Family Traditions:

A Southern Boy goes to Paris.....

A Southern Boy in Paris…..

 

Well Folks It is time for another trip.  Toby and I are off on another food pilgrimage.  This one is a little further afield than the last few…..We are going to Paris.  Not the one in Tennessee either, although they do have a great fish fry. 

I am not sure how often I will be able to update the blog while we are there, but I will make sure that I post plenty of pictures and have a lot to say about the great food that I am expecting.  We are not going looking for real high end restaurants, although I am sure we will visit a few of them, I want the real French food.  Street food and café and bistro fare.  I love crepes from carts and coffee from crazy French waiters.  It has been a long time since I was in Paris, but I find a very strong connection between the cooking styles and ingredients of Bistro food and Southern food.  Lots of slow cooking of tough meats, organs, and local veggies.  I can’t wait.  More to come after we arrive.

The building trials and tribulations.

Well we thought that we were on track to have the new place open in October, but the construction business and local Government being what it is we may be delayed.  We had a meeting with building and codes before we ever bought the building and got a list of hoops that we had to jump through.  We jumped and budgeted for all of the hoops and guess what?  They changed the hoops after we had started and now there is a whole new set of requirements that we have to reach before we can get the permit for the remodel.  I don’t know why I am surprised, but when someone’s incompetence costs me money, I get angry.  We now have an additional 10k in expenses and weeks of delays ahead of us, and that is before the adjustments on the remodel estimate.  We won’t know the total of the additional costs until we spend the 10k to have all new plans and architectural drawings done, as well as consultations from mechanical and structural engineers.  I love gov’t bureaucracy don’t you? 

That being said, our contractor is doing a great job so far.   He was ready to go and had all of the demolition work done so that the remodel could progress, but now he has to put all of his crews on hold so that we can get these new demands met.  I feel sorry for him as much as anything.  We are going to get this done, it just may take longer than we planned.  

The new menu is coming along nicely, and I hope that it will be one that the local group likes.  I guess we won’t know until we try it, but we will see soon.  I am not going way out there from what is comfortable and familiar, but we have added a few twists to what is strictly traditional for the area.  We think that the town is ready for this place, and after having to look around for a place to take people out to eat there this week, I think there is a demand for our place.  We just have to let people know that we are coming.  October was such an ideal time for us to open because of several local festivals and celebrations that attract a lot of people to the square, but I think we will do fine just the same whenever we open.  Keep watching and I will put up menu previews before long. 

Walking in the Foodsteps of Giants.

I have been nervous and stressed lately.  We are about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime and are betting a lot on the fact that we know what we are doing.  We have both done this for more than half of our lives, so we feel that it is a pretty good risk.  People will tell you that the odds are against you, but when you try anything in life, the odds are against you the first time.  The funny thing is that failure of the restaurant is not what scares me, or what has been stressing me out.  I know that we can run a restaurant and make it profitable.  We have done that for other people for years.  It is the giants of the southern food scene that I have to follow that keep me stressed out. 

In case you don’t know me, I am a very competitive person.  I am not always confrontational, but I always want to win.  It doesn’t really matter if it is sports, an argument, or being the best, I want to win.  I have no doubt that I am good at what I do.  The cooking side of our businesses very rarely gets anything but compliments.  We excel at the service side of things as well.  I have never had a guest walk away from an event not happy with our part of it.  That being said, the competition of great chefs in the south has really stepped up the level of cuisine in the past 15 years, and the last 5 years especially.  The South has really been a hotbed of up and coming chefs and innovative twists on traditional southern cuisine.  You all know how I feel about southern cuisine, so I won’t launch into that rant here, needless to say, I think that it is an exceptional branch of what America has added to the culinary scene.  I am following a path that some very big shoes have forged into a wilderness of cuisine.  Southern food has always been true to it’s original influences, but stayed pretty much the same for a long time.  Now, in the past few years or decade, it is really starting to move around again and expand the ways and types of cuisine that are served.  This is managed through innovative use of traditional ingredients and new imaginings of traditional dishes.  The scope of what some of these chefs are doing is really inspiring, and stressful.

I am not trying to reinvent the wheel at our new place, I know better than that.  I am not sure the customer base that we are targeting would really be comfortable with that.  What we are trying to do is introduce a new way of looking at southern cuisine for the immediate area that we are serving.  I am sure that there are chefs at places like the City Grocery in Oxford or the St John in Chattanooga that can get away with a lot of ingredients and preparations that may take me a few years to build a taste for where we are opening.  Not that this is a bad thing.  Those two are some of my favorite restaurants, and both have been nominated for a James Beard Award.  If that doesn’t say enough about them, you aren’t paying attention.  They both prepare great local ingredients with excellent preparation to produce some of the finest food in the South.  I just hope that someday I can serve the types of dishes, to an accepting clientele, in our restaurant some day soon.  In the mean time I hope to find the right balance in the food and presentations we serve to make the place a success, while elevating the culinary landscape in our immediate area.  I am just glad that the trail has been started, and I hope that in the future, I can extend the path a little further in my own direction.

Reality Hits Home

I haven’t been this excited since I was about 10 and Christmas was coming up.  Have you ever wanted something so bad and so long that when you finally get it, it takes a few days to really hit you that you got what you wanted?  Well today is that day for me.  I think that it has finally sunk in that two of the things that I have wanted most of my adult life are finally mine.  I have to say that it has been an incredible week.

Let me start by walking you through what has happened in our lives since Wednesday.  We knew that Wednesday was going to be an exciting day.  It was a day that we had anticipated for a very long time, but one that never seemed like it was really going to happen.  We both got up fairly early that day and sort of wandered around the house for a few hours to kill time.  You see, we were closing on our building for the restaurant at 4 pm and didn’t really know what to do for the first part of the day to keep ourselves from going crazy.  Then the other phone call that we had been waiting for came.  We have been considering adopting a horse for a while now, and had put in our application several weeks ago to see if we could get approved to do so.  Well, Wednesday morning the call came to tell us that we were approved.  All of a sudden we didn’t need a distraction any more.  We were bouncing off the walls to go and see our new horse.  We had seen pictures of him, but we had not had a chance to meet the big fella yet.  His official name is My Arrow Star and he is gorgeous.  He is almost 16 hands high and weighs in at about 1300 pounds.  His coat is so dark brown that he is almost black with almost no markings on him except a little brown on his belly near his legs and a very small white star on his forehead.  I will post pics on here as soon as I can, but for now you just have to take my word for it that he is a beautiful and big boy.  He really seems to have a great personality and is very calm as far as race horses go, of course that is sort of like saying that the recoil on a 12 guage is not that bad as far as shotguns go.  No, that is not fair, he is really a very sweet boy and loves to be the center of attention.

Well after that great surprise, we danced around for a while, but then the other big event started to really near.  We drove over to the lawyers office and sat down at the closing table.  All went very smooth and it all went off without a hitch.  We had a very nice agent and the lawyer was pleasant and efficient.  It always seems amazing to me that something that took so long to get together can be carried out so quickly and without any fanfare, but after a few signatures and the passing back and forth of some very large checks, we own the building.  This one really took a while to hit me.  I have been down to the building every day since we closed, and it wasn’t until yesterday afternoon that I really realized that this is my restaurant.  It is not open or even renovated yet, but the idea that my dream is really coming true is just a high like none other I have felt.  I don’t think that you can really appreciate the sensation of doing what you love in a totally independent way until you run your own business, but man it really makes all the hard work seem worth while. 

The building is great and I think that the space and the location are really going to be all that we hoped it would be.  The building itself was built sometime between 1890 and 1900 and was originally a store.  It is located on the west side of the square in Fayetteville Tn.  The downtown square has really come back in the last few years and has a great historic feel with a very up to date appeal.  Lots of antique stores and businesses on the square, as well as the grand court house and county building.  There is even a true old fashioned hardware store and a movie theatre that only has 2 screens.  We wanted a historical connection with the community and the building so we had decided that the square was where we wanted to be.  I guess being the son of a History professor had an impact on me after all.  The feel of the building and of the restaurant in general needed the historical aspect to really be complete, since I try to convey a sense of history and tradition through my food anyway. 

Well, that pretty much sums up what has happened this week and all told it has been a great one.  I’ll update as we progress along with the restaurant remodel.  Keep watching and see what happens.

Kitchen Nightmares

I have had a few bad dreams lately.  They come and they go, but this one has been more persistent than a lot of them.  I think that I know why I am having it, but it doesn’t help me sleep any better.  I keep having a dream that my kitchen falls through the floor and that the guests don’t care and still want their food NOW!  If you guys have been following what has been going on with us, then you know that we are in the process of opening a restaurant.  It is a huge step for us and I think that I am just nervous about taking the step and realizing a dream that I have had for over 2 decades.  I think that a step like this would make anyone nervous, but I don’t know if it would make everyone else have bad dreams. 

The building inspection process has gone along quite well, and we are satisfied that the building and remodel will suit our needs and wants for the new restaurant location.  One of the triggers for this dream is that the floor needed some repairs, including a leveling and rehab of the floor structure that is going under the kitchen section.  I actually crawled up under this building to inspect the floor structure myself and took a contractor along with me to see exactly what would have to be done.  I was scared by what I saw, but the contractor told me that a lot of the repairs were not serious, and would have to be done anyway to relocate the plumbing to the configuration that we wanted.  So all goes forward again.

We are both getting excited to see this part of the process completed and want to move on to the next step so that we are that much closer to the restaurant actually being open and running.  You know it is funny, I have never been nervous about having to run the restaurant, I have been nervous about getting to the point that we are open.  I have been running restaurants for years, and have always made my part of the business perform better than expected and in a very smooth fashion.  On the other hand I have never bought commercial property before, and setting up a restaurant from scratch is a daunting task.  What if I forget something ?  What if I miss a step and delay the opening and operation of the business.  I don’t think that I have ever made more lists in my life.  I do this for our other businesses anyway, but It is different when we are the ones who actually own the property and building.  What a crazy situation.

All of that being said, I am sure that we will do well with this endeavor.  Toby is the most dedicated and driven person I have ever met.  She simply does not fail when it comes to reaching her goals and this one will be no different.  I couldn’t ask for a better partner in business or in life.  None of this would have ever happened if it was not for her.  Thanks Baby.  And you thought I couldn’t work you into this little rant. 

Day 2 at the Roo

Well, we did make it to the Roo for a second day, although we didn’t stay for the Phish show.  We did manage to hear it for a little while, but I am not the biggest Jam Band fan anyway.  Well at least not since the Dead aren’t around anymore. 

I will say that I was quite impressed with the show that Snoop Dogg put on for the crowd though.  Now I have been a Snoop fan for a long time.  I can trace my Snoop days all the way back to high school, and that is longer ago than I care to admit, but it has been a while.  I remember when snoop was just heard in cameos with Dr. Dre and a lot of the guys from NWA, if that lets you know how long ago it was.  The show was great and he played a nice mix from both his old classics and his new album.  I have never seen another showman that exhibited the kind of crowd control that Snoop displayed.  The guy had everybody involved in the show and it was absolutely fantastic.

The food for our second day did not disappoint either.  We tried some samplings from several of the vendors, but I think the best of the day was the food that we got from Fired up Kitchen out of Asheville NC.  These guys had a wood burning oven on a trailer as well and it was a really nice set up.  I can’t wait to see what all shows up at the Roo next year.  I have watched the progression of the food business up there for several years and it is really nice to see that there are a lot of quality providers bringing a lot more of the local and organic items that Bonnaroo has been pushing for and the crowd has been requesting for years. 

We had a great time, and hope that the festival continues to grow and become more interesting for years to come.  Come join us next year.

 

Munchin' at the 'Roo

 

I didn’t think that we were going to get to go to Bonnaroo this year, but then a friend came through with some really cheap tickets.  The cost wasn’t the problem, I just couldn’t justify the cost for the amount of time that we would actually get to spend there.  We still have to work during the day, so we wouldn’t get to see a lot of the shows and stuff that are going on before 4 pm.  But my friend Steve gave us 2 tickets for 50 bucks so we went to see a few of the Saturday shows.  Elvis Costello was great.  Wilco put on a good show from what I could hear.  Gov’t Mule was as good as ever, and Bruce Springsteen is really as good live as he is on the albums.  I was seriously impressed.

As good as the music was, it was not what really makes Bonnaroo a fascinating experience.  The people and the food make this one of the best venues to watch folks on the planet.  You never know what people are going to do when all of the rules are suspended.  It doesn’t quite dissolve into chaos, but at times it really comes close.  You do get a lot of the people with “look at me “ syndrome.  There are the topless women, the naked men, and the crazy hippies that have a hard time standing up, but on average it is just a bunch of spoiled teens and 20 somethings that just want an excuse to let it all hang out for a few days.

I have been to the Roo a few times now and I have to say that the food offerings have seriously improved over the years.  You can now find just about anything that you want to eat from BBQ to Thai food.  The fair style food is always a hit with me, but I am a sucker for a corndog and a funnel cake.  The best thing that I ate this year so far was a made from scratch flatbread pizza cooked in a wood fired brick oven.  These guys had the oven mounted on a trailer so it was portable, and they brought about 2 ricks of wood to fire the thing for a few days.  The crust was amazing.  I had pepperoni (nitrate free) and organic tomatoes on mine.  Toby had kalamatta olives and Feta cheese on hers.  Both were absolutely divine.  I was seriously impressed with these guys.  The cost was about 10 dollars per pizza and they were not very large, but you can’t blame the guys for charging that when a beer cost $6 for a long neck anywhere in the place.

We didn’t eat much of the other stuff, but I can tell you that the place where the food vendors were smelled very good, even if they were over priced.  We did have a few drinks and some frozen lemonade, which was very good as well.

I am hoping to get back over there tonight as Snoop Dogg is playing, but we have family in town for a few days, and I really want to get to see my nephews.  We shall see which one wins out as Snoop draws closer.  Keep it rizzle fo shizzle and I’ll post more soon.

The Waiting Game

The plans for the restaurant seem to be falling into place.  We have been waiting for this day for a long time and it seems that the day will come very soon when we have a place of our own to do our own thing in.  It is not that we don’t have an outlet for creativity, catering has always allowed that, but we are taking the next step and rolling the dice with a place of our own.  We feel confident that we can make it work, but we are nervous about the process none the less.  I guess when it is totally our reputation and lives on the line it makes you really see a different side of the business than when it is someone else with their head on the block.  I am not saying that we don’t give it 100% in all of our endeavors, but I see where the restaurant owners were coming from all those years.  I am seeing a lot of the reasons that they seemed like such stress cases on a daily basis.  On an academic level I have always understood the concerns that they had, but now I feel it on an emotional level as well. 

I’ve always been emotional in the kitchen.  Not in the yelling kind of way, but in a way that I hopes translates into my food.  I really care about the product that goes out of my kitchen.  I feel that it is a part of me that is going out the door for approval from the public.  Wow, does that make me the most codependent person on the planet?  I want approval from people that I have never even met.  I guess it does make me a little silly, but it is the way that I feel none the less.  The immediate feedback is one of the things that I really love about what I do.  The guests don’t have to say anything, I can tell from the plates that are coming back to the dish area as to which things are popular and which things I need to tweak the recipe on.  It is a really good feeling to see a lot of clean plates come back to dish.  It lets you know almost instantly that you have done a good job and accomplished the goal you set.

Speaking of setting goals, I am amazed at what we have accomplished in the last few years.  I have discovered that you have to be careful when discussing goals around Toby.  She has this uncanny knack for remembering what these goals were and the next thing you know the goal has been reached.  I mean, owning a restaurant has been a goal of mine for a long time, but now it is actually happening.  It always seemed like a dream that would or at least could happen someday.  I am now standing face to face with the reality that the restaurant is going to happen.  The building seems to be working out, we are getting the quotes for the remodel, and the suppliers are starting to locate the products that we want to serve.  It is real and it is now.  The really scary thing is that we have already set goals beyond what is happening now.  We have a lot of personal goals that are yet to be reached and wouldn’t you know that these are looking all the more likely all the time.  I will keep posting and letting everyone know what is going on as more specifics come available.  Stay tuned and I will post more often as time permits.

I have this weird feeling that I am waiting for the other shoe to drop on something.  I feel that it has been a whirlwind of activity and yet we are waiting for something.  We have had the building inspected and there were a few surprises, but nothing completely unexpected in a building that is over a hundred years old.  I know that the rush of activity will return and we will get swept up again, but there is a calm before the storm as of right now.  I am playing the waiting game, I guess I should enjoy it a little for now, I may not have time before long.

Dreams do come true

I am one of the most practical people that you will meet.  Most of my life is governed by the rules of logic.  I worry about the things that I can control or change, I let the things go that I cannot.  I can only do the things that I can do, both in the kitchen and out.  If there is something that my brain determines as impossible, I move on to another solution.  There is only so much that one person can do after all.  Fortunately for me there is Toby.  She is the one who told me that dreaming is necessary I few want to really reach the limits of what we can do in our lives.  She is a real example of what can happen if you are willing to dream and actually suspend your disbelief.  She lives this way every day of her life.  No limits, no doubts, only the goals that she has set for herself and the pursuit of these goals.  Telling her that she can’t do something is just about a sure way to make sure that she will find a way.  I am constantly amazed at what she accomplishes and the way that she is able to simply do what she sets her mind to.  I have learned a lot from my wonderful wife.

On this same topic, it looks like our restaurant is going to become a reality.  We have talked to the bank and they have given us the go ahead to make an offer on the property that we want.  We are going to talk to building and codes to make sure that we aren’t missing anything on our plans and we going to go from there.  I am so excited, as I have been dreaming of owning our own restaurant for a long, long time.  I just wasn’t sure that we would ever reach the goal.  Toby, however, never had any doubt. She knew how capable we are as a team and just made up her mind that this was going to happen.  I love her confidence and drive.  Without her none of what has happened in my career in the last ten years would have been possible.

The restaurant is going to be a great concept and in a price range that will make it targeted to the cliental that we are starting to court.  We won’t be moving far afield from what we do now, but it will be our recipes and ideas that separate it from the crowd.  Not that there is much of a crowd in the restaurant business in the area that we are setting up in.  It is a good market, just one that is underdeveloped.  I think that we will do well.

I am not going to go into a lot of detail yet as to exactly what we are going to do here, but I promise you that it will be exciting.  Stay tuned and I will get more specific as the time for the opening of the restaurant gets closer.  I will say this, believe in your dreams and most importantly in yourself, and you will be amazed at the life that you can create for yourself.  Hard work alone is not enough, I know a lot of people that work very, very hard and never get to see their dreams come true.  You have to believe in the dreams, that is really what makes the rest of the things happen.

Adventure

I read a quote on a friends myspace page the other day that has really put things into perspective for me.  We all have a tendency to get in a rut in our lives and stay where things are comfortable and not very challenging.  It is so easy to become complacent and comfortable that we miss out on the great things that we could be doing with our lives.  We all have a tendency to let our lives just slip by without really living them to the potential that we could.  The quote that inspired me was this.

I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of securirty, conformity, and conservationism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a (wo)man than a secure future. The very basic core of a (wo)man's living spirit is his/her passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more of out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.

(yes, I am aware of the misspelled words, but this is a quote)

This is attributed to the guy that the movie Into the wild was about.  I have to say that Toby lives this philosophy better than anyone that I know.  She is always trying something new, or learning something new.  We travel when we can, but I have never seen anyone with a passion for living life like Toby has.  She simply refuses to waste time.  If she is not doing something productive, then she is not happy.  Now I’m not saying that her life is all work, but she is always working on something, even if that is just having fun. 

I am not recommending that you don’t plan for the future, but don’t forget to live your life today.  I read this a few weeks ago and have really tried to make sure that I am living an adventure in all aspects of my life.  Professionally I am taking more chances and trying new things and directions.  I don’t mean to imply that we are abandoning all of the things that we have worked to build over the last decade or so, but we are trying some new adventures.  We are starting to work on purchasing the building for the restaurant, and are planning our new menus and such.  I guess that the quote made me realize that if you aren’t doing new things all the time, all you are really doing is waiting around for life to be over. 

We have revamped the way that we are doing a lot of things at our current locations by making the products even better, fresher, and in a more old fashioned way.  Convenience make thing easy, but not always better.  We are walking away from the convenience and are heading toward the better.  It has been a very liberating change in that I feel that the things that we produce now are not a compromise between what is easy and what is right.  I have always been proud of the food that we put out, but now I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is prepared in the absolute most authentic way possible.  It is a good feeling to make the change.

I guess that what it all boils down to is that we shouldn’t be afraid to change things in our lives.  Change brings a lot of scary things into our lives, but it brings an even bigger opportunity for great things to happen.  Make the most of your time, spend it doing the things that you have always wanted to do, and not the things that you feel safe doing.  Living a great and adventurous life is not always easy, but neither is living a boring and safe life.  What you do with yours is up to you, I have made my decision.