The team at Oxheart Restaurant is pleased to welcome Chef Justin Cogley from Aubergine at L’Auberge Carmel for a dinner on Monday, June 24th.

Chef Cogley was recently named by Food and Wine as a Best New Chef at Aubergine where he shines with his modern interpretations of dishes using local and coastal products from Northern California. We’re most excited to collaborate on dishes using our Gulf Coast and California Coast  produce and products and to learn from each other as we cook dinner for our guests.

The dinner will take place on Monday, June 24th around our kitchen counter and round table and is limited to 15 guests each seating. There are two seating times: 6 PM and 9 PM at a cost of $125 per menu. Appropriate beverage pairings will also be available at an additional cost. Due to the nature of this event, dietary restrictions cannot be accommodated.

We will be releasing non-refundable tickets for the dinner on Friday, May 24th at 12 noon, with a pre-release available to all Supporters of OKRA which will be sent out via email before that date. You can book tickets on May 24th on our online system at SeatMe.com

We’re pleased to welcome Chef Cogley to our kitchen, and are thrilled that he’ll be sharing his talents with Houston.

Oxheart Restaurant is excited to announce that on Monday, November 26th, our team will be hosting a collaborative dinner with Chef Viet Pham of Forage Restaurant in Salt Lake City, UT.

At Forage Restaurant, Chef Pham was named one of Food and Wine’s Best New Chefs in 2011, and has been nominated several times as Best Chef: Southwest. Under Chef Pham and Chef Bowman Brown, Forage Restaurant has been consistently noted as one its region’s best and most progressive restaurants since opening in 2009, serving a highly personal, locally sourced and foraged food.

Chef Pham was recently a contestant on the Food Network’s Extreme Chef and will soon be participating in an episode of Iron Chef America.

For this dinner, we will be working together with various Salt Lake and Gulf Coast purveyors, playing off of each other’s cooking styles to cook what we hope to be a memorable, delicious meal.

The dinner will take place on Monday, November 26th around our kitchen counter and round table and is limited to 15 guests each seating. There are two seating times: 6 PM and 8:30 PM at a cost of $95 for seven courses. Appropriate beverage pairings will also be available at a cost of $60.

We will be releasing non-refundable tickets for the dinner on Wednesday, October 10th at 12 noon, with a pre-release available to all Supporters of OKRA. You can book tickets on our online system at SeatMe.com.

We’re extremely excited to have Chef Pham cook with us and even more excited to have you join us for this special night!

Growing up in a Cantonese household, we didn’t eat much sweets growing up.  The only memories of sweets that I have are the singular texture of Chinese mousse cakes.  Lucky for me, I had a neighbor who would fill our house with homemade pecan pies with pecans from the yard and hand-picked dewberry jam.  If pies were acceptable for finishing a meal at Oxheart, I would totally make pies. All day. Every day. I love pies. And carrot cake.

As Oxheart continues to evolve, so does my style of bread and desserts.  When it comes to desserts, I tend to try to over simplify everything because I am afraid to have too many flavors or components on the plate.  Not that they won’t all go together, but rather they won’t let each other shine they way I intend.  I learned at the French Pastry School that you can only move forward when you perfect the basics.  Every “fancy food” should have a strong foundation in the basic/”simple” food.   At Oxheart, this is where I’m starting, and I can’t wait to see what I will be making a few weeks, a few months or years from now.

Something that is as simple as a well-made tart or cake can be just as memorable as all the gels and foams in this world.  My favorite technique is folding, and this came out of my friend, Laura Knapp, who in pastry school told me she just wanted to watch me fold.  (I went from folding batters to doughs when I decided I wanted to really become a baker.)  I scour the Internet for food porn as one may call it and those beautiful plates do inspire me. I envy and respect the chefs who turn white plates into something that could be hung at the Menil.  But my aim is to finish your meal with something that is simple, clean, not-too-heavy, memorable and hopefully refreshing.  It must be my Chinese side coming through (where fresh fruit was enough to invoke satisfaction).

It is hard for me to read the Yelp reviews and not take any of them slightly personally.  I never said I mentored under Thomas Keller.  I worked for Courtney Schmidig, not Thomas Keller.  I baked with Matt McDonald, not Thomas Keller.  I learned to appreciate more than just a baguette with Ben Hershberger.  I learned how regional flour can be at Meyer’s bakery in Copenhagen.  My baked goods are a reflection of what I like to eat and how I like to eat it now, not then, not tomorrow.

Breads are more comfortable for me to explore different boundaries, as I have been actively pursuing learning from the best bakers.  The “pedestrian table bread” as some may call it, actually took 3 days from start to finish to get to the table.  I am obsessed with fermentation.  Sourdough starters or other pre-ferments will find a way into almost all breads I serve at Oxheart.  I love the uniqueness each batch of dough has.  The staff can attest to how excited I get when I’m super pleased with the final product.  As much as everyone loves the pretzel rolls and mustard butter, I do believe I can top that experience with something else yeasty.

I thank you all for the kind words of encouragement as I never felt ready to fit the position Justin had for me.  I could never imagine that my desserts or breads would even be up to Justin’s standard or the bar that Houston as set out for Oxheart.  I still don’t, but I do push to find that perfect food.  (The perfect food that really isn’t obtainable because if it was obtainable, then there would be no where else to go but down.)

So when I finally signed that dotted line on the lease meaning that Karen and I were finally business owners, I wasn’t sure whether or not I wanted to roar in primal joy, break down in tears, or collapse in mental exhaustion. It felt like I’d passed the finish line of a marathon– I had run that last leg so many times only to fall short of the finish line.

I’m sure in the back of my head I knew the real work hadn’t even begun, but I guess I never though the day might come where I’d actually have to open the restaurant. With so many failures before, the week following us signing the lease was like getting a sack or bricks slung at the back of your head day after day. The questions in your head following that week mounted without ever a hope of finding enough answers fast enough– and that doesn’t even include all the questions everyone else had.

There are some days that I wish I were some sort of big-shot enough to only have to worry about the fun things that I’d always dreamt about regarding the restaurant: how I want to cook the food, what cool gadgets I could buy, which plates I want to put it on, where I can source the best product, and how I want the dining room to feel when the guests eat it. But with the immense pressure of pouring our life savings plus the funds from investors into the restaurant, I’m left trying to figure out just how to keep on knocking out the new problems that come up every day while trying to answer the ones that have always been there slowly. Staying calm and collected is a task in itself; one that I don’t think I’ve always handled well these past two months, but one that has to happen to dampen the deafening roars of doubt that come from every angle every day. That’s not to say I don’t think we weren’t prepared. With all that could be (and have been) going wrong, the fact that I still see us opening on time or only with a few weeks delay is an accomplishment that I (and many others) doubted could happen.

It’s true, restaurants really are like living, breathing beings. Oxheart has taken a shape that I couldn’t have ever imagined and definitely not like the perfect restaurant that I had in my head. But just like many things, its imperfections make it human, and it’s those little imperfections that I’ve come to really love. I thought that I had over-budgeted for over-budgeting, but even then I find ourselves having (or maybe just wanting) to really come up with interesting, non-ideal solutions to problems we have, just to save a few dollars. It’s a trying task: new or used refrigeration? Stock or custom tables? Aluminum or steel cookware? Take down that wall for aesthetic purposes or just let it be for now? The questions are dizzying, and that’s even before people ask me when we’re planning on opening.

But that push and that pull is to find that happy medium is what I’m most excited to share with our guests. We fought with ourselves to really cut down to what was the most important to us, where we thought we could skip those few extra bucks, and where we knew we should and wanted to pay full price. Like all relationships, I’m sure I’ll be extremely frustrated at this place from time to time: those uneven floors, that thick layer of paint on the windows, the odd electrical layout, and the fact that we really have very little space to do the cooking (restaurants under 2000 sq ft really have got to learn to make storage go vertical). But then again, we’ve had the most amazing help to get our space to where it is now, from Mr. Somm Guy, Justin getting down on his hands and knees to scrub the years of dirt from the grout, to our designer, Gin creating a beautifully unique space within our budget, to Jeff and Adam for providing us with their amazing products to paint our walls and build our tables, to the countless craftsmen: the potter, the leathermaker, the bladesmith, and the street artist doing all they can to make Oxheart a special place. You can forget about the flaws when you can remember all the people that helped you get there. I don’t think I would love this restaurant nearly as much if we had that unlimited budget and could make everything shiny, glossy, new, and perfect. Learning to work with that we have and dealing with the restaurant’s flaws has been and will be an interesting task.

But truthfully, that’s what I know will make it better for you .

And worth it for me.

But, if you happen to be stuck in the dilemma of opening up your first business, here are some friendly tips.

• Liftgate Services – Adding liftgate services to your freight delivery does not mean they will deliver into your building. It just means that without a loading dock, the half ton package, your beloved stove that your wife ran around NYC trying to buy in cash to save a few bucks, can and will be lowered to your curb. If for some reason this does happen, make friends, bribe them with beer, and strap down for hours worth of work of moving that thing up two steps inch-by-inch.  Or, go to Home Depot and buy materials to make a ramp and be lucky enough to have your place of business close enough to another business that has a pallet jack. Lesson learned.

Sort of.

• Buy equipment that will fit through the door – or buy a door that will fit your equipment.  Better yet, take a hacksaw to your door before any of the equipment comes in. Also: make sure you have a tape measure. Lots of tape measures.

• Learn how to work the auction circuit (or just talk to Kevin Floyd from Hay Merchant a lot.)  Remember there is an up-charge to each purchase so bid under your budgeted amount. Also remember when bidding that you’re probably going to have to pay to get it to the restaurant. Come early and stay late — there is no pattern to the lowest bids and best deals.  Also, don’t bid against the refrigeration dealer because the pros always win

• Get to know your local restaurant supply stores.  Stainless steel sheets and trim don’t come cheap. They also cut delicate fingers. Especially delicate sommelier fingers that are normally only used to the dust that they brush off old bottles being the roughest surface that they touch. So wear gloves.

• Hire an employee with a truck – it comes in super handy.

• Grease that’s been on the floor for decades doesn’t come off with power-washer, or a slightly diluted concentrated degreaser, or a lye solution, or any sort of elbow grease. I guess we’ll have to learn how to re-tile the floor ourselves.

• If you’re trying to restore antiques, hire someone who cares about each step. Opening Oxheart has been like raising a child, you learn more about it and hold its hand each step of the way.  Case and point: the progression of our door. Thanks to Ayn for refinishing it for us and Adkins Antiques for having such a cool door. Just seeing it from when we first saw it in the store, to cutting open our frame, to scraping (and scraping, and scraping) paint, to stripping paint, to sanding (and sanding, and sanding) it down has been a joy to see. It should be done sometime next week– you all should come and check it out!

• Maybe most of all though: try to enjoy the process. You only open your first business once.

Without a home to call home, we have been given much opportunity to explore all types of cooking and baking.  A high-level breakdown of our lives since I jumped into the restaurant industry and away from my useful economics degree: Chicago for pastry school, Napa for the seasons, Europe for staging and a white Christmas, living in NY to “test” the strength of our marriage, with the gaps between in transit.

The next few years I can gladly say we will stay put in Houston, Texas and start a family.  Not that kind of family.

We are so excited to be starting this adventure with all of our friends and families we have amassed along the way. We hope you will be a part of it.  Our blog will transition into one that follows our less nomadic lives at Oxheart.  Until then, I leave you with this, courtesy of Yuling Designs.

Is hearing sirens at 3:11 am in the morning going down my street supposed to make me stronger?  Am I supposed to feel alone in a city of 8 million people? Should I worry that I may get mugged on my way home or to work because it happened to a co-worker?  How do I enjoy the smell of piss in a subway on a hot summer day? Can I ever sleep in total silence again without freaking out?

I’ve learned that opening a business requires much sacrifice and patience.  We have already had a lot of practice in replying with regrets.  The weddings we regretfully decline.  The missed baby showers.  The missed happy hours.  The missed birthdays.  The holidays we spent apart from our families.  The UT Football games I only see on ESPN college recap.  I feel like I need a sign that says if you want me/us to come to a life-changing event, it cannot be on a holiday or a weekend.

With that being said, NY has opened a lot of doors and shut some that I never want to open again anyways. I have experience my best falafel pita (Azuri Cafe, not Taim), my first apple picking experience (in Warick), the best almond croissant (Bien Cuit), the best lox + bagel (Russ and Daughters), best meat sweats (Roberta’s), best beach buddies (the Leftwich’s), the best roommates, the best co-workers, many memorable meals, and my first real cravings for alcohol.*  Many of you have flown into NY and made it a point to meet up with me.  (And I have only known you through my Justin.)  Those moments meant a lot to me.  It taught me where home is – where home will be.

Despite all the firsts and bests in NY, there were things that Houston has that I could not live without.  I miss our friends who take the time out of their busy weeks to hang out with Justin and I.  I miss Vietnamese food.  I miss guacamole done right.  I miss cocktails that are more reasonably priced and coffee that is brewed by familiar faces.  I miss a culture of people who truly want to make a difference and don’t have other motives.

Thank you for being so patient with me.  It took a bit of convincing of all the things I miss most about Home, but I suppose distance made this heart grow fonder.  I have so much to share with you all.

* If you have a significant other who seems to have a drinking problem, it’s may not be true.  Sometimes alcohol does help relieve stress and allow one to sleep through the night – something you may be thankful for.  You could say I am an advocate for “proper” use of alcohol.

Radishes, my favorite

I get it. Cooking vegetables is a huge “food trend” these days.

But that’s not going to stop me from cooking them. In fact, I think it’s a great thing– a task that I hope more chefs take to with vigor and open eyes.

I never imagined that I’d want to direct my career in a path where cooking vegetables would be the great majority of what I want to put out on menus. Hell, I grew up the fat kid. And let me tell you, it’s hard growing up the fat kid without loving to eat meat proteins. But things just happened that way: I ended up at Green Zebra restaurant in Chicago for my externship even though I thought I was going to be working at their (now-defunct) sister restaurant Spring and was introduced to the joys of turning cases upon cases of artichokes because I got there just in time for the spring season. When I moved to Napa, we happened to move within biking distance from Ubuntu, and I felt so compelled to work there that I pulled the ol’ Grant Achatz-move and sent it what probably amounted to 8 resumes and four walk-ins “to see if I can talk to the chef” in less than a month’s time-span before obtaining an unpaid job for the first couple months. And working “for” the garden that they’ve cultivated up there– well, let’s just say that garden was the most fickle boss I’ve ever had.

But the lessons that Chefs McClain and Bulkowski at Zebra, and Chefs Fox, and London at ubuntu taught me on how to look at vegetables with different perspective than rather just the same ol’ “line veg on a plate with some polenta/pasta/risotto” I think has helped me in other areas of cooking, on how to look at the dynamics of an item rather than their end being.

Vegetables and fruits to me are exciting. Their variety in numbers is only rivaled by maybe fish. But trying to understand their textures and flavors within the never-ending barrage of terrior, ripeness, growing conditions, weather, and handlers keeps me often-times confused and intrigued. Cooking with them is often a dizzying and frustrating task because they hardly ever come out the same way it did the time previously. Their ability to be sweet, bitter, acidic, grassy, and even almost gamey at times make them great products to work with. But figuring out the best “parts” of the vegetable and trying to figure out new uses for previously trashed waste of the items is a rewarding game of trial and error, and one that’s taken and taking me a lifetime to grasp. I suppose that’s why cooking is so fun though.

But to answer an Eater Austin commenter, that’s why we’re calling these dinners vegetable-focused as opposed to vegetarian. I’m not trying to play to any favors in dietary restrictions or or make any sort of political stance. I’m not cooking vegetarian because of the fact that it’s vegetarian, but because I just really, really enjoy cooking vegetables. We just want to make the products the star of the show Which is why I’ve learned to say “vegetable-focused,” because, well, it is. But if I need to split hairs, yes, it’s a vegetarian dinner.

That being said, these dinners aren’t vegan, we’re not bringing in new pans or cooktops or anything that may have touched meat, but I am really excited to cook for the Austin crowd. My wife, the forever Longhorn, sees Austin as our second home and first choice as a retirement city or dropping-all-our-worldly-possessions-to-live-as-bums-because-we-can’t-find-a-job city. Whichever comes first. We love the vibe, the people, and Austin itself.

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So beyond all this, Chefs Ned and Jodi Elliot of Foreign and Domestic will be lending me and a few friends their kitchen and dining room for one night: Sunday, October 9th.  Bobby Heugel and Chris Frankel from Anvil Bar and Refuge will be pairing all sorts of drinks, and David Buehrer and Ecky Prabanto of Greenway Coffee and Tea are coming to provide some quality caffeination. Most of all, I just hope it’ll be a fun night where we can serve the Austin food and chef community.

We’ll have two seatings: a supper 5:30 seating and a dinner 8:30 seating. The cost is $75 payable via PayPal at the time of the confirmation of your reservation. You can make your reservation by emailing:

eatdrinkjustins@gmail.com

We’ll start taking reservations at tomorrow, Tuesday, September 20th at 10 AM.

We look forward to be cooking and pouring for you all up in Austin or for whoever wants to travel to enjoy. But the biggest thanks goes to the Elliots. They really have a great vision up in Austin and we hope you’ll do your best to support them on a weekly basis and also if and when they continue their guest chef series.

Thanks again and hope to see many of you soon!

The ubuntu garden, 2010

Or, it was by just some sort of stroke of sheer dumb luck, but last month I had the chance to speak at TEDx Houston. TEDx, as some of you may know, is An event that brings together some of the world’s most apt minds to speak about new ideas, express passionate vignettes, and push forward innovations in their respective fields. The TED talks globally are huge YouTube hits, spreading ideas and bringing light to new thoughts from a variety of disciplines. Bill Gates has done one, David Blaine has done one, Sir Ken Robinson has done one. Hell, Rene Redzepi did one. This one was independent to Houston (hence the “x”), and gathered there to speak that day were CEOs of major companies, notable leaders of Houston’s community, world champions of dance, highly respected doctors and architects, and a gentleman that spoke with such a tone, conviction, and interest that you hung on every drip of every syllable that escaped his mouth.

Aaaand then there was me.

Shit, I was sandwiched between a rocket scientist and a nanotechnologist.

How a-bout that?

Mostly my TEDx experience was filled with sweaty palms, lots of pacing, and extremely sharp pains in my stomach from the searing amount of adrenaline that went through my veins when I walked on stage. I don’t remember much of what I said while on stage, so hopefully it all somewhat made sense to the audience. But to walk onto a platform in front of such a notably involved group of peers is an mind-numbing, humbling experience. When it was done, I walked off stage and wanted to vomit but ended up curling into a ball for a good ten minutes offstage. But you know, that’s just how things go.

Overall, I think I made it out alright. I talked about pretty much everything I’ve said here on this blog. Hoping to urge people in our community to go out and explore the big world around us and to bring back home new ideas, humble thoughts, new points of view, and appreciation of other cultures to take our naturally rich, raw ingredients from our region to create a distinct food culture here in the Gulf Coast. The whole word “stage” is sort of becoming banal with the use of it around here, but that still shouldn’t deny its importance.

But you’ve already heard all that, you can just scroll down our blog to pretty much get the gist of what I said for the entirety of the ten minutes. I’m not writing this post to talk about what I talked about. I’m writing this post because something hit me the next day as I went through all the foggy memories of all the talks I sat through that day at TEDx.

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Chefs have always told me that when you’re a cook, you should be well versed in everything. You shouldn’t be able just to work the line, you should be able to be a butcher, to do basic baking and/or pastry, and to know the basics and ideas of charcuterie. You should strive to understand (that doesn’t mean know how to cook) all cuisines, to understand food, its history, and how it got from the ground to the plate. It’s important to be well-rounded, because you’ll never know when you’re going to be called on. Lately, especially here in Houston, I’ve even seen extremes go where cooks are learning more about service, coffee, and tending the bar, everyone is working with and learning from everyone else. It’s in the early stages, but chefs, sommeliers, and bartenders are all starting to become interchangeable as they learn more about other parts of the food industry.

In example of this, Peter Jahnke of Les Sauvages probably is the first to come to mind. That guy can do it all (and we all hate him for it because he’s too good at everything.)

But what I realized that day was that because it’s so easy to get caught up in the food industry and all its facets, we as food industry professionals often get *too* caught up in the business. There’s so much to learn and enjoy about food and beverage that it’s hard not to become obsessive about it, but then we forget that there’s this other world around us and that we’ve lost perspective of that other world.

The amount that I learned that day from TEDx, from the statistics on how volunteering helps, to why disbanding the space program will ultimately hurt us, to getting a basic understanding of what nanotechnology is and how it helps us, and especially what the difference between what an MC and a DJ is, was not only invaluable, but it also showed me how out of balance in knowledge I was.

I, myself, love being involved and engrossing myself with everything related to food, and maybe sometimes that’s a problem (for me at least) because I’m oblivious to everything else.

Maybe I should put down the copy of Lucky Peach and pick up an Economist. Or stop hounding for menus on restaurant websites and read some more relevant literature sometime. Maybe I should lay off constructing dishes in my head for a few hours and really explore other creative outlets every once in a while. Hell, it would probably please the heck out of my mom if she saw me getting interested in my violin again (shut up, I know what you’re thinking.) And who knows, gaining balance in my knowledge of the world might even help with my cooking one day.

Like I’ve been saying. The world’s a big place, it has a lot of ideas, and you should go check it out. With my free time nowadays, I try to pick up random books, go to places in town that I’ve never walked through, and inquire on interests that I never thought I’d be interested in. It really helps with your perspective as a person.

All I know is that by watching all these other passionate people that day at TEDx being so animated about their lines of work hit a chord with me. There needs to be balance in other things rather than the world of salt, yeast, shakers, and tampers.

Because who knows– maybe the world will call on me one day.

And the things I’ll have to do won’t involve me having a knife or a pan in my hand.

Anyone who says, “OMG, you’re a chef? (replace interchangeably with pastry chef).  That’s so cool.” must not know how hard it really is.

It is not that kinda of cool.  It is sometimes fun and most of the time stressful.  It’s pretty much hard physical work.  The work that makes your feet hurt if you aren’t conditioned for standing more than 12 hours.  The work that makes your back hurt because you’ve been standing for more than 12 hours.  The work that makes the back of your neck sore because you’ve been looking down for more than 12 hours.  The work that makes your muscles in your back so tight it takes you over an hour of stretching at night to feel remotely relaxed to sleep. (Or the work that requires you to beg your wife to step on your back again.) The work that makes you dehydrated at the end of the night because you don’t drink enough because you don’t have time to go the bathroom.  The work that makes you come home smelling like grease or fryer oil or overheated Pam spray.  The work where you have to wash your apron in the sink because it’s so dirty it cannot be mixed with other laundry.  The work that makes you crave a cigarette, a joint, a drink, or whatever else helps you relax.  This shit’s not easy.  Now I know why my dad tells me he doesn’t understand why I want to work so hard when he worked so hard so I wouldn’t have to work so hard.

There are some things I prefer not to do.  Dad, you may be right about some (and probably many) things, but I am not doing this so you, dad, can tell Justin he needs to open a catering business.  I am not doing this so you, (dad) can tell me that heart-shaped cookies for Valentine’s day is going to make me rich.  To the rest, yet another public announcement, I am a bread baker, so my job description doesn’t include making cupcakes or cakes for your wedding/birthday/1st child/to-be-mother even though you’re friends with my best friends or sister or mother.  I’m just not comfortable mixing batters and frosting cakes.  I will not bake my bread lighter because you like it that way.  I prefer my bread with color, because the Maillard reaction is a beautiful thing.  Sometimes bread should not be served warm.  Think of bread like wine.  If it’s too warm, you can’t taste the subtleties of the flavors from long fermentation.  I am doing this for me, for us, for you who will appreciate me as an artist, as a person with a point of view, an attitude, as an individual trying to make a statement of my own.  I do love and appreciate the support.  I am here to make a humble living on what I love to do most.

I am working in a city that never sleeps, filled with 8.175 million people, yet I feel worlds away from everyone.  The sacrifice Justin and I made to live apart so that I could keep learning and pursue our dreams is really that hard.  I suppose this statement is necessary if you haven’t gotten the tone of my voice in the very direct comments above.  I wanted to write this piece so that you could feel me – understand where I’m coming from – relate if you can.  I don’t want more comments on how to live my life.  Our life is hard enough.  It really is.  It really is like a box of chocolates- you hope you know what you’re gonna get but you usually never know what you’re gonna get.  I have already rejected my Chinese heritage by not putting my education to good use.   What will I do with that Economics degree and what was the point of getting multiple honors? I am even farther from financial security than I was 3 years ago.  I have no idea what my next meal is.  (This is not always true, but it actually did materialize the first 3 weeks I was in NY.)  I miss my husband like mad.  I miss whatever home means.   This shit is really not that fucking glorious (it is glorious, but not glorious in that kind of way).  So next time you think cooking for a living is cool and fun, imagine giving up your job with financial security, benefits, paid time off, paid maternity leave, and having weekends off.

Anthony Bourdain may have been angry when he was writing Kitchen Confidential, but in Medium Raw, he says, ”I  instinctively liked and respected anyone who cooked or served food in a restaurant and took any kind of satisfaction in the job.  Still feel that way.  It is the finest and noblest of toil, performed by only the very best of people.”

(I believe best is being used here loosely.)

I wasn’t sure if this was appropriate to share.  (Justin said it may be seen as an angry piece).  But I never know how to describe my work to people not in the “industry.”  Still to this day I have a hard time adjusting to this “way” of life – the hours, the standing, the pay, the ability not to “go shopping”, the constant downsizing of our living space every time we move, the increasing number of suggestions people tell me what I should have in my bakery, or the type of food they want Justin to serve.  I can’t describe to you in words what I want my bakery or Justin’s restaurant to look like or serve.  We don’t even have a location, a home, or a large enough bankroll for us to be comfortable.  I have vented.  I have cried.  But at the end of the day, I am proud.  Proud to stand up to the challenge that continually humbles me.

I hope that regardless of who you are, what you do, how you eat, that you will appreciate the people that helped make your last meal.  This shit is hard work.