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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.