eggbeater

Do You Love Portland As Much As I Do?

Have you seen the PDX Bridge Set from Red Bat Press? Collect the whole set, or just gaze at the lovlies by clicking here. I've collected most of mine from Reading Frenzy when I'm in Portland.

{O Portland, I miss you!}
Congratulations on your whole gorgeous spread in the NY Times food section last week!!

As some of you have seen, I like letterpress and stationery (a lot). So much so that I have strung a tiny laundry line in my station so people walking by can have a tiny visual taste to look at...

Opening A Restaurant: the menu. the beginnings.

if you want to see the menu, lookie here.

thank you for letting me know about our great press so far. your compliments are a testament to my hard work but also, moreover, the long hours my sous chef and team and the entire management team and all of their crew have put in!

the way I see it is we are all naked. we are all gambling. and we are all savvy. cumulatively we bring over 50 years experience in the industry and we are working as hard as we can to cross all t's and dot all i's. lists get made over and over, items get crossed out and we start again from scratch.

opening a restaurant is building something from nothing.

we are attempting to hone in our vision so that others can sit and eat with us and feel comfortable.

and yes, pretty soon there will be a full, in working order, website of the restaurant. if you can believe it, (don't kill yourself falling out of your chair laughing), I am helping our web and graphic designer to make it clear and easy to navigate!

tomorrow is my day off. I am looking forward to doing a bit of homework for my team and seeing my dad. taking in the new autumn light rustling the leaves, agitating them gently to glide to the ground.

thank you for your good wishes. I hope to see you soon.

Opening A Restaurant: one day at a time

today we will serve more friends and family than we have in the past 3 services.
we are all a bit nervous, but in the best possible way.
last night I knew 98% of the people sitting in the dining room.
it is such pleasure to see my friends and family in my new home.
it's wonderful to feel like this will be my home for a while.

passions are running hot. the through-line is that we are all doing what we love and know best, but sometimes the fire spills over the pot and burns someone else. my hope is that with communication and compassion we can get through. although I have the sens of urgency that is required for restaurant work I know too that ending up in the hospital because of it does no one any good, especially not me.

I will no longer kill myself for an employer. even if the employer is me.

my menu at dinner is 5 strong desserts, and at lunch, 4. my assistants are still a bit rusty around the edges but I am giving them ample support and training so as not to push them out of the nest before their wings are formed. it is so interesting to me all the different personalities. how one person can be so confident and not have the skills to back up the ego and another can have no confidence and take loads of smart initiative.

my first assistant and I mourn the days when we were coming up in this business. back then when your schedule said 2 you showed up at noon, and were considered late. at The French Laundry we had no schedule. if you were working, you showed up in time enough to be set up for service. depending on what you dishes you had coming off your station, that could mean various times of the day.

I could go on. but I have to go to work.

One Day At A Time is such a perfect way to look at the days ahead. I can only do today today, as it comes, right? it's important to have long and short term goals but there's only so much one can actually do day to day.

I think we're doing a great job. no one is perfect but some great work has been accomplished, some great work lies ahead and in the end we have done what we set out to do: open a restaurant in San Francisco. only time can tell the rest of the story.

Opening A Restaurant: the time constraints & the beginnings.

there aren't enough hours in the day.
sleep is necessary but it's mostly composed of thinking about today and tomorrow.
I haven't seen my computer in two days.

yesterday my team and I served 50 (8 of each plate) desserts to the entire front of house staff and I spoke about each one, in a much needed very loud voice, taking questions and asking them. feedback was given and then we moved onto the next. my team scrambled and they congealed. it was a good day: full of energetic stress and teamwork.

for one person on my team this is the very first restaurant she has ever worked at. {no pressure. heh.} it gives me great pleasure to be able to have a team again. I love teaching and I, too, remember my first restaurant jobs. I know what it is to have the responsibility of managing people. it's always a challenge and I love those sorts of challenges.

it's never the same day in restaurant work. never dull.

tonight we serve our first meal: dinner for @ 50 people, all friends and family of the staff and industry.

see you soon?

Opening A Restaurant: the plated food photo shoot.

Tomorrow, well I mean today, we have a photo shoot with Frankie Frankeny, food & restaurant photographer extraordinaire.

The funny thing is that Michael, the chef of Sens, and I have both worked with Frankie at various points in both of our careers. Fifteen years ago, when I worked for Reed Hearon at Lulu, Frankie was a bartender.

I hope My Prince arrives too. We have about 6 ice cream, sherbet and sorbet bases to spin churn...

Opening A Restaurant: the humour.

The funniest thing I said to s friend recently was,

"I think I'm going to send a postcard to myself. It will say,

'Wish You Were Here.' "

"Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure."

I could not have said it better myself.
Nor could I have taken photographs as stunning as these.

        ~ Take a look
                    if you need to be airlifted from your life for a moment.

Hot air balloon perhaps?

Opening A Restaurant: the stress, mounting.

You can feel it in the air. Stress. As volatile as gasoline doused or an angry lover. Emotion which crawls up my body slow, burrowing, making a home in the pores of my skin.

    here we go, yo.

Roller coaster lifts, creeks upward, only to let us all go after its crescendo.

    are you in or out?

The lists grow, the people wring hands, take up smoking, drink coffee for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Tempers simmer or boil or sear or steam a soft hot burning shadow. Pressure tightening like a happy python.

    do you know who you are?

Friends fall away, phone-calls go unanswered, home fridges empty, significant others take a seat on the shelf next to bills and laundry. Demands get begged, purveyors wish you could lose their numbers, cooks hear a shortness in our voices we can barely control.

    are you strong enough?

What seemed important a few weeks ago is no longer. Sleep is merely a replay of the day before or the day to come. Numbers get crunched, staff learns new words, tastes new foods, and we are expected to know that we all know the same amount: absolutely nothing.

    suit up or shove off.

People get a talking to. Egos get spanked. Hard. We nip attitudes in the bud, with our fists.  Communicating language is clipped, succinct. Deadlines come and go. We attempt to reign in the chaos but it grows evermore out of our gripping hands, like slippery fish. T's get dotted and I's get crossed. People disappear, never even attempting to collect their checks.

    pinch yourself. where are you?

Press gets written. Writers spin the facts into market-y speak and the question in the end is: will we be able to do it?

    how does it feel to stand there naked in front of everyone?

Recipes are tested over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Mouths get tired of eating the same thing, with a few slight changes, again and again and again. Training staff is both a glorious gift inspiring gospel choruses from all of Harlem, and a burden like carrying boulders up hills, only to release them at the top, walk down and start over.

    everyone is a critic.

Computers break. Printers get sick. People lie. The dishes never come from UPS. Sales Reps make promises they can't keep. Bookkeepers lose checks. Employees hand in social security cards belonging to someone else.

    are you a leader or a follower?

Designers spell copy wrong. Freezers short out and everything melts. Ventilation systems stop breathing. Handy-men quit. Coolers warm. Fruit goes out of season. Menus change. And the phone never stops ringing.

And me?
I wouldn't trade it in for anything.
Find me with tears of joy in my small hands.
The challenge is just what the doctor ordered.

 

Lydon. my extended family, the face we share.

I've been thinking a lot about family lately. The Lydons, that is. We are a big group, extending out over large bodies of water and time zones, in countries whose mother tongue sounds nothing like my own.

We are located in Portugal, Ireland, Boston, New York and Berkeley. And when I was growing up, the Berkeley arm was in Bangladesh.

A few moths ago two Irish Lydon brothers, Dominic and Colum, came to town with their girlfriends, and we had a gorgeous afternoon and evening catching up. For my father's eldest brother Peter we had a birthday picnic, and then we spent the rest of the time being silly, sharing news, looking at pictures, playing basketball and taking loads of photos. {For a larger set of photos from that day check out my Lydon Gathering page on Flickr.}

What's most amazing to me about my Lydon family is how strikingly similar we all look. Some of you know my cousin Amanda in Massachusetts is also a chef and the year she appeared on the cover of Food & Wine magazine, I received many phone calls congratulating me. Never-mind that she's a savory chef and I a sweet one. Our resemblance is striking, as is all the faces of the cousins and our likeness to our parents'.

I didn't always feel like I knew my face. Growing up in my mother's Eastern European Jewish family meant that my body type, skin color, hair consistency, and height, bore almost no resemblance to the family I spent almost all of my time with.

It was not until I went to visit the Irish Lydons in County Kilkenny that I saw my face reflected.

One day, walking through Kilkenny near 3 pm I stopped on a small bridge when I realized I was walking in the opposite direction as everyone else. School was letting out and hundreds of uniformed young people were walking towards me.

It was in the cowlicked boys and freckled girls I first saw my face. Over and over again. An emotion washed over me. Home. The comfort of a home I had never felt lodged itself inside of me.

My straight brown hair. Chocolate dot freckles. Wiry frame. Deep brown eyes. Pug nose. Noticeable ears. The multiples of cowlicks pushing and prodding my short hair into unmanageable styles.

My Irish face. It was then that I understood. Fully.

Sometimes you have to see yourself reflected to understand who you are and where you came from.

My father is coming to town. {Yes, perfect timing: just in time for me to open a restaurant...} It will be time for another Lydon gathering. Time to gather histories, recharge, catch up and remember who I am. Who I'll become.

Opening A Restaurant: the ice cream machine

One day there was an excited me about a new ice cream machine.
And then it arrived.
All glistening and new.

Lots of knobs and pulleys and screws and beaters.
{well, no pulleys.}
But it looked small.
Not really big enough to hold the 3 Liters like it said it did.
Even though the delivery people insisted it did.
I puzzled.
And mulled.
And tossed.
And turned.

What was wrong with this new machine?

And then I churned sorbet.
Lots of it.
And then I saw.
I experienced.
I yelled. I stomped. I cursed.

I called the man who sold us the machine.
We spoke. He researched.

I researched.

I used it again.
I sweated. I pulled. I cursed, fought, felt defeated.

I called the ice cream machine man again.
We argued. I raised my voice.
I called the chef.
I called a past employer, got on the internet. And then,

   I Found My Prince!

He had been there all along. And he had never been a toad.

The Ultimate. The One and Only. My One True Love.
Kiss me you fool!
Tell me you'll me mine forever!

Wrap your chilly beaters around my soul and tell me you'll be mine until the end of time.
Churn my ice cream like nobody's business. Make my other suitors cry in despair. No matter.
We will run off into the sunset, or just to the other end of my station to the sink, and live happily after.

Tuesday September 18 marks 4 weeks of sleepless, excited, challenging, frustrating, nerve-wracking, joyful, maddening, gorgeous days!

I wouldn't trade it in for the world.   

California Happenings: **Save The Date(s)**

There are a few dates on the shunafishlydon e g g b e a t e r horizon you may want to take note of.
I know I do, so I won't forget.

Remember when I poked and prodded you to see the incredible documentary about Monterey Market, Eat At Bill's? It's playing on the big, (well, or mid-sized) screen now! Go! Eat popcorn! Sit in the dark!
You have no excuse!             Well, unless of course you don't live anywhere near California...

San Francisco Documentary Film Festival presents:

"Eat at Bill's: Life in the Monterey Market"
Visit SF Docfest website for festival details.
Buy advance screening tickets here.

Sat, Oct 6 2007, 2:45 pm
3117 16th at Valencia
San Francisco, CA 94103

AND/OR

Sun, Oct 7 2007, 7:00 pm
Roxie Cinema
3117 16th at Valencia
San Francisco, CA 94103

AND/OR

Wed, Oct 10 2007, 5:00 pm
Roxie Cinema
3117 16th at Valencia
San Francisco, CA 94103

Roxie Cinema

*

It's that time of the year again for LITQUAKE !
Remember how I MC'd last year's The Tasting Course: Writers on Food & Wine?

    THIS YEAR I AM GOING TO BE READING MY OWN WRITING!

At LITCRAWL. Check for details about this massive event by clicking here.
I will be reading, along with a few others on Saturday October 13, location TBA. Maybe by then I will be able to leave the restaurant before my 17 hours is up. heh.

*

Speaking of reading my own words~

        I never did tell you about this, but better late than never, right?

Last year I was approached by a Canadian writer named Marusya Bociurkiw. You might know her as Hungry Girl or the person behind Recipes for Trouble. She asked if I could write a short blurb for her new book, Comfort Food For Breakups: The Memoir of a Hungry Girl. The catch was that I had to read the manuscript in about a week. And the next day I was to leave for Florida.

I thought I would speed read it to catch enough of a glimpse to write a blurb.

But something happened.

I was drawn in. Entranced, moved, intrigued. I was hungry for every page. So I stayed up every night until my eyes shut, reading the 170 page book. I thought and thought about what I could possibly say in a sentence or two that would sum up a book written from the heart. About romantic love. Familial love. Complicated love.

As you can see, by looking here, I did manage to come out with words.

On Sunday October 21st Marusya will be here to read from her hot red book. And she has asked me to read with her. I thought I might have the pleasure of reading a partial chapter of hers. But no. She, too, has asked me to read from my own work. Go figure.

*

So? Will I see you out? Should I wear a bowtie? Iron my clothes? Douse myself in Bay Rum?

See you soon...

Custards Class, September 16, 2007

As many of you know I taught my last class of 2007 yesterday. It was a full house at 14 people and spanned almost 4 hours in total! I taught goat yogurt pannacotta, honey-lavendar creme anglaise (which is the custard traditionally turned into ice cream) and stove-top chocolate pudding. At the end of the day we ate all of these plus butterscotch ice cream and young ginger pot de creme.

One of the students, Lauren, just sent me this link to a few photos she put up on Flickr. Check it out-- you can see me in my crazy new hairstyle...