A day in the life

A rare day at home today! I've been busy with all of the changes and catering and everything else that passes through a working single mom's life. But now I am sitting on the couch using my ancient iPhone (a 3G!) to update the blog.

I cant believe it's been almost a year! November 15 will mark one year officially open. I have web writing a lot about the emotional side of starting a small business. Tonight I am feeling mellow and wanted to post a few pictures from
the day to day.

Life and all it's various nuances...

I am sitting at my desk, a rare free evening. My cat, Lilu, has been going through a phase where she wants to be a mommy (I think) and keeps dragging baby squirrels into the house. One dissapeared under my desk a week ago... suddenly sitting at my desk also involves smelling dead squirrel. It is not as easy as one might think to write about food while smelling dead squirrel. In fact, it is hard to sit here at all.. and yet I persevere...

Anyway, so two weeks has passed since Chef Stein, my beloved ex-sous-chef, left the restaurant. It is strange in many ways (like when I notice how low I am on some food product and realize I am the only one keeping track of such things now, so I better get on it!). But in general it mostly feel just... quiet. I am not sure I realized how stressed he really was about being there, but the air is suddenly deflated... calm and placid. He came by with his lovely bride today and (YIPPEE!!) had fixed my immersion circulator and Alicia made me this really awesome pig chalk board. I am going to use it to post the Charcuterie Specials.

Last Sunday I spent the day at my shop, singing and dancing around the kitchen playing with Creek Monkey's Octoberfest Bratwurst. It is bound and cased and now I get to sous vide cook it (which is always better) this week. I should have done a lot more while I was there, but one of my dearest friends came into town and I drove to Newark to meet her for dinner. There are some people that no matter how long it is between visits, it always feels like home when you are together.

The new employees are working out really well so far. (dear god, it really smells like a dead squirrel) Wendy is adorable and Ramiro is fantastic. I am dating someone young enough that we bumped into my daughter's English teacher at breakfast the other day and she thought he was my son (and then high fived me when I told her we were dating!). It feels so strange to be where I am now, compared to a year ago. A year ago we were getting ready to open the shop, no idea what to expect, making sausage and salumi... the path ahead a dark highway with indiscernible curves and hazards.

Since then so much has happened... the restaurant, my youngest baby, has taken on a personality of it's own,   often nothing like mine. So much of it's personality has Stein's imprint, and the colorful cast of characters that roam in and out of it's doors leave an indelible mark. (The squirrel smell is really gross)

I've met so many people who have taken an interest in our success, deep and important connections... commiserate spirits. It is such a unique experience, such a difficult journey. I still feel like I am free falling... the baby bird jumped from the nest, the wings are stretching, poised for flight. Please let me fly before I hit the ground! But I feel strong, I feel full of magic. I feel like the future is forming, dawn is breaking on the dark highway and I can see glimmers of the road ahead. (and that is all the dead squirrel smell I can take for one night)

Big Changes and Going with the Flow at the Compass Star

Has it really been that long since I last posted?

Big changes are coming for my little restaurant. I am losing Lindsey at the end of the week as she is going back to school (Cal Poly). She has been a treasure and I will miss her and hope she comes back to visit when she can. I've been interviewing for a counter person to replace her (Which is a whole blog all on it's own). 

But the strangest change is Stein is leaving. I remember reading Heat and chapter after chapter of Bill Buford's observation of Mario Batali's sous chef and his infinite unhappiness at one golden moment in time at Babbo. Stein got to that unhappy place, slowly over a long period of time. The ridiculously long wait to open when he was working for free. The discouraging realization that there is never enough money to fix the stuff that need fixing, buy the items we need to put out the quality of food to which we aspire, even pay for the minimum of stuff we need to comfortably operate. The stress and strain of the first year of a small restaurant opened on a shoe string. Being exhausted by the sheer overwhelming neediness of the venture, while still balancing the needs of his family. Dealing with the chaos of me... my focus and drive sometimes baffling in it's direction; frustrating in it's ability to tune out what it doesn't want to process. Chaos. Lack of control in a venture which he was deeply invested in. When I began to suspect he was not going to be happy ever again in our kitchen, we talked about possible solutions... there didn't seem to be a way to make things better and so... he quit.

There is no way to overstate how integral he was to the opening of this restaurant. I am still not sure how I am going to survive without him. In the last week, I see him try to impart wisdom, give advice... I am not sure if it's better to let my fears show? I just want him to be happy, in the end, about being free of the burden of this complex venture and the chaos and stress that seem to never abate. I feel relieved that I won't have to observe my dear friend in the depths of misery. We both feel relieved I think. I just want to make his last days here as pleasant as possible. I can never repay him for everything he has done to make my dreams come true.

We did have the going away dinner party last Friday at the Wine Bar. It was lovely but I missed having Alicia there and Jonathon and Leah. They are people who are important to Stein and I wish they could have marked the event with him (Alicia is stationed elsewhere right now and life conspired to make it difficult for Jonathon and Leah to be there).  I am grateful that I have an amazing new intern, Janet, to help with the process in the weeks ahead.

We found a counter person. Her name is Wendy and she is adorable. A young mother of two, she lives with her husband and mother in law in Martinez. She is a clothing designer as well ("They just don't make nice stuff for people who are plus size!"). She starts tomorrow.

Oddly, we've never been busier. It's been a strange catering year in that, typically things start to slow down after school starts, but we have been contacted almost every day about possible future events. I've been on 5 site/job walks in the past week. So my business is getting busier on all fronts, and I am losing my right hand man all at the same time. I know I can do this, I keep trying to find the sliver lining.

I suppose the silver lining is I can better target my payroll dollars towards the cleaning person we've desperately needed and the less expensive part timer for the counter help. Stein was really too well trained to do those jobs, and he can focus on getting a job where he can use his formidable skills, or starting his own BBQ rub company (which he is interested in doing). But I am really going to miss that guy and all that he brought to the organization.

I feel like it is the time to make some changes. I feel like I've been coasting... tired and overwhelmed... constantly trying to "catch up". But recently, I started dating someone who has to go to bed really early for work and so I've been going to bed earlier as a consequence. The extra sleep seems to be clearing some of the fog. I feel like we were originally planning for this low key sandwich shop but the reality is Martinez is full of foodies who are not afraid of hand made edibles. I am going to make the menu tighter, smaller and start upping the ante on some of the specials. I am feeling creative again.

I spent today (we were closed for the holiday) in the restaurant, just feeling the space. It feels so different with Sean and crew there in the evenings and the new cleaning guy. I also started reading again, books on food, magazines on food, looking at pictures...

Money, as always, is still very tight. I have been contacted about a large job in February, which would enable me to pay off everyone who helped me get started, which looms large in the back of my mind always. I am also hopeful money will be less of a worry when my payroll is smaller. It's always such a stretch to pay for everything. 

Anyway, I am pooped and tomorrow will come quickly, but I wanted to check in and mark some of the big changes that are coming or have happened :) Also posting a cute picture someone took of Derek and I shortly after the wine bar opened.

Busy Times...

It's been crazy at work! As many of you know I cater, have wholesale clients AND the restaurant. Well, everything has been busy all at once. Which is why I have not been blogging very much...

I catered every weekend for 6 weeks in a row. Lots of amazing parties, especially birthdays (which is unusual, usually big catering is strictly weddings). About half of my clients wanted "finger foods". I love the visuals on finger foods, but the definite downside is most people don't feel like they really ATE anything. So you are serving a very high labor item (lots of fiddling with little stuff for finger foods), and lots of it (people don't keep track when they are "nibbling") and then at the end of the day, everyone is wondering what time dinner begins anyway?

I may try to guide clients away from finger foods only events for a little while.

Wholesale business is great too. Two clients are doing some great high profile stuff with my products. I adore Pete, who is the owner of the Mr. Nice Sausage truck at the 11th Street Off the Grid location. Mr Nice is apparently some kind of 1970s pot reference (A very famous European pot seller/grower). Pete sells my Andouille, Chicken Apple Bourbon and Bratwurst on rolls. He also carries our Blackberry Berbere Organic Catsup.

My other higher volume wholesale client is Residual Sugar in Walnut Creek, who carries some of our cured meats and salumi. Fantastic place!

The other exciting development is the teaming up with Andrade Wine group to open the cafe in the evenings for a wine bar and small plates. It's been a lot of fun to play with the food and develop the menu.

6 Months and Counting...

(or life and the state of me)

It's been the most insane experience of my life. So much more than I expected... deeper, richer... a rush like nothing else.

We continue to get busier and we continue to learn and grow. We raised our menu prices slightly and that has helped a lot to assuage my fears that we would be slammed busy and continue to barely break even. I still have yet to start paying off friends who gave me money to get started and this is really important to me.

We have so much going on now. Lots of catering and I am REALLY excited about my first teaching and wine pared dinner with Sommlier Sean (Andrade of Andrade Wine Group). He selected Spanish Wines to go with a five course tasting dinner http://www.compassstarcatering.com/to_spain_with_love in mid June. Getting to talk to people about food makes my little black chef heart so happy!

We started a Friday Happy hour on May 25th. Our customers wanted us to stay open late one night a week and we choose Friday because it was Lita's Bocce night.  The picture to the right was the Chiccetti (Venetian Finger Foods) from last Friday. Bacon Freak with Crostini, Chicken Apple Bourbon Sausage Hand Pie, Meatball Slider, Pancetta-Sage and Orange Crostini, Soft Boiled Egg with House Made Andouille, And Smoked Eggplant Caponata on Crostini. It was a holiday AND raining (so no bocce) and kind of slow, but so much fun!

It's been a crazy few months... I split from my long time significant other and I feel like being single, 42 years old and autonomous has been an lusty distraction. It is a strange rock-star life of Caligula-like proportions... cook all day and obsess about food, hang out in my kitchen with two fantastically talented chefs that I adore (Stein and Haley), chat with customers all day, then roll out still smelling like blood and cinnamon with my room mate Mary (Chef at Pizza Antica) to Creek Monkey to drink amazing beer and hang out with the fantastic crew there, watch Matt and Jim Brew, then collapse in bed, sated. Wash... Rinse... Repeat.

I went and hung out Monday in Port Costa at this ancient bar/restaurant called the Warehouse down by the water. It felt so good to just be in the sun with an amazing beer, a beautiful man, and low key down to earth  people. I watched the river flow by and felt the bay breeze on my face and tasted the marrow of life.

I feel like there is so much more I want to write. My life is insane and scary right now, but so amazingly fulfilling.

Adjustments and hitting my stride

The past few months have been such a rush. I want so much to give the unvarnished truth about what it has been like to do this crazy thing (open my own restaurant), but it is so difficult to express the highs and lows... which are dizzying extremes.

This past week felt like movement. It started with a fantastic Friday night out in Martinez where I met up with friends at Creek Monkey for a burger and beers. The owner's assistant (the totally adorable Valerie or "Val") said there was something special going on at Ray' Lounge, which is kind of a smallish dive bar around the corner from my place. We all ambled over to Ray's and Val's new room mate's indie SCA band was playing. It was really really cool. We had cute 20-something hipsters following us over and we all headed back to Creek Monkey for a final beer before I embarked on one of the worst Saturday hang overs I've ever had. I tried to talk a friend into bringing me Pho, but to no avail. I canceled all but my most non-cancelable appointments for the day and laid in bed, moaning and sleeping.

Saturday night I met up with friends in Berkeley for my dear friend Adina's birthday pizza at Zachary's Pizza on College. I had never had deep dish pizza and it was REALLY filling. The place was PACKED too. I tried to get back on the horse and have a couple of beers... then a super cute friend drove me home.

Sunday I hit breakfast with another good friend and then into the Farmer's Market for the goodies for the restaurant for the week. Spring produce is finally coming around and the sun was shining and I met up with someone I am casually seeing for a coffee and fantastic conversation. Then back home to for a day of wine tasting in Napa with my room mate, Mary Carlson, who is sous-chef at the Peasant and the Pear in Danville and her mom.  We hit Oxbow Market in Napa First.

 It was pretty touristy, in a cornflake Napa kind of way. I had to go check out the Fatted Calf, which is a Napa place making their own charcuterie. I wanted to hate the place, but there is just no way to not love it. The guys were unfalteringly kind and respectful to their customers, even when it was wall to wall bodies they were constantly making eye contact and apologizing for the wait.

A place like this could be total assholes to their customers (Like they are at Big Sur Bakery) and people would still be clamoring to buy their stuff. It was great to see how well my own products hold up against such great stuff and I felt even more committed to the culture of Yes we are trying to foster at TCS.

We also got coffee at Ritual, which was kind of funny. They had this little hot plate and wire frame they were making single cups of coffee on which ranged in price from $5.00 to $7.00. It took like 5 minutes to get this cup of coffee that was kind of so-so. I suspect I have grown super spoiled by the coffee we have at work. Weaver's Coffee kicks all kind of ass.

Our first winery was V Sattui. I regretted it right away. It is like Napa's version of a Disneyland ride. With long lines for everything and every part of the winery is also a gift shop with kitschy stuff. Usually I like the wines but this time the only one I liked was $45 a bottle.  

Much better was Savour in St Helena. This fantastic tasting room is also one of my clients, but there was room to breathe and comfy chairs to sit in and all of the wines we tried were fantastic. It is always a lot of fun to go hang out with Dejan or Meghan and have a sip or two (or seventeen) of wine.

The last place we had time to hit before everything shut down was Prager Port Works. This is one of those places that has been around forever (hence the money stuck all over the wells as you can see below) but manages to still have the port maker in the tasting room to talk to people and retains an intimate and local flavor. Also... the ports kick ass! We stayed for a little while after they closed to chat with the guys and generally have a great time.

Most of the wineries close around 4:30 so we headed back to First St in Napa to grab a bite to eat for dinner. We tried to hit Oenotrie, but it was slammed. Mary and I went to school with Anders Bergen, who is the sous chef at Oenotrie and it is a fantastic place to eat if you can get in.

 We ended up at Celadon. I'd been there before with my sous chef, Brian Stein and they had this fantastic pork belly with watermelon salad. We tried a bit of this and a bit of that. Anyway, fantastic day!

The week at work was crazy. I am madly in love with our intern, who just completed six weeks of her internship. We are keeping her on part time to help with some of the work load this summer. I wish I could afford to hire her full time, but we are just not there yet.

We've finally done the 4 month temperature check on the restaurant and decided to try to get more fiscally healthy by doing a more reality based menu price costing. We determined we needed to raise a few prices. When we are as busy as we are and not making money, there is something wrong and we need to fix it.

We also are rolling out a few new things. Sliced meats in the cold display. Staying open later on Fridays starting the end of May. We will also be open for a champagne brunch on Mother's Day (info coming soon).

I told one of my regulars I would be raising prices on some of the items she likes and she asked me how much more for her latte. When I answered $.50 more she just handed me the extra $.50 right then... lol I love our regulars.

This past Friday was insanely fun. Stein had been sick a lot last week and was finally feeling 100%. We had a slamming day with customers hanging out til well after we were closed (I think our last one left at 4:30) and drinking wine. I was really proud of the holiday dinners we sent out this time. I have been unhappy with the packaging of the past few and I think we did a much better job of making the food as pretty as it (hopefully) tastes. Lots and lots of foodies in for the Charcuterie board. I especially had fun with one of our regulars named Greg, who is usually only in for lunch when he is working. He had Friday off and could sit and have a glass of wine and really enjoy the afternoon. It was a lot of fun to chat about my work background and why I do what I do and just generally geek out. It was a weird combination of me being able to chat with people and still being insanely busy. Usually it's one or the other, but Stein and I are really starting to hit our stride (WHEW!).

I also went into Residual Sugar this week to deliver a large order of our meats for their new lunch service. I ended up chatting with the owner Jim and had a fantastic conversation about salumi. He and his wife want to learn how to make salumi and I am going to try and carve out some time to spread the faith. They have a wine aging cave at their new house and I would suspect they could easily do curing for home use in that environment.

OH and I am teaming up with Sean Adrade of Andrade Wine Group for a Spanish teaching dinner! http://www.localwineevents.com/events/detail/417872/fb-post I am SO excited to be in the thick of this creative primordial ooze of the babyhood of my restaurant.

I have also been invited to Australia next year for 8 days to teach a class on breaking down a pig and making salumi. This seems freakishly exciting to me!!!!

Anyway, so there it is. My life as a (sort of) Rock StarTM Chef! Also the Best of Diablo Magazine 2012 closes on April 8th (hint hint) if anyone wants to check that out and vote... you know... for thier favorite restaurant (insert evil grin here)!

The baby is four months old!

We opened the Compass Star on Nov 15 and so in just a couple of days the baby will be four months old!

It's been such an amazing four months. I am still not getting paid and money is a constant struggle, but we are managing to pay our other bills, which is pretty good for a first year restaurant. I have an extern now, her name is Haley and we simply love her. She is finishing her last requisites for the Cordon Bleu school in Sacramento.

We spent Sunday at my house breaking down a 240 pound pig that was organically raised for my friend Ajax. It was a GORGEOUS pig, very thick and lustrous fat, great color and texture. I feel so good about the education Haley is getting at the CS from Stein and I. Remedial knowledge of butchery is a great skill to have in any high end kitchen and salumi is very trendy right now with few restaurants are doing it. She is already a bad-ass, but when she leaves our care, she is going to be even more so!

I am still madly in love with Martinez and enjoying the foodie scene downtown. I spent Monday Night at Creek Monkey hanging out with Jim Blair and his new brew master Matt getting a lesson in beer making. It was (of course) ridiculously interesting especially how amazingly delicious all the parts of the beer making process are. The mash was like oatmeal made out of Grape Nuts and the wort was.... SO yummy, I could drink that like tea. I can think of 20 things I could make with these tertiary ingredients that would be amazing. I really love the brew pub, the bar tenders (I think Valerie is my favorite) are great and lots of good beers on tap. The beer they are currently making will be served at the April 21st Craft Brew Festival and we are planning to make a fresh sausage that incorporates that beer and serve it at the festival as well. It seems unbelievable to me that it is almost April.

I feel a lot of kinship with Jim, we both opened our first restaurants right around the same time and have been both horrified, brutalized, inspired, exhausted and delighted by the process.

It's strange, we've been so well received (we have a five star rating on Yelp... sure it's only like 10 reviews, but lol, still!) but I seem to obsess about the failures. Unhappy customers make me lose sleep. It doesn't happen a lot, but when it does... it's awful. One of our regulars came in specifically for the bangers and mash special and we'd sold out by one pm. We made easily twice what we normally would have for a Friday special, but people have been waiting for us to showcase some of our fresh sausages and they came in droves. She came in, we were sold out and she was so upset! I hate that kind of thing, but I have to let it go and try not to fixate.  (also, note to self... make some frickin sausages for your retail customers... they want them!)

Stein was saying the other day, we can have someone come in a ton and then suddenly disappear. It can be because they are on a trial that ends, but it's hard not to wonder if we did something wrong. I want so much for people to be excited and happy about their experience.

We are also getting ready to reprice our menu. The price of brisket has gone up, in addition to just being a lot more realistic about costs now that we've been open for four months (YAY!). I've been doing the menu price costing so Stein and I can meet and chat about exactly how we want that to go, then I will have to change all the signage and menus and give fair warning to our customers of the changes.

I adore my regulars, funny food snobs for the most part (and as Alan says, "Good food, plus I like your tight jeans!"). I feel so at home there. I will be teaching a sausage making class soon at the shop for some of my regulars. They are small game hunters and want to make some Duck or Goose pepperoni (which sounds fabulous!).

I am also officially single, which is a little strange. It is so stressful to dissolve a 6 year relationship on top of opening a restaurant, but I think I am working through it all and I feel like I am getting to the other side. I go back and forth between being terrified and being euphoric. It feels right that Spring is coming. I went to the Farmer's Market on Sunday and my favorite small family farm had beautiful hand picked asparagus and so many treasures. I stood there smelling the produce and thinking that if Spring had a smell, it would be like produce fresh from the soil.