Case of the Mondays?

Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays (please tell me you've seen Office Space). That someone is ME. For some reason, after Ash started taking off Mondays, I've had some horrific luck on Mondays at Shabu as shown from this previous post. I thought I had maybe possibly sort of kinda perhaps left that bad juju behind me, but noooOOOOOOooooo. On December 21st, 2009 AD around 10:00 AM PST, yes on the Winter Solstice, I strolled in to the restaurant to find out that our water was shut down. About fifteen (15) minutes later, we had flowing water again. Catastrophe averted!

End blog entry? HA! I wish!

Another five (5) minutes goes by and the water dries up like Jim Carrey's improvisations (oh where oh where have you gone great Jim of yesteryear?). I jog outside and and find an employee that was sent over from the Mesa Consolidated Water District. We talk it over for a bit and he explains to me that the backflow device was turned off initially (if you guys remember, it's the pipe we spent over $2000 to install before we opened). The employee turned it back on and thought that the sprinklers came on, too. So we falsely thought the water pipes were ok, until he realized that it wasn't the sprinklers, but rather a pipe that looked like it had been rammed and bent. Due to the damage, water was squirting out of the concrete like a Slip 'N Slide. He went on to explain that he couldn't allow water waste like that to continue on just so we had running water to our building. Of course we agreed and sent him on his way.

After that I made some frantic phone calls to our property management, so they called a private plumbing company, who sent Joey (pictured above). Needless to say, Joey broke the news to us...he had to jack hammer the concrete, fix the pipe, install a stop valve, and patch everything back up. That was the bad news, the good news was that they were on the ball and had us up and running in about two and a half (2.5) hours! Unfortuantely, we had to close down for lunch on the first day of Winter, but RJ, Linda, Xiao, Erin, and I ended up popping out for lunch and chowing down on some grilled fish before we headed back to the restaurant to prepare for the dinner rush.

Joey's Clean Up Job (Not a Hitman)

What I learned from all of this? Mondays are the pits.

Smoochies,
Len

Best Monday EVER

So the above picture depicts our faithful customers who came in on December 7th, 2009 AD right at the beginning of our lunch shift. Why is it so dark you ask? Because the power was out for the second time in our short life at 801 Baker. About fifteen (15) people stuck it out for about thirty (30) minutes (the power was actual out for about double that time, but prior to any one coming in to boil meat) before the power came back on. What made it even more painful was the fact that it was the first rainy and cold day of the season, meaning we had more people who were craving some hot soupy goodness.


Emergency Lights

So if that wasn't bad enough, when we turned on the hood vents, rain water started shooting out of them, splashing on top of some of our customers. UGH. It was probably the worst start we cold have possibly had for the cold season. We found out later on that our retarded sub-contractor from before flipped the panels upside down on our make-up air blowers. Instead of keeping water out of the units, we were collecting water ha ha. Alas, it is behind us now and things are smooth once again.


Collecting Rain Water From the Vents

That being said, a big "Thanks, buddies!" goes out to everyone who waited around in hopes of some boiling pots.

Smoochies,
Len

Our First Customers!

Crapola, this is late. I just wanted to introduce you to our first two (2) customers!

They wandered into our restaurant randomly on June 18th, 2009 AD right at 11:30 AM PST and have since crossed our borders many times since. Thanks for stumbling in, guys.

Smoochies,
Len

We Got Lice! We Got B-lown Lice!

Woo hoooo! After flirting and teasing him a little bit, we finally initiated brown rice into our list of offerings at Cal Shabu. We are now serving Nishiki Premium Brown Rice at *no extra charge* for our customers while each batch lasts every day. As of now, there aren't too many people asking for it, but as demand increases, we'll be steaming up more to meet up with everyone's appetites.

Olga and Laila

Olga and Laila were our first two (2) official brown rice lovers after we tested with some customers for a few days to get the water and cooking measurements down pat. Zaal, Jake, Alex, Chris, and Renewal, you guys can finally stop hounding me now. Thanks for blowing up my phone during the last Lakers versus Clippers game. As if it wasn't bad enough we got drummed by the lesser of the Los Angeles professional basketball teams (that's right Mikey, tell Blake I say, "Hi" as he surfs the bench in his Girogio Armani suit the rest of the season).

Smoochies,
Len

Kimo's Korner

Yuck, still playing catch up, ha ha. As most of you have proabably already seen in our entrance area, Kimo took over a chunk of our wall and put up a pretty sweet creation that leaked out of his head and through his hands. Coming in every day after work for a week, his mini mural evolved every day. If you guys haven't already peeped it, swing by. Don't worry, we won't force you to eat shabu.

To take a closer look at Kimo and his art (along with the goods he pumps out with IMKing) take the leap here or hop on to the IMKing site aqui.

@Kimo - We may just have to get you back in here to grab another piece of the restaurant. Thanks for all the support, bro!

Smoochies,
Len

JuBAM!

To Juliann and Millie, one of the cutest couples we know. Thanks for all the good times, especially all the Jell-o shoooooooooooooooooooooots!!!

Smoochies,
Len

The Making of a Caffeine Fueled Mural

Holy shnikes! Has it really been four (4) months since our last blog entry? My apologies to anyone who has actually been checking this thing.

Anyhoo, hop on the picture above for a ton of photos from the few days that Pinky (Meeseter Moostashes Kitty Meow) Taylor invaded our restaurant. For those who have seen the mural already and have been wondering, no he was not on drugs ha ha. Pinky was purely on our ridiculously strong iced coffee and coke. At one point, he had imbibed six (6) iced coffees and eight (8) glasses of coke in a two (2) hour period. This was in addition to a few root beer floats. Needless to say he was bouncing around the walls and skipping down the halls.

Through it all we've gained a crazy wall that fits into our persona perfectly as well as a great friend! Thanks to Allison and Kayley for helping us take some photos when we started getting busy =].

Check back with us soon for some photos on Kimo's imagination on one of our other walls.

Smoochies!
Len