Sunday Dinner

Tom says:
We took a break from the restaurant today to cook Sunday dinner for Maureen's parents down in Massachusetts. Sunday dinner is something Maureen and I both grew up having. In today's over-scheduled world, though, this is a meal, that for most of us, exists only in fond memory--nostalgia even--except on the rare holiday that ends the weekend.

Z will serve lunch Mon-Fri only, but dinner every night of the week. On Sundays we plan to open a bit earlier and offer our own interpretation of Sunday Dinner: a fixed price, multi-course menu where items except for the entree choice are served family style. Because today's world is overscheduled. Because dining options are limited on Sundays. Because, as Maureen likes to say, if it weren't for Sunday Dinner, I might have been any number of things in this world instead of a chef/restaurateur.

***

Gazpacho? Check. Cheese straws? Check. Prime rib in the oven? Roasting away. My grandparents are arriving in an hour and I still need to set the table and arrange the centerpiece of roses from the garden.

“Mom!” I yell, “Jacki won’t leave me alone and get out of the way!” Jacki is my sister, younger by two years. It is four o'clock on a late-summer afternoon in 1978. I am 11 years old and in the final stages of preparing for my first Sunday Dinner party, what my family now calls my debut into the world of all things culinary. The menu?

Hors d’ouevres:
Cheddar cheese straws
Insalata de Arroz (rice salad)
Gazpacho

Salad:
Caesar Salad (prepared table side in the old-school style with raw eggs)

Entrée:
Roasted bone-in Prime Rib of Beef
Twice-baked Potatoes
Steamed Asparagus

Dessert:
Chocolate Cream Pie (my grandfather’s favorite)

My mother brought out her wedding china, the good silver. Is it any wonder I fell in love with every aspect of entertaining at such a young age?

My mother wasn't just your classic stay-at-home mom. She was the enigmatic product of an upper middle class upbringing and the earthy-crunchy movement that seemingly defined 1970s California. She made everything and still makes most things today from scratch--bread, yogurt, granola and jam--and she always used local, natural ingredients. Cookies? Never store bought. Cakes from the bakery were for people who were unmotivated. Looking back on this now, it's unbelievable to me that I used to complain about having hot muffins or fresh-fruit turnovers at breakfast while my friends had PopTarts. She even taught cooking classes to the neighborhood kids.

Dinner, however, is where my mother excelled and Sunday Dinner was her crown jewel. The leftovers from that dinner generated another 2-3 dinners that carried us through the first half of the week. Sunday's roast leg of lamb was curried with rice on Monday and turned into Scotch Barley Soup on Tuesday. Strangely enough, as good as Sunday dinner was, I always looked forward to these 'leftover meals' and it's the creativity she applied here that most strongly influences my menu recipes today.

That first dinner party wasn't exactly a success. Instead of a teaspoon of dry mustard in the rice salad, I used a tablespoon, but everyone, even my sister, overlooked the mistake (obviously I didn't and still don't seeing as I can recall the exact error almost 30 years later). But the Sunday Dinner I cooked yesterday--NY strip loin roast, sauteed brussel sprouts with maple-cured bacon, and pan-fried red bliss and yukon gold potatoes--that was a success. Maureen's mother said that one of the best parts about it was that she didn't have to make it. If that's your feeling about Sunday Dinner as well, then soon enough you'll be able to have our favorite meal of the week with us at Z. We, of course, look forward to serving you.

Some Side Effects of Opening a Restaurant

Maureen says:

You Stop Eating Out. You're broke, you're exhausted and most restaurants are closed by the time you get around to eating, if that time ever comes at all. Besides, any place you could go, you won't relax anyway. You'll be too busy guessing what font the menu is printed in, gauging the space between tables and debating the merits of providing individual specials sheets or having servers recite them instead of enjoying your meal. Probably you're going to be doing something like that anyway, so you might as well do it at home over a nice bowl of cereal.

You Lose Your Will to Live. Okay, you still want to live, it's just that when you finally call it a day, the will to do nothing but sit on your ass comes pretty close to trumping everything else, with the only reason to get up off the couch being to get another glass of wine. The solution is to keep the bottle with you, preferably within easy reach. If it's been a particularly trying day, bring a backup bottle. It's likely you're wearing the wine opener on a chain around your neck by now anyway.

No Matter How Much Laundry You Do, There Are Always Two Loads Waiting to Be Done. Who knew? While some of the volume can be attributed to the seasonal need to dress in layers, mostly it's the dirt. This polymathic business partner of mine not performs general contractor duties, but quite often, acts as a contractor himself and comes home filthy, sometimes to the point of disgust. So much for the energy-conserving practice of getting two wearings out of various items of clothing.

You Look Forward to Trips to Certain Box Stores. For things like toilet paper, cat litter, laundry detergent, Method household cleaners, dish soap, shampoo, razor cartridges and garbage bags. I never knew parting with a couple of C-notes at the home of the bull's eye would fill me with such joy, but it does. If I'm spending that much money there at once, it means I don't have to go back for another three months.

Your Listening Skills Improve. You're not only in want of break in living/breathing/talking about your endeavor, you need one. Consequently, you listen to the goings on in the lives of friends and family with heightened interest. I mean really listen. Not the sort of pretend listening where you're really just waiting for a break in conversation so you can jump in with the next thing you want to say. Active listening. And you realize that everyone's got their own version opening a restaurant happening in their lives. And okay, whatever--kumbaya--we're all in this crazy thing called life together, marching to our personal drum beats and making our own kind of music. So you put down your wine glass, get up off your ass and do the damned laundry. You write a blog post. You call it a night.

I'm in the Mood for Love...err...Light

Tom says:
The electrical crew has finished the rough installation and the materials stacked in the dining room are slowly being moved to the areas where they'll be put to use. Our designer Ariel and I are finally able to identify see places where we can add the extra details needed to pull the full look-and-feel of Z together.

These details are the kinds of things I never noticed in restaurants until I began thinking about opening my one of my own. Over the last few years I've paid less attention to the food (terrible, I know) and focused instead on dining room configuration. It used to be that when I went out to eat that the only details I absorbed were related to the food I'd eaten. I could go on for hours about ingredients, flavor profiles, technique and presentation, but not so much about how the restaurant actually looked. That's all changed.

But even though I've been taking mental snapshots of restaurant interiors for a while now, it wasn't until I went to work for Bill Lee in California that I learned how critical lighting is in creating the mood you want to evoke for the customer. Bill was always tinkering with the lights, adjusting the positions of the floods and the table spots, trying different wattage, and seeing what effects colored bulbs, twinkle lights or rope lighting achieved in relation to his concept. I'm not talking about the obvious impact too-bright or too-dim lighting has on mood. It's more about the subtlety--something the owner will notice that you might not, but that you'll respond to naturally and unconsciously.

One of our largest renovation expenses, of course, has been our lighting and its installation. The lights that were in the space when we bought it were nice--in fact, we'll probably use some of them at home where overhead light is needed--and anyone who visited the space seemed to comment on them. Size, shape, color, the way they cast light in relation to bulb size? Not in line with our concept. So we've taken them down and replaced them with track lighting.

Track lighting fulfills several mood-enhancing objectives: they allow us to spot light each individual table in a way that's not stage bright, but on-a-pedestal bright; it also allows us to flood areas of the ceiling to showcase the craftsmanship of the tin panels; lastly, its positioning can be set to draw your eye to various design features and make them stand out.

One of the design features we'll enhance with lighting are the Pittsburgh Corning glass blocks we're using in the build out of partial walls and the bar as illustrated by this sample application photo from the company's Web site.


Back light these babies with low-voltage lighting and the effect is pretty dramatic. Between this and the other lighting schema Ariel and I designed we've achieved what I almost thought couldn't be done: ambiance that's smoldering and yet doesn't stray from the whimsy of our overall concept. We accomplished the goal of getting the most bang for our buck by spending wisely on atmospheric elements rather than being seduced by high-priced furniture and fixtures.

Maureen and I wish you all a smoldering, mood-lit Valentine's Day, Nor'easter blowing through town and all.

They Call It 'Restaurant Recycling'

Maureen says:
Z is one of several soon-to-open restaurants featured in the February 13th edition of the Manchester Daily Express. If it's still February 13th when you're reading this and you have Adobe Acrobat installed, click here to see the article in PDF form.

Otherwise squint really, really hard at the screencap of the article below. Tom's got a knack for being either in the throes of a cold or two days without a shave when the press comes to call, but he's still got that je ne sais quois, non? I almost missed the article, though, because they misspelled Tom's surname and that's the word I search for online.

"But All Shall Be Well...

...and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."


T.S. Eliot quoted this line from Julian of Norwich in the fourth of his Four Quartets, Little Gidding, and it's a relevant balm for the rash of stress and chaos spreading across our lives at the moment.

But my favorite quote from this English Mystic called Julian, the mantra if you will that's getting us through these days, is this:

"Start by doing what is necessary; then do what is possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible."

We wouldn't mind a few of those miracles you hear about sometimes either. I'm just sayin'.

Oh, yeah: this is Maureen if you hadn't guessed already. Carry on.

Oh, but seriously.

You thought we were kidding?

Destroy and Create

Tom says:
There comes a time in every renovation project where your patience or, rather, your impatience, gets the better of you and then, miraculously, all the moving parts suddenly sync with one another and the result is one very beautiful machine.

This is not that time.

Work is progressing, but it's hard to see beyond the destruction even if you understand that destruction is necessary before creation. Right now, the dining room is a holding area, which is a nice way of saying storage. Twenty-five cases of tile, nine wall sconces, four pendant lights, stacks of plywood, MDF board, 20 feet of cherry bead board that will be used for wainscoting, and 15 cases of glass blocks--basically, everything we need to finish the job is in that room. This, in turn, means that the amount of physical space we have to do the job has gotten smaller. With approximately five weeks, give or take, until we open, it looks like it will take at least that long to clear it out and clean it up.

All this is enough to make me forget sometimes why I'm doing this. But then, I had a meeting with our Chef and I remembered. It's about the food. It's about the experience I want to deliver to downtown Manchester. It's about having the guts to take everything I've learned over the last 20 years and put into play beneath an awning of my own.

When I first began thinking about opening a restaurant, I knew what kind of Chef I wanted to hire. Because I'd likely spend a significant amount of time in the kitchen at the start, the Chef should be on the younger side, energetic and dynamic; someone who'd served as sous chef for a few years and was ready for the next step of chef de cuisine. He/she would also be able to execute my vision of the restaurant's concept, could be trusted to manage the daily operations of the kitchen and be someone who had found his/her authentic culinary voice.

I believe we've got that Chef. Until we issue a formal press release announcing the hire, we'll refer to him simply as Chef. He came to us via high recommendation from a friend in the business, has worked as a sous at a local spot I hold in high regard, and most importantly, he aced the tasting--nailed the concept, showed off his technical skills and demonstrated the ambition to make his voice heard. It's a voice worth hearing is all I have to say.

So he and I sat down last night for the first time since he accepted our offer and we talked opening game plans and expectations. It was also the first time in weeks and maybe even months that I got to talk solely about the food, the belief system behind the concept, and the narrative or story I want the menu to tell. I got to talk about cooking techniques. I got to talk about ingredients. I got to talk about creating.

And it was good.

For a brief moment, the stress and adrenaline subsided and I forgot all about the drywall we tore down to string the wiring for the wall sconces the thin film of dust that coats everything (including me when I come home at the end of the day), and the mountain of materials waiting to be used that seems insurmountable.

Since We Last Blogged (a break down of the last five days)

Maureen says:

Problems bank fraud policies have caused versus prevented: 3

Instances where I said the F-word in a conversation...with my mother: 2

Chefs hired: 1

Business cards printed: 1,000

Menu layouts approved: 2

Personal guarantees signed and notarized to waive exorbitant deposit fees: 2

Tax returns filed: 4

Solicitations to provide credit-card processing machines: 17

Life/business partners with water-on-the-knee: 1

Ounces of coffee I used to drink daily: 16

Ounces of coffee I drink daily now: 40

New coffees tasted in the search for a supplier: 3

Times the phrase "I'm tired," has been uttered in our house: 13

Personal emails and phone calls I owe: 11

Days since my appetite up and left: 2

Nights waking up in blind panic: 3

Stitches I've knitted in attempts to maintain sanity: 3,776

Realizations that we're fortunate to be doing what we're doing despite the aforementioned exhaustion, panic and a loose grip on sanity: countless

When Given the Choice...

...between blogging or eating/sleeping, we are going to choose the latter. Watch this space for more updates over the next two days.

M & T

Resource Allocation

Tom says:
Now that the check for big-ticket items have been cut and we're close to hiring our management team, I'm becoming intimately acquainted with the concept of resource allocation.

Yesterday, I listened to a pitch from a security company whose product line ran anywhere from $2,000-25,000. At the essence of the pitch was fear: if we're leaning toward the low end of the range, then we're setting ourselves up for disaster.

This kind of decision requires a risk/reward analysis. Does a state-of-the-art video surveillance system that's tied into the POS system really pay for itself with the amount of shrinkage it reduces? Is your only choice to spend a ton of money now or lose that same amount slowly over time?

Or, is there another way? The research I've done says that following good cash-handling procedures and vigilant awareness reduces your risk of an external security breach by making you a less desirable target for theft and a little deterrence can go a long way toward achieving that. What remains is that if a thief really wants to steal from you, they'll find a way. Your goal is to deter them just enough not to make it worth their while.

That same research also says that you're most at risk for an internal security breach. In a restaurant, that can mean bartenders over-pouring drinks, bartenders and servers not charging properly for items, an excessive number of voided items on order slips, cooks and cleaning crews walking product out the back door, customers walking away from the bar on a busy night and not paying their bill.

Here, I believe, is where you have to make a philosophical choice: invest heavily in surveillance equipment that engenders a environment of fear and distrust or apply old-fashioned methods like strict inventory controls, hiring and training of competent and ethical staff and treat them with respect as integral parts of the team. The latter creates a working environment that's built on respect, empowers staff and allows them to invest themselves in the success of the restaurant. If you create that, then anyone who may be inclined to engage in dishonest practices will be less so. But if you create an environment where staff feels unappreciated and/or slighted and you make it easier to justify an over pour here, a voided item there.

A certain amount of shrinkage happens no matter what you do. So, you weigh the risks and rewards of paying now or paying later and hope you make the right decision. Pretty much like everything else in life.