Austin Cantina

Sunshine, flowers and al-fresco brunch

Wow, the weather has really gotten wonderful! At first so many Seattle folk were just enjoying the sun, possibly BBQ’ing at home, or going out of town and it didn’t impact business much. Last few days we have seen a significant jump in people dining outside among our flowers. I think it makes a big difference that the outside tree has been trimmed to allow sunlight though, but it does seem nicer to sit outside, and you can see our sign from across the street.

 

 

Another possible impact may have come from this mention in Nancy Leson’s Blog

“sample a grass-fed Cowboy skirt steak (or the "Texas Pot Roast" seen in its raw incarnation, in the photo above) at Austin Cantina” which appeared on Thursday morning without photo, until Nancy and her dining guests cam in that night to check out our counter service and noticed me butchering the Beef Chuck in the picture.

Bucking the trend...

We've all been watching gas prices soar, I've written here about the rice shortage, now Yahoo Headlines informs us Record corn prices mean more expensive meat, dairy after the Midwest floods.

In an effort to stem the raging increase in prices across the board we have begun an early bird special, $15.00 before 6:30 for 3 course, a salad, choice of Chicken Fried Steak, or Meatloaf, and a Grilled Peach Sorbet (the peaches are grilled BEFORE we make the sorbet, if we tried to grill the sorbet it would make a big mess in the kitchen)

Our costs continue to rise, we have had to raise prices on a couple grilled items, but it continues to be an important value for us to be able to serve affordable meals to the families in our neighborhood. Please stop in between 5 and 6:30, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Sunday for an excellent value, and some really great sorbet.

Equipment failure

One of the most expensive pieces of kitchen equipment that we bought for this place was the tortilla steamer, it cost over $800.00 as a refurb. A few weeks back the on switch failed (wouldn't turn off) so we moved it to a switched outlet and let it run that way for a while. This weekend the machine gave off a bad smell, like an electrical burn with melting plastic. Sure enough the switch had melted from too much heat in the system. Being Saturday afternoon there were few appliance stores open, and none had a switch for an older commercial steamer. I removed the switch and tried to run it "hot wired". It worked for a few hours and then the whole machine failed.
Service was difficult because we rely heavily on that machine, we tried grilling tortillas, we tried using the rice steamer, nothing was satisfactory. I guess that tomorrow I'm going shopping.

Unfortunately the Fremont Fair this weekend really drained our weekend business and finding $1,000.00 for a kitchen machine AND paying all the other bills, including back-excise-tax is difficult challenge. If you can't send me a new steamer, please send good wishes. Or better yet, come in for dinner and spend some money here!

What to do about 4th of July

Austin Cantina does about 1/2 of our week's business on Friday & Saturday night. Closing for a Friday night is very difficult because I'd hate to give up so much revenue.

This year 4th of July falls on a Friday. My experience is that people aren't going out to eat in Ballard on 4th of July. If we were by the waterfront, or near somewhere that people congregate to see fireworks that would be different. Most of the restaurant staff is convinced that we'll do no business at all, it will hardly be worth spending the day doing prep to open for a few hours and sit around while our customers are at BBQ's or at Gasworks Park waiting for the sky to explode.

If that is all there was to it, it would be a fairly easy decision to close. However, that is the first Friday after Seattle Metropolitan Magazine comes out with their "Best of Seattle, 2008" issue, which is expected to feature us in some way. There is potential to get some quite significant business from that exposure. If it weren't 4th of July, I'd expect to see 80 or more guests that night, with the 4th, maybe fewer than 30.

I just don't know how to resolve this. I'm strongly leaning toward being closed so that staff can spend the holiday with friends and family, but it isn't an easy decision.

Live music this week

Dylon is back this week, but he has an other engagement on Wednesday, so he'll be playing for us on Thursday evening from 6 to 9.

I'm also expecting some samples of Quail and Ostrich to run for specials this weekend.

Brunch has been quite slow, we're going to enjoy the Fremont Parade on Saturday and not open for Brunch that day. We'll be open for regular Brunch hours on Sunday of this week only.

Back

Dylon is back from his sabbatical/hiatus in the Midwest and will be playin' tunes again tomorrow evening from 6 to 9. We're so pleased to have him!

Tears of Joy is back, got a big shipment of hot sauces including the clear Panola Sauce with peppers and garlic floating in it, a few bottles of "August in Austin" and a new "Texas Peach Habenero sauce" which sampled out wonderfully on the sirloin I had for dinner tonight. Will try it next on spicy mushroom quesadillas.

Yesterday I met with a group from the Washington Restaurant Association and we spent some time with government folks, including a representative of the Governor's office to discuss Liquor Control Board issues. Based on what I heard from others my experience getting a license was significantly more problematic than most, but once I had the license my experience dealing with liquor wholesalers has been much less troublesome than many of my peers in the industry. I could easily fall into a rant about how silly I find it that you can't buy spirits in a grocery store the way I could in Texas, but it would be all too easy to poke fun at the Texas policy of taping off the liquor section of grocery stores one day a week to reinforce the ban on Sunday liquor sales.
We also met with a couple people who work on the city's sewer system and discussed disposal of Fats Oil and Grease and how it impacts the waste and sewage system and upcoming proposed regulatory changes that may affect restaurant operations as well as enforcement. I love that this department is refers to the trio of waste products as FOG, it kept bringing to mind Jay Wiseman's acronym AFOG (Another Friggin' Opportunity For Growth), which would certainly be the case if grease waste was not properly treated.  I get calls once or twice a month from companies trying to sell me some sort of chemical or biological treatment for our grease trap.  It was very interesting to hear that the city is considering banning use of any type of additive or treatment that gets dropped into the traps. On the good side, such additives could breakup grease and help it flow to the waste system, but on the bad side they require certain fairly specific parameters to work correctly. In many cases the additives work exactly as promised but too often the physical environment (temperature, time in contact with grease, volume of flowing water, etc...) prevents the additive from working correctly and though the trap may clear, and the few feet of sewer line out of the restaurant may clear, but once the fluid reaches the communal line the icky bits go back into suspension and cling to the insides of sewer pipes and slow drainage for the neighborhood. I didn't expect this meeting to be as informative or as useful as the meeting with the Liquor Board representative, but I certainly took away a lot more new and useful knowledge that I will use in the Cantina.