This thing that we have going at The Wooden Table is a roller coaster of emotions. The spectrum usually ranges from pissed off (the fish monger cut the tails off?!) to stressed out (oh man, my gelée isn’t setting up) to amazement (all you do is soak these things in water and they end up looking awesome?). I don’t like roller coasters. Sometimes I have to remind myself what it is we’re trying to accomplish. So here it goes:

[begin note to self]

Today I caught myself thinking, “What are we doing? This is madness, how will we ever survive? The margins! The margins!” but I came to the realization that it’s about more than that. We’re not just playing restaurant. We’re trying to build a brand that stands for something. We want people to come to The Wooden Table expecting a unique meal and we want them to walk away having experienced a culture. (cough andthenmaybehireusforcatering cough) . . . underground catering . . . but anyways.

This thing isn’t a job or a hobby really, it’s a lifestyle. It’s non-stop googling exotic herbs, stalking celebrity chefs, and studying menus. Not to mention spending valuable brain power on random things like thinking of ways to make a 1.5″ cardboard cube look as cool as we could for as cheap free as possible. We live a certain way (good thing we love shopping for food) because The Wooden Table demands it from us. Life is like playing ball, if you hustle enough the Universe will give up the rock and when it does, you’d better be ready to do something with it. No lazy dreams, sleep is the cousin of death, {insert your own motivational phrase here}.

[end note to self]

Thanks for bearing with me dear reader, and thank goodness for this blog. I’ll file this one under Emotional Brain Dump and get back to cooking! Poisson!