someone oversleeps, or just fails to leave enough time to account for late busses or trains, and shows up forty-five minutes or an hour late, I'm generally just so relieved that they eventually did come through the door, and that I don't have to go through the hiring/new hire/training process again, that I tend to be too laid back about the lateness.

It's a hard thing. I have to force myself to ignore my relief and gratitude that they didn't just outright blow me off, and act more stern and put out about the lateness than I'm actually feeling.

I did it today with Luis, who has come in more than a half an hour late two consecutive Sundays. Even though I wanted to hug him for eventually walking through the door, I angrily told him that he needs to leave more time on Sunday, since the trains don't run as often, and that if it happens again, he's going to be out of a job.

And I did it again today with Norberto, who picked up his phone when I called him a half hour after his scheduled start time and sleepily asked me what time it was.

So....no signs got posted today. The beef got ground and the employees who portion and cook it showed up. But I did double duty composing the signs in my head.

edzo's t-shirts are in!

2009-12-08T19:21:00.003-06:00

Just in time for all your holiday shopping needs. Come and get'em! Hard to tell from the crappy cell phone photo, but the one on the left is either dark brown or blue/gray (depending on the light) and the one on the right is kind of a mustard yellow. They're nice organic cotton pre-washed shirts.

Now available for the low, low price of just fifteen American dollars. Tell all your friends.

And...for a limited time only.....anyone who purchases an Edzo's T-shirt will also get a FREE piece of hot dog gum!

luis, rodding, hustling

2009-12-08T18:49:00.003-06:00

Luis is one of my employees. He's one of those guys who's just always in motion...talking, joking, doing twelve things at once, innovating.

I came to employ Luis because he works next door in the evening as a busboy, and he came by about three times a week while I was working on the space, asking for a job. I asked Rodolfo about him--Rodolfo is proving to be an apt HR person as far as vetting potential new employees--and was given a good report, so I signed him up.

He's quite the little hustler, Luis. But in a good way. Almost every day, it seems, Luis is working on brokering a deal to swap food with one of the other nearby restaurants. He works next door, of course, so getting pizzas and pastas from them is easy pickin's. He also knows his way around over there, so if we're temporarily out of garbage bags, eggs, or whatever, he just goes over and gets whatever it is we need (we pay them back).

The other day, he set the record for back-door-restaurant hustling. He traded four burgers for a large pizza with mushrooms, pepperoni, sausage, and onion in the morning, which we all feasted on. Then, when we had a backed-up drain under our dish sink, Luis suddenly just disappeared for a few minutes, only to return with some Asian guy and a power rodder. I guess the guy works at the Japanese place around the corner and somehow Luis knew the guy had the right tool for the job.

The worked on the drain for a while, and then Luis pulled me aside and quietly told me that the guy would probably want something in exchange for his time and the use of his tool. I was prepared to pay him (you know, with actual money), but after fighting the drain for a while with his handheld rodder and having no luck, then wheeling in the big one and finishing the job, the guy just wanted a few burgers.

He left with his rodders and a few minutes later, I sent Luis over there with a sack of burgers for him. Of course, when Luis comes back, he's got a bunch of fried rice and some pepper steak or somesuch. Hustler.

He's also one of those guys who never stops eating but weighs like 130. This might be explained by the fact that he never stops jabbering, joking, or just generally moving around. He's a hard worker and a pretty bright guy, but his energy level and his ability to figure out ways to get stuff done (and just get stuff) makes him a really valuable guy to have around.

More examples of Luis' powers; he's managed to get me to make a custom internet radio station for him featuring the music of Los Tigres Del Norte. Only because I could not bear to listen to another morning of radio 105.1 Que Bueno, the worst morning show in the history of broadcast media. He got sick of buying coffee on his way in to work, and trying to mooch it from the Trattoria was proving difficult, so he showed up one day with a used Braun machine from Village Thrift and a can of Folgers.

The amazing thing about this guy is that he's so charming and nice about everything, that he manages to hustle up all this stuff for himself without ruffling any feathers or stepping on any toes. In fact, everyone seems to love it. He's one of those guys that people like setting up with stuff.

If you come into the restaurant, look for him. He's the guy in the paper Vienna Beef hat. He prefers to wear these cheesy paper hats that I have instead of the standard issue baseball cap, for some odd reason.

(Oh, the hustled-up rodding job didn't take, of course, so I've now got a guy coming out tomorrow. A real guy. Who I'll have to pay. With money.)

sick

2009-12-02T17:49:00.003-06:00

I've felt like I've had a slight fever most of the day today and have occasionally been a bit dizzy, so I'm heading home early tonight and going straight to bed, swaddled in sweats and a big comforter, to try and sleep/sweat out whatever might be going on.

I live in fear of getting sick or injured. If I do, I'm not sure how the restaurant would continue to run, and if we had to close due to me not being able to work for any extended period, that would be the end of Edzo's, I think.

Not a pleasant note to end on, but I'm not in the mood to write more now. Back tomorrow.

shakedown

2009-11-27T16:51:00.009-06:00

So, I'm a big believer in the whole "customer is always right" mantra. Except for those times when the customer is wrong.

Seriously, I take customer complaints VERY seriously and I'm very quick to offer comps, refunds, empathy, apologies, whatever it takes to rectify a situation in which a customer is less than fully satisfied. I've become very good at handling these kind of situations and turning an unsatisfied customer into someone who feels that, although they weren't given what they should've been, the situation was handled by someone who genuinely cared about making it right.

So today, when a guy called me and told me that the burgers he got on Wednesday contained "foreign matter", I got my initial horrified reaction under control and started asking some questions to get to the bottom of the situation, and, more importantly, what did he want me to do to fix it.

Turns out, this person, who identified himself as "David" was claiming that the burgers had "gristle and bone" in them. He claimed that once he or one of his friends (for whom he bought lunch) got a bite with whatever it was in it, they just threw away the rest of the food and ordered a pizza.

He also claimed that he called back that day and was told that the manager "wasn't available."

So now I start to wonder what's up. First off, I grind the beef myself every single day. No one else does it. Ever. The large pieces of chuck that I get in are boneless and they're trimmed well before being ground. I eat the burgers every day and have never had anything even vaguely resembling a hard gristly piece, and have never received this complaint before.

Second, I'm the only one that answers the phone here. If the phone rings and I'm not able to answer for some reason, my employees don't pick it up.

So as soon as David told me that these two occurrences that never occur both happened to him on the same day, some red flags went up. That said, I wanted the opportunity to talk to him in person, so I told him to come in when it was convenient for him and we'd talk about it.

Of course, he showed up today, towards the end of the day, and was basically demanding his money back. He claimed he was owed forty bucks, but when I asked him how many burgers he had, he said "four", which doesn't compute.

It's always a delicate situation, this kind of thing. You don't want to just come out and call the person who's standing in front of you a liar, you want to somehow reach an amicable solution, but, also, no one wants to be taken advantage of by some scammer making up a story to try and extort money.

So I basically tried to just keep him talking. I asked him if he had a receipt and he said that he had "just thrown it away this morning" after talking to me on the phone, since I didn't tell him to bring it, he said he figured he wouldn't need it.

Ding, ding, ding! My scam artist alarm bells just went off again there. If you managed to actually save the receipt for two days, why wouldn't you then bring it with you? And, even more damning--I generally don't give the customers receipts. We use them in the kitchen and, while I can print a copy of the receipt if the customer requests one, almost no one ever does.

I didn't tell David that, though. I just acted incredulous about the fact that he expected me to hand him a cash refund without a receipt, and asked him if any other store/restaurant would ever do that.

That's when he started getting confrontational and loud. He made some thinly-veiled threat about how he didn't want to have to talk loudly about this and have my customers hear, since I might be embarrassed and I told him that I wasn't worried about that, and to go ahead and talk as loudly as he wanted. Then he asked me flat-out if I was "calling him a liar" and even though I thought he was lying, I didn't want to escalate the whole thing, so I just said something about how his story contained way too many unlikely coincidences for me to believe it to the point that I'd hand him forty bucks out of my register.

Then, he started going off about how we're doing well, have lots of customers in here, and could afford it, to which my response was "what the fuck does THAT have to do with anything?", and then I started getting nervous, wondering how long he's been watching me and/or this place.

Finally, I just came out and told him that there was no way that I was going to give him any cash, but if he wanted me to give him a re-make of his lunch, I'd do that. With that, he stormed out, but he went out the back door, rather than the front. I followed him to make sure he wasn't going to trash my bathroom or something, and after I listened to make sure he was just washing his hands, he returned into the restaurant and said that, yes, he would just take the free food.

But now I was so certain that he was a shake down artist, that I didn't want to give him the free food, at least not without making him work some more for it, so I kept at him, telling him that his story seemed really fishy, and first he didn't want the food, but now he was going to take it, and what's up with that? Finally, I just said to him, "look, if I give you a bunch of free burgers, are you just going to go away and not come back again with this kind of crap?" He said yes, so I wrote a ticket and had the burgers made, but while he was waiting, he must've gotten cold feet or something, so he said he needed to go do something and he'd come back in a few minutes, but he never returned.

The whole thing was just so upsetting. The guy looked like a fairly nice, normal person, and it goes against my nature to be suspicious of people anyway, but especially in a customer-service type of situation. After he showed his hand, I felt like such a moron for even giving him the time of day in the first place, and then I started getting paranoid, thinking he was going to try and come back and beat me up, or jump me when I went to the bank or something. I even took a different route when I walked to the bank to make the deposit.

It's been a couple hours, but I'm still shaken up. I hate the nervous, freaky feeling that this encounter has left me with, and I hate even more the prospect of dealing with any future unsatisfied customer with this looming in the back of my head, coloring my perception of the next person, whose complaint might be perfectly legitimate.

Fuck you, asshole scammer shakedown artist. Stay the fuck away from my store!

sorry!

2009-11-25T17:35:00.005-06:00

photo courtesy of Carrie Becker's twitter feed (https://twitter.com/CarrieBecker7)

I know that the lines out the door are a good thing. And almost everyone is super-understanding and patient about waiting. Which is also a good thing, and thanks, folks, for that.

But I can't help but feel bad when people have to wait too long to get up to the counter and order and then wait too long for their food, or have us screw up their order in one way or another.

I try and say 'sorry' a lot, I'm loose with the freebies when this happens, and I'm usually good about thanking people for their patience, but this post is geared towards people I missed, or didn't know about, or who I just wasn't able to personally talk to. Sorry. Thanks for your understanding.

Today I misjudged how busy we would be and we got caught. I thought it would be slow, that people would be heading out of town, but it was crazy busy. We should've had at least one more employee working than we did, I should've ground at least 30 pounds more beef than I ground this morning, and we should've been more ready.

That said, it wasn't a disaster. I managed to run around and get Rodolfo, my dishwasher, set up with some meat and the grinder so he could start grinding more beef, the cooks held their own, and even though I had to run downstairs to the basement to change the CO2 tank for the soda machine right in the middle of it all, everything worked out in the end. I did notice quite a few people at the end of the line peeling off though, and for that I feel bad.

But.....we didn't run out of beef, fries, or burger buns, and those are my three basic cardinal rules of what to never do in this restaurant. So not the end of the world, I guess, although all the delays and scrambling certainly caused some people some time, annoyance, and perhaps negatively impacted their experience. Especially if they were the ones in line when I came back from running downstairs and promptly spilled the dirty milkshake-machine-cleaning-water cup all over the shake station.

Sorry! Thanks for your patience! Next year, I'll know to plan for a busy day, the day before Thanksgiving.

am I still a chef?

2009-11-21T17:10:00.003-06:00

I've been reading a lot of stuff lately about me and my restaurant. Which is great--I'm super thankful for all the media attention we've gotten.

One thing, though, that I've noticed is that a lot of writers like to emphasize the point that I "used to be a chef". The implication being, I guess, that since we're a quick-serve burger place with low prices, that my designation has somehow changed.

Even though I'm still running a kitchen, wrote the menu, plan to write specials, manage the cooks, and do all the stuff that makes up the typical chef's job description. I find it a bit strange.

Don't get me wrong--it's not a big deal. Media folks can hang any title they want on me as long as they get the restaurant's name and address correct. But I think it's indicative of how society thinks about restaurants and chefs. In my experience, there's a bit of a disconnect between how people think of chefs and how chefs think of themselves.

People have always been a bit confused about who gets called a "chef". When I graduated from culinary school, my parents were quick to introduce me as "my son, the chef" and their friends acted suitably impressed. But I was quick to point out that I wasn't a chef. I was working at the time as a cook, and so that's how I identified myself. I worked with too many puffed-up line cooks who thought they were chefs but couldn't properly truss a chicken or butcher fish, and I tended to err on the side of modesty, for fear of lumping myself in with them.

Graduating from culinary school isn't the same as graduating from medical school. You're not "a chef" the day you graduate. You're a culinary school graduate. In my book, you're not "a chef" unless someone is paying you to run a kitchen, write menus, order food, etc, etc.

There are notable exceptions, of course. Some chefs reach a status that entitles them to be called chefs regardless of what they're doing at the present moment. But these are few and far between and I'm not in that realm.

It's strange, though, because when I've been unemployed, I haven't followed this rule. If I met someone at a party or something and they asked me what I do for a living, I'd say "I'm a chef". It's just easier than getting into the whole thing.

Anyway, the important thing is that I know I can cook. I've always thought of my vocation--the one that's not tied to any individual position--as cook. I was a cook when I was cleaning out the deep fryers at Spruce in the mid-90's, when I was cleaning cuttlefish in Barcelona in '98, and I was a cook when was expediting at Carlucci and writing menus at Solara in the mid '00's. It's just easier to think of it in those terms, and also, when things blow up and I'm unemployed cooking dinner at home for my family, I'm still just a cook.

I suppose now that I'm running my own place, I'm wearing multiple hats. Bookkeeper, accounts payable/receivable, HR, interior decorator, cashier, kitchen manager....call me whatever, I guess.

At root, though, Edzo's is what it is because I'm a cook at heart, and I kind of like the fact that the restaurant that I chose to open is so low-brow and accessible that people are reluctant to bestow the title of "chef" on the guy running the show.

Joints don't have chefs, I guess. That's probably a good thing.

the cooks are talkin'

2009-11-15T18:08:00.002-06:00

Word gets around.

Yesterday a guy came in and grabbed a burger and fries to go, and while he was waiting for his order, he told me that he works at Blackbird and someone he worked with told him to come up to Evanston and check out Edzo's.

Then today, around the same time...maybe 3, 3:30 in the afternoon, another guy comes in, asks me what I recommend (double cheeseburger, fries), and gives me his name--Brian.

Turns out it's Brian Huston, of The Publican.

He grew up in Evanston and still lives here, I think. We talked for a while, he told me where he gets the espelette pepper he uses on their famous pork rinds, and I was so absorbed in the conversation that I forgot to pass his ticket into the kitchen.

Nice to meet you, Brian. Hope you liked the (somewhat delayed) burger.

clean air

2009-11-12T17:17:00.002-06:00

New exhaust fan = clean air inside the restaurant.

It works. Pretty damn well, actually. As I recently blogged, there were so many things wrong with the exhaust fan that was here when I bought the previous restaurant that I just went ahead and got a whole new unit. Upgraded it a bit, even.

The difference is huge. Whereas before, the smoke from the char burgers would curl up and under the hood, billowing out into the dining room, the new unit pulls so hard that the smoke literally streams up off the grill and flies right up into the filters and out. It's like night and day. The place already smells less like burgers and fries and I expect that, with time, it will go back to having a fairly neutral smell.

(Not that the smell of burgers is such a bad thing...I just don't want people's clothes to smell like burger grease after eating here.)

I'll resist the urge to share the final cost of the whole operation, but let's just say it was significant and dashed any hopes I might've had about turning a profit this month. The fan I ended up getting was huge--600 lbs--and had to be lifted up onto the roof with a crane. The install was supposed to happen yesterday around 4pm (closing time) but the company doing it called me around noon to ask if they could move it up to 2pm, since the crane would be more expensive at four.

So it all happened while we were open. I was out back, checking out the crane (my cell phone was out of batteries, so I couldn't snap any pictures), running around trying to get people to move their cars out of the parking lot so the crane could maneuver around some electric lines, all while still taking orders, ringing up customers, and making sure that things in the restaurant were happening like they're supposed to.

Except, of course, for the smoke. And the heat. Before the new fan could be installed, the old one had to come out, so we had basically two hours with no exhaust whatsoever, but we were still cooking burgers and fries. So it quickly got pretty hot and smokey. I propped open the front and back doors and warned everyone when they first walked in that it might be somewhat uncomfortable, and everyone was really quite nice and understanding about it.

There were, of course, some issues with the install and so I had to stick around until late into the evening before eventually signing the guy out and writing him a big check. Once it was hooked up and running, I cooked a burger on the char grill just to make sure it was working well, but it was pretty obvious. The draw yanked a piece of wax paper quickly up toward the filter, and it's strong enough to cause the filters to kind of rock back and forth as they get sucked up.

So it's good.

But let's hope not too good. Problems can arise from having too powerful of an exhaust as well. It can create a vacuum by sucking out all the oxygen from a space and cause other gas appliances to get choked off or backdraft, it can pull all the heated air out of the space and require the furnace to run far more than it needs to, and it can sometimes create weird pressure and drafts to move through the space, causing strange problems. This is the kind of stuff that you don't always find out about right away--sometimes these things won't be evident until the weather gets cold, or hot, or humid, or not, or I start running the furnace...or who knows.

We have a passive make-up air system that allows air to flow from outside into the front lip of the hood, which is supposed to prevent the exhaust fan from pulling out all the interior air, and it appeared to be functioning fine today, although there are definitely some new drafts and the door to the kitchen is very difficult to open when the fan is on, so there's certainly some change. Only time will tell if it will be problematic.

Sure hope not. One of the few things that is more costly than an exhaust system is a make-up air system.

a crappy day

2009-11-10T15:31:00.003-06:00

Today was a crappy day. Probably the first one I've had since we've been open.

It had nothing to do with the food; everything ran fine and people were happy with their burgers. It mostly had to do with me finding out that I'm going to have to shell out nearly five grand for a new motor for my exhaust fan.

For those of you who've been following along, and remember when the fire department was here, that's probably not a big surprise. But I was holding out hope that someone would tell me that I just needed a new fan belt or something similar that would cost a hundred bucks or so. No such luck.

After having three or four HVAC guys out here, and getting wildly disparate opinions about what the underlying issue was, the last two have basically told me the same thing, which I am now resigned to believing. I need a new motor, a new drive shaft, and new bearings.

That's not the reason for my crappy day, though....It was more due to how I responded to the news. The quote was delivered to me right as we were about to get busy for lunch and I really let it affect me. The guy kept turning the fan on and off and we kept building up lots of smoke and heat and then it would slowly dissipate, and for a while I was worried that his monkeying around up there was going to cause the thing to fail entirely.

Instead, it kept chugging along, but they're coming out tomorrow to do the install. After I found out I'm going to have to put out all that cash, we had a fairly slow lunch (well, ok....not slow, per se, but slow compared to the crazy pace we've been going at) and I found myself sweating the stupid small stuff like people getting water instead of a soda and that kind of thing.

Normally, I hate the kind of nickel and diming that restaurants often engage in. My philosophy is that I'm happy to provide water cups for free (full size), happy to have people get in and out for $4.75, and happily give four quarters to non-customers because I believe in the concept of hospitality.

It's a lot harder to do, though, in the context of a $5,000 hood repair, and so I wasn't able to be as upbeat and positive today as I normally try to be.

Similarly, I try hard not to "cut" my employees when we're slow. Generally, I believe that hiring and scheduling well makes it possible to allow my employees to work their scheduled hours, and that giving them X number of hours per week consistently is the humane thing to do, since they have bills to pay and households to run and need to be able to count on getting a certain dollar amount every two weeks.

Today, though, after the lunch rush ended, I continued worrying about money, so did end up cutting two of my guys early, although I asked them if they would mind and was fully prepared to allow them to work their scheduled shift if they expressed reservations. Both were actually happy to get out, so that was no big deal.

Bottom line is that I allowed the news about the hood to affect my mood and demeanor with customers and my employees, which is not good.

I need to chalk the expenditure up to start up costs, which is really what it is--it was something that needed to be addressed all along, we just didn't find out about it until a month in--and get over it.

I'm having a hard time doing that, though. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be closer to a place where I can manage it. A really busy day will help. And so will seeing the burger smoke whip up into the canopy and out the way it's supposed to, rather than billowing around under it and curling out into the restaurant as it's been doing for the past month.

patty melt

2009-11-09T10:33:00.004-06:00

These have been coming out nice, as both a 4-oz. thin patty melt, and a half-pound melt where the customer can specify the degree of doneness. We do these with the standard american cheese and grilled onions on griddled marble rye. This is a pretty good looking medium rare;

mural

2009-11-07T17:48:00.006-06:00

I've been wanting to blog about the mural and have probably referenced it already in one place or another, but this is the official post about it and the process that went into having it done.

It's fabulous--I love it. The digital file looks great but on the wall, it's like 15 feet wide by 10 feet high, and it's just so in your face with it's utter funky burger-osity.

I wouldn't have even thought of having a mural done, but there was already a framed-out space that had some dark undersea motif going on, and that needed to be changed, so I figured I'd put an ad on Craigslist looking for a mural person and see what happened.

Well, there are a LOT of talented artists in this town who will respond to a Craigslist ad for a low-paying, long-hours job like drawing and then painting a big-ass mural. It was great, since I had so many awesome people to choose from, but it's kind of depressing too, that so many talented people are hard-up for work and cash. As a society, I think we don't value our artists enough.

Anyway, after looking at many portfolios and talking to lots of people, I hired Jason Castillo to do some sketches and then see where we could go from there. He documents the process on his blog, but, from my perspective, the whole thing was really fairly effortless. He emailed me scanned drawings that he did, I gave him feedback, he sent me more, and eventually we got it to a point where I was just literally thrilled with the result. It completely makes the space.

Sadly, Jason broke his elbow on the same day that we finished removing the old wallpaper and he was just set to start painting. After learning that he would be out of commission for 3 months, he suggested having his friend and fellow mural artist, Shayne Labadie do the actual painting.

Which she did, and a very thorough and conscientious job she did, gridding it all out and then painstakingly doing pencil line drawings of every section of the mural, before starting to paint and fill in the various blocks of color.

Shayne was super nice and just quietly went about her work for the two weeks leading up to our opening, and finished up just a few days into our official lifespan. Since she was just getting a flat fee, she could've rushed through it or given me grief when I asked her to re-do a section or two, but she was a pro throughout. She's also quite talented, check out her stuff.

Anyway, the whole mural process was so cool, because it was completely happenstance; I had no initial plan of doing a mural and it just worked out so perfectly, didn't cost very much, and added a ton to the overall feel of the restaurant. I love when things work out that way.

banks, fees, annoyances

2009-11-03T18:23:00.004-06:00

On Sunday, going over my bank statement online, I noticed that the bank had charged me $1.95 "currency exchange", $1.50 "change fee", and a $3.93 for "cash deposit immediate". I've been doing exactly the same thing every day that we've been open and this is the first time these charges appeared. WTF?

So I march in there this morning and the tellers can't tell me anything and the "bankers" (aren't they all "bankers"? If not, why not?) aren't there yet. Great.

So when I went back to make my deposit this afternoon, I asked my "banker", who nodded and replied that we'd have to "tweak" my account status so I won't get charged as the totals build up toward the end of the month. I was relieved to hear that this wasn't going to be a daily occurrence (I was prepared to switch banks immediately if it was), but it's still super annoying. Apparently I was depositing TOO MUCH money and so started to incur charges. Are you kidding me?

This is the same bank that charged me $38 for a stamp I didn't ask for and don't need, and that refuses to furnish me with a night deposit bag to carry my money back and forth, instead offering to sell me one for thirty-five bucks. Needless to say, they're on my short list. Get it right, "bankers", depositing lots of money is a GOOD thing, not something you should be ~~charging~~ trying to charge me for.

Then, just a few minutes ago, I'm going over my merchant services statement from the nice folks who process my credit card transactions and noticing that every day showed a fairly large number (perhaps 10%-12% of my total daily sales) as "non-funded card types". It showed these transactions as part of my deposit, but the total for the non-funded card types (whatever that means) was shown in red and was not included in the daily amount transferred to my account. WTF again! The total of "non-funded card types" was more than $150 just for last Saturday! Where's my money, people?

When this kind of stuff happens, I immediately see red, begin imagining that they're all out to get me, to rip me off, and there's some sort of fine print I didn't read and I'm going to be out a bunch of money. I was wondering if somehow my machine accepts debit cards, but I did something wrong and wasn't getting reimbursed for them? Really, I had no idea.

So I called the number on the statement, punched in my merchant ID number, followed by the pound sign, wormed my way through the many numbered menu items, and finally got a person, who promptly asked me again for my merchant ID number. (Why'd I just enter it if you're just going to ask me for it again?!?)

Ok, this time, crisis averted. The "non-funded card types" turns out to be American Express, and those charges are being deposited into my bank account (after AMEX takes their cut, of course, on top of what merchant services takes).

Being a cash-only business is something I toyed with doing, but given my proximity to a major university, and knowing a lot of people who use their debit cards for everything and never carry cash, I opted to take the cards. Looking at this statement and the amount of fees, cuts, and percentages they take out every month makes me regret that, to some extent. But, honestly, I think it was the right choice and so maybe the answer is just to not look to closely at the damn statement every month.

corndog

2009-11-01T18:01:00.003-06:00

I'm going to start blogging about one specific menu item whenever it occurs to me or if I manage to snap a few decent pics. This one features the corndog.

It's hand-dipped. A basic cornbread batter. Put a Vienna dog on a stick, roll it in flour, dip it in the corndog batter. Try not to let it stick to the basket when you drop it in the fryer.

week three complete

2009-11-01T17:44:00.002-06:00

Three weeks in, and all systems seem to be go. We haven't run out of beef, potatoes, or bread. Everything else is gravy.

Running this place is starting to feel routine. Employees are showing up consistently, working competently, learning fast. I'm starting to feel comfortable with the ordering, thinking one or two days ahead in case orders show up late, and today we blew out compressors and did some deep cleaning.

Am I jinxing myself? I'll shut up now before a pipe bursts or something.

why do we close at 4pm?

2009-10-25T17:21:00.004-05:00

Lots of people have been downright incredulous about the fact that we close at four and aren't planning to be open nights any time soon. The conversation usually goes like this:

Customer: "Hey, what's up with you guys not being open at night?"

Me: "Yeah, we close at four everyday."

C: "Oh, but that's just temporary, right? You guys will eventually stay open later?"

M: "Nope. Four pm."

C: "What?? Why?"

And so it goes. I feel bad disappointing so many people, but....

here's why:

Life's too short for me not to spend some quality time with my wife and kids. I've spent a good part of the last 15 years in kitchens working long hours and 6-7 day weeks, and I'm at a point in my life where I need a decent balance between work/personal time. Being closed at night means that I get to read to my kids almost every night.

it's the beef

2009-10-25T16:55:00.003-05:00

A very successful first couple weeks! Numbers are better than expected, media coverage has been wonderful, and, best of all, customers are loving the freshly-ground burgers.

The quick-serve restaurant burger standard is simply set so low that just by virtue of grinding our own beef, we are worlds beyond what people have come to expect, so folks are generally very pleased with what we're giving them.

The menu mix at this point is about 20:1 burgers to anything else on the menu besides fries, and I suppose that's to be expected; when you go to a "burger shop", first thing you try is a burger.

And I'm glad, because that's really our strong suit. The fresh-ground beef yields a really tender, looser texture, much better, cleaner flavor, and a ridiculously juicy finished product.

For those who get into this sort of thing, I'm sourcing beef from Nebraska; it's conventionally farmed and raised and sourced through JDY Meat, a local, family owned company that is bringing me some really nice pieces of chuck. I played around with adding different cuts to the grind, but ultimately opted to go with straight chuck, which, with its natural 80:20 fat to lean ratio, has always been the go-to cut of beef for burger grind. And for a reason--it works.

a visit from the firemen

2009-10-20T18:37:00.005-05:00

Is it a good thing when the fire department shows up on only your seventh day of business? I've been pondering this question since it happened at around 12:30pm today.

On the one hand, it means that I'm cooking so many burgers and fries that I'm generating a ton of smoke, so that's a good thing. But somehow the smoke was going into the restaurant next door (Trattoria Demi--I love the fried calamari with banana peppers) and offices above and someone called the fire department. Woo-hoo!

I tried to explain that we were just cooking lots of burgers (seriously, the menu mix has been about 30:1 burgers to anything else) and after a cursory walk-through and look-around the six or eight firemen that were suddenly everywhere seemed satisfied that our smoke was of no danger to anyone, and took their leave.

So the downside of all that burger smoke is that when it doesn't go up and out like it's supposed to, things start to cost a lot of money.

Honestly, I think the main problem is that so many people keep ordering the char burger, which is our 8oz. thick burger that gets cooked to the requested degree of doneness on the char grill. Cooking it on our really hot grill generates a ton of smoke.

In my opinion, the meat doesn't come out as nice this way as it does when it's cooked on the griddle with the smaller 4oz. patties, and I've actually toyed with the idea of removing the char burger option from the menu due to the fact that it takes longer and is also more of an adventure, since the cook is trying to hit temps--medium, medium rare, etc.

But the freshly ground beef is coming out so nice that I really hate to remove the option of having it cooked that way, if that's what one person or another prefers. But to anyone who asks, I'm recommending the griddled burger.

Sorry, fire department guys, for the inconvenience!

Call to the ventilation company has already been made, of course, and the guy is coming out tomorrow.

the good and the bad

2009-10-18T22:31:00.006-05:00

I had a really nice exchange today with a woman who came in just to shake my hand and tell me that the burger her husband brought her as part of a takeout order yesterday was the best she's had in years. She was really raving and heaping on the praise. I've had lots of people say stuff along these lines, and it's really nice to hear.

But, of course, no matter how many people say positive things, I can't help but fixate on the few negative comments I've gotten.

One guy was pissed off even before he was halfway through the line on Friday. The line was out the door and he was yelling at me from way back there, finding fault with the fact that we weren't able to accommodate people as quickly as we should perhaps have been able to. And while it's true that we're not able to work through a line as fast as we'll be able to in a month or so, most people understand that we've just opened and are cutting us lots of slack. (Thanks for that, if this applies to you.)

Once this guy got up to the front, he gave me three separate orders, paying separately for each, and then ended up calling back twice to complain. I felt bad that he wasn't satisfied with the experience, but couldn't help but wonder if his negativity at the outset didn't more or less guarantee that he would end up disappointed.

It's a fine line to walk. Yes, it's true that for the moment, we're probably understaffed when the crush comes and the lines are out the door. But my guys are learning and with repetition, we'll get faster and more efficient, and the same number of cooks will soon be able to handle those lines much faster. So, do I hire another person or two, and then let them go once we get faster and smoother? That doesn't seem very nice or fair. Or do I muddle through with what I believe will ultimately be the right number of employees, creating some long lines at peak lunch hours and perhaps alienating some customers?

Then today, I found a couple reviews of us on Yelp, and rather than be happy about the two fairly positive ones, I'm obsessing about the negative one, which the guy also Twittered.

So, even though there's been plenty of good--and I'm fully aware that there's no way public comment is ever going to be 100% positive--I'm finding myself being overly sensitive to the bad. It's a dangerous tendency because when one person says something--that the food's too salty, for example--my response is to OVER react to that specific criticism, instruct my cooks to scale way back on the salt and pepper, and then what'll inevitably happen is that we'll start getting comments that the food is bland and flavorless. Either that, or I'll end up telling my employees one thing one day and then telling them the opposite the next, which will result in them losing confidence in me and eroding my authority.

So even though my head knows that we're doing things right, that we can't possibly please everyone, and that the vast majority are giving me big thumbs up as they wipe the juice off their chins, I can't help but get somewhat emotional and panicky as a result of every negative comment that I hear or read.

Not sure what the solution is, other than to smile, apologize, and be gracious, take the advice for what its worth (some of the criticism is, of course, valid, and offers opportunities for us to improve), and just keep doing what we're doing knowing that we're getting better every day.

Beyond that, I guess I just need to grow a thicker skin. Or stop doing web and Twitter searches and finding this stuff.

real-time blogging

2009-10-18T08:38:00.003-05:00

Ok, one of the really weird things about writing this blog in conjunction with opening the restaurant has been trying to consider what is and isn't prudent to write about, depending on what's going on.

For instance, I would resist the urge to blog about various things that I was worried about the health department busting me on because of the possibility that someone that works for the city might stumble onto this blog and read it. Same thing with negotiations surrounding the purchase, lease, etc.

But now that we're open, I'm going to catch up and start blogging in more or less real time. It's really a liberating feeling to be able to do so. I'll still have to consider who I talk about and how I portray them, but the whole question of time, and whether to blog this or that before this or that event takes place is now moot. Thank god.

It's been a good first week. We opened Tuesday and did ok business Tuesday and Wednesday. The articles I mentioned in my previous post came out mid-week and then we did a lot of business on Thursday and Friday. Saturday, fearing a crush of people, I came in at 6am and ground hundreds of pounds of beef, cut hundreds of pounds of potatoes, and then waited around for all the people, who never materialized. We had a pretty good day on Saturday, but it wasn't crazy like I thought it might be.

So that means today is a light prep day. Sundays, I hear, are usually pretty quiet around here, and we're closed on Monday, so no sense in bulking up on prep. This is why you find my writing a blog post when we're set to open in less than two hours.

Wow! Only two hours until we're open? I'd better get to work.

open!

2009-10-15T15:53:00.003-05:00

Yes, it's true. We're open.

I kept it quiet for a while. I was very conflicted about it. I wanted to be open so my life could transition from getting-the-restaurant-ready-and-I-need-to-work-every-minute-of-every-day mode to normal maintenance mode (with some continuing tweaking, of course). And I wanted to be open so that we might actually be able to put some money IN the bank for a change.

But I was also worried. Worried that we'd have too much business and wouldn't be able to handle it well, and we'd alienate people. And worried that we wouldn't have any business and the whole thing would be a pitiful crashing failure.

We'd been doing training sessions for a couple weeks, inviting people to some, giving the food away randomly at others, and towards the end of this cycle, I started answering 'yes' to people that just walked in off the street and asked if we were open. That was the tail end of last week. We did about seventy bucks in sales on Thursday and a bit more on Friday. It went well enough and I felt that the guys were moving forward pretty well, so I decided to just go ahead and open on Tuesday and do normal hours this week.

But, my plan was to leave the paper on the windows to kind of ease into it.

Well, that all changed on Tuesday. I decided to remove the paper off just one window, and once it was down, it felt so nice to have sunlight in the space and to be able to see outside, that I just tore all of it down and figured I'd just see how it went.

And it went pretty well. We're having the inevitable cluster-fucks and ticket confusion, but the bottom line is that the freshly ground beef is turning out such awesomely flavorful, juicy burgers that all is forgiven, it seems. People have been really kind and understanding and the food is getting raves. I've felt really bad a couple times when someone's ticket gets misplaced and they wait forever for their food while their friends are already finished, or the same guy gets a wrong burger two times before we finally get it right, but all I can do is sincerely apologize, thank them for their patience and understanding, and move forward.

Today was the busiest we've been, in the wake of magazine pieces in both Time Out Chicago and Chicago Magazine, and another nice piece on Urban Daddy dot com. I'd never heard of this site, but apparently a lot of people read it since we've heard lots of folks mention that they saw it, and the analytics I get on this site tell me that I'm getting tons of traffic here as a result. So, thanks, Urban Daddy!

I'm generally not one to rest on laurels and waste time patting myself on the back. Instead, my tendency is to worry about what all this good PR will bring, and whether we'll be able to handle it, so I've been focusing on making sure we have enough beef and potatoes and just putting my head down and working. But in the moments between all that, it's been pretty damn nice to see that this project that I've been working on since January is now coming to fruition and is getting a pretty nice reception from customers.

So....cat's outta the bag. I haven't Twittered or Facebooked it yet, since I wanted to feel like we had our legs under us before I put out the APB alert, but there it is. No turning back.

5/5

2009-10-11T15:10:00.003-05:00

Health inspection passed. First try.

This actually took place about a week ago, but I've been reluctant to blog about it for fear of feeling pressure to get open and possibly do before we're ready.

I've been doing trainings with my staff (which has now grown to include a kind of scrappy guy named Luis) and there have been some issues, mostly centering around cooking the 8oz. burgers to the requested degree of doneness, and then also some issues with reading tickets and putting the correct toppings on the sandwiches. Totally stuff that you'd expect to have to work out, but that does still need to be worked out. Preferably not on paying customers, although it's inevitable that there will be some of that.

So I've been trying to limit that as much as possible by inflicting it on my friends, who are always willing to submit themselves as guinea pigs. Down to the last, they are gracious when they receive a dreadfully overcooked and wrongly-topped burger, but it's hard not to feel sheepish and apologetic when someone I know and care about is given badly prepared food.

There were definitely some growing pains. Following one such session, where I invited a bunch of denizens of LTH forum, I got really down on myself and the restaurant for a couple days. Things did not go well and this was a group whose opinions I really valued. Everyone was completely kind and understanding, but I was embarrassed and started to question the whole crazy idea of me running a restaurant. Until the next good thing happened--I think it was nailing the corndog recipe--and then I was on top of the world again. Can you say bi-polar?

I've mentioned this before, but it's tough not to feel about as good as my last experience here, given the fact that the restaurant has no history, no momentum, no "way it always goes", to fall back on. I guess it's kind of like when you have your first kid and everything's so hugely scary...you just aren't all that confident that they won't just stop breathing one night. But you do tend to gain that confidence over time, with each night that passes and there they are, still alive and fine the next morning.

I keep coming back to the restaurant on days or nights I don't need to be here just to ensure that everything's still here and working the way it's supposed to.

So far, besides some anticipated setbacks, it is.

french fry testing

2009-10-11T14:35:00.005-05:00

Getting the fries right has been a long and fairly time-consuming process. Not really difficult, per se, but I was determined to try a bunch of different things and see how they affected the finished product.

Common wisdom on a ka-chunker cut twice-cooked fry is that you blanch (par-cook) them in 300° oil, drain, cool down, then fry again at about 350° right before serving. The devil is, of course, in the details. Particularly, with this style of fries, the question of how to cool the potatoes down after the first cook.

The question of rinsing the potatoes after cutting them is also one that you'll find various schools of thought on. I decided to try a lot of different ways while I was waiting for the inspection process to progress and weigh what worked best against how difficult/easy it would be to do it that way and ensure it's done consistently.

One thing that really complicated the process was that the thermostats on my fryers were all off by 25 degrees or more (on the low side), so until I got a fryer thermometer to check, I was very confused about the results I was getting.

Basically, what was happening was that I was cooking too hot. When I set it to 300°, I was getting 325°, and ditto for the second, hotter cook. The result was a fry that browned too quickly and so wasn't fully cooked inside before being brown outside. Undercooked, still crunchy in places, soggy, greasy, and burnt-tasting. Not good.

Once I started temping the oil, the 300/350 method worked, so I started playing with the cooling down variable.

Chefs Bob Zrenner and Jason Hammel are friends, so I asked them both how they do their fresh-cut fries. Both said that the blanched fries should be cooled as quickly as possible, spread out on trays in the freezer. Bob said rinse the potatoes for 20 minutes in running water, which seemed like a long time to me.

I started with a really well-rinsed potato and found it too "clean". The fries were too perfect somehow. I played with rinsing a bit less and less until I found that the method that works for me (at least with the current batch of potatoes) is just to cut them into water, move them around a bit to rinse the residual starch, and then pull them out and cook them.

Leaving the starch is a conscious decision, but I find that to my taste, it yields a better fry. One that's somehow both quite crunchy, but also a bit chewy somehow. I'm pretty happy with how the fries are coming out now.

Yeah, and then there's the toppings. Cooking really good fries is definitely something I'm aspiring to do every day, but, honestly, you could put Merkt's cheese sauce and crisp bacon on an old shoe and and I'd eat it!

As far as cooling them down, I'm going to leave that little fact unblogged and not a part of the public domain for now. If you're that curious you can come on into the restaurant once we open and see for yourself.

the not-so-great flood of '09

2009-10-06T21:55:00.002-05:00

Can you think of anything less helpful to someone trying to open a restaurant than to suddenly find water streaming out of the ceiling for no apparent reason? I can't.

The day had promise. A guy came and paid me $400 for the pleasure of taking away a cooler that I didn't want and probably would've given away for free. My window graphics were, I learned, done, and would probably go up today (they did). And I was looking forward to a fairly low-key day where I would tie up lots of loose little ends and move towards getting open soon.

Then, in the midst of fielding two phone calls simultaneously (a cell and a cordless up to each ear, arms crossed momentarily, fumbling), I realized that the sound of water running I was hearing was....water. Running. From the ceiling down all over everything; onto the counter, onto all the stuff stored in the line coolers, onto my cash register, my hamburger phone, and the new menus I'd just gotten back from the printer. From the light fixtures, from my menu board (still lit).

All I could do was quickly tell both phone calls that I'd call them back and then start trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. I dashed out the back to see if it was raining. It wasn't. Duh. There are offices above me.

Then I ran up the fire escape out back and pounded on the back door to whatever offices are up there. Someone heard, let me in, and I quickly headed to the spot where it seemed like the water would've been coming from. Bathrooms. After stupidly checking the women's room first and finding nada, I went into the men's to find two stopped-up toilets, one of which was running and overflowing. I was so pleased with myself for finding the problem so quickly that I didn't even blanch at the prospect of cozying up next to the filled-to-the-brim toilet in order to reach behind it and turn off the water supply. If you must know, yes, there were floaters.

Great. Problem fixed. I yelled a parting message to the office-workers to "PLEASE, NEXT TIME YOUR TOILET IS STOPPED UP, CALL THE LANDLORD!" and headed downstairs to begin the lovely task of cleaning up the fucking bilge water that was all over my restaurant.

But not until after I called the landlord. I called my rep (or whatever you call the guy who handles your account for the building management company), left a message for him, and then called back and hit zero to talk to the operator. I very excitedly told her what was going on and her tone was about what you'd expect from someone who you just told all about the toast you had for breakfast. As if stuff like this happens every day.

"Yes, ho hum...have you called the building janitor?" (She didn't actually say "ho hum".)

"No, I wasn't even aware that I have a building janitor. What's his name and number?"

She gives me the info using the most blasé voice I've ever heard (I think she may have literally been filing her nails and blowing bubble gum bubbles at the time) and so I hung up and called Tufa, the janitor. I think his name's Tufa. It might be Futa. Or Tafu. Definitely not Tofu.

Anyway, he's an older Croatian guy shaped vaguely like a bowling ball, but with much more hair. I told him what was up and he disappeared for about twelve seconds before re-emerging and declaring the problem fixed. I asked if he'd help me clean up the mess, and he gestured that I should just show him where the mop was, but when I did, and showed him where I wanted him to clean, he balked, saying "I no mop NOTHING".

I really didn't know what his problem was, but I was in no mood to get into it with this dude, so I just kind of disengaged. Once I returned, it became evident that he had misunderstood and thought that I was trying to get him to clean the floor of my whole restaurant and once I explained that I just wanted him to clean up the overflown toilet water, he became much happier, chipper even, and started flying around cleaning up.

Which he did very quickly and effectively, I will say. I pressed him about the situation upstairs and he agreed to go back up and make sure the toilets were both working properly. So he did, and then--poof--he was gone.

I spent a good amount of time then walking around throwing things away and trying to salvage stuff. Very annoying. No call from my landlord rep guy the rest of the day either.

But, honestly, for all the annoyance, it wasn't a huge setback. When the water was streaming in, I had visions of settlements with insurance companies, re-wiring electrical, and all sorts of months-long delaying type of stuff, so the three or four extra hours I spent on this don't really seem that bad. Just a bunch of drama. What else is new?

4/5

2009-10-02T15:30:00.002-05:00

Forgot to log this the other day. Electrical inspector came back, gave a quick look at the two fixes we had to do, and signed off on my last building inspection, which means that we're cleared to call the health department and schedule our health inspection.

The health inspector's name is Ike. He did a pre-sale walk-through for me back in July (can't believe it's been that long) when we were on the verge of buying the place.

He pointed out a few small things which I've already taken care of, so I'm just hoping to catch him on a good day or in a good mood so he doesn't just decide that another few thousand dollars of fixes need to be done, or some other random thing.

He seems really reasonable, though, so I'm hoping that it'll go smoothly.

the role of the ice cream dipper well

2009-10-02T15:05:00.004-05:00

Hello,

I'm an ice cream dipper well.

Behold me in all my stainless steel glory!

I am NSF certified! Any restaurant in Evanston that chooses to serve ice cream must use me to contain the scoops and/or spades with which they portion the ice cream. I serve one purpose. To run cold water in a constant stream over those scoops as they sit idle. I take this job very seriously.

I cost more than $500 to purchase and install, and I run through probably dozens of gallons of water per hour since, as you can see, the only single solitary thing I do is maintain a small pool of running, sanitary, clean, water.

Seems crazy, right? Very expensive and wasteful just for the purpose of keeping those ice cream dipping tools clean and sanitary, don't you think?

But. This is a nice little restaurant you got here. It'd be a shame if anything were to happen to it. Like, for instance, if the health department came in here and just one day up and decided to close you down because they viewed you as a risk to the public health, with your ice cream scoops that were just cleaned in normal soap and water.

So...most intelligent restaurant owners such as yourself--you look like a smart guy--choose to employ the services of an ice cream dipper well such as myself. Just in case. Like I said, this is a nice little operation you got going here; it'd be a shame if anything were to happen to it.

Thaaat's right...just purchase me and install me using the handy mounting screws (included), hook up that small metal pipe there to the nearest water supply, and go buy a length of plastic tubing from Menard's to run down to the drain. There you go....that's the way. Good.

I can see you're a really smart businessman. I believe we're going to have a long and fruitful relationship. I've got a great feeling about this little venture of yours.

It's been a pleasure doing business with you.

today I bolted a table to a wall

2009-09-28T16:08:00.008-05:00

And, yeah, that took me pretty much the whole day. It's incredible, sometimes, how long stuff takes.

It's our lone prep table, and It's going to serve as the main base of operations for the meat grinder and the deli slicer, which will both be used daily. As I've been working through the food, I've been noticing that the table careens wildly when I do anything on it, so I determined that it needed to be attached to the wall.

So, after my 349th trip to Menard's to fetch a pair of heavy duty brackets, I set to work. First thing I needed to do was figure out how to attach the brackets to the table. It wasn't easy, since the table is really just legs with a stainless top and backsplash, so other than the top/backsplash, there's not a whole lot there to attach brackets to. But, in an ideal world, you're not supposed to have screws or bolts sticking out of your seamless stainless work surface, since little bits of food and gook can get lodged in there and the health department doesn't like that. I mean, that's why restaurants use a single, seamless span of stainless steel--it's easy to clean.

But, as we all know, we do not live in an ideal world. And I couldn't figure out how else to attach the brackets, so I lined it up, marked it off, and began drilling through the stainless.

In the midst of doing that, of course, I fielded phone calls ("Hi, we're calling from Ontario about your credit card processing terminal--how you doin' on thermal paper?"), handed out job applications, did a couple brief interviews, tasted a couple different kinds of sausage, and some other stuff I probably forgot completely about by now. (I'm actually composing this post today, Monday, but the table in question was bolted to the wall in question on Friday, so forgive me if I leave out any essential minutiae).

Because it's so busy around here during the day with phone calls, walk-in visits, and such, I'm usually not able to do anything that involves any long-term focus until evening, so around 6 or so, I re-engaged with my bolting a table to a wall project.

Of course, if you've got a table that's going to be bolted to the wall, and you pull it out to attach the brackets, you really will want to do a thorough cleaning behind it, since it's probably the only chance you'll have to really clean back there for a long time. So I did. Cleaned down the walls, deck brushed the floor, lots of de-greaser, squeegeed the whole mess over to the floor drain. Looked great.

Then I scraped all the silicone off the wall and off the table so I would have a nice clean surface to work with. Great. Ready to bolt.

Ok...drilling through stainless steel is difficult. Very difficult. Even with my hammer drill and a titanium bit, each hole still took about 8 minutes of solid drilling to punch through the steel. I had to stop and let the drill cool off a couple times during that process. I've burned out more than my share of drills being impatient.

Then I realized that the screws that came with my brackets were too long and would butt up against each other the way I had the brackets configured, so I had to walk over to the local Ace Hardware (which I can't believe I didn't figure out was only a three block walk until after making dozens of car trips to Menard's/Lowe's/HD) and get some shorter nuts and bolts.

Got'em. Picked up some dinner on the way back, did a bit more drilling, ate dinner while the drill cooled off again, and by 8:00 or so, the brackets were attached to the table.

Mercifully, attaching it to the wall was fairly effortless. I moved it into place, marked spots where I needed to drill, moved it away again, drilled, sunk anchors, then pushed it back in and, zip, zip, zip....the screws went in and the table was suddenly--a mere 12 hours after I started--attached to the wall.

A couple beads of silicone where the table meets the wall and the dish sink, and I was done. Yep, another successful day in the glamorous restaurant biz!

I'd include a picture, but it's a friggin' table bolted to a wall. Not much to look at.

good things

2009-09-24T16:54:00.005-05:00

That was my lunch today.

We've been working through the menu, a few dishes at a time, for a couple days now, running through the process, putting things where they need to be, and trying to just learn how to best do what we're trying to do. Some things are going well, some are proving harder to nail (like the fries).

Polishes are easy. Score the ends with a plus sign and let'em curl up when you toss the sausage into the deep fryer for about a minute, before finishing it on the char grill. It's a Chicago classic. I tried a few different types of Polishes before settling on Vienna; some of the others were good, but had pork in them, which disqualifies it from being a Maxwell style Polish in my book.

We did a few milkshakes today, as well, after the cooking was over, including a chocolate malt, a vanilla-maple shake, and a banana shake with fresh banana. I'm experimenting to see how much pureeing the mixmaster can handle; it's not really made to do that. It came out ok, but I think a pre-smush while still in the skin would help next time. Details....

Lots of good media interest continues as well (probably in no small part due to this blog). Chuck Sudo from Chicagoist stopped by today and we chatted for a while. He was too late to get food, but we're doing trainings next week as well so maybe he'll be back.

Also some interest from Chicago Magazine and Time Out Chicago. It's great and I'm flattered and pleased with the interest, but it also makes me concerned that we're going to get completely slammed when we do our "soft opening". It's only soft if you're not drumming up business by blogging the whole thing, I guess. Duh.

Anyway, Polish and cheese fries were more or less a success. Merkt's spread is so good. Need to keep working with the brat, char burger, and, of course, the fries, which I think could've used another two minutes of blanching. Onward. Tomorrow's a slow day.

3/5

2009-09-22T16:46:00.004-05:00

Amidst a very busy morning of repair guys, our first day of staff training in the kitchen, and receiving our first deliveries, the fire inspector showed up and gave me the stamp of approval.

So that's three out of five. The fourth should happen soon enough--I'll have the fixes from the electrical inspection done by Thursday, I think, and hopefully we'll get a re-inspection fairly quickly. That just leaves the health department, who inspect me and issue my business license.

We had a very successful morning of training. I ground beef, cut fries, cooked burgers, fried fries, and did an abbreviated set-up and breakdown with Carlos and Rodolfo. We had about six or eight friends drop by and so we served up burgers, fries, shakes, and I got to do the first road test of my inside-out grilled cheese. Everything went well. The beef, in particular, was a home run. We froze all the grinder parts this time, the beef was nice and fresh, and it came out just beautiful--beefy tasting, juicy even with the 4 oz. burgers cooked through, and with a great crispy, lacy edge from the flat top.

The fries were a bit of an adventure, since, after mastering them on one of my three fryers, I fired up the second one for the first time and discovered the temps are way off on that one as well.

One minor bummer was that the pop machine and ice maker were down and I didn't have time to try and figure it out, so I just advised everyone to bring drinks for themselves. A few people were nice enough to bring me cold waters and iced tea as well. Thanks!

Turns out it was just one of the GFCI outlets. There are a number of bad ones around, and I'm already having the electrician replace them when he does the other stuff for the inspection, so that's no big deal.

It was again fun to have some friends in to sample our wares, and our neighbors Steve and Wendy, in particular, since they went to the trouble of making Edzo's shirts and wearing them! I don't even have an Edzo's shirt yet!

So. A good day. I'm super tired. Setting up, breaking down, and cooking is always pretty stressful at this stage because you're just doing so much *thinking* as well as all the actual physical work. Once things are figured out and we all know where stuff goes, and how it goes, it starts to feel much easier.

I'm hoping to get four of five done this week and call for the health department to come in early next week!

logo

2009-09-19T20:18:00.006-05:00

I left here around 8:30pm last night and got here around 9am this morning, but somehow in that time span, the awning company came and installed the new awning with my logo on it.

I haven't posted the logo here yet, and I've only showed it to a select few people, but since it's now above the door and officially out there, take a look.

It was done by Paul Koob, who did a great job on it. Thanks, Paul.

look what i got

2009-09-18T18:17:00.006-05:00

I told my Vienna rep to look around for any old signage he might have laying around so when he got wind of another place closing, he asked me if I wanted the sign when they took it down. This was a few weeks ago.

Today, I get a call and a couple of eastern European guys show up in a van with a cherrypicker thing attached to it and lay this cool item on me. Nice.

This day was fun, but not particularly productive. My wife and kids and a couple other early tasters came down for lunch, so I spent the morning getting set up; cutting and blanching fries, slicing cheese on the new slicer, and firing up, for the first time, the hot dog rig.

I don't have a steam table and didn't come across one cheap enough on any of my forays into the unseemly underbelly of Chicago restaurant gear buy-n-sell to pick one up, so I'm using a countertop steam bath unit with deep half pans--one for the dogs in water and one for buns.

Things went, overall, pretty well, although it's always very difficult and stressful working in a new kitchen, figuring out where every little thing is going to go, but that's the point of working through it now rather than later.

Other than the cool sign above and the run-through on some burgers, Polishes, fries and dogs, (oh, and I did make shakes as well--almost forgot), not a lot happened today. I'm noticing a distinct pattern of nothing getting done on Fridays.

Wait. One thing I did forget was that the electrician came by and looked at what I need done for the city to write me an estimate.

Oh. Another thing that got done was that I had my pest control person, the incredible Al Howard in to do his thing.

Al is quite a character. I worked with him at my last job and he did an awesome job for me. He is one of those rare people that takes great pride in doing a really unpleasant job. And he does it well. He's really quite dedicated. He'll also talk your ear off! Anyway, I served him up a dog and some fries and by the time he had gone over the place, and done what he needed to do--with lots of chatting along the way--about three hours had gone by.

(No, he doesn't bill by the hour. Al's deal is that you pay him a set amount per month (it varies, depending on the size, location, etc) and for that much money, he makes sure you don't have any pests. Regardless of how many times he has to come back. Which is a big part of why I like him.)

Ok, so now that I look at it that way, I did, actually, manage to get a few constructive things today. But the list is long and I'm going to wrap this up to go work on costing menu items.

inspections continue

2009-09-17T15:22:00.002-05:00

Had a guy out for the electrical portion of my building inspection today and he dinged me on a couple little things.

Which isn't really all that big a deal, I guess, but it requires pulling permits from the city and everything else that goes along with that. So it's going to cost time and money. Of course.

The first thing was that an outlet is required for every four feet of food prep counter space and I only have one across a six-foot span of counter. There's a plate on the wall where it looks like an outlet might have been at one time, so it's just a question of installing one.

The second thing is that I have an neon "open" sign in the front window and the cord for that runs up the side of the window and up into an outlet in the ceiling. It reaches just fine and the cord is secured well, but the guy said that the code requires such an outlet to be at least eighteen inches from the window, and this is 24 inches. So I have to have the electrician come out and do some sort of extension on it.

Both of these rules are designed to remove the likelihood that people will use extension cords, which, apparently, are quite hazardous. (I don't know, maybe they really are.) I had no plans of using an extension cord in either case, but that doesn't matter. Just gotta get these things fixed.

I called three local electric companies (I have to use an electrician that's licensed by the city of Evanston). Two didn't answer their phones so I left a message. The third seemed confused by my request to have a guy come out and give me an estimate, and transferred me twice before I got to the right person, who seemed incredulous when I told her I was hoping to get someone out today.

But, after a few hours, I got an appointment for a guy to come out tomorrow and take a look. It's probably going to end up costing me at least $300 for what's probably less than an hour of (completely unnecessary) work.

It's not really that big a deal, but right after the guy left, I was working on one of the line coolers and when I plugged it in, it didn't start up. So I checked the outlet and realized that the outlet's not working. I tried fiddling with the test/reset switch, but they appear to not be functioning the way they're supposed to. That made me realize just how many of the GFCI outlets in this place are kind of wonky and I started getting all paranoid, thinking that nothing works right, that the electric is a big mess behind the walls, and it's all going to cost me tons of money.

This is how it goes. I have a good day where I get a few things done, maybe do a little cooking or hang a sign and suddenly I feel like I'm ready to open tomorrow!

Then the next day, things stall, people cancel appointments, something breaks or shows itself to be a potential problem, and I'm totally down, thinking we'll never get open, pushing things back.

I'm sure it's best to just keep a steady course and realize that the setbacks are going to happen, but because I'm not getting all that much sleep and I'm hyper-focused on every teeny-tiny detail, it's hard to keep perspective and stay cool. There's a certain sense of momentum that restaurants have, once they're up and running, they kind of tend to just keep on running, because that's how they've always been.

But when you're starting up, you don't have that, and it undermines confidence. You start to wonder if you'll ever get open, if you'll be able to find any good employees, or if anyone will even want to come in and buy what you're selling.

So that's where my brain is at today.

Things continue to happen, though. I got my ice-cream dipper well installed and leak-free, my big garbage cans arrived, and my Quickbooks person came by and tidied up my financial situation so that what I see as my balance jibes with what Chase says is my balance. That's always nice.

The knife company came back with my deli slicer, and they brought the right one this time. They picked it up last week and yesterday the guy shuffled in with one that looked similar, but, although I didn't really remember what the one I sent out looked like, I didn't think it was it.

It wasn't. A quick call revealed the fact that they repaired two very similar slicers and got them mixed up. So I sent the old guy away and he returned today with what is a much more solid, somewhat larger unit. Nice. Much better, thank you.

Oh, and I got another call from Penny Pollack, from Chicago magazine, who said they're planning on featuring me in a small blurb in their November issue, which comes out in mid-October (thanks!). She wanted to know for sure that we'd be open by then. I confidently said 'yes' while crossing my fingers. I told her I'd call her on a day that we were training and she could come by and have a burger and fries, but she reminded me that she works anonymously.

I was actually pretty surprised to hear that. I didn't think any restaurant critics, outside of maybe the New York Times or something, still did that. But it's a good thing, I think, and raised my respect level for their reviews a couple of notches. We had a brief, somewhat humorous discussion about the ethics of restaurant reviewing, how things have changed with the advent of bloggers, Yelp, and the fact that everyone with an internet connection is now a critic, and that was that.

The big thing that happened today, though, was beef. Beef arrived. I got a bit yesterday from one vendor, I bought some more today from the grocery store, and then another vendor came through with a whole cryovacked piece today.

So while the day has been somewhat frustrating, I'm planning on staying late, grinding some beef, cutting some potatoes, slicing some onions, and doing some cooking. Which is always a good way to remind myself of what the point of all this is.

Anyone reading is welcome to give me a call or a tweet and maybe I'll let you come in and sample my experiments around dinner tonight.

2/5

2009-09-16T16:06:00.004-05:00

City inspection two of five (I think) got done today. The guy from the structural department came out today and looked around, confirmed I didn't do any construction, and signed off.

Fire department was out as well and found an emergency light that didn't go on when I cut the power from the box, so I have to figure out what's wrong with it. He also wants me to put some address numbers horizontally (there are already a set of old, vertically-oriented numbers on the door frame, but he wants to see something horizontal) so I'm off to Menard's Depot for the 868th time on my way home. Other than that, everything was fine.

Busy day today, lots got done. Griddle is finally re-wired and operational, ice cream dipper-well got installed today, but has a slight leak I believe. Pepsi fountain service guy was out to flush the lines, calibrate and "brix" the unit so we all drank a celebratory cup of soda once it was functioning.

Rodolfo was in helping me with cleaning, he finally got the blades for the ceiling fans all finished, it's been at least a month since I could safely turn on the fans, since some of the blades were in a half-installed state. There was this one screw, on each of the blades, which was just really impossible to turn...

But now we've got fans going, and it creates a very nice circulation of the air that wasn't there before. Good. And Pepsi, too!

More samples arrived today, including beef from my Greco rep Len (thanks). So after I make a quick trip to the store tomorrow for some tomatoes and lettuce, I'm going to start cooking a whole bunch of stuff. I'm going to walk through things tomorrow here, solo, and then have Carlos come in on Friday-Saturday and work together with him, just getting a feel for the flow, the equipment, etc...

Very exciting! I've been working on fries the last few days, but now that the kitchen is fully operational, there's no reason not to start making everything.

I also need to hire a couple more people. I have two employees, plus myself, but I'm thinking I need two and possibly three cooks on the line including Carlos, so I'm planning on hiring a couple part-timers to supplement the busy periods and use to cover the six-day week.

My plan was to close on Mondays, but from what I've seen in this area, it's busier Monday to Friday, and Sundays appear to be the slowest day, at least street-traffic-wise. May re-think.

I'm going to cut this post short because I must visit two of the holy trinity of depots (Home, Office, and Restaurant) on my way home and I need to get back in time for the wife to go out tonight.

fits and starts

2009-09-15T10:35:00.003-05:00

Stuff is happening. Some good, some bad.

My report of the kitchen being up last week was, unfortunately, premature. We're still whacking away at the griddle. If you'll recall, it's wired to be plugged into a 220 outlet, but I don't have such an outlet anywhere near the unit, and I don't want to start re-wiring electric, which would require me to pull permits, etc.

After all my hand-wringing, my appliance guy, Paul, finally opened it up and discovered that it was originally built as a 110-type unit, and that someone else had previously re-wired it to work in a 220 outlet, for no particular reason that we could figure out. And, he said, they did a pretty poor job of it.

So he's going to re/un-do it in such a way that will allow me to use it, but he keeps not having the right parts and/or enough time to get it done. He was hear last week on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. He managed to get everything else working, but keeps putting me off on the griddle. He was supposed to be out this afternoon, but just called me to reschedule for tomorrow morning.

Which is fine, since I've been working on my vendors for samples since last week and still haven't gotten anything except 100 pounds of potatoes from my Sysco guy. So I can't grind/cook beef on my griddle, since the griddle isn't working, but, since I don't have any beef (I suppose I could go buy some, but I'm trying to be frugal), it doesn't much matter anyway.

But...time is a-wastin' and I really want to be able to have at least a few days to work through some of the recipes/procedures before I start training my employees on them.

More crappy news. Jason, the guy I hired to paint a mural on one wall, who's in possession of a fantastic portfolio and who did an amazing sketch and mock-up of the mural he was planning on painting for me, broke his elbow in a bike accident over the weekend. He needs surgery and it's going to be about THREE MONTHS until he's back to normal.

I feel for him; it sucks that this happened and, obviously, the problems this creates for him are worse than the problems it creates for me. But I'm me, and I'm focused on myself and this restaurant and this really sucks.

I was really psyched about this mural, it was going to be a fantastic mood-setter for the place. I just spent a bunch of time peeling off the old wallpaper in anticipation of him starting and now I have a 15x10 foot framed-out square of patchy white plaster and a talented but one-armed artist with a great plan but without the ability to bring it to life.

It's not an essential part of opening, but it would've been nice and the whole thing bums me out.

On the up side, city inspections are starting to happen. I booked the building and fire people last week and the first guy came out this morning. He was a very congenial older guy who was already familiar with the space and when he learned that we didn't make any changes, he did what was a fairly cursory look-around and signed off. That's the first of three buildings inspections, (they do plumbing/HVAC, electrical, and structural) and then the fire department inspects before everyone sends their paperwork to the department of public health, which does the final inspections and issues the business license.

So that's step 1 of 5 or so that's been cleared. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it all goes as smoothly.

score!

2009-09-11T18:07:00.007-05:00

After a half a dozen or so restaurant sales and auctions, including some where the guy was asking for darn near face value for grit-encrusted stuff out of their basement, I finally hit a good one this morning out in Downer's Grove.

It was an Elliot's Off Broadway Deli franchise in a 10-story or so office complex that looked like it had been there quite a while. The nice lady who sold me all this stuff for eighty bucks said fifteen years. She didn't seem too upset about closing up the restaurant, but it was still one of those situations you hope for when you go to these things, where the people just basically want some token amount of money for a ton of stuff, just so they can get rid of all of it and move on with their lives.

It's hard not to feel kind of bad in that situation, like am I taking advantage of someone else's misery. (Which, yes, I know I am.)

But also the feeling bad that creeps in when I wonder how my restaurant will do...these people selling all their equipment were all full of potential and enthusiasm at one time as well. I can't help but think about how this could be me a year or so from now...and then I quickly push those thoughts away and crank up the radio. I've been listening to 97.1 The Drive a ton as I'm working. They play at least one song off Journey's 1978 classic, Infinity, every day!

Score! Off to sort through the loot.

kitchen, up!

2009-09-10T20:02:00.002-05:00

Ok, I apparently lied today when I twittered "landmark day. Edzo's Burger Shop, kitchen is fully operational."

It's not quite fully operational, since the griddle is still not up and running, but everything else is. I fired up the fryers today, filled with water, all three were cranking. Did a boil-out clean and they'll be ready to fry up some potatoes tomorrow.

Sysco guy dropped off two cases of Idaho russets this afternoon, fifty pounds each of #1 grade and #2 (utility). They're the same potatoes, but the #1's are generally used for baking so they're cosmetically a little nicer, less blemishes and such. I wanted to sample them side by side and see if it made any difference. Most fresh-cut places use #2's, since you're just cutting them up anyway.

I broke in the ka-chunker this afternoon, cutting a small container of each, rinsing them in cold water for about 10 minutes until the water began to run clear showing that all the surface starch has rinsed away. I labeled the #1's as such and stowed them away for tomorrow.

Not much in the coolers yet. There will be soon.

live auction

2009-09-10T00:15:00.002-05:00

So as I continue to pour money into what I keep calling "the little stuff", I keep thinking that this stuff has GOT to be available elsewhere. I'm talking storage containers, those metal steam table insert pans, sheet pans, tongs, ice cream scoops, rubber scrapers, etc, etc.... Look it up. The stuff is expensive, and it adds up quick.

Yesterday I managed to locate and arrive on time for an auction. This was a bankruptcy auction for what used to be a Cold Stone Creamery on north Halsted. Apparently, the owner defaulted, owing lots of money to the landlord and/or bank, and they hired an independent auction company to come in and sell anything that wasn't bolted down (and lots that was).

It was a pretty interesting scene. You check in, give a $200 cash deposit, and they give you a bidding card. The auction staff was running around slapping stickers with lot numbers on everything and there were a couple dozen of us bidders milling around, turning stuff off and on, and waiting for the deal to start.

The auctioneer was a no-bullshit old country boy who sported overalls and an American flag-emblazoned screaming eagle shirt, which all of his staff wore as well. He was wired up to a small PA with a wireless headset and cranked it up pretty loud, getting everyone's attention when he was ready to start. He was all business, stating the rules up front, ordering everyone to turn off their cell phones, and mandating that damn near every stick of goods be bought and paid for within an hour and half.

The crowd in attendance was a mixed bag of tired-looking chef types like myself, a couple wide-eyed, full-of-enthusiasm new restaurant owners, and grizzled old veteran restaurant auction bottom-feeder types. The latter category was populated by older Jewish guys, a few younger Mexicans wielding fat rolls of cash, and a bevy of guys with Middle Eastern names scrawled on their nametags. These are the straight-up opportunists...the auctioneer knew most of them by name, and they have the cash, trucks, and storage space to be able to capitalize on the deals, purchase the big stuff and then turn it around on Craigslist, Ebay, or wherever.

The bidding went pretty fast, but I managed to get a few really good deals. A lot of six 2-gallon cambros went for 20 bucks, as did another lot of four 6" half pans. I picked up five half sheetpans for another 20, and, although I just needed one or two ice cream scoops, I left with fourteen of them, sold all as one lot. Not a bad haul.

It was worthwhile for what I purchased, but the auction itself was the more interesting part. At one point, Bob, the auctioneer, went on a tirade about sawzalls. He was auctioning off a safe that was bolted to the floor, and he just raised his voice and started in, completely unprovoked;

"...and I just want to state right here and now, that there will NOT BE ANY SAWZALLS permitted during the removal of anything sold in this sale? Got that? Have I made myself UNDERSTOOD? No SAWZALLS. The landlord and the bank have entrusted me to make sure that we leave this place in good condition and the last thing I will stand for is you people coming in here and tearing it up! Does everybody read me loud and clear?"

Whoa. I'm sensing there's some backstory. I swear, I've never even used a sawzall, Mr. Auctioneer, sir.

There were some really good deals to be had. The three massive ice cream coolers and Cold Stone signature granite mixing slabs garnered no interest as Bob started up at $3,000 and worked his way down, down, down to $150 each. One guy bought the center one, an Italian-made, shiny chrome ice cream dipping display cabinet that probably cost six grand new less than two years ago.

I spoke briefly with Larry, the owner of Tre Kronor in Andersonville, and he had gotten himself all worked up at the prospect of grabbing a $20,000+ Carpigiani batch freezer (ice cream maker) for $500 before he realized he probably didn't have the truck or the manpower to get it out of there. It ended up going for $1500. He told me that he's hooked on these auctions and that he can't go to one without buying way too much stuff, because he knows the value of this stuff and can't believe the deals. As we continued chatting, someone nabbed a twin cooler/freezer Master-Bilt walk-in unit for $2200.

Nice. But what I was really after was the garbage cans. Have you ever looked at the pricing on these things? Crazy. But they didn't have lot number stickers on them. I scoped them out anyway, and they were beauties....clean, new, no cracks anywhere...a few slim-Jim types and two big Rubbermaid Brutes with dollies for the big loads. I asked one of the auction helpers if they were going to sell the garbage cans (they were listed among the items up for sale on the auction company's website) and he said that Bob always sells everything, so I should wait around after the sale and make him an offer. I was all excited, thinking I was going to get $250 worth of garbage cans for ten bucks or something.

But after the sale was over, I approached Bob and asked about the garbage cans, and he looked at me like I was nuts. "We gotta use'em to clean this place out, bud!" he said, eyes bulging as he cut across the restaurant, attending to about four different things at once, "everything's gotta be cleaned out of here by end of day tomorrow."

Well, ok, then. I stacked up my goods, paid my bill (the total of my winning bids, plus a 12% buyer's premium, minus a 2% discount for paying cash), and high-tailed it back up to Evanston. I kind of liked the auction, but for my purposes, it was kind of a waste of nearly an entire morning.

something for nothing

2009-09-09T14:36:00.006-05:00

Yes, it's true. You can get something for nothing. That is, if you have a whole bunch of spent fryer oil.

Back in the olden days, restaurants would have to pay a company to come pick up their spent fryer oil. The grease disposal company would provide a big heavy-duty grease dumpster, and you'd get a bill from them every month depending on the volume of oil they disposed of for you.

Now, things have changed. People want that oil (it's referred to as "yellow oil" in the commodities markets) to run their bio-diesel type cars and for who knows what else. With all the development of alternate energy over the past few years, the price of spent oil has gone sky high and so now the grease disposal companies (they're usually called such-and-such Environmental now) actually pay the restaurants. They calculate their costs, then compare it against the resale value of the oil, and restaurant owners usually get between six and 10 cents a pound, which comes out to maybe fifty or a hundred bucks a month.

Not that much, but, hey, it beats a swift kick to the head.

Today I met with the rep from the company that will be hauling away my grease, and it was just so easy, so quick and so FREE that I felt compelled to write about it. Everyone else I talk to holds out their hand for a check after the conversation, so it's just such a breath of fresh air to put my signature on something, not pay anything, and, as if like magic, the grease that I put in the dumpster will just disappear!

I've been getting lots done and we're very close to the point where I'll start gracing this blog with photos of the food I prepare as I work through recipes. The basics are mostly in place; fryers are up and running, french fry ka-chunker is mounted, the meat grinder has arrived and been tested (it's a beast), hoods are working, fire suppression is re-charged and correctly positioned, and samples have been requested from my vendors.

Food should start arriving any day now and once it does, burger and fries testing will begin. Should be fun. I'm going to work through the procedures before I bring staff in to train, which I'm thinking will happen next week.

Along those lines, I'm starting to take applications for cooks. I have my two main guys hired already, but I'm going to fill in with 2-3 more part timers that will probably get 30 hours a week or so.

The first guy filled out an app today. Under 'position desired', he wrote "line cock".

Perfect. I need one of those.

feelin' the pinch

2009-09-05T10:05:00.006-05:00

The last few days have been productive ones, but today the tide has seemed to somehow turn and I'm now feeling the pinch of money. Budget. As in, I'd feel a lot better about it if there were more of it.

Good news is that I bought a car and got rid of the truck. The truck drop-off netted me $800 I'd forgotten about, which was serving as the security deposit for the guy's truck that I was renting. It's good to be driving the new car rather than the big beast, which was really hard to maneuver in the tight parking lot out back.

You'll notice, if you scrutinize the picture above, that the car's got nearly 100k miles on it. I spent $5k and got a car that I figured would have a great chance of running reliably for three years or so. Last night while I was driving home, the 'check engine' light went on. Great. The Friday of labor day weekend. Fingers crossed for a bit.

One of the main reasons I'm feeling the money pinch is that the bank here in Evanston decided to bounce the cashier's check that I got from the other bank, down in Lincoln Square, when I closed that account. And then, for some reason, decided to debit my account twice for the amount of that check. Once just wasn't enough, apparently.

Days later, after continuing to look at a balance that's much lower than I know it should be, but still not being able to avoid being nervous about it, as if the balance it's telling me really is the real balance, plus, worrying that the whole screw-up would cause the check I wrote to pay for the car to bounce, I finally got word that there was a problem with the endorsement.

I signed it and gave it to the teller, but she didn't stamp it, apparently, to verify that I was endorsing it on behalf of the company. The conversation with the bank guy was not amusing.

Bank guy: "Oh, did you want us to stamp it?"

Me: "I don't know, I don't even know what 'stamp it' means. I wanted you to do whatever needed to be done to make the money go into my account."

BG: "OK, so in this situation, in the future, do you want us to stamp your checks?"

Gaaah! Of course! Jeez, what are you, an idiot? When someone walks up to the window and hands you a big check to deposit into their account, they want you to do ALL THE VARIOUS BOOKKEEPING ACTIONS NECESSARY TO MAKE THE MONEY GO INTO THE ACCOUNT.

Do I have to spell out every step for you people? You're bankers. Bank!

Anyway, I believe the situation will be remedied early next week, but I can't help but worry about money because of it.

Then, besides the car being a potential money sink, I walk in this morning and there's a big puddle of water by the back door, right under where the A/C unit is in the ceiling and I think the worst. I'm immediately moving ladders around, taking ceiling tiles off, and flashlighting around up there, trying to see if there's any kind of leak.

After playing with it for a while, I think it came from the drip pan of one of the countertop beverage coolers we moved back there yesterday, and so is a minor problem, but, again, it's giving me a scare.

Oh, and I opened the electric bill for September and it's over $500. And that's with having all the coolers (including the walk-ins) turned off the entire month!

I've also been spending tons of money. A few $200 orders to restaurant supply stores for smallwares, a meat grinder purchase, a few hundred for hood cleaning/servicing, a few for getting the hot equipment configured and up, a few more for the fire suppression service to recharge the Ansul system, and, on top of all that, a car. All that adds up to an expensive week.

All these little things are making realize how tight my budget is. I'm planning for everything to go smoothly and income to start flowing in my direction in late September. If some of literally dozens of things--most notably, my inspections with the city-- don't happen the way they're supposed to along the way, I'm worried about running out of money.

milwaukee field trip

2009-09-01T21:16:00.007-05:00

Those that have kept current on this blog will remember the trials and tribulations I went through to get a pickup truck. It's now served its purpose and it's time to ditch the F-150 and get a small(ish) car. Just something basic, that can serve as back-and-forth transportation for me and that I can use to shuttle the kids around in if necessary. It'd also be nice if it was big enough that I could toss a few hundred pounds of potatoes in the back if I need to make a run to Restaurant Depot.

So I've been trolling the ads on the web the last few days in search of The Right Car. I'm picky about cars. I like to buy really well-made cars that still have plenty of life in them, but I'm only looking to spend about five grand here, so I'm looking at long running models (Honda, Toyota, Volvo, Subaru) with a pretty good amount of mileage on them. A Subaru with 100,000 miles still has a lot of life in it.

Ideally, I'd love to find a Volvo or Subaru wagon (I've always loved wagons) with 60-70k miles on it for around $5000. They are out there, although most have upwards of 100k.

Yesterday I found a nice-looking Subaru Legacy wagon with 60k on it for sale up in Milwaukee. I figured since it was priced at $5,000, it'd probably go fast, so I decided, despite the fact that Monday is my day to take care of the kids, that I'd go up there, take a look at it, and if all looked good, buy it on the spot.

So I packed up the kids, snacks, diapers, toys, stroller, etc...and headed up to wonderful Wisconsin. Henry's last voyage to Wisconsin was way up in the Northwoods, so when I told him we were going to Wisconsin, he kind of freaked out a bit, thinking we would be in the car for 8 hours again. "No, don't worry...we're just going to Milwaukee," I told him, "only an hour or so."

And then I tossed it out there; the promise....given good behavior....of burgers and frozen custard.

Yep, that's right. I figured as long as work was taking me up to Milwaukee, we would have to check out the famous Kopp's. If in the name of research, if nothing else.

Ok, first off, let me just say that the place looks wierd. The building has this strange, kind of late 60's modern industrial feel to it. I saw the sign above when I pulled in, so I knew I was in the right place, and I saw all these people milling about eating custard and burgers, but they all seemed like they were coming out of a bus station or something. We parked and headed in.

Inside, it's clear you're in the right place. There are 25-foot high gleaming spans of stainless steel everywhere, and huge tall menu boards screaming out the burger/fries/custard offerings. Again, it's got this strange industrial cafeteria kind of feel to it, and compared with the freakishly chipper employees at Culver's, who always seem to take a double dose of their morning happy pills, Kopp's employees serve you with all the joy of a post office employee. The place is built for volume and speed.

Which is understandable, but somewhat inhospitable. The only tables are high cocktail-type tables, but there aren't any stools, so you can stand and gobble, go eat in or around your car, or go down some steps to an outdoor courtyard kind of area. We opted for in-car dining, since dealing with the kids any other way seemed pretty difficult.

The burgers were quite good. I'm not going to wax rhapsodic about them, but I've come to expect a much higher standard from a burger in Wisconsin vs. a burger in Chicago, and Kopp's didn't disappoint. It was a damn good burger; bigger than expected, loaded with cheese, fresh-tasting beef, good quality bacon, good unobtrusive bun, decent grilled onions. Worth the trip.

But the custard was really the star of this show. They have this massive custard-making set-up that takes up one whole side of the restaurant, and the wonderfully fresh, creamy frozen custard is constantly streaming down a trough into these deep wells that are set into the counters. Unlike many custard places, they serve it scooped, and unlike many, they do flavors with chunks of stuff in them without having to go the mix-in McBlizzard style route.

What they do is delightfully low-tech. A worker stands by the trough and spoons in chunks of cookie dough, peanuts, or chocolate chips as the custard moves into the well, creating layers of stuff within the finished product.

The result is fantastic. You get all the smooth creamy texture that makes frozen custard so awesome, but you also get the crunchy stuff for those that like that sort of thing (like me). What's nice is that the nuts or whatever stay intact, due to not being bashed around with a Flurry wand, and they're nice and fresh, due to the fact that it was just mixed with the custard a few moments before it was scooped onto your ice cream carrying vehicle of choice, so they're still crunchy, rather than being sogged out from being mixed with the custard earlier in the process. It's seriously great.

Ok, so, bellies full, we loaded ourselves into the car and headed up to the used car dealership. My plan was to take the carseats out of our car, hook them up in the prospective Edzo-mobile, and take a kid-tested trial run.

Didn't happen though. When I got to the used car lot, they had just taken a deposit on the car from someone else.

So we drove all that way for naught. Bummer. I was pissed.

But there was no one to blame, no one to focus my anger at. Guy's in the business of selling cars...first come, first served. I peeled out of the lot and sped away, straight onto 94 and back down south. By the time I got back, I wasn't so angry anymore, and I was still burping Kopp's burger and onion rings. Back to cars.com!

i hate painting

2009-09-01T20:47:00.004-05:00

It's almost over, the painting. I've been doing most of it myself, and basically, whenever I have a free minute between talking on the phone, having meetings, running all over town hunting down equipment and stuff, and sleeping, I've been painting.

I should amend my title. I don't hate the painting part of painting. What I hate is the prep work. The taping, the primer, the cleaning brushes and rollers, putting down paper on the floor, and being oh-so-careful to not knock over the paint bucket or slop paint around onto the wood work or whatever. The actual painting part where I'm putting the color on the walls is pretty fun. The best part is pulling off the tape and really getting a sense of what the place is going to look like.

That's what I see on the inside of my eyelids when I close my eyes lately. It's what I've been submersed in for some time now. Out with the purple. It's such a dark color that I have to go over it with at least two coats of primer, in order to really cover all that darkness, before I go with the orange. I want the orange to be really bright and unless I really cover the purple well, there's a dark greenish cast that shows through. So...tedious.

But we're close. It's going to look good when it's done.

disaster (narrowly averted)

2009-08-28T07:17:00.003-05:00

My heart is racing as I type this entry. At about 6:30 this morning, I woke with a start, suddenly remembering something, and drove to the restaurant as fast as I could.

I remembered that I had left a counter-top steam table unit plugged in and running last night. Very bad. As I drove down Dempster I kept picturing what I'd see as I turned the corner from Grove onto Sherman, and the scene kept alternating in my mind between a burned-out shell of a building and...not. I tried to control my urge to go 80 as I hoped for that second option.

I made an effort last night to leave the restaurant at around 5pm, in order to get home by around six and start dinner. I've been working so much that when I get home, the kids are a mess, Wendy's behind and exasperated, and I get home so late that I'm not able to be much help with dinner and getting the kids to bed. So last night I made a conscious decision to try and be there for that, and I left rather quickly, forgetting completely that around 3pm I had filled the unit with de-limer and water and left it to boil.

There were some things working in my favor, I calculated as I drove...the unit's max temperature was 180°, it was filled with water nearly to the brim, and there wasn't anything flammable around it, that I could remember. If I was lucky, it might've just burned itself out after it ran out of water. Or maybe it would still have some water in it. After 15 hours? Not likely.

Well, no fault of my own, I got lucky and there was no damage. The building was intact when I turned the corner. No flashing firetruck lights, no plumes of smoke. I parked the truck and unlocked the outer door, then the inner door to the kitchen. Door wasn't hot. No smell of burning or smoke.

The unit had burned all its water away, the bottom was well-toasted, brown, and kind of stunk, but the thing was still operating. The air above it was quite hot.

I got lucky. I did something really, really stupid and, thanks to dumb luck, it did not result in me burning down my restaurant and ruining all my plans.

Thank you God, or karma, or Great Spaghetti Monster. Or maybe just my lucky star. I owe you one.

I'm putting a sign on the back door to remind myself to turn everything off. Right. Now.

signage, sales reps, and the mural

2009-08-27T20:18:00.002-05:00

Another eventful day in the permanent painting zone. I'll be really happy when I can take the chairs down off the tables and move everything out from the center of the room. Still more molding to paint. It's taking forever because I'm painting a light color (orange) over a very dark eggplanty purple. So I'm doing two coats of primer and two, sometimes three of paint. Tedious.

I went down to Lincoln Square today to close the bank account that we had opened down there when we thought that's where the restaurant was going to be. They were nice enough about it, totally understood. Whoever ended up buying the space is already open. Looks like they did a quick facelift on the dining room with new tile floor, new drywall, and a paint job, and opened the doors. It's called Mediterranean Grill and appears to be serving just about the exact same menu as the previous entity, which was Skewers Grill, and the one before that, Egypt Kabob.

Not sure why they think they'll suddenly be able to make a go of it with the same concept that's already failed twice in the space, but good luck to them, I guess. I'm feeling some sour grapes, but don't really have time to care, and I honestly think our location is better. It all works out in the end. I still think that location would be great for this concept. Maybe for our second store.

From there, I headed up to Evanston and got busy. Had a meeting with the Vienna folks to discuss marketing, signage, and lots of other stuff, including this huge framed-out section of wall that I'm hoping to have a mural done for. I was thinking I could use some of Vienna's artwork, particularly that one sign you always see where a giant hot dog is on Navy Pier and it's got the Chicago skyline behind it, but they said they don't have the original of that in a computer file and that it couldn't be done.

I chatted briefly with about 10 different sales reps from bread, meat, produce, and all-purpose vendors, filled out a ton of credit apps, faxed them all around, fielded calls to clarify info, and all the fun stuff that's involved in getting a company to sell you stuff with terms. In between all that, I kept painting, received a big delivery of smallwares (including my fresh-cut fry potato ka-chunker gizmo), and, since Vienna was no help with the mural, placed an ad on Craigslist seeking an artist to do it.

The response I got was amazing. At least a couple dozen replies within a few hours of the ad going up. I thought at the price I was offering, I would get art students and the like, but I got lots of replies from people with degrees and many years of experience, including plenty of portfolios to look at.

One guy came by and threw a bunch of ideas at me, some of which were good, and I considered hiring him on the spot. I didn't, though...figured it's best to sleep on it a bit and see who else applies. It's nice to have this many options, but kind of depressing that all these talented people are so desperate for work that they immediately pounce on an ad offering $500 to do a huge mural inside a hamburger and hot dog place.

I guess it's a good thing that I've got the work to give. The end result should be something striking and interesting on the wall, at any rate. Should be cool.

The next couple days should be pretty crazy. I've got a few artists coming by tomorrow, my guys Carlos and Rodolfo are coming in to help me paint the shoe moldings because I'm burnt out on painting and don't want to lay down on the floor to do the moldings, I've got a Quickbooks consultant coming by in the morning to help me set up my bookkeeping and payroll software, and then, after my meetings with the muralists, I'm supposed to meet some friends down in Wrigleyville to celebrate a buddy's 40th birthday. He's in from New York and is taking a bunch of us to the Cubs' game on Saturday as well, so no work that day. I'm going in on Sunday for a while to compensate for the lost time.

I'm excited because with the menu boards and mural starting to come together, things in the front of the house are really starting to look good. Once the painting is done, I'll really be able to focus on getting the kitchen up and running and then I can order FOOD. And start COOKING. Yay! Can't wait.

Last night I got home around 8:30 and even though Wendy and the kids had already eaten, I started making burgers because I had four different buns I wanted to sample and I really felt like it was best to check them out when they were fresh. I had a pound of ground beef, so I divided it up into four quarters and did four smashed-on-the-griddle style burgers, serving up two as singles and one as a double on one of the larger buns.

It was a fruitful exercise, because I did eliminate one of the buns and managed to hone in a bit more on what I liked about the other two, but even moreso, because the burgers were just juicy, crispy, sloppy, cheesy, and nicely topped with grilled onions and ketchup, I was reminded of what this whole thing's about. I was also STARVING, so that made them taste particularly good.

Oh, yeah...that's right. This opening a restaurant thing is about cooking tasty food. Sometimes I forget, what with all the mundane chatter about grease dumpster service, alarm systems, professional references for lines of credit, and all the other crap I'm devoting 90% of my time to.

I'm determined to have the ability to cook by the end of next week. In order to do that, I've got to figure out my line configuration, get my equipment guy in to do the hookups and repairs, get the hood people out to bring the exhaust up to speed, and get the fire suppression people out to ensure that the Ansul system and fire extinguishers are working properly.

Then...when all that's done. There *will* be burgers cooking. And fries. Can't wait.

new characters

2009-08-26T19:00:00.003-05:00

I've had quite a few new characters emerge over the last few days and wanted to quickly jot them down before I forget.

Carlos--This is my other future employee. I've already introduced Rodolfo, who was the dishwasher/prepper/allaround cleanup guy for PP's. Carlos worked there as well as the main kitchen guy. Pete made a point to pull me aside and highly recommend these two, so I'm planning on hiring them and I've been trying to give them a little work during this in-between time.

Carlos helped yesterday with painting and cleaning. He's a Peruvian guy in his mid-40's, with pretty good English skills. Very good natured and laid back, fairly clean-cut, in that way that people from South America can sometimes have. If that makes any sense. More to come from this guy, I'm sure.

A guy came by yesterday when I was painting in the vestibule and introduced himself as Neil. He apparently knows my dad, and says he's met me in the past, but I don't remember meeting him, and based on his personality, which is along the lines of the guy I met the other day outside Captain Porky's, I think I would've remembered this guy if I'd have met him.

He's an older guy, my dad's age, and I believe the connection is through this family. I'm probably offending them by not remembering better. Sorry!

Anyway, Neil's a big burger-and-fries aficianado going way back to Albany Park and the storied Cooper and Cooper, of which I've only heard. He quizzed me about my plans for cooking the burgers and such and seemed pretty damn knowledgable about the various styles and techniques. He also said that he used to own a restaurant and so has connections for equipment--at one point he whipped out his iPhone and insisted on making a quick call to a guy.

I'm mostly done with buying big pieces of equipment, but I took the phone and talked to his guy, promising to make the trip down to his store on Madison at some point or another.

The third new character of the last few days is "Don". I'm using the quotes because he's a muslim guy who at first introduced himself as Imad, then quickly changed it to Don. Whatever.

This guy is the manager of the beef stand around the corner and he drives an 80's Cadillac Seville that he constantly parks in my spots. When he does, I make a point of wedging him in so he has to come find me if he wants to leave. It's my hope that this will cause him to decide not to park in my spots anymore.

I chatted with him briefly last week, and he came to the realization that we're more or less competitors, although he has plenty of menu items that I won't sell, including Italian beef and sausage. Today he knocks and asks if he can get a burger, jokingly, then tells me he's actually fasting for Ramadan. I offered him some bacon and a pork chop, but told him he'd have to wait until after sundown.

More on all three of these interesting dudes later, I have no doubt.

busy week cued up

2009-08-24T10:30:00.003-05:00

Saturday was fairly uneventful. My guy Sasha was a no-show. He's got some sort of dubious business venture that entails him driving back and forth to Pittsburgh twice a week (don't ask--I didn't) and he called me early Saturday to tell me about some emergency that came up.

So I spent almost the whole day painting. I'm only doing the trim and some fix-ups on the walls, but it's a lot of work because I'm doing light colors over dark ones, so I've got to prime and then do two or sometimes even three coats to get good coverage. It's coming along, but I'm dreading the shoe moldings.

I did a few other things, including placing a big order from Restaurant Equippers, on which I blew about half of my start-up smallwares budget. Hopefully I got about half the smallwares I need. I also made a bunch of appointments for the coming week.

Yesterday I rested my aching body. Painting is really hard on the muscles, especially if you're not used to doing it. Today is my designated childcare day, so that's fairly restful, at least physically.

Plans for the upcoming week; finish painting, get the kitchen equipment hooked up to gas, kitchen deep cleaning, lots of meetings with potential vendors, fill out all credit apps for vendors, keep trolling the restaurant sales and auctions for good deals, pull the trigger on a meat grinder, and a meeting with a Quickbooks expert for a crash course on Friday. I'm sure I'm leaving out a bunch of stuff.

Should be a busy week! Looking forward to making some progress.

my day-long voyage

2009-08-21T21:39:00.007-05:00

How does a quick trip up to Delavan, Wisconsin, to buy a popcorn machine off someone from Craigslist turn into an entire day-long trip?

Well, rain, for starters. It rained and drizzled on and off all day, turning every driver on the road into a nervous Nellie and creating gridlock down every street I turned. Second, construction, of course. Is there a street or highway in the tri-state area that ISN'T under massive construction right now? If so, I did not find it.

Then, of course, there's my ridiculous compulsion to turn every driving trip into a diner, drive-in, or dive visit. Can't cross a state line without seeking out some out-of-the-way hole-in-the-wall that's rumored to have the best whatever it is. Nope. Not me.

And so it was that what would've already been a pretty long trip (hour and a half each way, plus stops) turned into an epic, 8+ hour, butt stiffening, wiper-blade groaning death ~~march~~ drive.

The first error that I made was thinking that, since I was already in Evanston, so close to the lake, I could just shoot up Sheridan Road and avoid all the 94 construction insanity. Wrong. "Shoot up" Sheridan? What was I thinking? It's like a 25 mph limit, curvy as hell, and there was a landscaping truck parked every eleven feet. And don't you dare speed through Winnetka or Lake Forest driving that shitbox F-150, buddy, unless you really want to return for a court date in a few months.

Then, since I was already going to be in the general neighborhood, I figured I'd make a quick stop at the jewel that I've been known to refer to as My New Favorite Restaurant, Captain Porky's in Zion.

Slowed me down quite a bit, but worth it. Dino (the owner) was there and his staff was spread out all over the place with stainless bowls, all of 'em peeling a huge load of gulf shrimp that must've just come in. Score! I'll take one order of those please!

Even better was Dino's fresh goat cheese, which he battered and deep-fried for me. He offered to let me stay and watch how he makes the cheese. This is how the guy is...every visit has the potential of turning into a kind of apprenticeship, depending on when you happen to walk in and what mad-man food science experiment he's into right at that moment.

I ordered an order of the fried goat cheese ($3.75 for five big planks--a total steal) and it was a revelation; texturally, it was like a mozzarella stick...soft and melting with stringy cheese, but this cheese had oomph that you don't get from frozen mozzarella sticks. It was a bit salty, briny almost, like feta, super-creamy, and had a late tang, which is the goat. Amazing. I'm not kidding. I'm not even exaggerating. At all. Dino makes his own cheese from the milk of goats and sheep he raises on his farm in western Illinois. He also told me he just bought a couple Jersey cows with which he will expand his cheesemaking operations. He rocks.

It cost me an hour or so, but I'm glad I went. As I was eating off the flatbed of the pickup truck, this guy approached me and started going on and on about Dino, Captain Porky's food, the gulf coast, "white trash" food, what kind of wood he uses when he smokes pork butts in his backyard, and on and on....I always seem to attract these type of people. How do they find me, I wonder?

Anyway, I forced the last Dino cheese plank on him because I could just tell that if I finished it, I'd be toast for the day, fired up the truck and careened out of the parking lot. The guy was still rambling on as I pulled away. Later, dude!

I got a bit lost going from Zion to Delavan, but managed to make it to the popcorn machine guy's house ok. The guy's wife met me in their garage, we tested out the machine, which was super-clean and seemed to be in fine working order, and made the exchange.

I left the restaurant in Evanston at a little before 11:00. It was about three when I finished loading up the popcorn machine. Not that bad, right?

It gets worse. The trip back is when all the many forces of nature, construction, detours, traffic, and poor radio reception conspired to beat me to a frustrated, traffic-cursing pulp. I held out until around Barrington, when I started melting down. It didn't help that the truck's tires seem to be bald and I kept shimmying around on the newly-laid, perfectly flat roads, all wet with fresh summer rain.

I toyed with the idea of just heading straight home and leaving the popper in the truck overnight, but I had stuff at the restaurant that I wanted to get, so I tacked my way back there, using side streets and even alleys at times to avoid the traffic snarls that met me at every turn.

When I got back to the restaurant, it was 7:00. I dumped the popper on a counter, packed everything up and got home in time to put Nora to bed at around eight. A full day in which I accomplished one thing--buying a popcorn machine.

Actually, that's not true, since I was pretty active on the phone, setting up a number of appointments for next week. But, all in all, a fairly frustrating day. Tomorrow, I'm not doing any driving except to and from the restaurant.

painting, press, parking...

2009-08-20T21:05:00.005-05:00

Progress continues on the restaurant. I'm doing a million things at once, just about every day; taping, priming and painting the space, working on getting equipment in place and hooked up, fielding a thousand calls offering me wonderful rates on merchant and payroll services, and still celebrating the little baby-step victories.

All the big kitchen stuff is in place and I'm working on gathering the smallwares, as we call them in the industry. The little stuff. Bowls, spatulas, french-fry cutting ka-chunker machines, fryer baskets, pink soap, mop heads, and on and on and on forever. I probably have a few days of painting left and then I call Rodolfo in for a couple days of deep cleaning, hook up the equipment and, hopefully, start cooking. That's when things will start to really feel like they're coming together. It's hard to feel like the place is a restaurant when I'm mostly eating Atkin's bars and drinking cold water from the soda machine all day long.

But it is. Or will be. Ideas careen around in my head constantly. Today I worked on the stereo a bit. One of the speakers was vibrating strangely, so I got up and messed around with it, checked all the connections, and got the system working nicely, so then I started planning how to do the music in the space, thinking I could just load up an old mp3 player of mine with hand-picked restaurant songs and put it on endless shuffle.

I've never used the "voice notes" feature of my cell phone before, but I keep thinking of things to do and forgetting them before I can add them to one of my 12 to-do lists, so I trained myself on how to use them and did a couple on the ride home. I'm still feeling scattered. Not because I'm disorganized, but because there's just so much to do and remember.

What I accomplished today: we now have a logo. To be shared on this site soon enough. I think it looks damn good and that will enable me to move forward with the awning company early next week. Like everything, it's a process. Papers have to be filed with the city, etc, etc....

What else? I finally got the guy in the black Cadillac who keeps parking in my spot to seek me out. He parked deep in my space, so I crammed the Ford F-150 I'm currently driving in behind him, right up against his bumper, and left it there until about 7pm tonight. At some point, I figured the guy would want to go home and would have to seek me out. Nice enough guy. I'm hoping he got the message and won't park in my spot any more.

Oh! And, press! We got some more. Courtesy of Chicago Magazine's online blurby blog, Dish, this time. I spoke with Penny Pollack late last week and someone called to fact-check this morning. I'm not crazy about how the piece reads...how it's just one big quote from me...but any mention is welcome, especially from a prominent presence like Chicago. And--bonus--they spelled my name right, so I'm not complainin'. (That's more than I can say for GrubStreet, which spelled my last name "Laskin" at first, and even though they corrected it quickly, Google's bots must've picked it up, 'cause if you Google the name of the restaurant or "Laskin", there it is, floating around the internet, in perpetuity.) At any rate....it's free PR. Much appreciated. (I still love you, Helen!)

Another cool thing I just found out today is that I'm going to get to go to Hot Dog University!

Did you know there was such a thing? I didn't. Vienna runs it at their factory near Damen and Elston, and it's a short training course for people who want to run hot dog carts or stands. It's a service they provide (one of many) for those who sell their products. I'm hoping to get that done sometime next week.

I'm very excited to be working with Vienna. They are, of course, a legendary company, their place in the history of Chicago food is prominent, and, since the restaurant is shaping up to be kind of my personal tribute to classic Chicago hot-dog-stand-food, Vienna is kind of a one-stop shop for me. They have a reputation of being very helpful to start-ups, supplying stuff like signage, promotional materials, free food, and even equipment, so I'm pretty psyched to be involved with them and will be grateful for whatever support they can offer.

More to come tomorrow. I regret that I've gotten out of the habit of posting something here every day or two, due to the fact that I've been getting home late and exhausted and going to bed around 10pm almost every night. Painting equals lots of very tired, sore muscles. I'm going to pick up the pace again.

eventful day

2009-08-13T23:03:00.003-05:00

Today was an eventful and successful day.

The big task at hand was purchasing a three-well deep fryer from some guy on Craigslist who's been listing this thing for sale for the past few weeks. I went and looked at it a couple weeks ago, thought it looked just about perfect, and toyed with the idea of just buying it and stowing it in my garage. But reason won out, I realized that if the restaurant deal fell through I'd be stuck with a big ole deep fryer in my garage, and I passed, figuring that at the price the guy was asking ($500), it'd go.

It didn't. I saw it listed last night, so jumped on it and set up a time to meet the guy in River Forest, where he had it stowed in HIS garage.

But, as you can see, it's a beast, and there's no way that I'd have been able to handle moving it around myself. Especially with my bum arm, which is still hurting me enough that I just iced it for over an hour.

Enter Rodolfo.

Rodolfo is my first hire. Unofficially, at this point, but I'm going to hire him. He worked at PP's and PP spoke very highly of him. In fact, he called me during the negotiation period especially to talk to me about two employees, who he highly recommended that I hire. He said they were super-dependable and great, hard workers. I plan on hiring them both, and have filled them in on the plan, the timeline, and when they can expect me to call them to come to work.

It's great from my perspective, since finding dependable help can be difficult, it's great from their perspective, since I'm sure they're daunted by the prospect of looking for a new job right now, and it's great from PP's perspective, because he gets to walk away without feeling like he left these two quality people high and dry by selling the place.

I happened to run into Rodolfo in the bathroom (the bathrooms are located in a common area of the building, so are shared by all three retail tenants) yesterday. He explained that he was coming back from his other job and just stopped in to say hi to some of the guys at the restaurant next door. Perfect coincidence, I thought...so I asked him if he'd be willing to help me move the fryer, and he was happy to earn a little extra money doing it. We made plans to meet at the restaurant this morning.

He was punctual, so we hopped in the truck and drove down to River Forest. Everything went pretty much perfectly, and I ended up giving the guy only $300 for the unit. It's a leap of faith, of course, as is the case when buying anything off Craigslist, but even if only one of the three wells is functional, I'm still ahead of the game, since most used single-well fryers that I've come across are going for $400-$600.

Once we got back to the restaurant, Rodolfo enlisted the help of some of the other various busboys and cooks hanging around the alley (there are always a few out back smoking or whatever) and we managed to wrestle it out of the truckbed, clean it up a bit, and guide it gently into the restaurant and onto the hot line where it will live. All in all, it was a pretty smooth operation. Hope it works!

The fryer was a big accomplishment, but what I think I'm most pleased with today was laying the groundwork for a good relationship with Rodolfo, who will be my all-around cleaning, dishwashing, busboying, and prep guy. He's a good-natured forty-something guy from Mexico, has lived here in Chicago for 15 years, and isn't shy about sharing his philosophies on life, love, and work. We spent a good three hours in the truck while sitting in traffic on the way there and back, and chatted, switching back and forth between English and Spanish, almost the whole way. Lots to know.

After we were finished, I bought him lunch, we ate together, and then I paid him and sent him on his way. I genuinely like the guy and have a lot of confidence that this relationship will work out well. He seems like a well-grounded, happy individual and clearly has a strong work ethic and a great attitude. I'm lucky to have him.

After he left, I puttered around a bit, reluctant to tackle anything big since I had to leave at five for an airport pickup. But, lo and behold, the phone company guy came a-knockin' on my door, ready to do whatever needed to be done to get my phone, fax, and internet lines working.

He needed to find the phone box, which I had no idea about where it could be, so we went exploring around the building and finally found it, in the basement of the restaurant next door. After looking at the huge old bundle of wires for about four seconds, he declared that he couldn't do it and started asking me a bunch of questions that I not only didn't have answers for, but had not the faintest clue what the fuck he was talking about.

Phone Co. Guy: "Oh....this could be an issue. It says here that I'm just supposed to tag the nid. Is that what you want me to do?"

Me: "I have no clue what that even means. I want you to do whatever you need to do to make my phones work."

PCG: "Well, what kind of phones do you have?"

Me: "Uh....cordless? I don't know? Normal phones."

PCG: "Well this phone here seems to be part of a phone system. Do you want this phone to work?"

Me: "Yeah."

PCG: "Well, that's gonna cost extra, then. It's a system."

Me: "Ok, well I don't need it to work as a system, I just need it to function as a phone. How much extra would it cost anyway?"

PCG: "I don't know."

Me: "Ok, well let's just get the regular phones working and we can worry about the system later. Can you do that? What do you need me to do to get the regular phones working?"

PCG: "Well, this just says I'm supposed to tag the nid. But to get the phones to work, I might have to address some of the interior wiring."

Me: "Ok, well let's do that, then."

PCG: "Well, we might not have to do that. I need to find out. Do you know where your up-level switching station is?"

Me: "I don't have a clue what that means. Look, when I talked to the lady on the phone, she said that this would be a pretty easy deal. The previous owner had four working phone lines in this space just last week, so can't you just, like, flip a switch or something and get'em working again? Do you need to call into the home office or whatever and ask them what to do?"

PCG: [Chuckling annoyingly] "It's not that easy."

Me: "Ok, well, I don't think I'm going to be able to help you. All I know is that the phones were working fine last week, so I don't see why you'd have to do any interior wiring. Just get'em working the same way they were working last week. I'll be upstairs if you need anything. Thanks."

After all that (and I'm posting a vastly abbreviated version of that conversation), I picked up a phone about five minutes later and heard a dial tone. I guess it wasn't quite as hard as PCG was making it out to be.

What-EVER! The phones now work, and my number is 847-xxx-EDZO. Cool!

Ok...it's now late, and this post has become far longer than I intended it to be. Today's victories were getting a fryer, an employee, and a dial tone. I hope every day is this productive.

welcome new readers!

2009-08-12T20:51:00.005-05:00

Up until today, the most visits this blog ever logged in a day was three. Today, more than 100 people showed up, thanks to the folks over at Grub Street Chicago, who put up a quick blurb about me, the restaurant, and the blog.

It's great to have you folks here reading, but I feel I should explain a few things; I wasn't quite ready for all you all, so the links at the top of the page don't work. I'm not crazy about the font either, and the whole layout still kind of bugs me. Basically, this site is still kind of "in development", much like the restaurant itself. This blog was kind of a secret for the past few months and I liked it that way. Now that the cat's out of the bag I feel a bit....exposed.

But, whatever. It is what it is, and it's great publicity, so I can't complain.

Lots going on today. Opened a bank account near the restaurant, started getting ready to do some painting, I've got a line on a deep fryer that I'll hopefully purchase tomorrow, and, of course, all this media attention, which is the big news of the day.

Not without setbacks, of course....never. I've got an issue with the griddle I'm wrestling with. As part of the arrangements of our purchase, the previous owner (PP) arranged a swap of griddles between the Evanston location and his other store. They have a smaller hood over there and wanted a smaller griddle so they could fit another piece of equipment under it, so he asked if it would be ok to swap the one that was there for a newer, larger one. The griddle is the centerpiece of classic burger cookery, often working buns, burgers, and grilled onions all on the one large surface, so I was fine with it. He brought over a huge old Vulcan 48" unit, thermostatically controlled, which looked to be in excellent condition, so I was psyched.

However, I neglected to notice until a couple days ago that it requires a 220 electrical line. Which I don't have. And running a new electrical line behind where the griddle's going to go is no small feat. It requires running metal conduit through the wall, which is tile. Plus, it requires pulling permits from the city, which I wasn't planning on doing.

The whole thing could end up costing me weeks and thousands of dollars. I called PP to ask him about swapping back and he was really reluctant to do that, so I asked him if he'd split the cost of running a 220 line and he said he would. But I'm still not sure that's the answer.

I'm mulling it over, but I'm not liking any of the options I'm coming up with.

Mistakes I made today; drinking six shots of espresso before 2pm, telling the guy setting up my bank account that I wasn't sure if I was going to take credit cards, and trying to lift a Berkel deli slicer by myself. I think I tore my right biceps.

Small victories of the day; my hundred-dollar ice cream freezer is running like a champ! And of course, my total media domination.

Thanks for stopping by...

first day on the job

2009-08-11T22:15:00.003-05:00

I've been back and forth to the restaurant a bunch of times already, but today was the first actual "workday" type day, where I wake up, have breakfast, and then head out to work. At my new job. Running my restaurant.

Ahhh! Kind of terrifying and very exciting all at the same time.

I spent a couple hours last night organizing, planning my day, so that when I got to the restaurant, I wasn't just running around like a chicken with my head cut off, doing whatever I happened to pass by and think of doing. I had it all planned out....

But then I remembered that I don't yet have a working phone or internet service there. Sure, I can use my cell phone to make calls, but some stuff I really needed to use the internet for, so I spent a couple hours this morning setting up utilities and setting appointments, then headed out.

But, halfway to the restaurant, I get a call from a guy out in Elgin who's selling an old popcorn machine on Craigslist, and he wants to meet *right now*. So I hang a big ol' U-turn and hit the highway, make great time out there, and check out his popcorn machine.

The popcorn machine is a 'want', not a 'need' (this is how I've categorized the equipment list I'm working from), but I think it would be a really fun tone-setter to just have it out in the dining room, for people to help themselves, and especially for anything resembling a grand opening that we do, it's a perfect fit. This guy wanted $450 for the thing--it was a nice old machine--but I'm looking more along the lines of two hundred and he wouldn't budge on the price. It also didn't seem to be running right, so I passed.

Back in the truck, back on the highway, and all the way back, retracing my steps, to Evanston. Not counting the five minutes I spent in Elgin popcorn machine guy's garage, I've been in the truck about two and a half hours, need to pee badly, and am way behind schedule for all the stuff I'm supposed to be doing today. I get to the restaurant, pull down the alley into the parking lot, but....alley's blocked by a delivery truck. I go around the block, enter a different way, and....in the four parking spots I'm allotted, five cars are parked.

So, I have to leave the truck in the middle of the alley, and go into some of the various businesses to try and figure out which cars belong to who and get them to move at least one so I can park. Arrgh.

There's a nice little Italian restaurant right next door to me, and I've already met a couple people that work there, so I go in there, resist the urge to start screaming at anyone who looks like they might drive a car, and calmly, politely, explain my dilemma. The woman--the restaurant's day manager, I believe--was nice enough, asked around to her staff, and found one guy who said he'd move his car.

Well, he did take his time about it, so once I unloaded (four trips to and from the truck), went to the bathroom, perused a couple paint samples, and made an appointment to meet with the ice machine guy, he finally got his Isuzu the fuck out of my way. I'm exaggerating for effect...he was a nice enough guy.

In fact, he seemed so nice and accommodating that I hit him up for a little help moving a couple of countertop drink coolers that were too heavy to move solo. One thing about doing most of this by myself is that there are sometimes going to be tasks I really need another guy or two to help with, so it's a good idea to try and stay on good terms with some of the guys from the other restaurants around me.

Besides the trattoria, which is the place right next door, there's also an outpost of Al's Beef and a sushi place called Koi right around the corner, so we all share a common alley, dumpster zone, and parking lot. It's kind of a tight area for so many restaurants and there's a fairly constant stream of delivery trucks, cooks out back smoking, dishers emptying pots of spent fryer oil into the grease dumpster, and waiters crouching down by the parking blocks scarfing some ill-gotten plate of food. Should be interesting.

So....after all THAT....I got into the restaurant and started thinking about actually doing some work. I met with Dick Symon, a be-suited 70-something salesman/rep for the ice machine rental company, wrote him a check, signed his contract, and he was on his way. I made a bunch of calls to fire suppression companies (they inspect/charge the Ansul system and fire extinguishers) and hood/vent cleaning companies (self-explanatory), worked on my budget for getting the place ready to go ($10,000), and started trying to move things around to try and figure out how I'm going to set up the line.

I managed to kind of carve out a nice little milkshake station, I think, right behind the cash register. Whoever's running the register (me, primarily) will also make shakes and malts, unless we're busy enough that I need to split that into two positions. The ice cream freezer I bought the other day gave me a scare, because after being on since Saturday, it was warm when I checked it, but it seemed to perk up when I plugged it into a different outlet. I think it had somehow tripped the GFCI on the one it was plugged into. Might've been a fluke, or it might be an indicator that something's wrong with the freezer. I took a risk on that one, but it was only a hundred bucks. We'll see.

I'm feeling good about money today. I'd been kind of discombobulated, money-wise throughout the purchase and close process. It just took so long that I'd been focusing on all the stuff I needed to do to close and all I was doing was making sure I had what I needed in the account to pay for the purchase of the restaurant, security deposit on the lease, and the first insurance payment. So today was get-my-house-in-order day, and after I ran all the numbers, brought the corporate checking account up to date, and estimated what I'd need to spend on equipment to get us to opening, the money situation looked pretty damn good.

Even better, the estimates I got from fire suppression and hood-cleaning folks were lower than I'd expected. And...even better, I found two items down in the basement that I believe I can use, so that's two items scratched off my list for exactly $zero dollars.

The basement is quite a trip. Basements in restaurants are basically where old shit goes to die. This one is no exception. Restaurant people never throw anything away. There are all sorts of old pots and pans, plates and glasses, and various other strange things down there that you have to hold up to the light and try and figure out what they are. But, thankfully, plenty of functional basics are there. There's a four-drawer file cabinet--empty and ready to go. There's a fax machine, a paper-cutter, a decent multi-line phone, a nice older office chair, and a cup full of pens. There's a 100 year-old walk-in safe with a two-foot thick door. There's a cabinet full of sombreros.

Yep, you heard me. A cabinet full of sombreros. At least fifteen of them. So I've got that goin' for me. Which is nice.

No, seriously, the place before PP's was a Mexican restaurant, so there are strange odds and ends like a cabinet full of sombreros, a collection of fancy old tequila bottles (sadly, empty) and a four-foot eloté on a stick.

Call me if you're having a Mexican-themed party.

More tomorrow.

we have a restaurant!

2009-08-07T23:38:00.003-05:00

Well, finally, huh?

Crazy, how long this took. But we did manage to get all the pieces--lease, purchase, insurance, lien searches--assembled and the closing took place this morning. I've had keys for a few days, but the official hand-off was this morning.

I also got the approval to substitute me in place of PP's with the city of Evanston. They have a rule that every "type 2" restaurant (meaning not table service) must possess their own individual zoning ordinance allowing them to exist there. They stipulate a few basic requirements about garbage pickup that I had to sign on to, and transfering it was, everyone told me, a big, scary thing that could take months, but nope! It's done. I found dealing with the city very easy and pleasant.

So after holding myself back on buying equipment, I almost immediately headed out to Westmont to meet a guy about an ice cream dipping freezer, loaded it up, and then went back up to Evanston to put it in the restaurant space and put brown paper over the windows.

Now that the matter of buying a restaurant (and agreeing to a lease!) has been taken care of, my mind has begun considering the matter of MAKING MONEY by running a restaurant, and I'm nervous. We'd been thinking of this idea as a no-brainer back 6-8 months ago, when we found the Lincoln Square space and thought "what would do well there?"

I'm happy with the location in Evanston, though...don't get me wrong. But there's a lot more competition, it feels somewhat more intimidating.

That said, I'm on a crusade to open this place with as little money and as much of my personal sweat equity as possible. The freezer I bought today was $100 and I'm determined to spend less than $10,000 getting the place ready for employees to come in and start training and hold on to as much of our reserve cash as possible, because I know there will be expenses I haven't budgeted for.

The really exciting part of it is that it's now in my hands. No more waiting around for deals to be made, lawyers to worry me, or debt searches to come back before I can do the stuff I need to do to get this place open. I got zero emails from my attorney today!

I do believe the pace of this blog will step a bit livelier now, since I'll be actively out and doing restaurant stuff every single day. No internet connection yet at the space, but hoping to find a place where I pick up wi-fi from someone.

Oh. And there is also one more nugget. Almost forgot. A name.

We had been using Automatic Burger & Dog as the working name, but an overwhelming number of people we know who we told the name to hated it. So the new name is Edzo's Burger Shop.

Do me a favor, ok? If you hate it....don't tell me.

bubble sitting (again)

2009-08-01T17:25:00.002-05:00

Well once again we find ourselves sitting on the bubble. In-between time. We have a signed contract with Pete (the seller), from whom we're essentially purchasing all the "stuff" in the restaurant, but we still don't have a lease from the building's management company.

We worked out the major details of the lease weeks ago, and have been coordinating smaller stuff since then, but it's been a very slow process because the person we're dealing with from the management company just goes a few days at a time without responding to messages and emails. Not anything to stress about, necessarily (I'm hoping), but, still, stressful...because at this point it's inevitable that it will be.

I've moved a few things into the space and have keys in hand, but I'm reluctant to move forward much due to the way the last deal broke down at the last minute.

In the meantime, though, we're really coming down to crunch time with regard to the name. The working name we've been using all along is Automatic Burger & Dog. But I've gotten a lot of negative responses to that, most notably from most of my family and closest friends. The other name on the table currently is Edzo's Burger Shop. I've been firmly in favor of Automatic for months now, but after being in the space a few times, it just doesn't *feel* like its name should be Automatic, which evokes imagery involving chrome, stainless, and white tile, which this place doesn't have.

The current space has lots of warm tones, with some woodwork and terra cotta colored floors, and a vaguely 60's-70's vibe to it, which I kind of like. It's occurred to me that most places doing burgers, fries, and shakes do the 50's-early 60's retro thing; doo-wop, drive-ins, and ducktails, but that's played out, in my opinion, and now just kind of has that contrived Disney-set kind of feel to it. But you've got to watch it doing 60's-70's retro, that you don't overdo the whole hippie psychedelic thing, which can be as cloying as clove cigarettes or patchouli.

The other thing is that we're trying not to spend much money on turning this place around. Literally, the opening budget for changing the space is around $10k, and that's including everything I need to do to get the kitchen up and running.

So keeping things mostly the same is the plan. I'm going to paint, clean, change signage, and get some stuff on ebay for decor. Maybe a plant would be nice too. In the kitchen, I need multiple deep fryers, an ice cream dipping cabinet, and the grill needs attention. But I'm also going to re-arrange the equipment on the hot line, which means that all the Ansul sticks will have to be re-aligned.

It all costs. Once the deal closes, the idea will be to hurry up and get open as soon as possible, but then we're at the mercy of the City of Evanston, which, I will say, has been quite merciful so far. Hopefully that will continue. Evanston, if you're reading, I will be proud to be an upstanding member of your business community and have confidence that I will thrive in the space and pay you a lot of taxes!

Anyway, if folks want to chime in with thoughts on the name, that would be great. I hope to post again Monday with some actual concrete news.

the burger joints of wisconsin

2009-07-27T10:00:00.008-05:00

While I waited for the lawyers to do their thing(s), we took a trip to the North Woods of Wisconsin to visit some relatives up in Lac du Flambeau.

Wisconsin has its own thing with burgers. The crispy griddled kind are most common, with buns that have been slathered with butter and plenty of cheese, usually American. I'm not generally a fan of American cheese, but with the thinner burgers, stacked up as doubles or triples, American is the best choice because of the great melting qualities it offers.

On the way up, we ventured a bit out of our way to check out Fred's in Burlington, WI, due to its reputation as having the best burgers in the world. Not the best, but solid. Could've used more seasoning, I thought, and I wasn't overly impressed with the flavor of the beef. Fred's offers an unconventional 8oz. griddled burger, which results in a lot of juice when served around medium, which is how ours came.

We ordered Fred's hand-cut curly fries and chips (they're the really thin kind that are all still connected like you get at the county fair) to go with our burgers, but, strangely, the potatoes all came out 5-10 minutes before the burgers were ready, so we were faced with the choice of either letting them get cold, asking the guy to hold them for us, or eat them first. Kind of annoying, but we nibbled, tried to wait as best we could, and both were good, freshly fried, not greasy, and seasoned nicely. It's rare to find curly fries without that stupid batter that's usually on the outside, so Fred's version, which is just natural potatoes spiral-sliced, is welcome and unique.

Wisconsin is packed with little independent joints with lots of character.

And you can't get really into the subject of Wisconsin burgers without mentioning Culver's. The quickly-growing chain is very corporate, very fast food, and also very good. Whatever Kool-Aid they're drinking over in Wauwatosa or wherever their corporate headquarters is located is some powerful stuff, because I've never had an even slightly negative experience at Culver's. The food is always hot, freshly prepared, and tasty. It's very straightforward, although the menu is quite large and varied for fast food, and tries to offer something for everyone.

But it's hard to not order a double ButterBurger with cheese, so I don't think I've ever tried anything else, except maybe the kid's chicken tenders. Their burgers are quite good
(the pic at the top of this piece was eaten at whichever highway exit location we happened upon--I think there's a state law requring that each highway exit have a Culver's within 500 feet). They do the "smashed on the griddle" style that yields a thin, crispy edge which hangs out of the bun an inch or two.

The other thing about Culver's is that the staff is always ridiculously, genuinely NICE. I'd sit and wonder about the hows and the whys of their corporate training if I didn't know that it's just a Wisconsin thing. People from Wisconsin are nice.

I could travel the state for weeks and still not cover all the places that are probably worth covering. In particular, the drive-ins of Kenosha get a lot of love out on the 'net, and Kopp's and Solly's are both well-known down here in Chicago. Continued reading, travel, and tasting is clearly what's called for here. And also milkshakes.

inspiration

2009-07-14T01:22:00.003-05:00

Posts are being written, but I'm holding off on posting until ink is on paper. Out of superstition, suspicion, and fear of jinx.

So, in the meantime, here's some inspiration.

pita pete's

2009-07-09T13:59:00.003-05:00

The lawyers appear to be doing their thing at a decent pace, and we haven't reached any bumps in the road as of yet, but we're not out of the woods.

Pete, the seller called to ask me if I'd be interested in meeting a few of his employees and considering hiring them for Automatic, so I went over there yesterday morning to do that, along with a walk-through to talk about all the smallwares, incidentals, office stuff, things in the basement and what the expectation is on whether he's taking it or it's staying.

He seems like a really genuinely nice person, giving me all kinds of tips about how I should run the place, who I should get in with in the neighborhood, and then giving me the rundown on the employees. There are three.

Rudolfo is an older guy that does clean-up and some prep, who's worked at Pita Pete's for a couple years, Carlos is Pete's main cook and opener, and Ryan only wants part-time and is best suited for customer service. Pete swears by the dependability of all three, and there is something to be said for keeping people in a work-routine that they've already gotten used to and have managed to get to on a regular basis for a couple years. With restaurant employees, by far the biggest factor is that they SHOW UP. Dependable people are worth hanging on to.

I told all three of them that I'd call them in late August and maybe sooner if they're willing to help with clean-up, painting, setting up, etc. We're currently planning for a July 31st close and I'd take possession then. I'd like to use August to work on the place, and then get open (assuming the City has mercy on me) in early September.

The place is really in very good shape. I gave some extra attention to corners, floor drains, areas around sinks-the kind of spots that get the most wear and attract all the grime in restaurants-and everything looked to be very well-maintained. Pete and I also worked out a griddle switch. He has a larger griddle in his DeKalb restaurant, but the hood there is small and he wants to create space for something else, so he asked if he could swap the Evanston one out for a larger unit. Which is great, for me, and the hood we're going to get is enormous, big enough for two or three additional pieces of equipment.

What we're getting, as far as hot-line cooking equipment is a large (maybe 48-60") griddle, a 36" char-grill, a six-burner range with an oven below and a salamander above, and a few soup-kettle type warming units. I'm going to have to add a deep-fryer, and the more I plan, the more I think I'll need a multiple-well unit.

The other major thing we'll need is a meat grinder. A big, powerful one. I was hoping to inherit a stand mixer, not so much for the savings (although they are expensive) but to save the hassle of moving one. I'm not planning on making any dough, so it's not essential, and there are quite a few options for grinding beef. We'll figure it out.

I am starting to get very excited about this, although I'm consciously working to bring myself back down to earth so as not to get ahead of the deal. Fingers still crossed, blog posts still only drafted, not posted. I'll post everything once signatures are on contracts.

moving closer

2009-07-04T01:00:00.003-05:00

Pete (the seller) called me late last week and asked about whether I'd be interested in meeting two of his current employees, who he highly recommends.

I'm certainly open to this--when you find people that consistently show up and are good workers, you try and hang onto them--but I'm also being peppered with lawyerly contract language about not assuming any prior liability. If I mentioned this meeting to my attorney, who scares me shitless every time I talk to him worrying about every possible contingency, he would flip.

So I won't.

I booked a visit to PP's (the current restaurant--it's still open) for Wednesday at 9:30 to meet the employees and do a walk-thru of the place to point out some of the small stuff that he wants to keep.

Good sign. Pete also indicated that he'd be willing to close as early as July 15th, but I'm thinking that it'll take longer than that to get our stuff with the city squared away, so I asked to push it back to July 31st.

Also, incredibly, the insurance company I ranted about in the last post called me back. But it was a new lady, who seemed infinitely more competant and managed to ask me all the pertinent questions and go along her merry way in less than five minutes. Imagine!

I was so pleased that I complemented her on her ability to ask questions, take the answers, and move forward, explained that it seemed like Gail and I often had communication breakdowns, and asked if she would be taking on my account permanently, which she happily informed me she was! So we're all happy in insurance-land today.

I've also seen a draft of the purchase agreement from my lawyer, who says maybe early next week it'll be done, and I heard from Dave (agent) that landlord is looking at about the same timeline.

wrangling with the city

2009-07-02T01:14:00.004-05:00

Still sitting with fingers crossed as lawyers on both sides construct the documents that I hope will eventually be signed, but I'm also moving forward dealing with the City of Evanston, since the various special variances, permits, and licenses we'll need will likely be the longest-developing piece of the puzzle.

I've been to Evanston's civic building four times in the past week. The first and most important thing to deal with is through the zoning office. Evanston has two "types" of restaurants; type one is the typical table service with waiters and tips type establishment, and type two is quick-serve, fast food, and anything else that doesn't use servers. ALL type two restaurants are required to attain a special use ordinance.

Now, the current occupant's restaurant already went through the process, which involves the planning and zoning committee meeting and discussing the proposed restaurant and how it might impact the area, allowing a period for public comment, and giving a recommendation to the city council who can either vote aye or nay, or kick it back up to planning and zoning. Fun!

The process for me is somewhat easier. I apply for what they're calling a "substitution" which allows me to simply change the name of the restaurant on the existing ordinance. I filled out a few forms, paid $385, and now I wait for my request to wind its way through the process.

I've also paid a few visits to the Dept. of Public Health, which handles all (or most) restaurant-related paperwork. Thankfully, since we aren't planning on doing any construction in the new space, we got to skip the incredibly detailed 17-page building permit application, so I just filed forms detailing the info about our newly-formed corporation, and that's it. For now.

Then, today, after I went back and handed in some forms, checked on the status of others, I paid a visit to the folks that deal with signage. They informed me that, per Evanston appearance standards, I am obliged to leave 85% of my awning as blank space. And if I want to put words like "burgers", "fries", or "shakes" along the bottom of the awning, that's a special variance that I'll need to apply for. I asked about a hanging sign that sits perpendicular to the building, so that people approaching the restaurant on the same side of the street can see the signage, and was informed that the maximum size they allow is 2x3 feet, "so you probably don't even want to bother. Plus, that's a special variance--need to apply for that."

Another thing Evanston offers is the opportunity to do a walk-thru with the health inspector that will eventually become MY health inspector. This seems like a great opportunity. I haven't asked the seller if he'd agree to allowing this, but if he does, I'll at least be able to find out about any big and/or costly changes that this guy is going to require once he inspects for real.

Logic would indicate that there wouldn't BE any issues, since this very guy just inspected the currently-operating restaurant within the last six months, but that's not always how it works. Often, when the city knows that a change of ownership/concept is happening, they view it as an opportunity to get the building up to code. They're more likely to let a longstanding owner slide on pre-existing code violations than they are if you just bought the place. That's just a fact of life.

It may sound like I'm complaining, and I am, to some extent, I suppose, but I realize that if this were the City of Chicago that I was dealing with, the whole thing would've been ten times more time-consuming and frustrating, and I wouldn't be halfway as far through the process as I currently am. I'm also finding the city employees in Evanston to be so incredibly pleasant. They're nice and appear calm. When I walk in, they put down whatever they're doing and almost immediately give me their attention. And they don't send me running around on wild goose chases throughout the building, playing civil-servant hot potato with me.

It's quite refreshing.

On a somewhat more ridiculously annoying note, I got back into contact with the stupidly incompetent insurance company that I ranted about previously so I could get the ball rolling on getting a whole new set of quotes to insure the new space.

And, of course, they did not disappoint. I had already informed them that our last deal was dead, and then when I called and left a voicemail, I informed the woman that I wanted her to start getting quotes for the new space.

When she called me back, I was watching Henry bounce around the Kohl Children's Museum, so it seemed like an ok time to talk.

The first five minutes or so of the conversation was spent reiterating the stuff I already told her in my voicemail. I hate people that do this. Isn't' that the whole point of voicemail? Do you really have to go through the whole thing sentence-by-sentence and confirm what I just said?

"So you want me to get quotes for your restaurant in a new space?"

"Yes"

"And this space is located in Evanston?"

"Yes"

GIVE ME A BREAK, LADY!

Then she launches into this surreal "who's on first" type thing that I'm still trying to make sense of. She asked me about the last space (Lincoln Square) that we got quotes on and again confirmed that we weren't opening a restaurant in that space.

"Yep. That's correct," I said.

"But now you're buying a different restaurant?"

"Yep. In Evanston."

"But is it the same restaurant?" she asked.

"Uh....well, we're opening the same restaurant we were planning to open in Lincoln Square, but we're buying a different restaurant from a different restaurant owner and leasing the space from a different landlord. Does that answer your question?"

"Oh. Well, but, it's the same restaurant, right?"

"No. Same as what? I don't understand what you're asking me."

"The equipment, the square footage, the type of building...all that is the same?"

I'm somewhat incredulous now. Plus, Henry is using a grease pencil to paint cat whiskers on an unsteady toddler. "Of course not," I said.

"How could it be all the same?"--I'm trying to keep my voice low at this point-- "It's a different restaurant. In a different city. The building is different, the square footage is different, the location is different, the equipment is different. Everything's different. Do you understand?"

"Oh," she says. "So you're buying a different restaurant from a different seller?"

"Yes". (Do we not understand the meaning of the fucking word "different"??)

"And you want to get quotes on this new, different space?"

"Yes".

"Well, we'll need to get all new information from you--details on the building, the address, the fire suppression system...everything."

"Yep. I know. That's why I called. To begin that process."

"Oh, ok, well I'll need to get back to you another time when I'm prepared to take all that information from you."

Arrrrrgh. It's seriously time to get a different insurance company. Why do I even bother with these people?

crossed fingers

2009-06-28T23:34:00.003-05:00

I'm holding off on spreading the news around too prematurely, in any sort of official capacity, since we've only got verbal agreements, letters of intent, plus earnest money given, but it's looking good for us on the Evanston space. We've arrived at verbal agreements with both the seller and current occupant and the landlord.

Restaurant Real Estate guy, I believe, has a good relationship with the building owner, and that may have influenced the deal the landlord gave us, which included a 20% discount off the current rent and 2 free months (rent "abatement", as I learn the lingo). Nice.

It's almost been a bit too easy, and I realize as I type that that I shouldn't even be typing that, but there it is, it's out there, I said it, no backspace key is going to allow me to pretend I'm not thinking it constantly. Which is another reason that I'm holding out posting about this place at any length and/or getting ahead of myself.

But, of course, I am picturing myself in the space, going over layout in my mind, as far as how the line appliances will be positioned, and the flow of the food from receiving to prep to the hot line. We're going to be moving through a lot of beef and potatoes.

If I haven't explained this concept at length here before, I might as well do it now. The concept is burgers and fries (we'll also sell dogs, sausages, and a few other sandwiches, as well as milkshakes). But, at heart, it's a celebration of burgers and fries.

First, for the burgers, we'll grind our own beef. I haven't started playing around with what particular mix on the cuts of beef I'll be using, but we'll start with a good amount of chuck, which has a natural 80/20 lean to fat ratio, and is easy to grind for burgers since you don't have to then go back and add fat. Brisket, short rib, and hangar steak are all options, as they generally add a really nice strong beefy flavor. The whole idea on the beef is fresh, fresh, FRESH. Very few hot dog stand type places use fresh beef, it's all either frozen hockey puck patties or previously frozen ground beef, thawed. That kills the texture and flavor of the meat.

So, beef ground fresh every day for the burgers. Pattied to order, only salt, pepper, and beef. The other thing on the burgers is that we offer two styles; you can order your thick 8 oz. burger cooked on the char-grill, rare, medium, whatever, and we're also going to be offering the thin, diner-style burgers that are cooked by smashing the beef down on the flattop with a spatula, the more Steak-n-Shake type style. These would only be 4 oz. each, so you're more likely to do a double cheese burger on this one.

Then the other thing is the fries. We're going to do hand-cut fries, cut everyday, fried to order, cooked and seasoned perfectly, and we'll have a little fun with some crazy toppings on the fries as well.

So this week, we're praying to the lawyer gods to make those guys work fast. My lawyers are drafting the purchase and sale of the assets of the current occupant, and the landlord (or his attorney) are putting together a new lease (current occupant's lease expires end of July) for us to look over. The plan is to get everything signed and then I could take possession in early August.

Once all that's taken care of, the next piece of the puzzle is the city. There's a requirement in Evanston that all "take out" restaurants--defined as any restaurant that does not have waiters, table service--must get a special zoning ordinance passed to allow them to run this sort of establishment. Even in this case, where the existing restaurant already got the special zoning, we have to re-file, to have the current occupant's transfered over to our name. Which can take 6-8 weeks, not to mention a few hundred bucks. I was down at Evanston's city offices a few times last week, working to get that in, and will be going back at least two more times next week to get the business license and health department all on board, fill out all the forms, and pay all the fees, so that everything is in motion as early as it can be.

If all goes as planned, it's quite possible that we could be ready to open, waiting for the city to grant us all the permissions and the licenses. Which wouldn't be a first, at any rate, but would be a pain, when we're geared up to get open and get a feel for how the business will be.

more developments

2009-06-18T00:58:00.003-05:00

I'm itching to blog about THE FOOD that I'm planning to offer at this restaurant (burgers will obviously be central, but I've got lots of other fun ideas), but don't want to jump the gun. This is, after all, being published on the internet, regardless of how few people are actually reading.

So...back to the grindstone of working on finding a space.

I went and looked at the Evanston location again today, and had a nice long talk with the current owner, who seems like a genuinely nice guy. Bottom line; I love the space and the location and believe that the added costs will be offset (at the very least) by increased traffic. After taking a look at this guy's financials from the last few years, I called the listing agent and made an offer.

On my way over to see the Evanston space, I spoke with one of the owners of the Western/Armitage space, who told me they're going with another offer. I had known for a while that another, more well-established, hipper restaurant was interested in this space, and I figured they had the advantage over me and my unproven concept. The other factor was that this party approached this deal through an agent (coincidentally, it's the same agent who I'm dealing with on the Evanston space) and, therefore, they were offering the current owners quite a bit more than I would've had to offer them if I'd gone in through the landlord.

Confusing, eh? No shit. I'm having trouble remembering which deals are still alive from one day to the next. I'm not too upset about losing Western/Armitage, but that's only because I'm really excited about Evanston.

If that one blows up, I'll be back to square one, and this is starting to get frustrating. Oh, and the seller of the Evanston space told me that the landlord is very thorough and will want all sorts of information before agreeing to lease the space to me.

This is an eye-opening education about a process I've never been a part of before. I've bought and sold a few houses in my life, which seemed difficult and stressful at the time, but this whole thing is making that process seem simple. The hard part here is getting all three parties--buyer, seller, and landlord, on the same page at the same time. I figured that as long as there was a potential buyer, the landlord would be happy to rent to whoever, but that's way off. It's starting to look like the landlord is the harder nut to crack in these deals, which makes sense, I suppose, since it ultimately becomes a longer relationship and involves more money.

Tomorrow, I sign off on the written offer for the Evanston space. Here's hoping that this one moves forward smoothly and quickly.

on the bubble

2009-06-15T23:43:00.002-05:00

We're in in-between time right now. We've made our case to the landlords at Western/Armitage, who are deciding between us and another, more well-established restaurant, a very hip Asian concept, for whom this would be their second location. The first has been a runaway hit.

They've already made an offer to the current occupants of the space, but the final decision is the landlord's since, without a lease, any offer becomes void, similar to what happened with us at the Lincoln Square location.

I do have an 'in' with the landlord in this case, but the ownership is a group and they're ultimately going to do what's best for them, from a business standpoint, regardless of my personal relationship with one of the owners. So if they decide that the other concept will work better in that location, that's what they'll go with.

It'd certainly be nice to have options, but at this point, I'm thinking that the Evanston location I looked at last week is the the better location for us.

I went by there on Saturday, which was a very rainy day, and the streets were dead. But this past week was finals week at Northwestern, so most students have likely left town by now. Then I swung by there again on Sunday, when the weather was beautiful, and the streets were hoppin'; tons of people out and about, shopping, walking, etc. And that's with the university kids gone for summer.

The rent is higher there, and so is the buy-in, but, ultimately, I believe our volume would be significantly greater in Evanston, enough to counter the higher expenses and then some. I did some number-crunching and it wouldn't take much of an uptick in traffic from what I was expecting on Lincoln to offset the added expense of Evanston, and then, once that money is offset, the rest is profit. Volume always makes things easier, numbers-wise.

The listing of the restaurant that's in the space now claims that they do $390k in gross annual sales, and that's with what I consider to be a fairly weak concept. That's about double what I estimated for our first year on Lincoln, so it's a nice-sounding number.

I'm going to take another look at Evanston this week, when the restaurant's closed, and so I should have a much clearer picture of what the start-up will entail there, but from what I've seen so far, I'd only have to add a couple pieces of equipment--deep fryers, an ice cream freezer, maybe a stand mixer or a meat grinder--and do a little painting/decorating. It's exciting to think that I could put in about $5k and a month's work and get the place open and running.

I will wait and see what happens with Western/Armitage, but I'm thinking that I really want to make an offer on Evanston this week.

casting a wide(r) net

2009-06-11T22:09:00.006-05:00

I'm still working on a deal for the space near Armitage and Western that I mentioned a few posts back, but I'm also trying to keep my options open and see what else might present itself during this process, so I've begun casting a wider net. Mostly due to circumstance.

I'm not set on any one particular neighborhood, or even a specific part of the city, but I feel that I'll know the right location when I find it. I mentioned in my last post that I was going to do a bit of trolling along Southport to see what was there (my real estate contact kept mentioning it), but when I went down there, I didn't really see anything that looked like a restaurant-ready space for lease. Upon further pressing, my real estate contact became less responsive and then stopped calling me back.

I called him again yesterday, and again today, and so he gave me a name of another real estate contact. A friend of his, that deals specifically with restaurants.

I'm not sure why it took him so long, whether he was trying to keep me for himself or what, but I'm certainly glad to be in touch with this new guy, who appears to really be THE guy to talk to about this. He rattled off about four listings that seemed like decent options, and, unlike everyone else I've spoken with, this guy led with numbers. He's a fast-talker, and not shy about sharing the crucial information, and even had the courtesy to break down the $/square foot prices to real monthly net costs.

(The way the world of commercial real estate works--and this was brand new to me just a few months ago--is that the rents are listed in dollars per square foot per year. So you'll see something that says Rent: $25. You have to multiply the price by the square footage to get the yearly rent, and then divide by 12 to get the monthly number.

But then you have to add in other stuff. Most are "triple net", meaning that in addition to your rent, you have to pay taxes (whatever the landlord decides is your share of the property tax on the building), common area expenses (if any), possibly insurance (your share of what it costs the landlord to insure the building) and possibly water, depending on how it's set up in the building. These extras can often add a thousand dollars or more to the monthly rent number.) So you can understand why I was so thrilled that this guy gave me monthly net cost numbers, without even having to ask, right from the get-go.

Later, when I got home, there was an email waiting for me with about 20 listings from all over the city, including asking price, situation, and monthly rent. THIS is what I'm talking about.

Since I happened to be not that far from one of the listings the restaurant real estate guy mentioned while I was on the phone with him, I figured I'd swing by there and check it out. It's in Evanston, of all places. Totally not on my radar at all during this process, but I went and looked at it and it's a very good fit. It's in a very busy downtown area, tons of shops, boutiques, other restaurants, but only one similar concept, and the layout of the place is nearly dead-solid perfect. It's also much more low-key and befitting of the concept that we had in mind. The Western/Armitage space is almost too nice, and the layout is much more problematic.

I grabbed a little food at this Evanston place, spoke briefly to the owner or manager, and cased the place pretty thoroughly, and....I like it. It's a strong contender. I took a walk all around the area and counted restaurants, made some notes, and pondered whether this concept would fly in this location. I think the population of the area is a good fit. Students, the more affluent Evanston residents who are already patronizing the fancy shops, salons, and boutiques in the area, and I also noticed several very tall condo buildings very close by.

I left Evanston, headed south down Lake Shore Drive, and did a drive-by on a second location that Restaurant Real Estate Guy mentioned as well. This place was much more affordable, from a rent and purchase standpoint, but I did not like the location at all. It's on a smaller, almost side street, and the main street that it's just off of is not a busy foot traffic area at all. This place was kind of in a no-man's land between Old Town and the busy North/Clyborn intersection. Either of those areas would be a good fit. Smack dab in the middle of them is not.

There are a bunch of other possibilities as well, plus I answered an ad on Craigslist today about a place in Andersonville that's kind of interesting.

This place is on Clark, about two blocks south of Foster. The really well-developed part of Andersonville is all north of Foster, but it's been creeping south for quite some time now. There are plenty of new construction condos and the salons and boutiques that invariably follow in their wake, but there are still a number of holdouts from when this area was kind of dicey. The space is right at the edge of where the creep has reached so far, so it's potentially a good spot, and it's really only a few blocks from the really busy section of Clark.

The situation, though, is a bit strange. It's raw space right now, so it would have to be completely built out. To offset that, however, the landlord is offering one year of free rent, and the rent he's asking is really low (nearly half what Evanston would cost, about 2/3rds of Western/Armitage). Rent is a big consideration, since that number can ultimately determine whether we survive or fail.

But location is an even bigger consideration, since that will drive (or fail to drive) sales.

The big question on this Andersonville space is how much would the build-out cost and would we have enough left to really make a go of it in that space? The build-out would deplete our cushion, but maybe we woudn't need the cushion with free rent for a while and low rent after that.

The other factor on that spot is how long it would take us to get open. I'm not super thrilled with the idea of waiting 6-8 months, dealing with contractors, etc. The other two main contenders right now are both basically turn-key situations where we'd have to do almost nothing--paint, decor, change the kitchen configuration, get inspected and open. 1-2 months, tops, for either. So that, to me is, worth the price of entry on those places.

It'll come down to location, ultimately. I'll keep looking. I'm thrilled to have my new Restaurant Real Estate Guy in my corner, with his stack of listings....it seems so full of potential. I'm trying to let go of all my preconceptions about Lincoln Square, or Southport, or even the city in general, and go in, open minded, with the mindset of finding the best possible location where I can make this thing work.

I never would of thought to look in Evanston, but maybe Evanston is the best situation. We'll see.

i'm mobile!

2009-06-03T22:54:00.002-05:00

Unfortunately, I don't have anywhere in particular to go.

This post will give some insight into just how difficult every tiny little step in this process has proven to be.

Back when we had a deal and a space and a plan, I decided I needed a truck. But I didn't want to just go ahead and buy a truck for the business, because after things were all settled down and the restaurant was running normally, I wanted to have the option of using my vehicle to drop the kids at childcare, if that proved to make more sense. But I figured I'd need a truck during the period that I was doing the build-out and equipping the kitchen, so I could make Home Depot runs and go to restaurant sales/auctions and haul deep fryers or what have you away on the spot. Often, with these sales, if you show up at the right time with a wad of cash and a truck to take it away, you can get really good deals.

So I called around to see what it would cost me to rent a pickup. I quickly realized that the normal rent-a-car places weren't an option. They wanted $1200 a month and up, plus wanted to charge me for mileage. $1200? The truck I had in mind could probably be bought outright for that much.

Then I called a few used car dealers. The best response I got was from the guy who asked me if I'd already made any calls and , if so, what did they want to charge me?

"Well, I'm asking you how much you'd charge"

"Well...that depends...what is everybody else quoting you?"

Are you kidding me, I thought? Do your own research, slimeball.

"A hundred bucks a month," I told him. Click. Apparently, he was not amused.

So then I put an ad on Craigslist and lo and behold, a few days later, I got an email from a guy who would consider renting me a truck that he might be buying in the next month or so.... Fairly dubious, but it was really my only hope. After much emailing and cell-phoning back and forth, we did come to terms and he agreed to rent me the truck for at least two months for $400/month. But, he said, I had to insure it.

"Well," I figured, "that shouldn't be very difficult". Heh.

So I contacted my insurance company, told them the situation, they made some calls to the underwriters, and a week or so later, told me it couldn't be done. I had to own the truck in order to insure it. I kept at'em, and then they told me that, maybe...just maybe...it might be covered under the package that I was purchasing to cover the entire restaurant. Some more time went by, my Truck Guy was working on purchasing, then fixing up, the truck, and eventually, word comes back from the insurance folks--yes! It will be covered under the policy I'm getting for the restaurant.

Well, those of you who are reading this blog know what happens next. The deal falls apart, there is no restaurant any more, and so, logically, we're not purchasing insurance to cover it.

We debated about whether to cancel the truck, but figured that now, since we're still looking for a space, I'd need a vehicle to run around checking places out, and plus we felt kind of bad that we had this guy do all this preparation for renting us the truck and now to cancel so far into it wouldn't be very nice, so we decided to take it, figuring it would at least make our lives that much easier for a couple months.

So...back to the drawing board with the wonderful insurance people. I called them last week and relayed the information about the new situation. Wouldn't my normal policy cover at least the liability part? As if I was borrowing a friend's car?

Nope. 'Course not. I asked my Insurance Lady to check into what the options were and she said she'd call me back the next day. This was last Thursday.

Fast forward to today, Wednesday. I still hadn't heard back from her, but today was the day we'd set up for me to take the train out to Joliet, where this guy lives, and pick up the truck. So I call her to follow up, and, then, while I'm waiting at the train station downtown, she calls me back.

Nope, she says. No one will cover it. It's not covered under my personal policy, because the insurance stays with the vehicle, not with the driver. "What I want to know," she keeps asking me, "is how he bought the car without having insurance?"

What does that have to do with anything, Insurance Lady? WHO CARES??? He probably bought it off some guy for cash. They don't tend to ask for proof of insurance before allowing you to drive away. And that has nothing to do with what I'm asking you to do for me. Please focus on the task at hand and JUST GET ME SOME DAMN INSURANCE, so I can drive this thing legally, without having to worry that if I get in an accident, I could lose my house.

Anyway, I'm clearly fed up with her on the phone and, eventually, I say to her "look--just do what you need to do to get me covered to drive this thing. I'm just trying to get basic liability insurance, so I can be legal. That's all. You should be able to do that. This shouldn't be this hard."

If it's possible for someone to look at you like you're scary and crazy through a phone line, that's what she was doing. She said meekly that she'd make some more calls to the underwriter and get back to me tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'm picking up the damn truck in an hour. Thanks for nothing, Insurance Lady.

So, as I sit on the train, it occurs to me. Why am I dealing with this stupid insurance brokerage that takes forever to get questions answered just because we use them for our personal policies? There are hundreds of bottom-feeding insurance companies saturating the air waves with their stupid, mind-numbingly memorable commercials that would probably bend over backwards to accommodate my situation.

I dial 411 and ask for Geico, but they don't do policies for less than six months. I scour my brain for remnants of ads I've heard from other auto insurance companies, and come up with 1-800-Safe Auto. I dial it up, and....presto chango, four dropped calls and a brief delay in beautiful downtown Mokena later, I am reading the digits of my credit card number to the incredibly patient phone person and she's telling me that, yes, I am, as of right this very moment, insured.

Incredible. What my broker (who we've dealt with for years for all of our insurance) couldn't manage to do over the course of five weeks, this company did in 20 minutes. Perhaps the most amazing part of this story was the fact that not only did I have the VIN number of the truck written down, but I was actually had it with me and was able to locate it while I was on the phone with the person.

Small victories. They're all I've got right now, so savor them, I will.

After that whole episode, smooth sailing. Truck Guy picked me up at the train station, briefed me on the idiosyncrasies of the vehicle (it idles rough), I was psyched to see that it had a newer stereo with an mp3 hookup cable, and we went back to his house to sign the homemade contract that we had worked up and trade cash for keys.

So now, good readers, I am proud to announce that I am the proud ~~owner~~ renter of a fine 1997 red Ford F-150, which sits in my driveway at this very moment while I type. It ran fine on the way home and Truck Guy assures me that the odometer, which reads 886,433 miles, is not correct.

I believe him. Tomorrow I go scouting locations along Southport.

one door closes, another opens

2009-06-02T23:01:00.006-05:00

The Lincoln Square deal is officially dead. It's probably been dead for a while now, but I'm now officially pronouncing it.

I called the landlord again today, following the strange, confusing discussion I had with him yesterday, and he finally came out and told me that he is taking another offer. I busted his chops a bit. Figured I'd vent out some frustration on him...it's not like he's a bridge I mind burning. And I asked him a few questions about this so-called better offer.

Apparently, whoever's he's now renting to is going to keep the concept the same. They're going to re-open it as the unsuccessful middle eastern sit down restaurant that closed way back in December. Yeah, that'll work. I'm sure the neighborhood will just flock to a place that's been closed without explanation for six months and then suddenly reopens as exactly the same thing as it was when it closed. Good plan!

The landlord claims that it'll work this time because the new owner is a chef. I snorted and scoffed a bit and then predicted that he'd be back in this same position within a year. I'd be surprised if it took that long. Sour grapes? Yep! I'm not going to apologize for it. I spent a ton of time working on this and I'm pissed.

My wife had a bit of a breakdown last night when we were talking about the deal falling through. She'd already been picturing how this restaurant would effect her life, similar to what I was talking about towards the end of this post, and losing all of that potential stuff was hard for her. She's got a good friend that lives in Lincoln Square, and she'd been picturing herself spending time down there, taking walks over to the restaurant, going to the park with the kids, etc. We've both spent a lot of time envisioning how our lives would be while I ran this restaurant, and now, all of a sudden, the page is blank. Again.

I can't help but think that the landlord and seller did, in fact, team up and try to get rid of me on this deal. The landlord's whole "talk to the seller" thing rings false if he simply accepted another offer. Plus, I've now called the seller twice to have kind of a post-mortem on our deal, and he's not calling me back. If the seller was really getting the rug pulled out from under him by the landlord, he'd be calling me back, if only to commiserate. My guess is that he got a better offer after he signed the contract with me, and his only way out of our deal was to go to the landlord and ask him not to agree to terms with me, so our deal would blow up, he could take the higher offer, and then pay the landlord back more of what he owes him in back rent.

The lawyers tell me that I can stall this out as long as I want to, effectively preventing the seller from selling his property to anyone else until I release him from our contract. I can potentially string him along for months, claiming that I'm still trying to work out a deal with the landlord. But I probably won't.

There's really no point in it and it's better for me to let go of the anger and resentment I'm feeling, rather than indulge in a pointless, spiteful exercise that won't get me anywhere but mired deeper into a situation that's never going to resolve itself the way I want it to.

On top of all this lovely stuff, my wife is freaking out about money. Since this deal was supposed to have happened by now, we set up childcare for our kids and, in addition to our normal expenses, we're now paying around $250/week for someone to watch our kids while I'm at home, not working, essentially not doing anything that would prevent me from watching the kids myself.

But, we're reluctant to just pull the kids out of the situation they're in, since, if another deal takes shape, we'll have to just slap them back in there again, which isn't fair to them or the person who we've got taking care of them.

That being the case, I feel a strong need to make every day the kids are at childcare a day that I do constructive stuff towards getting this restaurant off the ground. Often, that's just making phone calls or waiting for people to call me back, but today, I took some initiative and did some scouting in the area that may be about to become our new prospective location. (Did I put enough qualifiers in that sentence? You can tell I'm reluctant to emotionally commit to this new possibility!)

This site is in a different part of the city than the last one. It's near Armitage and Western (just a bit south of Margie's Candies, for those that know the city) and it's a very good opportunity. I detailed some of the pros and cons already in an earlier post, and while the entry situation is excellent, the big question mark was the neighborhood, and whether it can support the concept I'm envisioning.

So, I took the train down there today and spent about five hours of this cold, rainy Tuesday walking around the area, scouting competitors, getting a feel for the area, checking out the ratio of new condos to old apartment buildings, and having lunch in the space.

I'm pretty encouraged. This area is a lot harder to get a handle on than Lincoln Square, which is kind of one dimensional (but in a good way--the one dimension is young urban families and couples with disposable income). This area is much more varied. There are plenty of fancy upscale condos just a bit east in West Bucktown, and, subsequently, quite a few hip little boutiques and shops to cater to their inhabitants, but Western Avenue is kind of the border of that area, and Western itself is still pretty seedy, with lots of currency exchanges, payday loan places, and dollar stores. Let me put it this way; the immediate area isn't lacking in people standing around bus stops for hours drinking liquor from paper bags and smoking cigarette butts they found on the sidewalk.

The upside, though, is that there's almost no direct competition. There's a McDonalds very nearby and a tiny hot dog stand with no seating that doesn't have burgers. And then a new outpost of an established suburban Italian beef place about six blocks away. So, not much. Another plus is that while there's less foot traffic than there would be in Lincoln Square, there's a ton more car traffic and parking is relatively easy. This is a much more high-traffic area overall, with an 'L' stop very close by, tons of cars passing through the six-way intersection of Western, Armitage, and Milwaukee, and a lot of busy bus stops as well.

The restaurant that currently occupies the space isn't, according to the accounts I'm getting, doing all that bad, it's just that the owners overextended themselves during the buildout prior to opening and so they have a pretty big debt to service every month. One partner has decided to get out of the restaurant business, and the other doesn't have the ability to buy her out or run it solo. They were pretty busy for a rainy Tuesday, with nearly every table full at around 12:30 and still some stragglers at around 2:00 when I finally left. Their prices seemed very high--I had a sandwich and a can of Diet Coke and my total was $11.01.

(Tangent--what's with restaurants that sell cans of pop? This annoys me to no end. C'mon, people, get the damn fountain service! It's cheaper than cans, you'll make more money, customers prefer it, you present a higher perception of value by offering free refills, you don't have to store all those cans, and there's much less to put in the garbage/recycling. Get with the program, folks!)

So that's encouraging. I think by offering a much more focused, simple concept and a better value price-wise, we will do pretty well in this location--especially because we will not have all that debt to pay back.

Based on what I saw today, I want to move forward on this place. My wife is reluctant. She thinks I'm just going for the "rebound" opportunity, and she's probably right. But that doesn't mean that we can't make a go of it in the rebound place.

The thing is, I don't think we have time to mull it over. This place is a great opportunity; the owners have allowed their lease to expire and now are just interested in getting a decent return on their equipment without having to deal with an auction company or selling stuff piecemeal. If I don't act soon, I'm certain someone else will jump on it.

But I have the inside track on this place; the building's owner is a neighbor and a friend who's been trying to get me interested in this space for a while.

So, once I got back home, I called him up and told him that we're interested in taking the next step toward moving on the place. Certainly not a done deal; he's got to get his partners sold on having me and my concept as their tenant. But at least we're moving forward on something.

If this space doesn't end up working out, I really don't know what we're going to do.

completely confused

2009-06-01T16:25:00.004-05:00

After last week's conversation with the landlord and the ensuing flurry of calls that followed, I had more or less completely written off any chance of the purchase we're under contract for actually going through.

But, since I'm still pissed at the landlord for doing a complete 180 out of nowhere for no apparent reason, I decided to call him today and ask him some pointed questions just for the hell of it.

Surprisingly, he picked up his cell phone when I called. I introduced myself and reminded him of who I am (he seems never to remember from one day to the next) and just asked him point blank, "so, you're still determined not to rent the place to me?"

His answer was to tell me that it's not his decision. A whuh? Whose decision is it, then?

He asked me if I'd spoken to the seller, and I said that, "yes, I'd spoken to him and that he's very upset that you're doing this and blowing his deal. He wants to sell the place to me and the only thing preventing that is the fact that you suddenly don't want to rent to me."

He seemed confused (join the club, I guess) and said that he'd have to call the seller, so I should call him back tomorrow.

Feeling brazen and belligerent, I didn't let up. "Look," I asked, "do you own the building?"

"Yes," he answered, reluctantly.

"So, then you decide who you want to rent to", I said. "Right?"

Again, he begrudgingly admitted this was the case.

At a loss as to what this guy was saying, I took a different tack. "Why don't you just be straight with me," I said, "do you have another offer? Is that why you suddenly don't want to rent to me?"

"Of course!", he shouted back.

Well, what the fuck, then, dude? Why don't you just say that in the first place? Why are you trying to tell me it's not your decision?

He won't answer any of these questions, though...he just continues to repeat that he needs to talk to the seller and that I should call him tomorrow.

So while the title of this entry is "completely confused", I guess I'm not, actually. It certainly appears that the only logical explanation is that these two are trying to cook something up that will be mutually beneficial to them, whether it's an attempt to ditch me for another buyer, or to squeeze me for more money, or something that I haven't thought of yet. The landlord's constant refrain of "talk to the seller" pretty much tells me all I need to know.

Except that I'm getting a completely different message from the seller, who seems genuinely frustrated that this nut-job landlord is blowing the deal we worked for three months to put together. So maybe I am completely confused after all. I don't know what I am.

I do know, however, that I called the electric and gas companies today and stopped service so that we're not being billed for the utilities in a place we're not going to end up occupying. And I do know that I'm almost certain that I wouldn't even go through with this deal now even if the landlord suddenly reversed his position on his sudden reversal of his position, and up and decided that, yes, he does want to rent to us.

Because if this is how he acts during the negotiations, when folks are usually on their best behavior, how will he conduct himself once we've signed a lease?

cutting bait

2009-05-31T11:40:00.002-05:00

I talked to my real estate contact (he's a longtime friend of the family whom I trust to be straight with me) and he asked around to some of his contacts who have dealt with the landlord. The consensus among these guys is that this landlord is a major league asshole, who is very quick to go to litigation about anything and is just generally a huge pain to deal with.

He couldn't really give me any explanation for why the landlord suddenly wouldn't want to rent to me, other than to speculate that he's got another offer that he feels is better. Possibly something corporate, although I'm not sure why people would view corporate-owned businesses as a safer bet than independently-owned entities in the current climate. A Bank of America recently vacated the space next door to the restaurant, and up until recently, I'd think that a property owner would view a huge bank like that as a dream tenant.

So. We're done with this guy. This deal is dead. I've mentally moved on already and am considering other spaces. I will probably call the landlord again Monday just to put the screws to him and see how he responds, but that will be more out of curiosity than anything else. I'm fairly sure that I wouldn't move forward with him at this point, knowing what I now know, even if he changed his mind. My real estate adviser (who may soon be my real estate agent, depending on how things go) says that we're lucky to have seen his true colors early enough in the game that we're not out ~~any~~ much money.

There are two spaces that I'm now focusing on; one, I've seen and one that I haven't. The one that I've seen is on Western Ave. and is a completely built-out, well put-together space. It's a great deal because the cost of purchasing it is less than we were going to pay with our previous deal, plus there would be practically zero build-out costs. It would represent a savings of about $50k over the last deal. Downside is that the location is completely different and we've already done a ton of research and legwork about the previous Lincoln Square location. The rent is also higher.

The second option, which I haven't seen, is practically right next door to the space we had a contract to purchase. The location appeals to me because we can pick up right where we left off, and there would be a certain sense of retribution or revenge there based on how this landlord is fucking us over. I'll show him! But, I know practically nothing about the space--whether it's built out as a restaurant, what the rent is, what the entry costs are, etc. Supposed to hear more this coming week.

Crazy stuff. We'd been working on this deal for months. I'm upset that we've spent so much time and some money on this location and now it's all of a sudden off the table. Most of our legal fees will now have been wasted, since we'll have to draw up new paperwork for anything we end up moving on, the cost of the inspections I did is now wasted, we've got checks with that address printed on them, and accounts with the gas and electric companies already up and running. Not a huge amount of money, and it certainly could have been worse, but it's a frustrating fucking waste.

Mostly, though, it's shifting gears emotionally that's hard right now. I did a lot of picturing myself in that space, planning what I was going to do with the space, writing layouts and floorplans, telling people about the location, and fantasizing about what life in my restaurant would be like in that particular spot. It's really hard to just pick all that up and move it to another spot, especially one that I haven't seen, or one that's in a different part of town with a completely different feel.

It's not quite as bad as in the past, when I've been fired from a job, but it's a similar feeling. A big part of identity is where you work--what you do. And when someone takes a job or a restaurant away from you, all of a sudden all the identity-forming stuff that comes from that is gone, and it leaves you feeling untethered, and somehow less legitimate. I've been fired enough times to know that I'm not defined by one particular job or restaurant space, and that what I "do" isn't dependent on where I do it, but it's still a hard feeling to deal with, especially for the first week or so after it happens.

puzzled

2009-05-27T20:03:00.002-05:00

Follow up to today's post.

I spoke with the seller this evening and he seems genuinely puzzled as to what this is about. I don't think he's lying because I just don't think he could lie that convincingly. He also didn't ask for or even imply that he wanted more money from me.

Basically, he seems just as pissed as me that the landlord is pulling this shit, and is wondering whether they guy is doing something behind the scenes like putting liens on his equipment or getting ready to padlock the door and seize everything as retribution for what he's owed.

Apparently, the seller owes about $15,000 in back rent; more than a few months. The landlord told me today that he doesn't mind letting the place sit empty, since the seller is paying him. So a bit of a disconnect there. Seller tells me that his conversation with the landlord was similar to the one I had today; that the guy believes that my idea isn't viable, that I won't make money, and that he'll be in the same position with me in a year or so that he's in now with the seller.

He also supposedly told the seller that he's got another space that I might be interested in.... Which makes zero sense if he really thinks my idea is no good.

This is crazy stuff. For the life of me, I cannot figure out what this guy's angle might be. I've got calls in to my attorneys and my contact that knows commercial real estate, so I'm hoping they might give me some insight.

Other than that, I'm not sure what I can do, other than to string this out as long as possible and hope that this guy comes to his senses.

our deal is blowing up

2009-05-27T15:16:00.004-05:00

I got the explanation for why the landlord hasn't been calling me back over the last two weeks--he apparently doesn't want to rent to us anymore.

This is nuts. I spoke with him at his office about a month and a half ago and he said he thought the concept was a great idea. I showed him our business plan, talked about the fact that we have enough in reserves to pay rent during our 'growth' period of the first year or so, and everything seemed fine on that end.

He is kind of a crazy old guy, with a storefront office in an old apartment building that looks like it hasn't changed since about 1958 or so, right down to the pictures hanging from the faux-wood paneling in his office. I got the impression then that he didn't care at all who was sending him the checks, as long as they kept coming in, and when I gave him the business plan I had worked up, he tossed it onto a pile on his cluttered desk in a way that made me feel like the chances of him reading it were pretty slim.

Back then, I was confident we were going to get him to make some significant accommodations on the rent and the terms of the lease, given the current economy, but he took a hard line and would hardly budge at all. After talking to a friend who is an experienced commercial real estate guy, and, as it turns out, who negotiated with this same old landlord himself, I realized that the terms being offered weren't really too bad, and that he had a reputation for not budging on deals. So I resigned myself to signing a lease that was more or less what he had offered me back then.

Now, all of a sudden, he tells me today on the phone that he doesn't think the concept is right for the neighborhood, that all of the other restaurants around don't do very well at lunch, etc, etc,.... This from a guy who's leased to three different restaurants in the past four years. All of a sudden, he's all picky about who's paying him rent?

He asked me if I'd spoken to the seller recently, and then, when I said "no", he told me that he wasn't interested in renting to me. I was incredulous. I kept asking him what the problem is, and he wouldn't really say. He kept telling me to talk to the seller, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be asking the seller about this; he's got nothing to do with the lease situation.

The only possible explanation for this is that the seller called the landlord and told him not to rent to me, so he can either back out of the deal or try and hit me up for more money. My suspicion is that the seller owes quite a bit of money on back rent and is now telling the landlord that, unless he can get more money out of me, he won't pay him. So they're teaming up to squeeze me.

The other possibility is that he got another offer that he's contractually not permitted to accept, so is trying to get me to quash the deal so he can take the other offer.

Either way, this is not good. I've put about four or five months of work into putting this deal together and preparing for the restaurant, and now it might all be for nothing. A complete waste of time.

I'm trying not to panic here because this is about the fourth time this seller has done something to try and make me nervous or panicky and then tried to hit me up to either move faster or pay him more. As soon as I got off the phone with the landlord, I put calls in to the seller, my lawyer, and the real estate guy that I mentioned above, but nobody's called me back yet.

One thing that's making it a bit easier not to completely panic about this is that I looked at another space last week. A neighbor of mine, who had originally considered investing in my restaurant, owns a building that houses a restaurant whose owners are looking to get out of the business. They're deep in debt, due to overextending themselves on the buildout of the place.

The upside of that is that it's completely brand new; a fully up-and-running restaurant--far nicer than I was planning on making Automatic. But this leads me to question whether the concept is right for the space; is it too nice? Will the simple concept I've been envisioning work in the almost corporate-feeling new construction space? Can I kind of "trash it up" a bit to make the space feel right for the concept?

The other upside is that the asking price is incredibly low; half of what I was offering the Lincoln Square seller.

Downsides of this other place are:

Rent. It's higher by about $1000/month.
Location. It's very different than the Lincoln Square location, and doesn't seem as much like a sure thing. It's on a major street with tons of traffic, but lacks the affluent housing and foot traffic of the original location.
Layout. The place has kind of an odd diagonal shape and the kitchen is laid out more for table service than for a quick-serve operation.
Concept. I'm not sure the concept I've worked up will translate to this neighborhood, although I do believe it could if I tweaked it. A big part of the concept, though, was that it'd be lunch-only, and that was driven by me trying to achieve a balance between my work life and family life. This new location lends itself more to later hours

So my mind is spinning right now. I'm going to wait and see what the seller and landlord have to say, but I also have to plan for this deal to fall through and start thinking about looking for other possibilities.

hurry up and wait

2009-05-21T16:19:00.002-05:00

Today was a flurry of activity. Unfortunately, not much actually got done.

We're a day outside of our contingency period and the seller hasn't been calling me back. This morning I called him at 7:30am and got ahold of him and the first thing he did was ask me "since we're outside the contingency period, that means I can entertain other offers, right?"

Well, I wasn't sure, so I said that I just didn't know, but I believed at the time that the answer was yes. So, of course, I started getting all worried and nervous that someone's going to come buy the place out from under us. Which is, of course, what he wants. He's been playing these kind of games with me from the start--I should know better by now, but I can't help but buy into it.

I emailed my lawyer and asked what we need to do to get this thing closed ASAP. We still have to get a lease in place (shouldn't be hard, we're basically just agreeing to the landlord's terms) and we're waiting for two searches to come back to determine if the seller has any debt we need to concern ourselves with.

I told the lawyer that I'd like to just blow off the searches and get this thing done.

Meanwhile, I had an guy coming at 1pm to inspect the stoves and grill, and the seller informed me that he couldn't have anyone there at that time to let him in, but that I could go pick up the keys at his sister's house and do it myself.

Fine. Except I still don't have a vehicle, since this guy out in Joliet hasn't gotten back to me about this truck that I'm supposed to be renting. More on that later.

Anyway, the seller's sister's house is in Albany Park, and rather than taking the train all the way downtown and then taking the brown line all the way back out there, I decided to get off the train at Jefferson Park and walk from Lawrence and Milwaukee to Foster and Kimball. It looked pretty walkable on the Google map I punched up, but it took me an hour and a half of pretty hard walking. Plus it was HOT out today.

But, things went according to plan for once. I got the keys, walked the three more blocks down to the Kimball stop on the brown line, and then rode the el four stops over to where the restaurant is going to be. I was there in plenty of time for the 1pm inspection, so I grabbed a salad and had lunch.

While I was walking, the truck guy from Joliet called me and told me that there's a problem with the "transfer case"(?). Not sure if I'm remembering that right, but it's something having to do with the four-wheel drive. Anyway, whatever the fuck it is, it means that I won't be able to get the truck until sometime next week. Great. Whatever, keep me posted.

Then, while waiting for the appliance guys to show up, I spoke with my lawyer, who patiently explained to me that "contingency" is one thing and "conditional" is another. The contingency period, which just ended, was the time allotted for me to do inspections and, if I desired, walk away from the deal without penalty.

The conditions of closing, on the other hand, are not, he informed me, constrained to any set amount of time; they're simply things that must get done before we can close the deal. So, what all this means that the seller cannot entertain other offers. He's locked in and, really, has no choice but to wait for us to get the lease and the debt searches done.

Hearing that, plus getting the results of the inspection, cheered me up immensely, and I no longer have this feeling that we need to get this done NOW or we're going to lose the place.

And--bonus!--the char-grill that's in the place is a pricey TEC infrared unit that retails for upwards of $3,000 and only needs a couple hundred worth of repairs. The Vulcan six-burner that's there is pretty much trashed, but I wasn't planning on keeping that anyway. Good deal.

So all my hoofing it around town paid off. I finished up my lunch, made a couple quick calls, locked up, and then rode the el downtown, walked over to the Metra station, and took my train back home. Eight hours of running around, but at least *something* got done, plus I'm in a much better place than I was when I left home.

Although, it's not like the surprises don't keep coming. The furnace and hot water heater were both disconnected from the gas, I noticed. The gas company insists that the room where they're housed is unsafe due to inadequate ventilation, and that they need to be relocated. Plus, I saw a dead roach in the hall near the bathrooms and the appliance guy, after sticking his head up into the ceiling, said he saw rat droppings and that the electrical was "a mess".

But I'll cross those bridges when I come to them. I need to focus on the eight or ten balls I currently have in the air.

So...now we still wait. For the landlord to decide to call me back, for the debt searches to come back, for the insurance people to email me their various bids, and for the Joliet truck guy to get his transfer case or whatever it is ready to go. This coming Monday is Memorial Day, so it's a safe bet that little will get done tomorrow, and it's certain that nothing will get done on Monday.

Hopefully next week, things will start taking shape. The blisters on my feet should be better by then.

waiting game

2009-05-20T15:41:00.002-05:00

The last two days have been waiting days. We're in the contingency period of our purchase of the existing restaurant's assets; we opted to not purchase the corporation because the guy we're buying from couldn't produce any tax records, books, really, any financial records of any type. And if we bought the LLC from him, we'd be on the hook for anything they owed anyone. No, thanks.

I was supposed to be doing inspections during this contingency period and negotiating the terms of the lease with the landlord, an ancient guy named Saul who, when he bothers to call me back at all, usually confuses me with someone else from one of his other buildings. Nearly every conversation with him starts with about five minutes of me refreshing his memory about who I am.

But for the last week or so, he hasn't returned my calls at all, and my repeated calls to his office staff have gotten me nowhere. It's frustrating, because we're basically in agreement on the terms, so this shouldn't take long, but I need to come to an understanding with him before we can move forward.

The other thing I'm waiting on is insurance. We met with our family's insurance agent months ago, went over every fine detail and all the coverages available, and he gave us a ballpark quote of about $5,000 per year, which included the "package", workman's compensation, and an "umbrella" policy of $1 million. I'm putting those words in quotes not because I'm using them in a novel way, but because I'm simply repeating words that these insurance people have been using and I have no idea whether they're real terms or not. I also don't care. I hate insurance.

Part of my prep for getting the restaurant open involves using a pickup truck for a couple months, so I can go to restaurant equipment sales and auctions, whip out cash, and haul stuff away on the spot. That is how you get deals....right place, right time, cash in hand. Anyway, after calling the conventional car rental places and getting quotes of $1200/month and up (plus milage) to use a truck, I placed an ad on Craigslist looking for someone to rent me one, and found a guy willing to do it for $400/month.

Sweet. Except the guy (understandably) wants me to carry insurance on the truck. So I've been going back and forth with the insurance folks about whether this can be done. Yesterday, our family person told me it's not possible--that one has to have the title in order to insure a vehicle. Today, she calls me back and says that it is possible, under some sort of "leased equipment damages" clause or something. But then she also lays the quote on me, and it's $9,000/year.

Later, she called me back with another, more reasonable quote, but says that they won't do the leased equipment damages thing.

So, back to the truck guy, to tell him what's up and he agrees to talk to his insurance people and get back to me.

And so I wait. And continue to wait. Antsy to get started gutting the place and buying equipment and painting and re-tiling and all that other fun stuff that needs to get done before I can actually toss a burger on the grill or dunk a basket of fries into the hot oil.

Fun, eh? The restaurant life is so very glamorous.

Oh, the other thing is that we're technically supposed to close tonight, but the contingencies have not been taken care of. In other words, we don't have a lease, and we don't have inspections completed. I have an inspection scheduled for tomorrow at one, my hot appliance guy is supposed to come look at the six-burner unit and the char-grill, but the seller is not returning my calls or emails to inform me of whether he'll agree to extend the contingency period or have someone there tomorrow at one to let me and the appliance guy into the space.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of this whole four-month process, which has included multiple sellers (who disappeared when it was time to sign the contract), a seller who wanted to change the name of the owner at the last minute (ah...no), multiple "other offers", which seemed to appear any time there was a sticking point to the negotiation and just as mysteriously disappear when we appeared ready to walk, a gas company guy who wouldn't turn on the service because he deemed the mechanical room unsafe, and more.

I'll detail that stuff another time, when I'm in the mood to backtrack. This post was just about venting my frustration with having to wait. I feel like there's so much I need to do to push this project forward, but I can't do any of it until the current steps are completed; lease, insurance, truck, inspections, close.

more burger (& fries) research

2009-05-15T23:16:00.001-05:00

As the unveiling of my project grows closer (I'll share more details when I can), I've been cruising around town trying boatloads of burgers and fries.

The more I try, the more I'm amazed at the differences from place to place. Here are some quick reviews of places I've tried recently.

Muskie's
2878 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago

This is a classic-looking old place with a sparse, simple menu that regularly gets pretty good marks on the various restaurant review sites. It's very clean inside, the owner is usually running the show behind the counter, and is extremely competent and friendly.

The burger, however, is your standard-issue frozen hockey puck. Besides lacking juiciness and good beefy flavor, which is almost always the case with a factory-formed, machine-stamped frozen patty, mine tasted freezer-burnt to boot. If the best part of a burger is the toppings, it's just not worth it, in my opinion.

The highlight at Muskie's is the fries. They're cutting their own potatoes here, but they're doing a thin fry, just about the same size as that awful place that starts with McD. And, these crispy shoestrings were cooked perfectly. Nicely cooked through with a great crunchy, well-browned exterior. This is the only place I've ever seen do a fresh-cut fry in this style. Very nice.

That's-a-Burger
2134 E 71st St., Chicago

This place has been recommended to me by dozens of people and I finally got around to trying it. The burgers are a nicely-done example of the diner-style griddled smashburger; fresh beef scooped and then smashed on the flat top. I did see (despite having to look through the bullet-proof glass) the guy scoop the fresh beef and flatten it with a specially-bent spatula that he fashioned (I presume) for this specific task, so they're at least doing it the way it's supposed to be done.

As a result, the burger was pretty good. Beef tasted fresh and had that nice crispy-yet-crumbly texture you want from a griddled diner-style burger. It was pretty juicy as well. They have a lot of other interesting-sounding stuff on their menu, and I've heard rave reviews about their turkey burgers, but I was interested in sampling just the straight-up burger and fries, mostly unadorned, in order to really be able to taste and assess the meat.

The fries, while fresh-cut, were abysmal. The trick with fresh-cut fries is to be able to cook them through in the time it takes the outside to brown and crisp up. In order to accomplish this, most places cook their fries twice--first in a lower-temperature oil, to cook the potatoes, and then again, at a higher temperature, to crisp and brown them.

That's-a-Burger, I believe, skipped the first step, resulting in fries that did not fully cook through before they started to brown. Then they wrapped them up in the same butcher paper as the burger, Gene and Jude's style, where the trapped steam caused them to lose any hint of crispness that they might have had when they came out of the fryer. They also lacked salt.

Which wouldn't normally be that big of a deal--I can add salt myself, no problem--except that since That's-a-Burger offers no dine-in options, not even a ledge to perch on while you stand and eat, we were a block and a half away, eating in the car, so it wasn't all that feasible to go back and beg for a salt packet.

Oh, and I also had an issue with the spongy, cake-like bun, which had a kind of strange-tasting artificial sweetness to it that I found just very off.

Another thing about this place was that it took them more than 20 minutes to cook our order of three burgers and fries. We just walked in and ordered, but from what I observed, it seems like the protocol is to call your order in ahead of time. I'm not sure why it would take that long to cook burgers and fries. Wish I could say better things about this place. I wanted to like it, really I did.

Poochie's
3832 Dempster St., Skokie

I stopped at Poochies with the intention of having a burger and fries--honestly. But the really unique item on their menu is the char salami sandwich. They cut thick slabs the long way off of an all-beef kosher salami, and then cook it on the char-grill, crisping it up, rendering out some of the fat, and giving it a great, smoky, charred flavor.

It's served on very good crusty bread, as well. It's quite a sandwich. I ordered mine with the mustard and grilled onions, and I give this combo very high marks.

The fries, though, at Poochie's, are really the star. Here is a perfect exemplar of the fresh-cut fry the way it's supposed to be. Cooked through, almost creamy on the inside, nicely browned and crispy on the outside, and well-seasoned. These fries are perfect. Order the cheese fries and they'll slather a mound of gloppy Merkt's on there too. Just as good as Weiner's Circle, but without the verbal abuse!

They do char cheddar burgers with the Merkt's at Poochie's too (in the same vein as Paradise Pup), so I'll have to get back there fairly soon and check out the burger, although I doubt it's made with fresh beef.

Goldyburgers
7316 Circle Ave., Forest Park

Another oft-recommended burger spot is Goldyburgers in Forest Park, just west of Harlem Avenue and south of the Metra tracks. This place is definitely worth seeking out. It's a classic old tavern that's just perfect for taking in a Cubs day game.

The burgers are definitely fresh beef, hand-pattied, and have good flavor. They're also pretty big--at least a half pound, I'd guess. The one I ordered was, unfortunately, overcooked, but I believe that if it had been cooked as I ordered it, there would've had a lot more juiciness to it. Even cooked all the way through, it wasn't dry.

The service here was very friendly, in that kind of neighborhood corner bar sort of way. There's a lot of low-rent charm here as well--the food is served on cheap paper plates, 50's-era paper place mats appear after you order food, and kitschy burger-themed salt and pepper shakers adorn the tables.

The fries were nothing worth mentioning, but the feel of the place and the good (potentially very good) burgers make it worth checking out.

Kuma's Corner
2900 W. Belmont Ave., Chicago

Kuma's was a must-try for me, since they've won all sorts of awards for the best burger in the city. So I stopped in for lunch on a weekday around 2pm and the place was packed to the point that I just managed to find a spot at the bar.

I had the "Kaijo" which featured bacon, blue cheese, and "frizzled" onions. As you probably know, all the burgers are named after heavy metal bands at this place. I'm not familiar with the band Kaijo, but the burger sounded good to me.

It was cooked spot-on perfect, as you can see from the picture above, and the meat tasted like it was fresh and looked hand-pattied. It was juicy for days and was, overall, probably the best burger of the bunch I'm reviewing here.

The one thing I didn't love about the Kuma's burger was the fact that it was over-topped. They really heap on the toppings, which, when you're dealing with fresh, good-quality beef, really kind of overwhelms what's supposed to be the star of the show. I also wasn't crazy about the "pretzel"-style bun, but I did appreciate the fact that it was structurally sound enough to stand up to the giant, juicy, over-topped mess (and I mean that in a good way) that is the Kuma's burger experience.

The freezer-bag-to-fryer waffle cut fries and chips are nothing worth mentioning. It's a shame that a place that features burgers this good isn't also doing high-quality fresh-cut fries, but given the volume they're doing and the small kitchen, I understand why they've made that choice.

So, to recap, the Kuma's burger was the best of the bunch, with their good-quality, fresh beef and ability to cook it to the correct degree of doneness. While I prefer the thinner, diner-style griddled burger featured at That's-a-Burger, the main consideration for me is the quality of the beef, the freshness, and the juiciness, and Kuma's really delivered on all three.

The runaway winner for fries was Poochie's, with a special mention to Muskies for their unique shoestring hand-cut fries.

That said, I think I can do better.