But Enough About You

I got my start in the industry in New York City in 1993, and I never looked back. I also never looked forward, which is why I’m still in it.

For five years, I've owned a restaurant in a major American city. This blog is where I share stories of my current occupation and the many restaurant jobs that led up to it. It's also where I sound off on a variety of topics, mostly relating to the business I've spent half my life in.

Like a lot of owners, I rose through the ranks, starting as a bad waiter, quickly becoming a good liar, and thereby rising to mediocre bartender. In time I got better, and after a few years some fool made me a manager. Someone else later compounded the error, and I found myself with a sort of career on my hands.

After seventeen years in the industry I was a seasoned restaurant manager a long ways from downtown Manhattan with two kids and three possible career paths. I could go on working for small, independent operators who offered limited potential for advancement; I could get a job with a major chain and enjoy limitless potential wearing a polo shirt and selling crud; or I could risk everything and open a small neighborhood place of the type I might actually want to visit.

I made the only choice my soul could bear.

So I 'm now a restaurateur, a term that demonstrates once again that everything sounds cooler in French than it is in reality. Though technically a businessman, at any moment I'll be found in the role of executive chef, line cook, floor manager, bartender, host, sommelier, copywriter, photographer, social media guy, bumbling repairman, or unreliable father figure. As occupations go, it stays interesting.

For some people in other walks of life, owning a restaurant is an escapist fantasy, the thing they'd like to do if having a normal life weren't a priority. I understand the appeal. Viewed from the outside, restaurant life looks like a never-ending party, filled with oohs and aahs and drinks all round. And if I'm being honest, which I sometimes can be, I'll admit I have trouble imagining myself doing anything else.

But there's a good reason there are so few restaurateurs out there. We're a self-limiting population. You have to be pretty smart to make it work, and you have to be very dumb ever to have tried it in the first place.

Enjoy the blog.