irresponsible blogger

Practically a month has passed since my suspense-filled post about the building sitting over the property line, and City of San Jose being none too pleased. So either it's being battled out in court and things are getting juicy, or I've strategically been holding out on you to build an extreme level of suspense, or I forgot to post the next day that the matter was resolved swiftly. It's the latter. Sorry. Basically, a call was made, and it got handled. For many reasons, it's probably better to just not go into further explanation than to say that, and that's it's good to know people. It's handled. Nuff said.

On other fronts, a month later and we're not terribly further ahead than when we last spoke. We submitted the package to the planning department within the city, and that was an exciting (and tangible) accomplishment. Submission for building permit is next. Overall, things are progressing slowly, and I'm now forecasting Feb 09 for a grand opening. It's a bummer mostly, but given the WONDERFUL news on the economy these days, maybe not so bad to hold out a few more months.

I met today with the interior designer to basically relay that her "vision" for the space (think $400 end tables in the corner, $7,000 settees on either end of the dining room, multi-thousand dollar custom/built-in tables) didn't quite hit the mark. We whittled down her proposal by over half, to a modest and I think really tasteful plan. I was expecting huge resistance, but they absolutely took the news in stride. Makes me think this is a common experience for them, and makes me sorry for any sucker who just buys into their plan. He may be the same guy auctioning his equipment in what used to be the patio 6 months after opening because "gosh darn it, costs were just out of control!"

Anyway, the overall idea for the space is a color palette of oatmeal, terra cotta, and two nice shades of green. Wainscotting (sp?) with a cool wood laminate, modern wood tables and chairs, and some lounge chairs for the coffee area out of a really great subtle striped fabric in similar colors. I like it a lot. Modern pendant lights and sconces. You get the idea.

I've also been taking other meetings with POS (touch screen cash register) vendors. Yikes, expensive. And we're VERY close to a logo. This has taken a while, and I'm really happy with where we are. I'll debut the logo here in hopefully just a couple weeks.

I've hired a freelance food photographer (he's well known in the industry) to take some shots here this week for use on the website, menu & who knows where else. I'll plan to post those here too, to get everyone revved up for what's to come.

To make this post even more all over the place, I can tell you that I dreamed up two new sandwiches today. Both need to be prototyped. The first is a panini full of traditional eggplant parm ingredients. Breaded/pan-fried eggplant, mozz, tomato-basil sauce. The second is what I'm calling "The New Chicken Club". It's slices of citrus-marinated chicken breast with smoke-y bacon, lettuce, tomato & honey-mustard on sliced sourdough. Thoughts on both?