January 10th Blog
People often ask me why I don’t open up a restaurant: as if the fact that I write about restaurants would somehow make me a candidate to run one. Well, as T. Soprano would say, “fuggadaboudit.” I have seen how hard restaurateurs work. It takes constant care and feeding to run a successful operation and even then there are no guarantees. It takes a dedication and perseverance that is almost unnatural. It also takes the abandonment of what most of us would call a normal life.
It opens one up to constant financial pressure where the entrepreneur is at the mercy of too many variables they can’t control: food costs, labor shortages, (try hiring a waiter in this town), vendor issues, landlords who mistakenly think we’re in the 90210 zip code, those furtive TABC types always lurking around, seasonal declines in business (around the holidays, summers, etc.) and even the essentially uncontrollable fruit fly.
Running a restaurant is one tough job and I have the utmost respect for those who venture into those turbulent waters. But for me, I’ll just keep dining in them and writing about them. That keeps my plate more than full.
