Bamboozled: A Story of Epic Failures

Yikes, has it really been about four (4) months? I don't know why it's taken so long...all right, ALL RIGHT, I know why. It's partially because we've been crazy busy, paritally because time just flew by, but most of all, it's because it's absolutely shameful how delayed we are in getting our restaurant up and running. First off, let me apologize to all of you out there who have felt duped over and over again by my empty promises of a shiny new Shabu restaurant opening up (especially to those who kept receiving those cursed automated eVite messages before I could change the date *shaking fists in air*). I know I'm wasting my knock out punch right in the beginning, but I feel like I owe at least this to every one who reads our little blog - we are finally going to open next week to the public! We're going through our final inspections this Wednesday, so please keep your fingers, toes, eyes, hair, legs, etc. crossed for us. Now that that's out of the way, I can explain the title of this post.

You guys will have to bear with me, though, as the story is a bit long. Actually, click on the photo below and you'll be bounced over to an album which will delve into more details on just how badly we were put in the tree chipper, but I'll give you a few of the lowlights.


We Thought We Were Flying High - Not So Much

My eyes are feeling droopy, but it may be due to all the epoxy fumes I've been sucking into my poor lungs the last few days (I'll explain that in the next post). Man, I am all over the place today...let me reign myself back into this thing. Let's see, where was I? Ah, ok. So, around the end of March, our Ogre disappeared on us. That's right, he up and abandoned the project - please pick up your jaws from the floor. For those of you who want to know the story, it's pretty crazy, but I don't want to air out someone else's dirty laundry all over the dub dub dub, so you'll have to come in and ask Ash or I =). After the Ogre pulled his best impersonation of Lance Burton on us, Ash and I were sent spiralling into a Twilight Zone state of mind. We ended up going almost two (2) weeks hitting up contractors that we spoke to in the past and some new contractors that were referred over to us. There was literally a parade of contractors coming in and out of our doors for a week straight. All we needed were some flashing lights and furries and we would have been lit up like Disney's Main Street in Costa Mesa.

As the fire flamed out, from the ashes arose...Shaun Gallagher - our little Irish phoenix.

The Man


Look out really REALLY soon, cross my heart (my eyes are getting watery just thinking of Pixar's UP - you guys all need to watch this and you'll know what I mean), for an entry on how Shaun has saved our collective rumps in the past month and a half from all of the Ogre's epic failures. Have you realized I can't even speak his name? From this day forward, that who we do not speak of shall now be known as the Ogre.

See you all on the site super soon and at our restaurant soon after that!


Smoochies,
Len

Chug Chug Chugging Along

Ok, ok, OKAY I KNOW! The picture makes it look pretty bad, but I assure you, we're getting really close to opening up our doors. I hope every one reading this had a great Valentine's Day! We were hoping to open by February 14th, but alas, all the delays from the last post have piled up nice and high and have caused yet another excrutiatingly painful, bile producing, and stomach wall eroding delay in our opening date.

Our induction cookers have finally arrived, we had a marathon meeting with Red Mountain to figure out our plumbing issue, and construction has actually been going at a relatively brisk pace. We're still handcuffed by some of the subcontractors for our walk-in refrigerator and our hood vents, but those suckers are supposed to be delivered and installed by the middle of this upcoming week. If you can sense the lack of enthusiasm in my tone, it's because I feel like we've let a lot of people down, including some friends (sorry Charles and Catherine) whose birthdays are coming up this weekend and a wedding rehearsal dinner party I am going to have to notify tomorrow that we won't be able to take care of them anymore. We want to get this right before, we open, so we're trying hard to remain patient and focus on finishing up everything we have left.

Just a quick update...our servers have been training at the current Fountain Valley location, so if you've seen some new faces in there, BE NICE ha ha. They're actually all doing a really great job, and should be ready to rock da house once we open.

I'll keep this sucker short since we still have many many loose ends to tie up within the next week if we are to get our pots boiling for you guys soon! I'm scared to even blurt out another date, so please check back with us soon for an update and more construction pictures. Take the jump and click on the picture above to see where we are with the inside. Bear in mind that these were taken about a week ago, so we've already made a good deal of progress since then. Any positive chi you want to push our way would be greatly appreciated!

Smoochies,

Len

Ogres Have Layers

Meet John, Chinese Shrek/Ogre, AKA our Contrator

That's John doing what he does best...chain smoking. That is but one simple layer of John. Underneath that is hair that hasn't been groomed for god knows how many months. Below that, are teeth that a jackhammer couldn't clean. Peel another layer back and you have his enormous pot belly hanging over the top of his jeans that have a pocket ripped half way down his thigh - to which I pointed at and he quipped in Mandarin, "You think you're over budget? I'm broke then." This, my friends, is our beloved Ogre. Even beyond all these layers, lies the core of John, who after much poking and prodding, is coming through for us.

I'll rewind for you guys a bit, we were just starting to pick up some steam with our construction and it seemed like we would have no problem getting things done for our intended soft opening weekend of February 6th/7th. For fear of me weeping like a little girl from how depressing it is to run into even more delays this late in the game, I'm simply going to ramble everything off in probably very poor English and grammar. *Deep breath* We were *this* close to ordering all of our induction cookers from Dipo since we were told they were NSF certified just to find out that they weren't so we were back to the Mr. Induction ones that are backordered and won't arrive till February 4th (yes two (2) days before our intended soft opening), finding out that the plumbing coming into our restaurant was inefficient and we couldn't get a hold of our plumbing engineer to help recalculate everything leading us to have Wayne and Ash go through everything with Virgil from Red Mountain and now we're waiting for the great *cough* City of Costa Mesa to install a new meter for us, our walk-in refrigerator was ordered over a month ago and we still don't have doors for it making it very counter-productive in keeping it cold, our stainless steel hood vents have been in fabrication for over a month now due to the holidays and maybe just all around apathy, our grease trap installation was delayed from the rain storm we experienced last week, Ash and I drove around San Gabriel Valley trying to find an affordable Shabu pot only to find cheap ugly ones and then finding out that the pots are going to be $10 more for each one now and it's going to take about a week to get them, our Point of Sale system showed up on our doorsteps missing a cash drawer, our ABC representative has decided to pull a Keyser Soze on us right as she was supposed to come in for our inspection, the list of setbacks goes on and on (I'm sure you would rather rake your finger nails over a chalkboard than listen to me complain more) but us ramblers have been ramblin' to get everything into place as soon as possible.

Even with all these crazy hurdles, John and his crew has been working hard to get us open by next weekend. It looks like Mission Impossible, but we are all burning the midnight oil during the last remaining days before Ash and I are buried neck deep in meat, pots, water, and vegetables.

Poke John's belly to take a peek at what's been going on with construction lately. We also decided to post some movies of the grease trap excavation, because well, we like big machines making holes.

Bobcat Tearing Up the Blacktop

Caterpillar Looking for Dinosaurs

I know I said we were going to post up photos of our new staff, but that will be coming soon!

Smoochies,

Len