Day off (kinda), Woo Woo!
I actually have a Friday off, which is very nice, but I have to run up to St. Joe to have lunch with my boss. He, Tom, Brandon, and I are going to eat at Ban Thai, the new (and only) Thai restaurant in the area. I had eaten there before by myself, and it was interesting. The place is tiny, which means the kitchen must be the size of a broom closet, and they’ve just opened in the last month and a half. They been very busy ever since they opened, so they’re learning all the things they need to work on, just as we did at the Buddha.
We opened the Buddha on July 1, 2008. If anyone asks me when NOT to open a restaurant in southwest Michigan, I can say with some authority and a lot of enthusiasm, that you should NEVER open a restaurant on July 1, so that your first weekend is right around July 4th. We got killed, hammered, rocked, whatever you’d like to call it, and we had to figure out some things to make life easier very, very quickly. A soft opening would have been nice. A soft opening sometime between Labor Day and Memorial Day would have been really, really nice.
So I’m not going to level any criticisms at Ban Thai here since they just opened, and I’ll be loathe to ever criticize them except in private, since they’re trying very hard right now, and they’re our competitors really. I wish them all the best and know there’s enough room for both of us in St. Joe.
The other major thing I have to do today is shop for the cooking class in Chicago on Monday. I’ve already told Cameron my schedule is nuts, so he’s going to do the prep, but that I’d pick up all the stuff for the class.
So off I go now!
