Please accept our project...

We submitted our request to participate in the Kickstarter platform tonight. For those of you who don't know, Kickstarter helps get creative projects (not businesses, mind you) off the ground. It's great on several levels - not only do you get a chance to raise moolah, but you also get critical feedback about your project before it actually goes live. Even the process of thinking through and filming/editing our video has helped us better articulate our concept. We're so hopeful that we'll be able to use Kickstarter to reach a demographic that wouldn't otherwise know about us that we've already finished our video (which is one of the fancier ones, if I may say so myself). We've also thought of some really creative rewards. After several days of editing, I have a new appreciation for film makers.

For us, Kickstarter would help us fill the gap of our construction loan. With our loan and Kickstarter, what has been my dream for the last 8 years will become a reality.

So long, deep fryer.

I have decided that I will work the fish station when our restaurant opens. After spending a year cooking fish in the kitchens of Bouley, Picholine, and Tabla in NYC, I moved into management because I wanted to learn more about the business. For the past 4 or 5 years, I focused on the front-of-house and managed the top and bottom lines, beverage programs, and the customer experience. Though service and ambiance are important, I've always believed that food is paramount in any restaurant. And, with some basics of restaurant management under my belt (including 6 successful restaurant openings and an MBA), I feel I can successfully train others to run restaurants without micromanagement. Therefore, without deliberately charting my path years ago, I have allowed myself the professional growth to return to where I will make the biggest contribution in my own restaurant, working directly with the food and alongside TM.

In light of this change of plans (initially TM would work in the kitchen and I would run service), we have been relentlessly re-imagining our menu. Because of her faith in my fish cookery - and my faith in her meat cookery - we are upping the ante, and taking bigger risks with more refined dishes. We will combine elements of food that speaks to one's soul, the fundamental key to TM's style so absent amongst even celebrated chefs, and layers of flavors captured though sophisticated textures, sauces, and cooking techniques. Watch our dishes develop in the coming months, they will be picture worthy.