We’re opening a restaurant, y’all!
There is a lot to go over.
It’s all very overwhelming and beyond stressful. The amount of major questions we have to answer on an hourly basis… it’s just not healthy!
I’ll try and keep y’all filled in on the good, the bad and everything in between.
For now let’s dig into the beginning.
It all started about six weeks ago….
Marce, my boyfriends (Ticol’s) brother, showed me the store front of their mothers building. It was the first time I had entered since it had been rented out for the past few years. As soon as I walked in something very unexpected happened, I had a visual of my future!! Like a proper visual of me in my cooks clothes, tables chairs, clients, Ticol, todo. It was very strange and it’s hard to explain, almost like a déjà vu moment but I instantly knew that I would have a future there.
So I started asking questions and the wheel started spinning, fast.
Ticol and I got to talking about the next step for our puerta cerrada, NOLA, that we’ve been running together for a year and a half. We absolutely adore our work at our little Palermo puerta cerrada. It’s intimate, personal, a manageable size and we’ve busted our asses building a name for ourselves here in Buenos Aires.
Then reality versus fantasy kicked in.
Is the puerta cerrada something we want for the ongoing future? I mean, how long do we want to be hosting dinners in our home for? What kind of place would we open up? Who do we want our demographic to be? What’s missing in Buenos Aires? Who would our competition be? Is our side of Palermo developed enough? Do we really want to open a business in this lovely economy of ongoing hyper inflation? Is there a point in earning Argentine pesos? Do we want to live in Argentina and if so how for long???
The questions were endless but when it came down to it, our guts told us to JUST FUCKING GO FOR IT!
It’s going to be a whirlwind! Hell, it’s already been one, la verdad! (truthfully!)
Let’s talk space real quick. It’s small, should seat around 20 people and a few tables outside that will give us capacity for about 30 diners in total. The ceilings are high!! Like 15-20 feet high. We plan on breaking those babies in and exposing that gorgeous brick that’s hiding behind like how the ceilings are in the house.
There will be a small bar to the back and a kitchen to the left that will be semi-open.
The style- industrial, rustic, Louisiana. More gastropub (gastronomy bar/pub) than restaurant. A place to have a good drink and a plate of savory food.
We wont do cubierto (a common charge at restaurants for the use of napkins/utensils/table clothes. INSANE, yes.) or the merienda scene. There’s plenty of establishments with herds of people nursing on cafe con leche and sharing massive chunks of sweets and we wont be one of them. We’re actually not even going to serve coffee! However there will be pie.
The overall theme- simple and local.
We designed the layout ourselves and hired our architect friend, Guillermo, to make the blueprints and contribute any layout ideas that would work well with our small space. After a few meetings, learning about habilitation requirements and taking loads of measurements we finally got our hand on the locáls final blueprints.
Is every step going to be this breezy?
DOUBTFUL.
Regardless, it was a great start.
We finished Stage I of our new little adventure. And you have no idea the amount of joy I felt crossing that off of the massive NOLA To-Do list. Blueprints, CHECK.
Next up, finding a contractor!
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