Updating

The restaurant has been closed since the end of November, but wanted to clarify that I haven't been on any sort of extended vacation. We closed to do a very extensive remodel of the dining room, our goal was to open with a new approach but to maintain our concept. Extremely hard to do, and I was out of loop on most of the choices. From the dark I was a bit worried, but felt better understanding that our company never goes into projects like this without the highest standards. We will reopen on the 24th of December and while my opinion is a tad biased I feel like we will reopen to one of the nicest restaurants I have ever seen. We continue to emphasize the view, but pushed for a more timeless feel with dark woods, mostly reclaimed, and darker less trendy colors. I am incredibly excited about all of it.

With Front of House changes this dramatic also came the need for menu changes, changes that were much needed. A menu overhaul was in order and we have been conceptualizing dishes with that in mind for months. Some old classics have been replaced with food that is a better representation of what we are trying to do, and for the first time in my career I feel like the menu is a pretty good example of my personal cooking style. To make a successful restaurant everything needs to have a recipe, be costed, descripted, plated, photographed, and then those cooking and plating processes have to be taught to my kitchen staff, and then I have to teach my servers how to sell them, and how to answer questions about the food or our choices of products. It is a long, hard, process that I am almost finished with, and I feel very good about.

With all of this change came the need for new china. Months of shopping and decisions involving everything from durability, flexibility, and amounts needed ensued. We bought a gorgeous glazed foot porcelain plate from a company called Syracuse, in round and rectangular sizes. In all 165 dz pieces were delivered and put up yesterday. I am so excited about the end product and feel like the plate is two times nicer than one you would get at any other restaurant in my local area.

All of this translates into money, but we balanced menu pricing as well as we could. A huge reason I work work for this company is that we refuse to settle for less than best. Two chefs buying the best product available, the only ocean view in town, two of the best managers I could hope to have, a service staff that is not only motivated, but understands good service and struggles to get better at it every day, and the best cooking staff anywhere on the coast. Couple all of that with one of the nicest restaurants in the state, the nicest china, the nicest glassware, etc, and you get value in your dining experience. We can be expensive, but we also stand by our products and treat our customers and employees better than anyone else around. All that being said we have still constructed the menu to be very approachable, and there are some really good deals in all the meal periods, and more importantly some things you wont see with any of my competition. If you do have the chance to join us keep an eye out for some signature things. Things we are cooking that you are familar with, cooked better and perhaps presented in a manner that is a tad more playful than you have ever had before.

Lastly I have again invested in a better phone in hopes of getting better pictures to this blog. I hope that effort translates into quality you can notice. Along with the new phone comes the ability to blog on the fly. Also, as some of you notice, I have a new twitter account, and you can read those updates on the blog to your right at the top. I am very new to the twitter thing, so please give me some time to figure it all out. The "tweets" will hopefully be less formal than the posts are, and if you ever want more info about something I have tweeted and not blogged about please let me know. As always I will keep them as food related as I possible. If you have a twitter account I would love to follow you, so please let me know. Still dragging some feedback here, so if you have questions or advice as to how to make all of this more approachable I plea with you to let me know. Thanks.