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
3 comments:
Remember to exhale that deep breath!
It's all going to work out, just not according to schedule but hey--it's going to be great once the resto opens and thereafter!
You're *still* messing around with the grease traps!? Isn't that why you moved to this location in the first place? :P
Good luck! I hope you make the soft opening! I'm sad I won't be here that weekend tho...
not messing around with it, it was just time to put it in. we're just having crazy problems with other things. i want to throw up just thinking about everything.
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