Permits and menu

Today we are taking care of permits and such including my work permit. We also saw a list of approved positions for immigration sponsoring. Now I know why pastry in thiis country sucks. You can't sponsor a proper pastry chef. Thank goodness I'm the executive.

Savoury Menu is done with... I think its fairly simple and stright forward...I will post a draft so If any of you have any opinions you can let me know.

Lunch Bistro Menu:


Soups:

Cream of wild mushroom soup
Tomato bisque soup
Chicken soup a la maman

Salads:

Crab and avocado salad
crab, avocado, tomatoes, fresh greens topped and citrus vinaigrette

Willamette salad
smoked Salmons, dried cranberries, blue cheese, fresh greens and apple vinaigrette

Caesar salad
romaine lettuce, garlic croutons, shaved parmesan, poached egg and caesar dressing

Appetizers:

Onion tart
caramelized onions, smoked duck bacon, edam cheese and crème fraiche

Frites Parisiennes
potato frites, garlic and fresh herbs

Tuna tartare
sashimi grade tuna tossed with wasabi vinaigrette

Mains:

Lamb tartine
rosemary roasted lamb, fresh greens, garlic aoli and tomato relish

Tartine of chicken and mushrooms
poached Chicken, wild mushrooms, manchego cheese, roasted garlic and herbs

Tartine of Peruvian Shrimp
escabeche salad of shrimp, on fresh greens and cucumber

Epicure burger
burger with Margaret River cheddar, sun-dried tomato aioli and fresh greens

Steak frites
hangar Steak served medium with our house frites and garlic aioli

Roasted chicken
brick oven roasted half chicken, onion roasted potatoes

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Dinner and Tasting Menu:

Soup:

Lobster bisque
Black bean soup with grilled corn
Plantain soup with roast chicken

Salads:
Sweet potato and apple salad
roasted sweet potato, fresh apples and creamy apple vinaigrette

Crab and avocado salad
crab, avocado, tomatoes, fresh greens topped and citrus vinaigrette

Caesar salad
romaine lettuce, garlic croutons, shaved parmesan, poached egg and caesar dressing

Appetizers:
Tuna tartare
sashimi grade tuna tossed with wasabi vinaigrette

Foie gras
seared foie gras, apple compote, brioche and cointreau

Salmon rillettes
spiced and smoked salmon rilletes, fresh greens and warm baguette

Mains:
Crab and mango ravioli
crab, grilled mango, avocado sauce, crème fraiche and jeruk bali

Skillet crisped snapper
skillet crisped snapper, fried yucca and garlic mojito

Jerked chicken
jerked chicken with jicama salad

Magret of duck
laquered duck breast with warm savoury pumpkin tart

Filet mignon
filet mignon, hibiscus glaze, tropical chutney and spicy potato rosti

Rack of lamb
Guava glazed lamb rack, shallot/basil mashed potatoes, roast banana tzaziki

Progress is slow but ...well, just slow

The walls are coming on slowly but surely, barely any work has been done other than tile being put up in the kitchen. Our exhaust hood got in today and we are patiently waiting for the people that brought it in to complete the job. Found a couple of good suppliers here and that makes me a bit relieved. I also met up with the owner of the business which will eventually be our wine and liquor supplier and it turns out he is looking for a place to supply him with cheeseplates, small salads and some desserts for his wine bar. I am working on a selection for him to quote him a price. This will hopefully end up being a long-lasting and beautiful relationship. As you can see in the picture the roof is starting to be shelled in and slowly but surely its starting to look like a restaurant. In other news, my little cupcake is 10 weeks old now and in the mommy's tummy healthy and active. Saw the ultrasound and cupcake started wiggling around. This baby is so beautiful...I'm so happy :D (says Alex with a dorky smiley)

Oh talent, where are you?

On monday and Tuesday I spent my day interviewing about 80 people. For my cooks, I have certain standardsthat I cant move away from and for my waitresses and FOH staff as well. Cooks need to have spent time cooking in a kitchen of a certain caliber, must be used to cooking to order and speak english (understand it at least). SO many people showed up that didnt fill any of the requirements, I feel like I wasted about 3 fourths of my day. The only highlights were a guy with actual pastry experience...during his interview he mentioned fondant cake, creme brulee, choux...Love at first sight (Im calling him up for a benchtest) and a guy who was telling me how he made steak with foie gras...I asked him what would happen if I'm making foie gras and I go out and make a sauce while it cookingand he freaked out, saying no you cant do that foie gras is expensive and the fat will melt it. NEEDLESS TO SAY, I like him too. Other than that I have gotten two requests from people that are somewhat qualified for salaries that are about as much as you would get working at a five star hotel...needless to say we wont be talking to them. I'm not getting paid much at all to do this...this is a labor of love. I hope it gets to the point where we get enough money to not have to worry about our future, but fo rthat I need people that are grounded in reality and hard working...as is we are paying somewhere around 3 times more than other places pay fo rthe same job so we hope if anyone leaves money wont be the main issue (it seems its a big factor in people coming to interview with us) quite a few people have said they get paid half of minimum wage (minimum is about $100). I cant see anyone surviving on so little ($100 maybe) but so little. I really wish I could hire everyone that came in and put them to work. But I can only afford to hire the best. I hope someone hires the rest.


***update: The walls are actually walls now...not just frames.

We have walls!!!!!!!!!! sort of

So we walk in today and we have a skeleton of a wall for the drywall. Looks like we have enough space for what we were thinking. Tomorrow we go out and interview for all positions. The phone has been ringing off the hook...seems people have trouble understanding the concelt of an open interview. Quite frankly I wish we could give everyone a job, but the reality of this is that we can only take the best of the best because of a limited budget. Our staff will be two pastry assistants, two cooks...one of them a sous-chef and 3 to 4 waitresses. Small but efficient....IHOPE.

Permits and such

In order to bring anything into the mall, be it a bag of cement or a pail of water one need to have a permit. Every day is a new permit. Its a little annoying that we have to get one everyday but what are you gonna do? The floor needed waterproofing and then the geniuses at management decided we needed to flood the waterproofing for 2 days to see if it was effective...so there go two days of work... Now were focusing on things other than the half a centimeter thick layer of tar under my kitchen...we focus on permits. To be perfectly honest the permit process here is much simpler than it would be in the US not as tight regulation wise and standards arent particularly restraining. But we need too many permits its just time consuming...all are relatively irrelevant and cheap except for one...liquor. We need to sell wine and cocktails to maintain a healthy profit margin, specially considering that we plan on doing a little lounge thing at night soon. But the price hovers between 1,000 and 10,000 dollars depending on who you know and who you are...wether or not you look chinese, indonesian, foreign etc. I think we wont overpay... But its still a biig reality check.

Good news, good news and some bad

First the bad...our investor, the guy who was going in with us 50/50 has a daughter that is opening a business

and doesn't have a much cash liquidity as he thought so he is probably backing out...thankfully he waited until the last minute. In any case its no biggy since we have enough money to take care of the business and ourselves for the foreseeable future but its still annoying huh? Well...nothing we can do about it. Now the good news...most importantly my dear, sweet and beautiful wife and I are going to have our first baby. I am soooooo happy right now...for those who know me...imagine my face...you know how goofy it is normally...now multiply that by 10. Good news again, our place is starting to take shape..the kitchen area is already marked out in brick and the floor is leveled out...tomorrow we lay down the tile in the kitchen floor as well as waterproofing....things are looking good. The way we figure it we lose a little and gain a baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We officially have our spot claimed

A drywall partition now separates our mall location from the mall itself. Right now the workers there are smoothing out the floor so that we can put in hardwood and tile. I don't know if I mentioned this before but our space is small...65 square metere or roughly 600 square feet and we have to take advantage of it as much as possible. We just found out that right next to us there will soon be a discotheque, there is already a poolhall and a couple of cafe's. Its funny for me because I go to these cafe's and their menus are like 10 pages long and offer everything from fried rice to shrimp cocktail...I really dont think anything comes out good...you'd think people here would learn to focus...but its not in the language.
Our partner yesterday said he doesnt have enough money to take care of our project and about 4 others he is involved with and he asked if we can do it on our own. Truthfully its better this way because we dont have to deal with an outsider. We thought we would have an investor to minimize risk, but truthfully we can finance the restaurant oursleves without much stress, and this way we dont have a third party with power over us. It is actually a good thing, but yesterday I was a little upset because of the last-minuteness of it (I mean we open in about 8 weeks!) But I am riding on a wave of good news on the personal front and very happy right now...the only thing that really changes is I may change the deck oven to 2 convection ones or just get 2 decks instead of 3, Poor me right? Next we start planning for the woodburning oven.