Happy New Year's!

Well, we survived it and I would say, it was our best one yet! Often New Year's Eve can feel like Valentine's Day: forced and eerily quiet. As soon as you have a group of people gathered together with expectations of merriment, the situation can go terribly awry. However, this year, everyone seemed relaxed and connected and happy to be out having dinner. Lots of tables talked across to each other and were very playful. The room looked so pretty, with silver stars and balls and garlands; all twinkly and pretty.

It was a busy one, too. The restaurant was basically full at 4:00 and stayed full until midnight. I think most tables turned 4 times and the kitchen did a great job. We had dinner specials (that I assume Alex will blog about) of lobster and veal, with a fantastic appetizer of oysters - they were so yummy, I think I had six at the end of the night! Our drink special was so popular we went through a bottle and a half of Red Alize. I was feeling particularly proud because I made it up and it had what we call "high poundability" which essentially means the drink is easy to drink and goes down like beer on a hot summer's day. Sometimes cocktails can be big and complicated but this one was simple and yummy.

Champagne Martini

1 oz Red Alize (passionfruit liquor)

1 oz cranberry juice

Shake in a martini shaker until it's nice and cold and frothy. Pour into a martini glass.

Top with Champagne (we used Prosecco but a Spanish cava would be lovely or go for the real deal and use Veuve Cliquot! - my favourite)

We garnished with blackberries and raspberry but you could use strawberries or frozen pomegranate pips.

So now that 2010 is upon us and the party is over it is one of my favourite times of the year. I spend a great deal of time running between commitments and feeling like I never quite accomplish what I need to in any given day. The beginning of the year is often a great time for me to contemplate the path ahead and get my ducks in a row. This contemplation comes at a time when the restaurant seemingly slows down (although last January was ridiculously busy so I think it is a bit of an illusion - it just seems slower compared to four turn nights like Thursday!)

This year, I have a new office in our home which feels like a delicious treat. There are six people living in our home and space can be at a premium. We love living in this cozy, hectic environment but it sometimes translates to highly makeshift arrangements like my tiny desk and filing cabinet about a foot from where I sleep at night. My desk is moving into the music room! Yeah! Move over banjo, guitars, basket full of weird Kindermusic instruments, piano (okay, I now that isn't happening), I am making space to think and work! Hopefully my schedule and instrument practice schedule are able to co-exist...

So the question is: what am I working on? Well, there seem to be a lot of rumours flying around (feel free to check out my previous blog entitled "Fish Bowl") and so here is the state of affairs from my perspective: Yes, we are thinking about expanding our space to include a lounge and a private function room. We plan to keep the two space mainly separate, connected by a doorway, in order to maintain the feel of the bistro. We are also looking at 3 other opportunities and thinking about writing more (I will write more about those as they come together). We both love to keep our brains going and feel engaged with life. And, given that it is January, we need to write those folk festival menus! We're also working with the festival to offer food in new areas. I want to put a Bistro 7 1/4 booth at the festival but Alex thinks I'm crazy (I always worry a bit when Alex thinks I'm crazy...)

This year promises to be another fun-filled adventure and I wish you all peace, health and happiness in your year to come!

ring, ring

On occasion, I have been known to call a customer when they are seated in the restaurant. It happens this way: we keep a list of people who want to come in that night, I see an opening and call the person. However, at some point the person called in, spoke to someone other than me, got a reservation and is now enjoying their dinner in the restaurant. When I phone them on their cell phone, we have a good laugh, I feel a bit sheepish and then we move on.

The other night, I got a call from a customer in the restaurant, they phoned the restaurant line from their cell phone. It went like this: "Hi, I'm sitting at the table over by the bar and I feel that you haven't been paying enough attention to our table. You've been talking to other tables but not ours and I want you to come talk to our table." Me: "Um, ok, will do."

Another night at the Bistro.

More about the fall menu

Last night was great!  It was a relatively quieter evening for us (although some tables still turned 3 times) and the timing was really good so the kitchen could get in its groove.  The food looked and smelled delicious and customers gave us great feedback.  I am really happy with this menu...

Fall Menu

New Menu Time.  Aaahhh, if only the process was as delightful as the product!  Tomorrow, we start the new menu.  Alex and I have been working on it for weeks.  We have talked food non-stop for weeks.  Which, on the outside might sound delightful, but really, there is a limit to everything!  We have haggled with each other (okay, you can have Tripe Soup but I get Vegetable Tagine with Cous Cous - I'll let you all figure out who was on which side of THAT conversation), we have dissected and reconstructed, we have priced and priced and priced and hunted down suppliers trying to make it affordable yet still be able to pay the rent and staff.  All round, the process is, well, a process.

Yeah, the new menu is here!  

Tomorrow, we'll serve fall food and it is beautiful.  We have worked hard to make a creative, comforting, luxurious menu.  Please come and let us know how we did!

the teen years

This week, as I sat at my daughter's gymnastics class, I listened to a small group of parents talk about how lucky they were to grow up when they did because they couldn't really get into too much trouble. Whereas, they pontificated, today's kids are surrounded by bad influences, scary and dangerous options and are hard to keep safe.

Really? I am somewhat amazed by this thinking. In some ways, I wonder if it reflects an abdication of responsibility: nothing I can do, the world is a bad place. Or maybe it is meant to be a justification for what I think of as overparenting: constantly breathing down your child's neck and denying them the freedom to explore who they are and what they believe in.

Regardless, I think these parents are terribly wrong. The teens I know today are far more responsible, aware, thoughtful, and safer than I was as a teen or any of my cohort seemed to be. I have the pleasure (and occasional frustration) of working with a lot of teens. They make up a significant portion of restaurant workers. So every day I get to spend hours with a variety of teens and listen to their stories and adventures. I am amazed at how clever and creative they can be.

Last night, one of our teen dishwashers proudly showed me his band t-shirt. He had been in a 'battle of the bands' and a t-shirt had been created of all the participants. It's a great shirt! Now, the night he was in the battle of the bands, he had tried to find another dishwasher to cover his shift. He couldn't and so had to leave from the stage and come straight to work. We figured he would probably ditch work and hang out with his buddies, riding on the high of performing, and find a different job. He didn't. He showed up and worked the night. As it was a Saturday night, we were really grateful!

We have one teen who has been with us since he was 14 years old. He is about to turn 18. He has learned all the kitchen jobs, he will jump in and wash dishes or be left to prep an entire catering with little supervision. He works at the Bistro, plays basketball, goes to a tough school that requires a lot of him, has a girlfriend and will drive to pick up his little brother from a friend's house late at night. He is a good kid. Of course, he still talks back to his mother which drives me nuts but we're working on it!

I guess my point is that teens are lovely and hanging out with them is pretty great. I think most of the kids I know are perfectly capable of navigating our "big and scary" world. Alex and I have been rewarded time and time again for trusting all the kids in our lives. I don't fear my kids' teen years: they will do inappropriate things, they'll be crabby some days but generally, I think they are pretty great people and I'm looking forward to doing fun things with them.

Having said all that, our new 14 year old dishwasher walked out in the middle of his shift last night!

bumpy road

Some nights at the restaurant sail along beautifully, people come in, get seated, have drinks, eat food, laugh, have fun and life is good!  Other nights, are bumpy, odd and tiring.  Tonight was a bumpy night.

People came but so many came at once!  Some people were late, others were early and so they showed up at the same time and the kitchen got slammed.  We couldn't move appetizers fast enough to make room for mains.  Sometimes what happens is that we put so much pressure on the kitchen to get stuff out that they put it out too quickly and the food isn't perfect.  

Timing is tricky and we try to make it right.  Some tables are gracious and can see that we are trying very hard to make it all work but other tables are cranky and snipe at us.  Once this starts to happen, we get kind of disheartened and we have to work really hard to make sure we don't snowball into being grouchy ourselves.  We feel so bad when it doesn't work as smoothly and we want to make it right!  

Of course, once we have refires on food, or food takes awhile to come out because the timing is bad, we can't get tables out in what would have been a perfectly reasonable amount of time if we hadn't got off track in the first place.  Then, we wind up with tables having to wait to be seated.  

Sigh.

In all of this though, people laughed and drank and ate and for the most part seem to enjoy themselves

Tomorrow is another day and we'll get back at it and make it fabulous!  

Performing Happy

Saturday was a tough night.  My apologies to all the lovely customers.

Almost exactly 16 years ago, Alex and I got married.  We bought our first house and, for Christmas that year, I gave Alex a gift certificate to the Humane Society for a dog.  It was early spring when we felt ready to go and pick out a dog.  Actually, 'ready' might be an overstatement - I called our friends and asked that they come with us because I'm a big suck and would wind up crying incessantly over all the dogs we couldn't take home.  Alex and Brent went inside while Jaik and I waited outside.  A little while later, Alex and Brent emerged with a small, black dog that didn't look anything like our predetermined decision to seek out a black lab.  She wanted to run so Alex started to run with her and she immediately laid down.  She laid there for a minute and then got up and started to run again.  This scenario repeated itself several times.  We realized that when she felt unsure about the situation, she laid down.  Clearly, this was the dog for us.  It also turned out that her birthday was our wedding day of five months previous.  It seemed like a great fit.  The "Dog of the Day" at the Humane Society was named Lily which we thought was a pretty name and took it for our new dog (anyone who has seen our yard will know that Alex has a big thing for lilies and we have many of them.)

Lily came home with us and fit in quite well.  She was incredibly well-behaved. We figured out she had been abused by a silver-haired man (had an intense fear of them) and she had been abused with shovels and brooms (she feared both.)  We spent a lot of time giving her lots of love.  She only barked when someone came to the door, she loved to run at the park and she slept through the night.  After a few weeks, we came home one night and she had had diarrhea all over the floor.  She went into the cupboard under the sink and got out the paper towel, pulled off bits of it and tried to 'clean' up the mess.  That night was the beginning of her being very sick.  She had parvo-virus and was incredibly sick.  For weeks, Alex had to carry her up the stairs at night and we would steam her in the bathroom.  One vet told us that we should put her down (while simultaneously telling us we needed to brush her teeth and selling us very expensive toothpaste!)  In the end, she recovered and lived a healthy and happy life, full of trips to the park and very exciting canoe trips (often involving a lot of wildlife!)  

Saturday, Lily died.  

She had been increasingly unwell.  Lily was deaf and mostly blind.  She had trouble walking and she insisted on being outside all the time.  She was often confused and would bang into things.  She was a coming to the end but of course when it happened our hearts melted.  Alex took her to the vet and made the decision that she was in too much pain to keep alive.  We all cried a lot.  

Then, Saturday night at the restaurant is upon us.  There is a lesson in performing!  We both felt like we had been hit by a truck: dazed, confused, sad, and hurting.  But, when you go for dinner, these are not the kind of people you want to hang around so we had to suck it up.  It was hard but in some ways, it was good for us.  We definitely weren't at our best but we made the evening flow and except for being a bit disconnected, I think it went okay.  So, my apologies to the customers that I didn't visit a lot with (girls from California - really wanted to know more of your stories!) and for being distracted (guy at 2A whose wine order I forgot!) Thanks also to the staff who were wonderful.  Especially Roger who was almost as sad as we were.  

Fortunately, we are all well-versed in performing happy.