Food Photography

Full-time attorney, part-time food stylist/photographer, Erik came over last night and took 400+ photos of my food. So far I have them whittled down to 111 of the best. Yikes. They're primarily intended for the website, and possibly for the to-go menu & in-store menus/advertisements. He took some interesting abstract & close-up shots of ingredients & dishes that might function as art-work in the restaurant. Time will tell. To your right is a little teaser. T-t-t-t-t-tasty tasty.

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?

Gadzooks!!!

The corner of my building juts past its property line onto city property. SHIT!! OK, OK, STAY CALM! The planning department says it's easily remedied by...you know...cutting the corner of the building off. I SAID STAY CALM!!!!!!

This is an interesting new wrinkle to be sure. The landlords (aka my dad & uncle) take few things lying down, and are already on the horn with the city working some angles.

It's funny all the way around, really. I'll keep you posted.

Architects

In my experience - now working with my second for this project - they don't know how to read emails before replying. And they sure as hell don't proactively use email (or phone for that matter) to update you on the progress of their work. Any architects reading this out there are welcome to fire back and represent for your fellow tradesmen.

SOOOOO frustrating.

I digress...

Ah, graphic designer had a sick son (the kissing disease) so she won't have logo revisions until next week. I'm very excited to see the latest!

The Facts of Life

You take the good, you take the bad. You take both kinds of vendors, and there you have...Lunch with Tony. I gripe about most of my vendors (usually for good reason), but I have to say probably my favorite is graphic designer to the stars Linda D. During the day, she's a prestigious Creative Services Director of a prestigious institution. By night (I'm assuming she does this during the off hours), she's designing the logo, menu & related materials that will become the look and feel of Lunch with Tony. It's hugely important to me, and I can't think of anyone else I'd trust with this task. She's shared a number of directions on the logo so far, and we're close to having something that is clever, fun, clean, welcoming & all the other things we want to communicate with this this restaurant. It's really exciting. Stay tuned. I'll very gladly post our logo as soon as we finalize things. Oh yeah, and Linda's great at keeping my ego in check. It's necessary and there are few people I welcome to do it. Wait, was that big headed of me to say? Linda?

At the 11th hour...

...he emailed me the first set of drawings. They're good. Hooray!

"no, it's cool.....

...I didn't want to review your work this week anyway, architect!" That's what I told myself when I learned they wouldn't have anything for me to review yet. Bastards! I like them, I'm happy to be working with them (sure as hell happier than with the last fellow), but papa needs some forward momentum on this project in a bad way. So hopefully, I'll see something first of next week, and HOPEFULLY we can submit a package to the city (for our building permit) by the end of next week.