Soft Openings (Get Your Mind Out of the Gutter, Son!)

I would like to start off this entry with a big "WOOT WOOT!" for all our friends and family that made time out for our two (2) little shin digs (especially my brother, Ivan,and Alex who drove down from Santa Cruz on Saturday afternoon and drove back up Sunday morning). Also, we'd like to apologize if we weren't able to chit chat too much with everyone who came, we were just so slammed and trying to make sure everyone was fed!

On Friday - June 12th, 2009 AD, our family and a few close friends who couldn't make it out for Saturday, swung by to act as our first set of official guinea pigs! Things were a little chaotic since we were still finishing up construction and cleaning up. We had initially planned on getting people seated at about 7 PM, but that rolled into about 8 PM, ick. It was melee when we first started, because it was the equivalent of having twenty-five (25) customers all sit down at the same time to order. Needless to say, there was a bit of a lag getting everyone their orders, but Ash manhandled the pressure and flung down the plates of meat to our stomach growling guests. Right when we thought everything was going to run smoothly, our induction cookers decided on switching on and off the entire meal, causing much confusion to us, the staff, and our family (we later tested it out and found out that the burners weren't being properly vented and have since cut large vent holes out of our counters. It looks like complete @$$ right now, but Morgan is working with us to brainstorm out some ideas to cover the holes with mesh). As wonky as the night went, it all turned out pretty good in the end. On to Saturday...

Funny as it may sound, we had about five (5) or six (6) times the amount of people on Saturday, and things went a lot smoother! It may have just been jitters on the first night or maybe just the overwhelming amount of people came forced us to get all tunnel vision with the restaurant and servicing our friends. We ended up using a makeshift solution for the cookers by propping up the back with little 1/8" nuts (again, get your mind out of the gutter) to allow for better ventilation. That seemed to do the trick since the burners were on the entire night to accomodate everyone that came in. I'll let the pictures do more of the talking for our little event, but just imagine what happens when beer and sake is flowing for free an entire night. Mayhem *cough STEVE cough CHUNG*.

We've been open now since Thursday - June 18th, 2009 AD, so if you haven't come by yet, SHAME ON YOU, I mean, hope to see you soon!


Smoochies,
Len