Watty set me straight last week about not doing any other prep work other than sauces, bases, and mixes. He probably feels that my palate is the most useful thing I possess, and for Tulips, I would have a hard time disagreeing with that opinion. But my other skills aren’t insignificant.

There really isn’t enough of that type of prep work to keep me busy more than about 3-3 1/2 hours a day, 3 days a week. John asked Amy, who is the new general manager of both Port 412 and Tulips since Brandon left a few week ago, to give me hours at the front of the house, but I’ve seen the schedule this week, and there’s nothing besides my prep shift. Last week that totaled all of 10.7 hours. And it will likely be even less this week. Death by starvation. Time to go.

I’m really looking forward to seeing some friends, most of them from college. There’s Charles, one of my roommates in Columbia, MO, now living in St. Louis with his wife and son. I met Diane, but I hadn’t met their son, so that will a lot of fun.

Then I’ll stop by the university itself. It’s been 10 years since I was there, and though I’m sure it hasn’t changed too much, wow, I sure feel I have! Hopefully I’ll get to talk with David Rees, the head of the photoj department, and the professor for the last class I have to take to finish my degree.

Westward HO! The drive from Columbia to Denver is generally boring, and let me tell you, that is a very long time to be bored, especially when you’re driving by yourself.

I have a college friend in Colorado, don’t know exactly where yet, but we’re Facebook friends and I just wrote her a message. I don’t think I know anyone in Utah, Nevada, or Idaho, so I’ll probably just go straight to Seattle for the climax of my trip, staying with Madeline and Don on Waldron Island, which is a small island in the San Juan Islands. I’ll probably be parking my car on the mainland, taking a ferry to Friday Harbor, and then taking a small private boat (Madeline and Don’s?) to Waldron Island.

She’s been living there for at least a few years now since she bought a house and farm. She’s had the farm certified organic, and she, Don, and her daughter Amirah live completely off the grid, growing their own food, selling it to nearby stores (now there’s a relative word!) and keeping chickens and goats for eggs, meat, and fiber.

I’ve really been looking forward to visiting them for quite a while, but with my life the way it’s been the last few years, and before that, it’s been impossible. So finally, yay!

I’ll stay there at least one day, perhaps two, we’ll see. Then I’ll stop in Portland, where I lived for 3 years, from 1999-2001. I worked for Intel and then was very unemployed after the tech bubble burst. My inability to find work forced us (my wife at the time and I) to move to the NW Indiana, SW Michigan area, where she has family.

I’ve got friends in Portland that I’d like to see, some beer I’d like to drink (is Hair of the Dog still around?), some food there I’d like to eat (helloooooo food carts), some shops I’d like to visit (Uwajimaya’s here I come!!!), and a few friends that I’d like to see.

Then south, south, to Sacramento where my sister and her husband live, for a brief visit before heading still further south to Merced, where I lived from about 2-12. I consider it the place where I grew up, perhaps because my fondest memories are from here. My parents are living with my grandmother and aunt in my the house my grandfather had built (he died a while ago).

The arrangement isn’t without it’s challenges, but everyone seems to have settled into what appears to be toleration and helpfulness. In comes Colin, and let’s see how it goes, if only until I’m finished with the last class for my degree, which will not take me any longer than May.

Then I’m off to S. Korea. And that will be a significantly shorter trip than the one from Michigan to California, in more ways than one.

First, it’s time to finish my degree. After that, I have some direction, but no real purpose yet. I think those are two very different things, the former having to do with the mind, the latter to do with the heart. For me, the heart is much more important, essential for living long term.

Stay tuned…

Tulips will be open in less than 2 weeks! I’m very excited, but also nervous of course. I priced the entire menu, which you’d think wouldn’t take too long considering it’s a relatively small one, but it was a chore, taking about 20 hours total. I had to go through every recipe, price every quantity of every ingredient, add it up, divide by the number of servings, and dictate the information to the executive chef who passed all the information along to the owner, who we all met with Monday night (does it still count as a day off then? lol).

My next job is to get 60 recipes together for items we’re carrying on the market side so we can pass out the recipe cards to help people figure out what to do with those items. And I need to get a procedure manual together for take-out orders so everyone knows how to handle them since we’re going to do probably 20-30% of our business in take out. I’ve already written complete descriptions for each dish on the menu so the servers know exactly what goes into each dish (no quantities of course), and so my boss can take the description and create a menu, probably a bit different than what I’ve already created.

Then there’s the little matter of actually getting food into the restaurant! We don’t have storage racks yet for the dry goods or for the walk in cooler/freezer. Hopefully we’ll get the racks soon, and Tom will place food orders for what we’ll need to at least test everything next week. Oh wait, none of the cooking equipment, including the dishwasher, has been hooked up and tested yet! So there’s definitely some work to do in the next couple of weeks. Yike!

I’ve seriously offered to sleep at the restaurant or in the (as-yet-to-be-finished) office next door, especially since I know how much I’ll be there, and I’m not crazy about driving home 30 miles after working 18 hours a day and then getting up a few hours later to do it again. I’ll keep you updated as to my sleeping arrangements.

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!

While name of the dish is intriguing, that’s nothing compared to how it tastes! Vietnamese caramel sauce feels barely related to what you put on your ice cream. It’s much, much darker, almost black, and because it’s so dark, it’s actually bittersweet. When you simmer catfish in it with a few other ingredients, you create a rich and seductive dish that almost everyone falls in love with. With a few minor variations, you can also use the same sauce and technique with chicken, shrimp, and pork with equally impressive results. The flavors are intense, and you’ll want something to soak up every drop of the finished sauce, so serve it with rice.

Ingredients
Caramel sauce (sugar, water, shallots, garlic, fish sauce, vegetable oil)
Catfish fillets
Scallions
Ground black pepper

Given that little list of ingredients, the complexity you get from that little list is stunning, definitely worth a try, whether you make it or order it! The best method for making caramel sauce base (sugar/water caramel) I’ve found so far is in Into the Vietnamese Kitchen by Andrea Nguyen. It’s worth the price of the book just for that alone since the caramel sauce can be tricky. And the rest of the book is outstanding as well, I’ve cooked from it many times and have always been happy with the results.

Video after the jump.

Now that I’m back in the kitchen most of the time, Chef Tom is very, well grateful isn’t the word exactly, relieved maybe, gratified is probably better. He’s let me know, on more than one occasion, that he’s worried about my ability to teach and execute my menu. Since I already did it at the Buddha, I’m not worried about it like he is. I know we’re going to be busier than we can handle for a little while, that’s the pain of opening and getting up to speed on a new menu and a new style of food. I think he’s worried about his own lack of experience doing this type of food, which is understandable. He’s a great cook, a great leader in the kitchen, and once he is more comfortable with the food and sees that we can do it under pressure, he’ll relax and enjoy the ride more.

I attended an 8-hour food safety class with Tom, Brandon, Jeff, and Tim, and we took a test to get our ServSafe certification. (We’ll find out in 2 weeks, but we’re all pretty confident about it since the instructor was great, the fairly easy test, and the pass bar set fairly low.)

Yesterday I didn’t need to be in until 4p, but I volunteered to come in at 9a so Brandon could get started early on the tiling. I was there until 10p.

Today, same thing, 9a-10p.

Tomorrow, 10a-close (11p).

Friday, noon-close (11:30p).

Saturday, 3p-close (11:30p).

Sunday, 3p-close (11p).

Then on Monday I have a Tulips tasting at 3p.

And then I would like to pass out until the afternoon of the next day.

I’m sure I’ll be twice as awkward the second time.

While at the Buddha, I definitely got on servers about letting food sit in the window, eventually just taking it out to the table myself when they were too busy or too whatever to get the food. I know there are good reasons why they didn’t pick up their food promptly, but it really doesn’t matter at some point, and I got tired of yelling. After a while of yelling their names, and feeling like I was becoming a loud-mouthed fool, I made a simple rule for myself. If the server (or somebody, ANYBODY) didn’t run the food when I called them twice, I would run it myself.

Of course at the Buddha, I was management, the chef, so I had the flexibility and authority to do that. I felt so much better doing that then continuing to yell and steam about it. I think the servers were grateful, but at that point, I really didn’t care. Going to any restaurant isn’t about the server or the cook or the management, it’s about the food and the experience, and if it takes forever to get your food, and the food is cold (and shouldn’t be), you’re having a bad experience.

Usually it’s not the kitchen or the restaurant’s short-term bottom line that suffers when someone has a bad experience (I’m not talking horrendous, just not good), since most people will pay for a meal when things are less than perfect, but customers see it as a service issue, and they don’t tip their server well. So it would behoove servers to get food to the table as quickly as possible since customers like their food appearing quickly, and hot (or cold as the case may be), instead of room temperature.

At the full staff meeting on Sunday 28 June, Tom apologized for yelling at the servers when they were slow to get food out of the window, but he stressed how important it was to do it. Most of the staff is very young and inexperienced, and on this issue, it shows. I’ve worked at the Bentwood Tavern in New Buffalo, Mich., and at Brewster’s, and the food never stays in the window long, mostly due to the server’s experience. At the Bentwood, they also had a full-time runner, and service there is excellent. Servers at both places are older and more experienced than at Port 412, and that’s one of the ways it shows.

On Tuesday night, one of the hosts, a high-school age girl, was in the kitchen while some food was languishing in the window. I asked her to please run it or find someone to run it. She smiled blandly at me, walked out of the kitchen, walked back in without having talked to anyone (I watched her), and stood at the window again. Not yet knowing how much authority I have in Tom’s kitchen, I refrained from talking to her about it again, and I wish I knew the table numbers so I could have run it myself. I asked one of the front-of-the-house supervisors to run food as well, with the same result, nothing. I don’t think they’re understaffed up front, especially if someone is hanging out in the kitchen for a couple of minutes without tables.

Anyway, stay tuned. I will not let this be an issue for long at Tulips, especially since I’ll be able to run food myself. And I’ll have plenty of authority there. The only people with more will be Tom and John, the owner, both of whom will back me up on this.

If you guessed “None of the above,” you’re absolutely right!

So we meet at 7a (I’m a little late, as usual) and take a short drive to Mid-West Family Broadcasting’s office in Benton Harbor for breakfast and a marketing meeting until 9:30. It went well, I can’t remember the name of the 3rd guy, but he, Michael C. (very tall), Marketing Rep., and Joe D. (deep voice), VP/GM, were all great, we spent most of the time helping them understand the concept. Joe and Michael want me to email them with a description of each type of cuisine we’ll be serving at Tulips, which will be a cinch for me. Since they’re not in the office this week and I’m quite busy until Sunday night, I’ll get it to them hopefully by Monday.

Then we headed to Bridgeman to look at some cars at a Chevy/Pontiac/Ford dealership where Brandon’s dad works in sales. Tom and Brandon both want trucks, but Tom will be getting a minivan that’s rigged as a panel van (covered windows, cage/screen on the back window). Brandon’s truck will be fitted with a snow plow so he can do the plowing for the Panera/Tulips parking lot. At least during the winter months, the contract will pay for both vehicles, pretty neat deal. Tom knows the minivan is more practical, but feels his masculinity is threatened, so he wanted to get Truck Nuts to keep from feeling emasculated. These accessories are so odd, I will move on quickly without comment.

Next we drove to a restaurant along Red Arrow Highway to look at the grills we’ll be taking to the Round Barn Winery event today and tomorrow. The biggest grill looked perfect, tons of real estate, great grates, huge side table, and you hitch it up and pull it to your destination. Problem, it doesn’t get hot enough because of a multitude of issues: The burners are way too far away from the grates; the flame doesn’t go beyond its little shield; and since the grate is at the very top of the grill and there are no sides to the grill, any amount of wind cools down the grill. Great! So instead of serving hundreds of people grilled shrimp and burgers, but we’ll be serving them raw shrimp and steak tartare! There was a 2nd, much small grill (still bigger than anything I’ve seen in anyone’s backyard, but when you’re serving so many people, that’s not a big comfort) which was better shielded and had awesome heat. I thought the big grill was a waste of time, and Tom said there’s no way the small one could handle the capacity. John first came up with an idea to put sheet pans on top of the burners in the big one and put charcoal. It had 3 (very heavy) removable grates, so he thought we’d remove the middle one so we could keep adding briquettes to the sides from the middle. It was practially brilliant! We change the pans to metal screen we could buy at a hardware store and cut to fit. That seemed much better to me since sheet pans are made from almost pure aluminum, so they’re rather soft, and I was worried about them dealing with 8 hours of high heat without melting through. Plus the ashes would fall through the grating, so it would be self-cleaning.

Then we headed to Kalamazoo for lunch at Chin Chin (I’m going to call it Double Chin, haha ho ho hee hee), but they were closed, which was frustraing. Don’t I know it! Try driving into Chicago and finding your intended restaurant closed without explanation. At least the sign on the door said they’d be closed in this case.

We didn’t exactly starve though. Luckily, Sushiya was close, and we feasted. John let me do the ordering, and Brandon had his first sushi experience. Since we had nothing but shumai, gyoza, and rolls, it was pretty accessible. The place is pretty slick too, fancier in concept, menu, and decor than we want to do with Tulips, but it was instructive. They had a great beer on tap as well, Great Lakes Brewing Company’s IPA, quite delicious.

Finally we headed back to Port 412 to talk more about Tulips and the upcoming 4th of July weekend and to sample some desserts for Port 412, about 16 desserts to be exact, I can’t remember all of them. Most of them were so-so, a couple were pretty good, and there were a couple worth stocking. I think Tom decided on a caramel cheesecake and a quadruple-layer dark chocolate cake. I hung around for a little while longer since the restaurant was serving 95 cent Bell’s Oberon and 50 cent wings, and we continued to eat.

Have I mentioned I love my job?