Hello again.

Venison. For the Table. Served with Ramen Risotto and Pomegranate Duck Jus.

Friends, it’s been years. Literally. The last entry was 3 years ago and we recently celebrated Ruxbin’s 5th anniversary! To bring you up to speed, we’ve grown immensely and with 5 years under our belt comes lessons learned and experience, which brings beautiful things like… change. Edward, Jen and I were discussing the best medium to share the news, in our very own words, and then it dawned on us – we need to bring back the blog! So here it is, from Chef Edward himself:

As a chef I spend a lot of time wrestling with the question of how can we do better, what challenges can we give ourselves so that we push ourselves and continue to grow.

Five years have passed since Ruxbin opened its doors and in that time we’ve been able to achieve more than we could have ever dreamed for, created amazing memories, and have been part of so many wonderful lives. It’s been a storybook ride. And through these past five years we’ve always had an a la carte menu; it’s a format that has served us well, but like a toddler with a security blanket, I feel that holding onto that same menu is now stifling our development, constricting us from growing up, and maturing. By changing our format from a la carte to one that is a hybrid of tasting and dinner party, where a minimum of five dishes is required, where guests must commune with one another from the onset, I feel we’ve created an exciting new path and goal for ourselves.

So much of a good dining experience is the communion people share when they eat with one another, and I feel that this new format will foster a greater sense of a shared experience. I feel that as a kitchen we will be given more flexibility to be more creative, and bolder in our flavors. How can we put out our best when a diner only has one entree and no appetizers, how can we create a cohesive narrative with only one or two dishes? On the a la carte menu, however small it was, I always felt that I had to have at least one option of beef, poultry, seafood, and that more than one vegetarian entree on a list of five was excessive. With this menu I no longer feel those limitations, and that I can properly fulfill one of my duties as a chef, feed people better, and at the same time indulge one of my not-so-shameful pleasures, subversively feeding people more veggies. I feel that within these five dishes our guests can walk away pleasantly filled, we won’t have to wrestle so much with the odd dynamic that the dollar value of a plate should be reflected by the quantity served, if one piece is enough, and two is too much, than one piece it is.

A classical symphony usually consists of four parts, with this new format I’m taking a little liberty and giving us five parts, and I’m excited, because I feel that with a set menu we will have room to compose our own story, it won’t show all we can do in a given night, and each party will be given some room to create their own narrative, but it will allow us a fair chance to properly showcase what we’ve got.

Come join us for dinner, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Our Sample Menu can be viewed HERE.

p.s. thanks for following us all these years. More to come 🙂

Some Things Never Change

It’s hard to believe it was just two years ago when we were ridden with anxiety and with brave faces prepping for our very first Friday. It was the day Red Eye decided to splash us prematurely on a two page spread in their Restaurant Features, and in an odd coincidence the day the utility pole outside our back door came crashing down on neighbor Michael’s poor garage from the 70 mph winds foreboding one of the heaviest rain storms that summer.

I don’t know how, but we managed to do 63 covers (two full turns) all whilst uncomfortably blotting rain water relentlessly leaking through our windows and spilling onto the tables of some of the nicest and most understanding diners you could ever meet.

We have grown tremendously as a restaurant since then, gaining the attention of some heavy weights in the press and food world along the way. And while 63 covers today isn’t anything to sneeze at, it certainly doesn’t induce the same kind of trepidation it did two years ago.

There is an old griddle that we inherited from the previous restaurant tenant. The kind that looks like it’s been through hell and back. We’ve been using it, along with other pots, pans, refrigerators and serving ware that came with the space. Mostly because it saved us from going out and buying new. But over time, and from the great fortune of staying busy, the old things began disappearing one by one. And in its place would appear shinier things. But for some reason, this griddle, whose very first appointment was to heat up sourdough crostini which went along with a bowl full of steaming mussels, couldn’t be rid. And even after its bottom gave out and began warping, it’s still a crucial vessel used for some of the dishes we serve today.

The other day Vicki brought in a brand new griddle pan from a recent shopping trip. But in the same absurd manner in which my dad would wear the same worn sneakers for years and years refusing a new pair until the soles flop off, the cooks would reach straight past the brand new griddle every time and take down the old one. Puzzled by this, we asked if the new pan wasn’t the right kind. “No, it just doesn’t make the same flavor as the old guy” Ed would say to us. Could be. I speculate it also brings a sense of old comfort to the rapidly growing and evolving kitchen. It keeps us grounded and reminds us where we began.

Cheers to our Two Year Anniversary!

Homefries

They say Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, and flattered we were when we saw that Geekeats  “cloned” our fries.   We were very impressed with his method (score on the $2 fry cutter btw), and he even used a similar silver bowl!  Could’ve fooled us.

So I thought I’d follow suit and document our process so you and Geekeats can see how we make our fries, step by step, and perhaps try your hand at it at home:

Morning Potato Delivery arrives:

Potatoes go for a scrub and a peel:
Scrubbed	Peeled
Happily soaking (prevents oxidizing & softens potato) as they wait their turn to get cut....
Brute Strength or Methodical Finesse?	Methodical Finesse.
Cut fries soak to remove starch:
Quality Control	Starch water drained
Off to the fryer!
Fry Round 1 @ 325 degrees: Soft and cooked through	Fry Round 2: To order @ 350 degrees until GBD (Golden Brown & Delicious;)
Hot out of the fryer, the fries get tossed in a large bowl (larger surface area increases coating potential) with garlic confit, parsley, kosher salt and love. Toss well so as to get a coat of garlic confit goodness on each fry.
Parsley	Kosher Salt
Garlic Confit	Don't be timid, get in there
The fries are then served with our housemade Chipotle Aioli which consists of egg yolks, oil, lemon, garlic, and chipotle peppers.
Money	Ruxbin Garlic Fries
Enjoy:)

an exciting day at ruxbin

February 16, 2012

6am.  GQ Magazine announces their 2012 Ten Best New Restaurants in America.  Ruxbin makes the cut at #9.  We. Are. Floored.

10am.  I get a text from Jenny:  “A guy had a tripod setup taking photos of our storefront, asked who he was shooting for and he said ABC.  I was out in my pink socks and crocs too.”  And yes, he glanced at her feet and gave her a funny look.

That's hot, Jen.

12pm.  Excitement erupts in the kitchen as Nate arrives with our brand new Cotton Candy machine!  A vast upgrade from our original one (generously gifted to us by Rosy).

The Real Deal.

1pm. Jason and Ed haul up lumber to the Rooftop, work on the Garden begins. This year’s goal: triple the garden size and have a bee hive.

Planter Boxes

5pm.  Family Meal.  The crew goes festive and makes carne asada,  fiesta-style~

People ask if we eat well at the restaurant...

yes.

5:15pm. We bust out the celebratory GQ Cookies.

Chef loves cookies.

Cookie Party.

🙂

12am.  Service is over, clean down is finished. Ed sits with the staff and says a few heartfelt words as we pop a little bubbly to celebrate and wind down the night.

Thankful to our guests and staff for another great night.  May we always continue to Push.

House Rules

Welcome to Ruxbin.

Thank you for joining us for dinner. We are excited to cook for you and have you as our guest. Ruxbin is our home. It houses our dreams and values. And while we invite you to be our guest, there are house rules.

House Rules:

Our food is labor intensive, our kitchen is tiny, your patience is appreciated.

No large groups: Parties up to 6 Sunday-Thursday, 4 Friday & Saturdays.

As this is a small restaurant, we may ask for your table after you’ve finished. 

We seat complete parties only.

Waitlist Courtesy: Let’s talk Commitment.  If you’re on the waitlist, you are committing to dine with us and we are committing to seat you. If your plans change, give us a courtesy call to allow other guests the opportunity to dine with us.

If you are in the Waiting area, please be patient while you wait to be waited on.

No grouchy pants allowed. You are responsible for agreeing to your wait time.  If you think the wait will ruin your evening, please do not leave your name on our wait list.

Please take phone calls outside. No laptops. No iPads.

It’s no secret that we are a tiny place. We max out at 32 seats, 10 tables for two and 3 booths. We have a kitchen probably smaller than the one you have at home, and no walk-in refrigeration which limits our storage space.  The other day we had a guest demand that we provide them with an extra chair- we don’t have extra chairs lying around, there is no storage for such thing. What you see is all that we have, and if your party is that large, then we simply are not able to accommodate you. We have limitations. Therefore, a set of House Rules are in order, to ensure an enjoyable experience for both our guests as well as the members of our Ruxbin Family.

Now what do I mean by “enjoyable experience”? Well, for one, by far the most popular question we receive here at Ruxbin is “how long is the wait”?  And this is where the experience begins… You see, the wait depends on you, the customer.  Every evening we typically fill the house by 6:30.  From there on we go on a wait and start allowing walk-ins to place their names on the waitlist.  And every evening there are several people that decide to not show up for their tables without cancellation notice.  This, my friends, screws both of us over, but mainly it screws you, the Diner.  It’s your fellow diners that do this to you.  Their place on the waitlist commits them a table for the night, meaning there is one less table to give out to you.  So either the previous customer that walked in equates to you having a longer wait or possibly them taking the last table for the night.

Take it from a fellow diner that came in the other night, visiting from LA:  “I love how you are walk in only, anyone can come in. Instead of having to wait 5 months to eat here, I only have to wait an hour and a half!”.  Here someone appreciates why we decided to stay walk in only in the first place – to be accessible. Given that we only have 32 seats, if we actually took reservations we would fill up so quickly that you’d have to plan your reservations far in advance.

So here’s a typical scenario: It’s Thursday night, the tables are full and the waitlist begins.  There are already several tables ahead of you waiting including Dan’s.  Now, you walk in at 6:45pm and ask for a table for 4, I typically have one of two answers:  A) There is a wait and the next table is estimated to be available around XX:XXpm  or   B) The wait list is full for the night and I am not able to take any more tables.  Now,  let’s say customer Dan haphazardly put his name on the waitlist thinking “well, I’m not going to wait that long, but just in case I will put my name down” (thinking no harm, no damage) and ends up eating elsewhere without giving us a call.  Well, if our buddy Dan gave me a simple courtesy call to cancel, that table could’ve been yours. But alas, you’ve already walked out the door 2 hours ago looking for another dinner option because you and I were both under the impression that Dan would be coming back for his table.

The above has been one of the toughest jobs I’ve had to do- turning away eager diners at the door, i.e. “But I just flew in from San Francisco”, “But I just took public transportation for 2 hours to get here”, “But I hired a babysitter for the night to eat here” , “But its my birthday”.  Trust me, all the heart wrenching pleas I hear at the door tug at my heart too, to the point that when I’m hosting, the kitchen braces themselves for critical mass and by night’s end are moments away from the breaking point, all because Vicki lets the crowds in. I can’t help but want to accommodate as many guests as I can.  But when we have a tiny restaurant that is able to only seat so many guests per night, and many are being turned away, all I can do is ask for a simple few rules to be followed so that people that want to eat here, can and enjoy themselves while doing so.

I’ve been learning a lot in the 1 year 4 months 11 days since we’ve opened.  I’ve experienced the spectrum from some really great guests to some that just tend to be plain, mean. But one thing I can certainly recognize, is that while we are in the hospitality industry with the intention to serve others, there is a fine line between being hospitable vs being a doormat.  Ruxbin is our home. We spend more time here than with our families.  It houses our dreams and values and we look forward to cooking for others. And while we invite you to be our guest, there are house rules.

 

Making the List

Lists are my sanity.  Making them, seeking them, referring back to them as often as I can, crossing them off, and repeating the process over again.  If you live by them (particularly those of the silent badgering To Do variety) just as much as I do, you’d understand how essential they are for processing a multitude of things at once.  On my desk right now is a shopping list of groceries that hadn’t made the day’s delivery, a list of phone calls and emails to return, a list of pros and cons (of a deeply personal matter that needn’t be divulged here), a list of places visited and remembered in Paris this past Labor Day, a list of neglected lists from previous weeks (ranked of course by priority), a list of goals for Ruxbin written in shorthand, and a crumpled up prep list Eddy must have left behind at some point.

But lists are also my repose.  There is nothing I enjoy greater than combing through somebody’s cherished book list, playlist, or bucket list.  While there is hardly any time for watching movies these days, I still like to check the box office list from time to time to see the weekend gross.  There is something very gratifying about making your way down a list.  The cognitive leg work of sorting things out has already been done, leaving you with the easy option to relate or dissociate.

Which brings me to a rather momentous list that’s recently touched our lives here at Ruxbin.  The abridged version is that we were fortunate enough to experience the “popular new kid” phase last summer when we first opened our doors, as evidenced by the frequency of nights we’d run out of tables.  And luckily, our passage into the “old news” bit wasn’t so painful, as we were still filling capacity with ease on most nights.  But the “hottest newest” effect was in truth beginning to wear off midsummer.  At first, we’d reason that we were experiencing slow season in Chicago just like everybody else.  Who would want to be cooped up inside on a warm summer night anyway?  Summertime is numbered in this city, and if we weren’t ourselves tied to running a restaurant we’d be at the lake with our coolers too.  But to be honest, the dip in covers had some of us a little concerned.

In a surprising turn of events a mere week after addressing this eventual slowdown, we were named 5th Best New Restaurant in the country by Bon Appetit in their highly regarded restaurant issue.  I imagine most consider these rankings and Top Ten lists arbitrary to some degree.  Especially because opinions are by definition subjective.  But when the opinion belongs to a trusted and well-traveled gourmet who carries a great deal of influence in the industry, it dares to cross over into something more than just an opinion.   We’ve certainly had noteworthy mentions in the press before, but nothing as bold as “Number 5 in the Country”.  Something about this label imparted a new sense of validation at Ruxbin for what we do each service and all the hours surrounding it.  And after the initial wave of excitement, it began to pose some serious inner-reflective questions which had me feeling the need to form some sort of construct to understand the meaning behind it all.

This past fall break, we were lucky enough to book a table at Le Chateaubriand, the highest ranked restaurant in Paris and 9th in the world according to Pellegrino’s 2011 list.  I was anticipating the meal of my life.  And as each course presented itself to us, I found myself scrutinizing a little more and indulging a little less.  It was as though the weight of this “Number 9” had me stranded in a jungle of critiques.  There were palate-rousing flavors [a roasted chicken so replete with almond extract, a pairing so odd that it stripped away any sense of familiarity I ever had to chicken] and textures I have never experienced before [duck heart coated in seeds and having every bit of an organ-like texture you’d imagine an organ to be].  I tried creatures that will haunt me forever [salty barnacles resembling the claw of a sea dragon which juiced with each bite and had minuscule mussels latched tightly to its skin].  There was shock factor [a raw mushroom opulently covered in rich dark chocolate with nothing more than a sprig of mint] and moments of sheer appreciation [a refreshing ceviche with pickling juice and peach, and an array of herbs piled atop a floral scented ice cream].  It wasn’t until Eddy cut the circuit of critiques at the table by raising a pretty straight-forward question that we realized our gaffe.  It wasn’t whether or not we liked the barnacles or chocolate covered mushroom, as that would be debatable.  He simply asked if we were having a good time.  And to that our answer was a resounding yes.

What I learned most from that five course dinner at Le Chateaubriand and how it relates to us at Ruxbin is that there really is no universal check-list of criteria.  What makes a good restaurant for one person could be if the food has challenged them or not, and for somebody else it might be the level of service received.  For Bon Appetit editor Andrew Knowlton, I think the determining factor was whether or not a restaurant afforded him a good and memorable experience.  As sited straight from The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, “an interesting experience in a simple establishment, where exceptional innovation was discovered, could be judged better than a more opulent meal from a widely feted restaurant team.”   When Mr. Knowlton recognized something special about Ruxbin, it was reaffirming and humbling for all of us.  In our hearts, we knew we had a good thing going.  A restaurant that, above all things, cultivates sincerity in both the food we cook and the service we give.  But to see it recognized on a very national scale is a privilege that we know we cannot take lightly.

We had the opportunity to share a round of drinks with Mr. Knowlton a couple nights ago, and we thanked him for the recognition.  He responded by thanking us for a great meal, one that he apparently hadn’t forgotten in over four months’ time, as he recounted with fondness our bouillabaisse-like mussels, the crispy eggplant salad with golden beet batons, and how warm and inviting our staff was.  Naturally, all this comes with more pressure to do more and be better.  But if you were to ask what it means to be number 5, my answer would be simple.  We try our best to ensure our guests have a good time, and perhaps they will leave with a happy rivet in the memory of the dinner they’ve just been served.

Savoring pastries in Paris.

5-Hour Energy

It's been busy. Fueling up the crew. This carbo load will get us to family meal:)

Patio Plans

Design:

Sketchbook

Team Consensus

Materials:

Pallet

Medicine Cabinet

Man with the plan:

Davide

Installation begins this week. Some may think we are nearing the end of “patio season” here in Chicago, but technically patio season runs until December 1st:) Exciting things to come.

Sixty-40

by Ed

I love pork. Well the truth is I love almost every food product, but pork is indeed wonderful. It’s versatile, tastes great cured, roasted, and fried, and bacon tastes so good that I often chide my cooks that adding bacon to a new recipe is just lazy or cheating. Very few things taste bad with bacon. Actually I personally can’t think of anything that tastes bad with bacon, maybe caviar? But if I remember correctly I think the general Law of Bacon translates to:

Bacon= Awesome

Bacon > (meh)

(meh) + Bacon is always = or > (Good) and sometimes = Awesome therefore:

(meh) < (Anything) +(Bacon), which is either always = or > (Good) and quite possibly (Awesome)

Fortunately for me I’m not the the only one who feels this way and people as a whole have loved pork for quite sometime. The fact is that Pigs are one of the earliest domesticated animals in our history, and as with any product that is continuously bred for our tastes, the pork that we enjoy on our tables is constantly changing. A clear example of this is that the pork that we readily pick up at the supermarket today is 30% leaner than what people were able to enjoy as recently as in the 70s.

Luckily for us who fall under the banner of “a leaner pig is a less tasty pig”, there has always been a stubborn and small group of renegade farmers resistant to the call for ”[an]Other white meat”. Refusing to allow what we now consider heritage breeds to fall to the wayside, these farmers have continued to raise pigs based on flavor rather than other values, such as the ability to be quickly brought to slaughter or the procurement of a leaner meat. In the past decade or so the demand for pork with the old flavor has surged, and it’s encouraging to see a growing group of farmers dedicated to this movement, like Faith’s Farm.

One of the perks of owning a restaurant is that you get invited to some pretty amazing events. Recently the Ruxbin crew was invited to Faith’s Farm for their 3rd Annual Butcher & Booze event. The purpose of the event was to get like-minded restaurants together to share their thoughts on farm to table products and the local food movement.

A quick note on Faith’s Farm. Faith’s Farm is one of those stubborn farms that decided to raise an old-fashioned pig, and in their own words, proudly and rightfully, proclaim “All our livestock is raised the old fashion way: on free-range pasture that is not chemically treated….. They are raised with a gentle and humane hand. ” Faith’s Farm, located in Bonfield, IL is a 90 minute drive from Chicago, two hours away if you’re prone to getting lost like I am. It’s run by a woman named Kim, one of the most hospitable and strongest-willed people I’ve met. Kim turned her back to a white-collar job and willed a succesful farm into existence with basically no experience and what I presume must have been an amazing combination of grit, gumption and determination. If you’ve ever read a Michael Pollan book, imagine one of those ideal bucolic farms he profiles that are sustainable and hell-bent to be the opposite of so many of the nightmarish factory farms in our country, and that’s what Kim has been able to create with Faith’s Farm.

At the farm one of the main events was the live slaughtering and butchering of both a lamb and a hog. Watching an animal slaughtered can be a harrowing experience and there is little joy to be found in the macabre event. Even so, the organizers felt that witnessing a slaughter first- hand was important because it has the ability to bring a much greater appreciation and understanding of how food products that we’re so familiar with, under the best circumstances, reaches our table, I agree.

The Hampshire-Berkshire Hog, right before the slaughter

The hog that was chosen was a magnificent animal. A crossbred Hampshire-Berkshire hog, obviously well fed and taken care of. Taken away from his group for the first time, the hog was clearly distressed. Taking note of this, Kim ordered that the hog be quickly put down, and he was taken down swiftly with a bolt to the head.

Sam, after the slaughter, showing us how to butcher a whole hog

Next we saw the pig being butchered. Under the skilled hands of Sam, the butcher, a hog that weighed nearly 300 lbs was quickly skinned and broken down into primal cuts in less than an hour. To put this in perspective, it can take me up to 20 minutes just to skin a large pork belly. The skill and craftmanship of Sam, bluntly put, was breath-taking. After the pork was broken down, we took a tour of Faith’s Farm, had a potluck dinner, enjoyed some booze, made some friends, and at the end of night we were given a very generous parting gift: whatever parts of the hog we would like.

For a restaurant Ruxbin unfortunately has very little refrigeration (no walk-in, reach-ins and lowboys only, in an apartment sized kitchen), and at the time we only had one menu item that used pork, our pork belly salad. I already had a fresh pork belly ready to cure in the fridge and wasn’t sure that if I picked up more I’d be able to sell it before it all went bad. I also knew we only had space for a couple pork-chops and a slab of pork belly. So in the end, that’s what we took.

Sun-burnt and tired from the day’s events we drove home giddy with the pork we were able to take home. The next day, with a clearer head after a good night’s sleep, I was able to take a better look at the pork belly that Kim had so generously given to us. I knew this was a good product, but under the flourescent lights of our kitchen, laying next to the pork belly that I had picked up from another purveyor, it was pretty mind-blowing to see the difference between the two. Kim’s pork belly had more layers of fat and meat. In Korea there is a prized pork belly known as “Heuk Dehji” which is loved for its five layers of meat and fat. Faith Farm’s pork belly made the prized “Heuk Dehji” seem homely, and our other pork belly emaciated.

So for the next week, unbeknownst to our customers, for the same price they were able to enjoy both a product who’s food cost would have nearly doubled what they were paying, and the finest specimen of pork belly that I or any of my cooks had ever worked with. Being able to do this as a cook brought my staff and I a lot of joy. There’s something beautiful about being able to send out a product that you know is wonderful, and allowing a guest to experience it unfettered of any grandiose background. Let the product speak for itself.

As Friday came that week, in the middle of our rush, the last portions of Faith Farm’s wonderful pork belly was coming to an end. I asked Gabe, who was working garde manger that day, how many orders we had left, and he responded “two orders, Chef”. From the corner of my eye I could see that the 2nd to last serving being plated was a generous portion of pork belly, so much so that I was about to have Gabe cut the portion down, but I stopped myself thinking that the end

to such a wonderful product should be celebratory and why not knock their socks off.

Of course that was the first Pork Belly Salad that has ever come back to our kitchen not fully devoured. I grilled the server what the problem was and she explained, with a look that could only be described as confused, that the table had said “the pork belly was too fatty and that they wanted a portion with less fat”. At this point you might expect the kitchen to be angered by such a response, but we found ourselves just laughing and incredulous. How could this be? “And no”, I said to the server “I will not send them another pork belly.” Instead I sent our expediter, Nate, to talk to the table and explain to them the origins of the pork belly we had just sent them, and to maybe clear up any misunderstanding they may have of the product. Maybe they hadn’t realized that pork belly was basically a generous portion of bacon. Minutes later, Nate came back with a grin that resembled a grimace. He informed me that the table upon his explanation responded that not only were they quite familiar with pork belly but they had much finer pork belly at many other establishments in Chicago, and that a proper pork belly should have a ratio of sixty-40, meat to fat. Gabe and I soon had a grin that resembled the one plastered on Nate’s face. This reaction was elicited by the fact that: 1. I, and any of my staff, would swear on nearly anything that you could not procure a better raw product than the one Kim had given us, and 2. neither I, nor any of my staff, had ever heard of this vaunted ratio of sixty-40.

Throughout the rest of service we joked amongst ourselves and even started using “sixty-40” as a punchline. Sometimes the only proper response to a situation is to just try to laugh it off. The truth is I wasn’t able to laugh it off, and later that night I started to wonder how the customer had come up with this ratio. Disturbed by the experience, unable to sleep, I decided to google sixty-40 and see if it had any relation to pork belly. What I found with some quick digging is that it is possible to order pork belly at a sixty-40 ratio, which made me pause and think “maybe that table was right”, but then I started to google Berkshire Hogs and here’s what I found:

A standard Berkshire hog should have 2 to 3 times the amount of intramuscular fat that a standard commodity hog would have, and in general is a much fatter pig than the ones people in the U.S. have become accustomed to.

If that’s the case, then it seems logical that a Berkshire hog’s belly would have a much higher ratio of fat to meat, much higher than the ratio of sixty-40 that our disgruntled table had expected. So what does this mean? I may be wrong, but this is what I believe: Sixty-40 is a standard that may have come about due to the leaner hog. It is not de facto, but maybe should be more correctly understood as the minimum requirement. And yes, maybe pork belly that is sixty-40 is what people have come to expect, but that doesn’t mean that such a ratio is what’s best. As a cook, as a chef, I’ve come to believe that predetermined notions and bias should often be put to the wayside, and a better question to ask when any of us have a particular dish or meal is not whether or not it meets a predetermined standard of quality, but whether or not it is satisfying. Did it make me happy, did I think it was tasty, or maybe even delicious. Food should be enjoyed on a visceral level, and not be judged like a dog show awarding points based on a “breed standard”.

I know in my heart that the pork belly we served was exceptional, that the fat on that once happy pig was cleaner and more unctuous than any other pork belly that I had ever had. And yes, the fat to meat ratio was generously beyond sixty-40, but that should be expected because anything that is exceptional will naturally break any silly standard or mold.

And so “sixty-40” has become a code word in our kitchen, it means “the minimum requirement” and in our kitchen if something is “sixty-40” that means that you better get back at it, because if you just put in the minimum requirement that means you did things half-assed, you didn’t put your heart into it, and you didn’t try your best. One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned working in the restaurant industry is that there are very few things that are meaningful in the kitchen, and in life, that can be accomplished with the minimum requirement.

With the minimum requirement Kim would never have been able to create Faith’s Farm. If Kim strived only to meet the industry standard of quality, if she didn’t push to make Faith’s Farm a place whose own standards were far above the industry norm, her pork and other produce would never have become what it is today: exceptional. In that same way, I hope that everyone at Ruxbin never settles for “sixty-40”, and instead I hope we strive and continue to push ourselves to be, in our own way, exceptional.

House-Grown Part II …

Here is a look at our growing garden.  Photos courtesy of Nate Chung.

Our heirloom tomatoes have gotten much taller and stronger. Growing among them are young sesame leaves, sourced straight from my mother's garden.

The Sun Gold tomatoes have already started to blossom. A good sign of juicy things to come!

Mint happily growing next to our Golden Sage.

Left: We've been using the Sweet Alyssum (edible flowers) to garnish our Soba. Right: Three rows of baby lettuces have just begun to sprout.

Jason's spring onions nestled in between the flowering kale are doing quite well too.

Our Bean Bush. Easily the most anticipated vegetable growing on the roof. We planted a colorful trio of Blue Lake 274, Cherokee Wax, and Purple Queens.

The baby lettuces were last to be planted but they are quickly sprouting and catching up.

                           The rooftop garden also serves as a nice respite during staff meals.  Here we are enjoying Tacos de Panza roofside. 

So Long, and Thanks for all the Trout

by Ed

Today, we’ve approached our first year anniversary  here at Ruxbin, and it’s amazing how much has taken place in the year. There’s so much that I’m thankful for, from our reception by the public, the positive press that we’ve garnered, our continual growth and maturity as a restaurant, to the fact that in an economy that isn’t in the best of times we’re still here, and not just surviving, but in many ways thriving.

Our success has been manifold, from the staff to the decor, from blind luck to naivety, to our loyal regulars and the overall positive reaction to our food. Which brings me to the point of this post: Trout.

From the onset of Ruxbin there has been one entree that has been with us from day 1, and that has been our Pan-Seared Trout.  Trout quickly became one of our signature dishes, and (in no small part through the imploring of our customers) is the only entree that has survived each menu change.

It’s a dish that I love for a number of reasons:

1. It takes a relatively common fish and treats it with the care and attention that would normally be shown to a protein of more exotic and/or greater value. For example, we fabricate the fish in a manner similar to that of sashimi and we pan sear it like one would a filet of Dover Sole.

2. It’s a dish composed of relatively simple ingredients whose sum becomes greater than its individual parts.

3.  It tastes pretty damn good.  As one of my cooks said “the dates, bulgur, and trout might not be a traditional combination, but tastes like it should be” (and that is a mighty fine compliment).

The trout has been one of Ruxbin’s standards, and if I were to personify it, it’s been a great friend to us. It’s been with us from the beginning, through thick and thin. With all that being said as we continue to grow and mature as a kitchen, there comes a time when we have to retire a dish to make room for others.  So as we’re at the one year mark, and especially when we feel that a dish is no longer evolving, it becomes clear that we should say good-bye, for the time being, to our dear friend.  In celebration of this transition, this will be our last week of trout. And as a thank you to all those who loved this dish, I’ve posted the recipe, as well as a few photos that show part of the process that we go through to get this “common” fish to your plate.

Trout has been cleaned and filleted, and is now ready for pin-boning

40 orders of trout, depending on how fast you are this can kill your prep time, taking from anywhere to 40 mins if you're fast, and up to 90 mins if you're a slow poke

This is the light at the end of the tunnel: Trout has been portioned, 4 oz each, and is ready for either the pan or the fridge

1. Check if the skin has become crispy 2.Push flesh down with a spoon so that the entirety of the skin is in direct contact with the pan 3. Move fillets around the pan so that cooking is even throughout

We've found that the key to an extra crispy skin is that you need someone standing behind you, arms crossed, looking slightly bored. (In this pic Jason's doing his best to fill this important role.)

Accoutrements for our beloved trout

Finishing the plate you can get fancy with tweezers and spoons, but if you're at home feel free to use your fingers.

RECIPE  for PAN-SEARED TROUT w/BULGUR WHEAT TABOULEH, ASPARAGUS & DATES       yields 1 entree

TROUT (protein portion)

4 oz            Trout (filleted, belly trimmed, scaled and pin-boned, cut into 2 pieces)

1 T              Canola oil/olive oil blend

2  T             Butter

1/8 ea        Lemon (Wedge)

3 sprigs      Thyme

1 t                Shallots (finely chopped)

Procedure:

1. Place saute pan on high heat, and wait for it the pan to get smoking hot, you literally need to see smoke coming off the pan.

2. Have your trout ready by your side, and lightly season the skin of the trout with salt and pepper. Add the oil to the pan, swirl the oil around so that the pan is evenly coated, and wait until the oil has the same viscosity as water.

3. Gently skim the surface of the pan with one of your trout fillets, if the skin is starting to stick this means that the oil is not hot enough, if it doesn’t, lay the fillet in the pan. Repeat with your other fillets.

4. With a spoon gently press the flesh of the trout down so that there is even contact with the skin of the trout and the pan.

5. As the skin crisps up lightly season the flesh of the trout with salt and pepper.

6. Crush the thyme with your hand and add it to the pan, be careful as the thyme will pop as you add it to the pan, tilt the pan away from you so that you don’t get too many splatter burns.

6. After about 45 seconds, attempt to lift the fillet off the pan with a spoon. If it sticks that means it is not ready, don’t worry, have some patience, the skin will release when its ready. If the fillet releases look underneath it to gauge how crispy the skin looks, if the skin resembles the top of a creme brulee its ready for the next step.

7. Add butter to the saute pan, and swirl. Lift the fillets so that the butter can get underneath the skin of the trout. The butter will turn the skin a golden brown, and will regulate the temperature of the pan.

8. Add a squeeze of lemon juice to the pan, and place rind in the pan as well, be careful as this will case splatter as well, so if you have a gas range momentarily turn off the heat and than put it back on, otherwise you’ll end up flambéing your trout.

9.  Add shallots to the pan, quickly spoon the brown butter in your pan over the trout fillets until the flesh is no longer translucent and has become an opaque white.

10. Remove fillets from the pan, skin side up, and pour the contents of the pan onto the fillets.

11. Dry fillets with a paper towel, and now your done with the protein portion.

BULGUR WHEAT TABOULEH (starch protion)

2/3  C  Bulgur Wheat (cook according to directions, and cool)

1 ea      Green Onion (chopped along a bias)

1 t         Sesame Seeds (Black)

1 t         Shallots (finely chopped)

1 T        Red Onion (chopped)

1 t          Lemon Juice

1 T         Butter

Procedure:

1. Place saute pan under high heat, and wait until it begins smoking.

2. Add butter, wait until it browns, and add the shallots, be careful that they don’t burn.

3.  Add Bulgur Wheat, flip the pan so that the Bulgur wheat is evenly coated with butter.

4. Add all other ingredients, add a dash of salt, and adjust for taste.

5. Bulgur is done when the grain becomes crispy on the outside, but still soft in the inside.

ASPARAGUS & DATES (vegetable portion)

3 ea     Asparagus ( bases gently peeled)

2 ea     Dried Dates ( rehydrated in hot water, for about 10 mins, and than halved)

1 t        Canola oil/Olive oil blend

1 t        Butter

1 t        Shallots

Procedure:

1.  In a hot saute pan, and wait until it shimmers.

2.  Add dates and wait until they brown, ~20 seconds.

3. In the same pan add the asparagus and wait until they become charred on at least one side.

4. Finish with butter and shallots, season lightly with salt.

BASIL OIL (sauce portion)

30 ea    Basil leaves

1 ea       Garlic, clove

A/N      Extra Virgin Olive oil

Procedure:

1.  Blanch Basil leaves in boiling water, less than 5 seconds, and than shock leaves in ice water.

2. Squeeze out as much water from the blanched basil as possible.

3. Place Basil in a blender with the garlic clove and add just enough oil so that basil can be blended until smooth.

4. Adjust with salt to your taste.

ASSEMBLY

1. Sauce plate first with a light drizzle of basil oil around the edges of your plate.

2.  Place Bulgur Tabouleh in the middle of your plate with cooked dates mixed in.

3.  Place finished trout on top of the tabouleh

4. Arrange asparagus so that it looks pretty on the plate

5. Put a light smear of the basil oil on the edge of each trout fillet.

House-Grown

We’ll be making a go of our very own rooftop garden this month.  Plans have been brewing among our kitchen crew since the first hint of spring, and images of tri-color carrots and candy-striped radishes have danced in our heads all winter long.  Despite a few serious logistical concerns (having no direct water line would make for a tricky irrigation system, figuring which crops could withstand the colossal amount of full sun our aluminum tinned roof absorbs on a hot summer day could be somewhat limiting, how do we protect the tiny sprouts from the torrential 50mph winds often experienced on roof level, how much weight can this old building even support, and most importantly who will haul up the stacks of 40 lb. soil bags four flights of rickety stairs?) we resolved to move forward.

Here we go!

Leapfrogging the soil one flight at a time

A winded crew taking a much needed breather after lugging up 640 pounds of dirt

Configuring the raised beds

Creating a layer of compost using egg crates, shells, and coffee grinds

As the garden grows we’ll continue to document and share the progress with you.

King of the Pit

Before we get into it, let me introduce myself. Hi, I’m Nate and you may remember me from previous mentions like  The Sum is Greater and Shot Clock. I’m excited to be back working with the Rux crew again and thought I’d write up a guest post on the blog…

Two Thursdays ago I had my first experience washing dishes for a restaurant. Stationed at the north end of the kitchen I reigned supreme with a floor to ceiling drying rack above, a ginzu-3000 spray gun beside, a proper three-compartment sink below, and the world’s fastest automatic dishwasher. My shift began at Noon as the cooks trickled in, barely scenting of their pre-work cigarettes. During their prep I commenced the jet-streamed spray down, the scrub, and the sanitation process. Andres, the seasoned mogul of the soapy empire bequeathed his techniques before his departure:

–        “Don’t use your fingers to scrub the pans. You’ll tire quickly. Fold the Scotch Brite, crush it with a fisted hand, and go to town on the stainless steel. Apply Bar Keepers friend when necessary.

–        During service, you get first priority on hot water. Don’t let anyone get near your store. It rinses the plates and pans, but most importantly it keeps the front’s glasses streak free.

–        The line cooks need sauté pans. Keep them well stocked. Pick them up as soon as they’re done. That means they’ll be barely red-hot. Fold a dry bar towel in thirds and grab the handle. Yell out, “Hot, coming through.” Don’t forget to keep the fry bowls, sizzle plates, steak plates, pork plates, calamari plates, salad boats, and soup bowls in circulation too.

–        The front of the house needs glasses, flatware, and plates. Keep them happy with a regular fresh washing.

–        Everything is priority. Attack all simultaneously.”

Inheritance in hand I took reign of my jurisdiction for the next ten hours, breaking for 4 minutes to swallow my family meal and calamansi juice gifted from one of the cooks.

Amidst the regularity of motion, I entered that clichéd zone where the surroundings faded away. An inner dialogue emerged. I was feeling the weight of the oncoming evening. This was no post dinner party clean up. Already my wrists were fatiguing and my hands started to wrinkle. I called them Grandma hands when I was a wee lad swimming with dolphins and Lego boats in the bathtub. Two decades later I was climbing up the ivory tower receiving the marks of membership with scholarships, fellowships, grants, and a masters degree. My pursuit to be a good Chinese son, a professional, an academic, and just smart was in conflict at 6:15 PM. What in the world was I doing here? Wouldn’t I be better slotted elsewhere? I have been groomed for roles unlike this.

A lifeline then jolted my dwindling state. Inner grumbling morphed into what some have called the zone, a Zen moment, an epiphany. Monotony and rhythm evoked a thought inspired by Brother Lawrence, “The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clutter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament.” Quite a different outlook from mine. Here the screaming demands for clean pans, plates, and flatware paired with cramping hands and achy shoulders prompted Brother Lawrence not toward humiliation but toward humility. Dare I say even joy. Challenged by this ascetic’s example, I chewed my slice of pie and considered this quandary a Lenten moment.

The evening pushed forward. White noise from sizzling vegetables ebbed and flowed with laughs of happy diners outside. I felt good. Chef checked on me regularly, making sure my countenance was positive. During more frantic cycles Jenny, the expediter, and Gabe, the Garde Manger, would slip beside me and help load the dishwasher. Around 10:45 I thought that I was moving steadily, but all those around me observed otherwise. Chef and Jenny forced me to take 5 on the loft. They pushed a plate of hanger steak in front of me. “This is only the half way point,” Chef warned me, “You need to eat something.” Slouching on the wooden bench I stared aimlessly. I just relished those moments away from water so that my hands might dry. I wasn’t hungry. I wanted to keep attacking that growing pile, get through the rest of the evening, and finish well. At last midnight struck as the last kitchen tongs steamed their way out of the dishwasher. I was finished.

The restaurant dishwasher, I learned, plays a crucial role in the kitchen brigade. He inaugurates a vessel to hold carefully composed dishes and reincarnates it back into the cycle. Without him the kitchen would not function. He is integral as much as the cooks, the hostess, the wait staff, the diners. He operates in a position that is not often highly regarded. It is not a flashy role. But indeed it is a necessary one. This position supports an entire system.

After a single evening among the suds I glimpsed briefly the challenges, weight, and fulfillment of being a dishwasher. I tip my proverbial hat to Andres and all the kings of the sinks. May you continue to renew tired plates and pots with vigor; may you receive joy as you serve your coworkers and diners.

* Nate, this blog’s author, oscillates between host, server assistant, resident artist, expediter, and friend at Ruxbin. He is an aesthete with who gravitates toward gourmand behaviors and community development. Check out more of him at www.natechung.com

Improvising

Nearly every dish we serve at Ruxbin has been developed over the course of several weeks in thoughtful layers to achieve a proper balance of flavor and texture without compromising the integrity of the ingredients.  But in opportune moments that come to us in the form of a quiet Sunday dinner service where the kitchen is alive and ready to build from the mise en place they have worked all afternoon to prepare, there is a flash of inspiration and in a matter of minutes, a series of savory treats appear in the window pass.   Some make it to the tables of our guests to enjoy as an amuse-bouche.  Some are gobbled up on sight.

“Spring Bite” – bacon, blue cheese, kumquat & basil  (photo courtesy of Iris K. Shim)

 

“Caesar Salad” –  Brioche crouton, endive, preserved lemon, parsley pluche, white anchovy & Caesar dressing

“Bistro Salad” – Quail egg, frisee, lardons, baby radish, sherry vinaigrette & crostini

“Ants on a Log” –  Crispy potato pirouette, nicoise olives, creme fraiche, fine herbs & red beet puree

This one is a nod to a Thomas Keller classic.  Ours was a hollowed eggshell filled with goat cheese grits, rib jus, and a laminated potato chip.  A playful treat for the front crew at the end of service.

 

PUSH

A picture book from the moment we enter the doors at Ruxbin to the very end of the night:

6:00am. Ed arrives

6:04am.  We start the six hour braise for the short ribs at the end of service around midnight.  That means its an extra early start the following morning.

10:00am.  Deliveries begin to arrive – meat, fish, bread, produce.

11:30am.  Kenny delivers the linens, always with a smile.

12:00pm.   Everyday, we put aside the piling tasks of the day for a moment to meet over a quick bite, pour some freshly steeped french press coffee and discuss the day’s urgencies, updates, concerns, and ideas. I truly think that it’s these meetings that have helped us stay grounded and keep a pulse on each other. It’s our think-tank time where we can regroup, bounce ideas, get advice, and simply have a time of exchange before we run back and tend to the demanding list of tasks at hand.

1:30pm. Cooks arrive

2:00pm.  Prep begins

2:00pm. Running errands throughout the afternoon, Home Depot typically makes the list

4:20pm.  Sprucing up the herbs

4:30pm.   Front of the house setup begins

5:00pm.  Family meal is served to the staff

5:30pm.  Doors open, service begins

7:00pm.  Rush begins

8:23pm.  Finishing touches at the pass

9:31pm. Tables start to wind down with dessert and coffee

10:45pm.  After service all stations are cleaned down

11:00pm.  Out of the dish and ready to put away for tomorrow

11:30pm.  Closing out the night

11:47pm.  After spending a long working day together, the Ruxbin crew becomes family.

Opening a restaurant is one thing… maintaining a restaurant requires a shift in gears. This is why we push.

 

*Special thanks to Roger for capturing our day.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

Note to self: Think twice before putting Chicken & Waffles on the menu!!

by Ed

Ruxbin's Chicken and Waffles

This post is a bit belated, as Chicken & Waffles have been off the menu for about a month now, but I was reminded of this sentiment when I ate at Boiler Room the other night and spoke to the chef, Cody, about how much Amish Chicken they were going through a week.

Cody told me they were going through about 3 cases a week. When we ran Chicken & Waffles, we went through 6 cases.

To put this in context:

Boiler Room seats at least twice as many people as Ruxbin, is incredibly busy and successful, and is open for lunch and dinner, whereas Ruxbin is only open for dinner. For the amount of services we’re open and the size of our space, that’s an insane amount of chicken.

It all started when I got the idea to do a riff on Chicken & Waffles for our fall menu.  The dish consisted of a pan roasted chicken breast, a cumin and cheddar waffle that was split, then stuffed with the leg and thigh which we would confit,  shred, and make nice and crispy in a saute pan, apple and red onion compote, and a savory citrus gravy. We thought it  would be fun and playful, and our fingers were crossed that people would like it.

People loved the dish, and it quickly became the crowd favorite, outpacing our second most popular entree 2:1.

To keep up with the demand we had to literally buy a case of Chicken every single day. It got to the point that we would have daily races to see who could break-down whole chickens the fastest, with me and our dishwasher/prep-cook, Andy, topping off the list, and constantly battling back and forth. We got so good that we could break down a whole case together in less than 8 minutes flat. That’s 24 chickens, both breasts and thighs removed, cleaned and squared off, divided among 2 highly motivated cooks, fabricating whole chickens at a rate of 40 seconds per chicken. To keep it fun we would make small wagers to see who could break down a case fastest, and I strongly believe that we would have gotten even faster if Andy didn’t lose his nerve in the end and back-out when I suggested that if he won I would agree to grow a mustache and if he lost he would shave his off.

At this point we were selling so much chicken that Vicki would bemoan the fact that we would need to have someone stationed just to slice the chicken breast as it came out of the oven during service.  I would half-joke that we probably sold more Chicken & Waffles than 90% of the Waffle houses in the city, and our protein cooler was quickly taken over by all the chicken wings, tenders, and the chicken carcasses that we didn’t have room for on our menu.

oh no!

Overwhelmed by this mountain of ever-growing chicken parts and not knowing what else to do, our solution was to try to consume it.  Staff meals had gone from a fairly balanced meal of protein, starch, and greens, to what just seemed like chicken, chicken, and more chicken.

Payton, one of our trusty line-cooks, was sick of making coleslaw everyday, I was sick of feeling like the head butcher of a chicken factory, Jenny was just plain sick of eating family meal, and in fear of her wasting away, I had to man-up and put an end to this whole Chicken madness.

This wasn’t an easy decision to come to; at this point there was a palpable fear that if we took Chicken & Waffles off our menu we would anger the masses. But I said to myself, “I am no slave to any one dish!”, and I finally found the courage to do so.

It also helped that as I was coming to this decision, in the middle of dinner service, the waffle maker broke down.

'twas a good and loyal waffle maker, who sacrificed itself for us

Perhaps he’ll make another cameo in the future.

Milestones

They say a child at two months can hold his head up for short periods of time (albeit a little wobbly) follow objects across its field of vision, smile back at you, and sometimes, if he is developing quickly enough, he can bear weight on his little legs.

by Jenny, (1:47pm)

In some ways, opening Ruxbin has been like raising a child. It might not be as severe a responsibility as actual parenting, but the similarities abound.  Ruxbin has been that ever-demanding, attention-craving child that depends on you alone, the first-time parent who is kept up at night plagued by worry but also a hopeful anticipation of things to come.

If you do not muster up the energy to stay behind and start the arduous process of the 13 hour chicken stock boil after a late service that forces you on your feet for twelve straight hours, then we do not have mussels for the next night, and what do you tell the lovely elderly couple that stop in occasionally just for the mussels if there are none to offer?

If you do not will yourself to climb out of bed at 8am the following morning to receive the CSA boxes from the folks at Triple A Farms, then how will our neighbors receive their farm-fresh-vegetable rations for the week?

If you do not make time to observe your cooks, the dishwasher, and servers to see to it that they are happy and listen to their needs (i.e. running out to Stanley’s last minute if the lemons didn’t make the delivery, getting the kitchen tool that makes their prep a little bit easier, and making sure everyone gets fed family meal before service) then who will provide a good working environment in which we share every waking hour of the day together?

When it becomes abundantly clear that others depend on Ruxbin, you no longer have the option not to maintain the kitchen equipment (which concertedly takes turns breaking down), or keep on top of the taxes, the bills, and all the expenses that come to you in a messy, heaping pile of receipts every day.  It’s not the easiest thing in the world to do but someone’s gotta do it.

But the joy of seeing a cab pull up and drop off an array of people at our door who may have been looking forward to dinner just as much as we were anticipating them, or watching the anonymous faces light up after the very first bite, and hearing Andres our dishwasher sing while he works (a clear indication that it is a good night) makes this all worthwhile.

It’s Ruxbin smiling back at you and showing he can now bear weight on his little legs.

2 Weeks

Summer has been in full swing, producing delectable Michigan berries, sweet Illinois corn,  gorgeous heirloom tomatoes and bountiful produce galore.  But soon enough, the heat will simmer down, the seasons will change, and we will gladly welcome the cool fall.  Changing of the seasons is a thing of beauty, and lucky for us in Chicago, we get to experience all four. Along with airs of nostalgia from past memories, the fall will bring forth exciting crops from the new harvest, and naturally, Ruxbin will roll into the Autumn Menu.  We’d like to inform you that Ruxbin will be closed August 29 – September 5 as we work on the Autumn Menu which will be introduced in stages post Labor Day, starting September 7.   

Til then, soak in the sun and come on by for a last taste of summer.  There are still two weeks left! =)

Hours: Tuesday – Sunday 5:30 – 10pm. Closed August 29-Sept 5.

Grand Open: Project Soybean

 

By Vicki

July 1st, this coming Thursday, will be Ruxbin’s Grand Open! And what better way to open than to give to others.  So for our grand opening day, we are excited to be supporting the Nutrition & Education International Foundation with a full donation of profits, to help NEI’s mission to alleviate malnutrition through soybean cultivation.

Stats: “[In Afghanistan] one out of six women die during childbirth and one out of five children do not live to reach the age of five. Most of these deaths are due to a lack of protein in their diet”.

In a nutshell,  NEI teams with the Afghan government and farmers to grow protein-rich soybeans to provide the nation with the nutrition they need.

Harvesting Soybeans

At Ruxbin, we understand that we are fortunate to not only have bountiful access to nutrition-packed food, but also have the luxury to provide tasty meals.  The fact that others don’t even have access to a viable sustenance is what moves us to take action and support NEI. All profits for our Grand Opening will be going to NEI, and we encourage everybody who shows up to donate until it hurts =)

Nutrition & Education International

We hope to pack the house this Thursday.  See you there!

**********

Here’s some additional information about NEI,  in case you’re interested:

We found out about NEI 2 years ago, through our friend in LA.  We were humbled and encouraged by the work that they do, and ever since, we’ve been actively following.   A little background:  Steven Kwon, founder of NEI, worked as a Nutritionist at Nestle USA for 22 years and until his retirement in 2008,  he used his evenings and weekends to promote the soy initiative. In 2003 he led seminars on health and nutrition in Afghanistan where he witnessed first-hand the severity of the nutritionally depleted Afghan diet, mainly due to a lack of protein.  After his trip in 2003, Kwon embarked on a mission to provide a practical way to alleviate malnutrition through enriching the diet with soybeans, a new crop for Afghanistan.  “Kwon lobbied government officials for permission to test the viability of soybean farming.  After a successful harvest in 2004, the experiment was expanded to 12 of the country’s 34 provinces, and the Afghan government adopted the soy initiative as a national project” –LA Times.

 

 

First Friday

Friday started out routine, until…

I walked out the door, grabbed the daily copy of Red Eye, and saw the cover mention: “Twist on bistro fare in Noble Square”. Eyes widened and super curious, I quickly flipped to the Dining section and there.it.is. a HUGE 1.5 page spread on ruxbin, with even our faces on it! We had no idea and were definitely not expecting that. Almost on cue, I start receiving emails and texts from friends saying they saw us in XYZ publications.

I meet the partners at ruxbin, give them the PR rundown and show them the spread. We all look at each other with surprise and trepidation. We’re excited, but a bit concerned as well. This is supposed to be our soft opening, yet there’s a PR blitz already! How to handle… well, we don’t know the ins and outs of the press world, but what we do know is that we have a restaurant to run and this is our First Friday, so time to get the A game on.

Prep, prep, prep and fast forward to 30 minutes before opening: Wild storm hits the city, gusts of 70mph winds, our utility pole comes crashing down on the neighbor’s building and electricity goes out. We look at eachother thinking “okay, salads tonight” and Ed makes a joke that perhaps this is God’s blessing of doing crowd control. Luckily, after playing around with the breakers, electricity is back up and running. We then attempted to call the utility company to inform them of the down pole, only to find that our phone line is out. So naturally, we get on the computer to send a repair request via email, only to find that our internet is down. Phone line down + internet down = credit card machines down! Uh oh. After all this prep, a storm comes and knocks down our utility pole, shoves broken trees into the street, and wipes out our communication to the outside world… what next? Leaking windows. As our diners braved through the storm and got seated and comfortable for their meal, our windows started to leak from the heavy sheets of rain. Ha. Sigh… fortunately, our diners were wonderful and understanding as we blotted our leaky windows.

the culprit

The day was comical to say the least, we were thrown so many curves that we just had to laugh, and we did. Thanks to our diners for braving the storm and our great staff, it was a successful night. Thankful for an eventful First Friday.

FYI: Open but phone line down.

We’re open, but the phone line is down, literally. The pole fell over from the crazy storm last night, 70mph winds… lovely Chicago weather:)

Tuesday

Smiling as I write this entry, I’m thinking about all the times we’ve been asked the question, “When are you opening?”.  We wanted to be sure before announcing a date, so we’re excited to share with you today that we have an answer:

We will be Softly Opening our doors tomorrow, June 15, 2010!

Disclaimer: Now, just cause we’re open doesn’t mean we are fully finessed. I’m sure there will be kinks to work out and adjustments to be made, but we would love our neighbors to come on in and let us cook up some dinner.

And yes, we are BYOB:)

ready? we'll see:)

Here we go!

It’s go time

I hope you’ll understand our hiatus from the weekly updates.  I can’t begin to tell you how much has happened these past

by Jenny, (3:17am)

few weeks.  For one, we’re gearing up for our pre-opening dinner series, and I am sitting in my most favorite seat at Ruxbin, on the loft facing the kitchen pass keeping Chef company as he preps out the last of his mojo (mo-ho) chicken for tomorrow night.  The flank steaks are all swimming in the glorious marinade reminiscent to the motherland’s kalbi, the flourless chocolate cake and ramboutan panna cotta are chilling prettily in the merchandiser, the pork loin has been cut, and now it’s 3am and we’re sleepy and delirious, remarkably so.  But the anticipation fuels us all through the night, every night, and wakes us up before the sun peaks out as we prepare and prepare some more.  The inventory’s been counted, the menu’s been printed, the staff assembled, the reservations confirmed, the lights have gone up, and now…  It’s go time.

Hands ON

Floor to Ceiling:

from Chef's personal library

nom nom nom

a little help from good friends

getting some sun

roll out

poly

TG the 4th

tada! we're close:)

Ruxbin is HIRING!

• Rockstar Servers
• Mercenary Cooks

If you’re a Food Enthusiast and got the skills to pay the bills we’d love to hear from you.  Drop your resume at info@ruxbinchicago.com

Green Light

by Jenny, (4:37pm)

“If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay….You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.”  -The Great Gatsby

our final checklist paired down to the last few items

Our days leading into city inspections were comprised of measuring, drilling, tiling, grouting, caulking, lugging heavy things down to basement, wrestling with the toilet, painting, hauling heavy things upstairs, removing basement clutter left behind from the previous tenant (of which included random cement cinder blocks, bins of dry goods going bad, 50 cans of paint I kid you not, large framed paintings that were a bit on the frightening side) vacuuming infinite layers of dust, moving equipment around, purchasing big heavy things from Home Depot and miraculously transporting them in Ed’s mini hatchback, nailing things to the wall, sweeping, tongue oil-ing, mopping, fixing leaky pipes, repairing refrigerators, moving heavy equipment around some more and sanitizing, scrubbing the floors, washing the walls, attacking unsightly holes with gooey foam spray, getting more heavy things from Home Depot, wiping down endless surface areas, and doing our best to control unceasing saw dust accumulation from our Alter Ego friends constructing all the wonderful things in the front of the house.

clearing out of the basement crawl space felt oddly similar to Mary Poppins pulling out unimaginable things from her bag.

prepared for the deepest clean of our lives. this biohazard suit we found laying around had my name written all over it

We knew exactly what we were working towards: to get Ruxbin open.  And we knew that we’d inevitably be granted the green light from the City.  But when we were in the thick of it, delirious from lack of sleep and/or inhaling too much dust and cleaning product fume, the thought of passing through inspections seemed like such a faraway notion.  Thankfully our due diligence paid off big time.  We passed!

Drumroll please…

And the winner is… Alter Ego Form for best restaurant design in Chicago! Congratulations to Davide Nanni, our designer and friend.  Last night, Alter Ego Form was awarded the 2010  Critic’s pick “Eat Out” award from Time Out Chicago magazine, for best design at Simone’s in the Pilsen neighborhood.

After seeing his work at Simone’s, we knew we were in good hands. The brilliant creativity and craftsmanship in Davide’s work is evident as he touts the triple R: Refurbished, Re-purposed, and Reclaimed.

He’s our Mozart, and we’re privileged to be working with him. Yay!

by Vicki, 4:03PM

The Sum is greater…

by Ed, 1:15pm

There’s so much to do to try to get Ruxbin ready & open, and at times its been a bit overwhelming. Each day is flying by quicker than the last. And I find myself truly grasping what it means to be so busy that it feels like  “there’s not enough hours in the day.”

There was a point where I’d come home every-night with a to-do list that seemed never-ending, and I’d make it my objective to knock off 5-to-6 of those buggers off. More often than I like, I’ve come home at the end of the night, with only 1 of those tasks partially finished.

Case in point, our toilet in our bathroom has been precariously resting on shims for the past couple of weeks, as the tile surrounding it has been removed so that we could put in a new set. Well, yesterday someone got a little too frisky with the toilet and the wax seal that connects it to the waste line broke, creating a mini-disaster. No wax seal=No toilet= Big Problem, when you have a  bunch of people scrambling in the space to get the place open. We knew this needed to be dealt with right away so everything else I planned for the day was put on hold, and my hand was forced to start tiling that night and get the floor ready so that it could be in working condition ASAP!! So instead of taking a nice break from manual labor and shopping for smallwares like I had planned, my day went like this:

3-4:45pm: Nate and I get our supplies ready and prepped, Nate cuts me some concrete backer-board for our sub-floor, and I finalize the measurements we need.

5pm: I start laying down the concrete backer board.

5pm-8pm: Going @ leisurely pace, seems like it’s going to be over soon

9:45-10:00pm: Stop and have a PB & J Sandwich, and stretch out my back.

12:35 am: Taking longer than expected, call Vicki & Jen for reinforcements, ask them to please bring food rations

1:15 am: Vicki and Jen arrive w/greasy burger and fries, and much needed extra hands for manual labor.

2:30-2:45am: Vicki becomes delirious, takes nap, wakes-up saying she’s refreshed, but still seems bonkers, we can tell she’s done for the night, and we send our fallen comrade home.

3:15-3:35am: Jenny & I layout the tile before grouting it, and Jenny points out that I’m making the task harder than it needs to be, and she creates an easier and better layout.

3:35-4:15am: Tile is layed and we wait for the quick-seal to dry.

4:15-4:45: Grout the tiles, and wait 30 mins to dry.

5:15-5:30: Clean off excess grout with wet sponge, and Jen and I take a sec to quickly admire our work.

5:45-6:05am: Jen & I can hear the birds chirping outside. We clean up our tools, slightly delirious and definitely slap-happy. We quickly pack up, and go home!

If I were alone in trying to get Ruxbin open, I’d liken it to a lone warrior trying to whittle down a mountain with a butter-knife.

Fortunately I’m not alone, and I’m grateful to have Vicki and Jen as my partners, 2 of the strongest-willed Amazonian warriors tackling the FOH (front-of-the-house), while I battle with getting the Kitchen up and running. We’ve also got a new addition and minor-miracle to Ruxbin: Nate Chung, who came to us as a talented artist who wanted to intern with us, and see first-hand what it takes to get a restaurant open. Over the past few weeks he’s become so much more than just a helpful-hand.  He’s been an invaluable asset, and very much a part of Ruxbin. Something I said to Nate after a particularly stressful day, and that I can honestly say to all my other partners “I love you guys, and you make the impossible, seem possible.”

I’d also like to send a quick shout out to:

Tony & Jason (for being a much needed Mentor and advisor)

Davide & the Salvage One Crew (for helping create an amazing canvas for us to work with)

Rog (for his enthusiasm, talent, and helping friends in need)

A couple of things we've been working on. (Left)- shaved Apple & Celery salad, w/ quatered Plum, baby Arugula, and a Meyer lemon vinagrette. (Right)- thyme & garlic rubbed Sirloin, w/ baby Radishes, Dandelion greens, and country mashed Dill potatoes

Tonight, I had the chance to take a quick breather and sit down in the banquette that runs along Ruxbin’s walls, and looking at the space, knowing the food and service we’re capable of, I felt at ease. We’re not quite there yet, but our opening is in sight, the space is taking shape, and with all the love and effort we’ve put, and we’re going to put into this place, I felt rejuvenated and excited. For that moment, my heart and mind are at peace, because I know that Ruxbin is going to be special.

Shot Clock

When spring arrives in Chicago, there’s something in the air that lifts and rejuvenates the benumbed and tired spirits in an uncanny sort of way.  Work at Ruxbin has been humming along in short order over the bleakest of winter days, with one grey day overlapping into the next.  But today marks a special occasion.  Not just because we can see (both literally and figuratively) the light at the end of the tunnel.  Today we’ve officially put in our application to the City for our business license.  Now it’s just a race to the finish, as we dot all the i’s and cross all our t’s.  And hopefully soon, we’ll be open and in full swing!

Our intern extraordinaire drafting our temporary window sign. Nate, you're a God-send!

1st Meal

by Vicki, 12:51PM

While the kitchen is still getting set up, we were excited to test our burners, so we took a mini break and had a quick dinner with the S1 crew.   It was tasty:)

Braised Oxtail Ravioli with pan seared endive, carmelized porcini mushrooms, fresh baby spinach, and brunoised port poached pear.

I think i gobbled it up the second the plating was finished, so i didn’t get a pic of the end product, but you get the gist…burners are working:)

Green thumbs

Micro-green seeds bought on-line @ botanicalinterests.com

by Ed, 11:53am

Let’s preface this with the fact that I’ve never been a natural gardner, and in the past I’ve had the uncanny ability to kill most house-plants no matter how hardy the variety.  So today I enter this new venture with some trepidation. My new pet-project: Growing Micro-greens for Ruxbin.

So what are Micro-greens? Micro-greens are kind-of like the in-between of sprouts (ie alfalfa sprouts, bean sprouts) and the baby lettuces that most people are familiar with.

Generally speaking, sprouts have just grown their first set of leaves while microgreens are older and have grown four or more leaves. Also sprouts don’t need sunlight while most microgreens do. The next step for some kinds of microgreens would be the baby greens we find in the popular mesclun salad mixes  (http://www.rawfoodunderground.com/glossary.html)

These guys pack a lot of flavor in a little package, and are quite beautiful visually. In restaurants they’re often used as garnishes, and among the health-food heads they’re coveted for the amount of nutrients that they carry.

There’s a few reasons why I’ve chosen to grow micro-greens:

1. They can be grown in-doors, at any time, (don’t have to worry about the unpredictable Chicago weather)
2. They don’t take too much room
3. They grow really quickly, estimated harvest time of 14-25 days

From everything that I’ve read Micro-greens are pretty easy to grow so I’ve included a few pics of my set-up, so that anyone interested can follow along.  If you guys have any questions please ask, and if you have any suggestions I’m all ears.

1. Get a 11"x 20" plastic tray (no holes) and fill all with water, just enough so that the grooves are filled, but not enough so that the water is pooling throughout the container (all growing supplies purchased @ Brew & Grow, Chicago)

2. Insert a 11" x 20" x 1/8" cellulose grow mat, and place about 2 Tbsp of Micro-green seeds evenly through-out the mat, spray the seeds with a fine-mist of water

3. Spray the inside of a humdity dome with a fine mist of water and cover the planter

4. Cover enclosed seeds with a cloth for the next 2 days near a warm space, spraying them with a light mist of water twice a day, and keep fingers crossed that they'll sprout.

I’ll post updates on whether or not this works, and if they sprout I’ll be documenting the next steps!

Taking Shape

by Jenny, 11:01pm

The space is starting to resemble a real restaurant.  Among other things, the kitchen now has a shiny new prep table, a deep fryer for Eddy’s irresistible panisse, and two brand new burner ranges.

And in the dining room something magical is taking shape.  All the pieces that will fill this room and bring it to life have been coming together bit by bit in the imaginative workshop of Alter Ego.  Last night we got the first installment of our seats, light fixtures, and wall panels.  Having seen these pieces in various stages at the workshop, we’ve been astounded by the craftsmanship of Mozart’s crew before.  But here in the space and attuned to the surroundings, the pieces felt like a mound of treasure we were unearthing for the very first time.  We couldn’t stop grinning from ear to ear.

apple juice shipping crates re-purposed into wall paneling.

light fixture doubles as art work and conversation piece.

custom built with pews salvaged from an old Baptist church.

the beginnings of our banquette strapped down with seatbelts taken from abandoned cars in a junkyard lot and the legs from old movie theater seats.

our booths showcase the old church pews and thrift shop leather jackets in a whole new way.

awaiting its first dinner guest.

Trust Me…

by Ed, 1:16pm

When I was seven and grandma watched us while our parents were at work, I would do little experiments in the kitchen with Vicki as my designated taste-tester and sous chef. One of the more infamous experiments was when I decided to toast a hot-dog bun, slathered it with butter and sugar, and topped it with soy-sauce. Despite her protests I was able to convince Vicki to eat it, and not surprisingly she gagged.

For all those culinary disasters, there were also some early successes, like when we would microwave bologna, just to the point that it curled up on its sides, stuff it with sushi rice, put a little kimchi in there, and then giddily eat it as a “Korean taco”. To a 7 and 5 year old, paired with a frosty-glass of barley tea, and watching “Reading Rainbow“,  that’s about as good as it gets.

The reason that I bring this up is that every once in a while, when I announce a new dish idea to Vicki, I can see that look in her eye that means she’s remembering the taste of that salty-sweet hot dog bun. Today was one of those instances.

So I’ve been working on the menu, and specifically I needed to create a signature fish dish that was both light and hearty. I mentioned the idea of doing Halibut, paired with a kimchi and pork-belly broth, to Vicki, and by her reaction of “Uhmm….Okay”,  it didn’t take a mind-reader to tell that she was doubtful that I would be able to pull it off. To be fair, when I first told Jenny about the dish, she was a bit skeptical as well. My reaction,”Trust me…it’ll work.”

Tastes like this

So here’s where my head’s at. I want to create a fish dish that evokes and reminds of a wooded forest. At the same time I want this dish to be light, and hearty, like crisp autumn air, yet with enough depth that it could sustain a lumberjack. So I’m thinking Halibut, pan seared, with lots of thyme. Halibut is a hearty fish that has a very clean flavor, and I want to give the dish more character by adding something that has a bit of punch, but not so much piquancy that it sets the mouth on fire.

Halibut- Not so pretty to look at, but tasty to eat

My 1st step is to make a kimchi broth, by braising pork-belly with kimchi, kimchi pickling juice, a little ginger, and chicken broth. After the pork-belly is nice and soft, I pull it out and then strain the resulting liquid. I then reduce the liquid to about 1/2 so that I’m able to attain a nice body in the kimchi broth. Having introduced the chicken stock, the kimchi broth has lost a lot of its fire/spiciness, but still has enough heat to remind you that its there.

Making kimchi, and no, I'm not related to these lovely ladies

The next step I take is to add a starch element to the dish. This dish is meant to be rustic, so I go with Yukon golds that I bake until light and fluffy , and then I crush them gently with a fork.

The last element is a vegetable component, and although mushrooms aren’t really vegetables, I know that they’ll be the perfect accompaniment to the dish. Plus, I had just recently gotten my hands on some beautiful mushrooms, donated by our generous friend Roger, and I couldn’t let them go to waste. I clean and reserve these mushrooms, and I’ll cook them a’ la minute in a hot pan with a lot of room so that they can get nice and crispy with thyme, and a garlic clove, to bring out their woody flavor.

So here’s how it went:

I heat up the broth, and then take the reserved pork belly and some fresh kimchi and  brunoise them, which roughly means small perfect cubes. I add the pork-belly to the broth, and place it over low heat, so that it can warm up. I fire up the burners and in one pan I start searing the halibut. In another pan I start sautéing the mushrooms. At the same time I throw the potatoes that I fluffed, into the oven so that they can get nice and toasty. When all is done, I start composing my plate. In a small pasta bowl, I lay down my pork-belly and kimchi brunoise. I then pour my kimchi broth, that I’ve brightened up  with chopped cilantro, so that it fills 1/3 of the bowl. On top of this I lay my potatoes in the middle, and then circle the potatoes with my mushrooms. Last I lay the Halibut, which after searing I lightly smeared with a delicate-horseradish mustard and a sprinkling of toasted bread-crumbs, just to add a little crunch on top.

Heres the dish, minus the bread crumbs. Note to Self: I need to get a better camera, and maybe take a photography class.

Vicki looks at the dish and expecting a stew, is pleasantly surprised that it doesn’t look how she imagined. I take a taste, and I’m excited by its flavor. This is a dish that is French in technique, European and Korean in ingredients, yet captures a feeling that is both pleasantly unique and familiar. To me it’s a dish that could have only been made with the influence of different cultures and continents. It’s not forced together, it makes sense, and because of this, it’s wholly American.

Vicki tastes it, and I wait for her reaction. She smiles, takes a small leap while simultaneously clapping her hands, and tells me what I’m already thinking “This is going on the menu.”

Who’da thunk? Pt. 2

by Ed, 12:47 pm

It’s been a roller-coaster the past few days at Ruxbin, trying to figure out how to fix the dining-room floor. After seeing the carpet under the wood-floors first hand, my first inclination was to run over to the hardware store, pick up some crowbars and start yanking out the boards.  Vicki started having 2nd thoughts about this approach, (I think it started happening after she saw me looking up DIY Youtube videos), and both her and Jen were concerned that I might just make the situation worse.  Thankfully my 2 partners went to consult Mozart and he was able to send a member from his crew, Ian, to asses the situation.

Ian Coming up with a Plan

So with Ian as our guide we were able to come up with a plan that made sense. Jen, Vicki, and I would spend the next few days ripping up the floorboards as gently as possible, salvaging as much as we could, (which would cut costs, and be in line with our desire to use reclaimed products as mush as possible) rip out the carpeting, prep the base floor as best we could, and at that point we would figure out how much new flooring we would need.

Hard at Work

Jenny like a proud mama showing off her first board, at this point we're still bright-eyed and bushy tailed

This board is screwed in tight with a 6" screw that has a stripped head, leading to a lot of frustration and heartache

Fast-forward, many hours later, a tired and disheveled man

It took Jenny and I all night, and in the end we were able to save about 70% of the wood-flooring. When Ian came the next day he saw what we had to work with, and where most would see a problem, or come up with a sloppy solution, he saw an opportunity. Ian is more than just a great craftsman, and he saw this as a chance to flex his artistry as well. Ian’s idea was to lay the walkway with woods stained in a variety of colors that would tie in thematically with the patchiness of the rest of the floors.

We started at 10 am the next day and truth-be-told, Ian did all the work. I just stood there and watched as the sawdust filled the air. The first thing Ian did was lay down a new sub-floor, and he suggested that if we wanted we could tag the boards up. We felt that this was a great chance to make Ruxbin just-that little bit more personal, and on the sub-floor, that few will ever see, Vicki, Ian, and I decided to sign our names, write down our hopes and wishes, ask for good-luck, and threw in a few quotes that Jenny sent us via text, which we thought were poignant.

An important message

A great quote

Well wishes from Ian "Best of Luck Ruxbin"

Breaking his back, and fueled on a handful of beef jerky, a bag of Sour Patch kids, and a 2 liter bottle of Dr.Pepper, Ian busted his butt to get the job done as soon as possible. 14 hours later he created something special:

Original Floors with Carpet Underneath

Sneak Peek

Prototypes!

by Vicki 9:21am

What do all these things have in common? Or better yet, what are all these things?

Hint: Dining room.  Its a head-tilter, no?  Pics B & C were clues sent to us from the design team. Even im wondering how this will all piece together, but I’m excited to see what Mozart and crew will come up with!

They are all salvaged and reclaimed materials to be given new life.  Stories behind the pieces to come~

Who’da thunk?

by Jenny, 10:43pm

The dining room floors.  It was one of the first things we decided to leave.  Ed and Vicki immediately took a liking to the odd and misshapen floors.  They had a strange patched together quality about them that took a little getting used to but eventually they grew on me too.  And after all, there was already so much work that needed to be done to the space, we simply couldn’t redo everything.   Traditional white oak hardwood blanketed 80% of the space with large boards of plywood bordering the north and east ends.  Some of the oak planks were buckling over and appeared to be held together by a smattering of exposed nails.   I just thought they looked sorta funny.  Never in a million years would I have guessed what lurked beneath it all……

Mozart’s crew loved the aesthetic of the patchy floors, but they also wanted very badly to fix the problem areas for us.  This is what they found when they lifted one of the boards…..

That ladies and gentleman is carpet you see.  Yep, you read that right.  Carpet under hardwood.  Now for the average person this may be a little unsightly and perhaps even amusing.  If you know much about me, you’ll know I can be a little phobic when it comes to germs.  The mere thought of what could have been festering in the fibers of that carpet that hadn’t seen the light of day in god knows how long made me want to gag.  It was sheer mortification like I hadn’t felt in a very long time.

So after having another stressful visit with the expense tracker, and tweaking and re-working our numbers some more, we finally found a way to rid the moldy carpet and stay in budget.  Yes, my friends, we decided to do the work ourselves.  Stay tuned for more details!

Hello, my name is…

by Vicki, 2:42am

Best way to be prepared is, to be prepared. Yea, we still have a couple months til opening, but doesnt hurt one bit to stock the rolodex with industry contacts.

Luckily, i can smell out industry peeps pretty well. Just came back from the local watering hole where i was sitting at the bar and noticed the house cook go up to a guy who walked in solo and grabbed a stool next to us. Its past 1am (likely coming in straight after dinner service -cue#1), he walked in comfortably by himself (cue#2), they are talking like pals (cue#3), basic math tells me 1+2+3= this guy must be in the industry himself.  I was waiting for a moment to say hello and do some digging around when he swivels his stool towards me and my comrade and introduces himself. We get talking and sure enough he’s a cook who hails from the east coast, did some work at very reputable places, including one of my NYC faves (score!),  and can butcher snout to tail = he’s a speedy one in the kitchen. Speed in the kitchen is essential for survival during service rush, so im keeping this one in the front lines come recruiting season=)

A little Green & White

by Ed, 2:47pm

As I write this its about 19-F outside, and I find myself listening more and more to the Very Best’s Warm Heart of Africa the colder it gets. The Afro-pop is a nice salve after having to deal with a morning that involved scraping ice from the windshield with a credit card and digging the car out of the snow with a pair of mis-matched gloves. There’s something incredibly satisfying and twisted , about  listening to warm global beats while being able to see the steam of my breath as I zip by on the highway.

I’m at home in the ‘burbs now, taking a quick break from the restaurant space on strict orders from Vicki and Jen to stay away for a couple days and work on a few recipes. This is the fun part, the part where we take the conceptual ideas we have,  and I attempt to make them functional and tasty.  So the first thing I decided to work on was something with a bit of green to brighten up the day:

Complimentray Colors

Those are some tasty tomatillos from the local Super Mercado, with a few red onions and a couple garlic cloves to keep them company so that they don’t get too lonely in the roasting pan.

So after they roast I blend them up to create a nice bright sauce, and  now I’m trying to balance off the tang and sour. I’m thinking salty-sweet, so I grab a couple black plantains that are just north of going soft. I hit them with a little brown sugar so they get that nice stick on the grooves of your teeth feel, a hint of clove to give it some character, and a quick shallow bath of brown butter to soften the plantain starches.

To finish this I want something smooth and creamy. Cotija is too grainy and dry, and the fresh Mexican cheeses generally don’t have the kick I’m looking for, so I’m thinking a little out-of-the-box and reach for my trans-Atlantic friend queso Athenio (feta cheese). Here’s a pic from my phone, it dulled out the colors, and you can’t see it pop with the red and purple from the shallots, but I think you get the gist, and at least it gives me an excuse to show-off Charlie:

Charlie is more interested in the squirrels

Evolving into a Night Owl

by Jenny, 1:32am

I am normally not one to compromise a good 8 hours of sleep.  I have been known to fall asleep in movies when we catch the 10pm show.  I have also been accused of being too grouchy to be around when said 8 hour goal has not been achieved.  Sleep makes me happy and I could do it all day if there weren’t things to tend to.  I track time the way my dog Louie watches for table scraps.  But in the last few weeks it has been a bit of a battle just getting to bed.  Too many things left to do and the list just grows and grows like a weed.  By the time I’m finally under the covers I find myself having mini panic attacks as I count in one hand the number of hours I’ll get to sleep before the room floods with light and hustles me back to my feet.

louie

It only just dawned on me that my neurotic counting of the hours had stopped.  It’s a quarter past one with T-6 hours before my alarm goes off.  And while I have the option to turn in for the night at a reasonable hour today, I choose to stay up and decant my thoughts with you.  But it’s not forced like it had been for a while when Eddy or Vicki would want to hold late night meetings to hammer out things that needed hammering out.  Of course the second cup of coffee helps, and I think it’s mostly the effect of being wired half the time.  But it’s beginning to feel more natural, this getting less than 8 hours of sleep club.

Penny Wise, Dollar Foolish

by Ed, 1:35pm

Trying to get Ruxbin open has been a daunting task and one of the hardest parts is trying to figure out where to scrimp and hold our pennies.  Every little additional piece adds-up and while saying no to an extra $10-20 may invoke images of Ebenezer Scrooge, when you add it all up, and multiply it by however many seats you need to cover,  you might find yourself in a hole several thousand deep. Unfortunately we’re dealing with a budget that’s forever contracting until we open, and I find myself pinching those valuable pennies.

Bravely typing away in Sub-freezing Conditions

So in an attempt to save, I had the genius idea to turn the heat off in the space. We knew that for the next few days we wouldn’t have anybody working in there, so why should we pay for the gas? And if I needed to be in the space, I could deal with a little cold, man-up, and take one for the team.

I was feeling a bit cavalier in my new-found frugalness when I had my mom come into the restaurant later that day. First thing mom asks when she gets in the space, and with a concerned look is, “Why is it so cold?”  I answer her and give her my reasoning,  the whole time expecting that glimmer of pride that mom’s get when they realize they haven’t raised a spend-drift son. Instead, I got one of those other  looks that only a mom is capable of. The look that’s accompanied by a roll-of-the-eyes and says, “I can’t believe I gave birth to such a moron.”  Of course, her words were kinder, and she explained to me slowly, so that I could understand, that by turning off the heat the pipes could freeze in this sub-arctic weather, and if that happened we’d be dealing with a lot more than a gas bill.

Thank goodness for moms, and the heat is back on. I’m keeping it at a frugal 50-F when we know no-ones going to be here for a couple days, a temp that would still make Tiny Tim wish for an extra blankie.

P.S. Oh Yeah, regarding that pic of me up there, to answer your question: No, the Wi-fi hasn’t been installed yet, and yes that’s my special internet hot-spot.

EX MALO BONUM… the good from evil.

by Vicki, 4:17pm

You like this space ? <cue horror music>

how dreamy.

Character?  Ha!  There’s only so much you can do with an ugly betty.

Or can you…  she does have potential, and she is architecturally interesting, and with minor cosmetic changes, okay more along the lines of “extreme makeover” changes… fine, sign the papers before i change my mind and lets move. 

~ FADE IN: The Present ~

Like i said, EX MALO BONUM, Latin for “the good from evil”. This is our space and with Mozart, aka our designer extraordinaire Davide [Dah-vie-day-he’s-Italian] Nanni at the helm, we are in the best hands possible. Taking the good from evil is his mantra, and if he were to apply that philosophy to anywhere, this (see above) is headquarters.

Astounded by his steampunk masterpiece  in the S1 showroom, we were in the right place, at the right time, asking the right questions when we ran into Davide.  I liken his skills to that of Mozart – brilliant, ahead of his time. His design aesthetic, the emphasis of functionality and ergonomics built-in to each of his one-of-a-kind pieces, the genuine passion to take from the old (100% salvaged materials) and re-engineer them into beautifully handcrafted pieces to strike the perfect flow within a room, a true artist. An artist that will take your flat, facet-less ideas and bring them to multi-dimensional flight. His designs are crazy. Crazy awesome. Seriously, you either have to be under the influence of some fantastical Alice-In-Wonderland-like drug or blessed with immense talent to come up with the stuff he does. In this case, he’s immensely blessed, and we know we are lucky to have him on our team.

I can go on, but let’s just say, our initial meeting with Mozart was followed by an immediate celebration with a Filbert’s in hand.

Design prototypes to come!

Philosophy in the Kitchen

“When you acknowledge, as you must, that there is no such thing as perfect food, only the idea of it, then the real purpose of striving toward perfection becomes clear: to make people happy, that is what cooking is all about.”
— Thomas Keller (The French Laundry Cookbook)

by Ed, 5:52pm

I love this quote and it’s something I like to show to cooks, staff, anyone who becomes part of our team.  We’re in a service industry, and I truly believe that we’re only just line-cooks or waiters shlocking out food if we allow ourselves to fall under that mentality.  It’s important to take pride in your work, and know that when you put your heart into your craft, people know.

When I’m in the kitchen working the line, I like to say  “You gotta give it some love, they can taste it”, and although that might sound cheesy to some, I really believe it. What I also hope to communicate is that as important as the customer is, it’s just as important that we  as servers, hosts, and cooks can taste and feel the love we put into our product, because when you’re able to achieve that, not only is the customer happy, but we’re happy.

DG

by Vicki, 1:28am

Time was of the essence, it was Thursday and Ed’s doppelgänger scheduled to drop off the deposit on Monday. We dropped it off on Saturday. Sheer stealth, in this case, won the game.

Here’s how it went down:

We get a call from a broker saying he can show us a space that we we’re interested in, and so we schedule a meeting. Here’s where it got strange in a Twilight Zone kind-of-way. When we get there it’s double-booked, with another prospective tenant, which isn’t that odd in itself, except that the other team was us. I mean this literally, not figuratively.

I get there early with my brother, Ed, and being the first there we spend several minutes by ourselves poking around and admiring the character and potential in the space when Ed’s doppelgänger shows up.

Now when I say doppelgänger (DG), let me give you the rundown: Mister 20-something, with his 2 partners oh-so conveniently viewing the space at the same scheduled time, hailing from a respectable culinary pedigree from Nor Cal, donning gray New Balance sneaks, fitted dark denim, print hoodie zip up, black waist jacket, tilted paperboy cap, and plastic black hipster frames, this was Ed’s DG to the T, minus the fact that he was caucasian. Then here’s Ed:  20-something, with his 2 partners viewing the space at the same scheduled time, hailing from a respectable culinary pedigree from So Cal, donning gray New Balance sneaks, fitted dark denim, print hoodie zip up, black waist jacket, tilted paperboy cap, and plastic black hipster frames. Catch my drift? I stood there, head tilted, shocked and amused – it was like looking in the mirror, it was…bizarro world.

But i digress. The point is, that we were on point. This is what I knew: Here is a space that not only we see potential in, but our twinsies did also and they were ready to go in for the kill. However, after courting many a space, we were tired and hungry and therefore better prepared to pounce on our prey.  Coming upon the dead of winter, timing was perfect as this would be our last chance to get our fill and hibernate (restaurant translation: work our butts off) to be ready to join in on the parade of springtime openings, before the summer rush.

Now, with location locked down, time to move.

Ready or not

by Jenny, 11:23am

The past 11 months of searching, scouring, finding, then talking our way deep into negotiations with prospective spaces and formulating big plans only to have something go awry and be left with nothing, is just a foggy memory now.  We have seen more lease agreements and contractor bids than I care to recount, and managed to rack up  over 10 versions of our business plan.  Here are some of the spaces we considered in all seriousness.

Then, in some serendipitous way when all of us were least expecting it, when we were all feeling pretty downtrodden and on the brink of questioning whether or not we were just building castles in the air, we  found it.  The space that will house our dreams, hopes, and ambitions that for so long was just a concept begging to come alive.

Space #14 ..... Ours

It’s finally happened and it’s happening fast.  Let the madness begin, we’re ready.

We are opening a restaurant.