Café Luz at KI is now open!

Enjoy our daily menu as you watch our chefs at work. Enjoy our espresso bar and soda fountain or bring your own beer and wine. Support local small businesses. Get involved in Houston’s burgeoning culinary community…

A true neighborhood coffeehouse, bakery and soda fountain in the heart of historic downtown.

Our Café is a unique multi-chef concept featuring a variety of foods prepared within our kitchens along with our craft soda fountain and espresso bar.

We are a small but beautiful space that respects the history of the building and the Historic District, exposing the original brick and adding Mediterranean kitchen warmth with our distinctive clay walls. Our space was restored by the hands of owners Lucrece Borrego and Jesus Acosta (with much visiting help from Audrey Archuleta), using sustainable materials from New Living and repurposed woods, stone and metals whenever possible. Even our menu boards are handmade from repurposed wood and motorcycle parts.

We will always be BYOB and offer free wi-fi to keep things cozy.

To provide the finest coffee service and extend the incubator concept of KI to our café, we have partnered with notable barista, Frank Freeman, to launch our beverage program and open Café Luz. I personally make our sodas in house as well as syrups for our flavored espresso drinks and our ice cream is churned by in-house creamery, Fat Cat. We use only Way Back When milk, locally roasted coffee, and all local suppliers whenever possible.

Our menu changes daily and can be viewed at www.cafeluzhouston.com. Please view our Client Pages for an overview of the bakers and chefs that provide our fine foods. *Photo by Gary Wise via UrbanSpoon

Our Café welcomes Chefs who would like to pursue Pop-Up restaurant concepts or guest chef dinners and lunches, including food trucks, farmer’s market vendors and all chefs who believe in our mission. Events at KI provide a unique blend of dining room and working kitchen, creating a remarkable sensory experience for guests. The photograph below shows a glimpse into a recent tasting in our kitchens by progressive Chef Chris Leung.

Photo by Cathi Walsh

We found ourselves in the middle of our first Holiday Season in a quick blink, time to haul a Christmas tree into the Café, hang snowflakes from our ceilings, blast the Christmas music and host a whirlwind of Holiday events.

Our PumpkinFEAST kicked things off just before Thanksgiving with a hands-on cooking class teaching a vegetarian-friendly and pumpkin focused Thanksgiving menu that featured pumpkin butter, pumpkin scones, gingerbread pumpkin mousse cakes, pumpkin bisque AND pumpkin lasagne. WHEW! Yes, we made all that! A lucky group brought in their pumpkin beers and feasted all through the night before leaving with plenty of pumpkin-licious treats to take home.

Heading into December our partner, Audrey Archuleta, flew in from New Mexico for a whirlwind tour of all our winter cooking. We welcomed her by taking her straight from Hobby to our Freetail Houston campaign meeting with Scott Metzgar of Freetail Brewing, our grassroots effort to bring a brewpub back to Houston.

You may have seen us at Yelp’s Holiday Hoedown last Thursday, handing out a variety of treats from our table in the DJ room atWinter Street Studios. Lucia’s Especialidades Argentina, Offenbacher Fudge, Sweets by Belen, Chef Sandra Shafer, Kaleidoscope Cupcakes and Divinity Catering teamed up to create the event’s most unique table. Lucia’s empanadas flew off the table in record time, Chef Shafer wowed the crowd with her decadent deviled quail eggs and caviar and the post-event Yelp chatter could not stop asking “where do we get that fudge?” (The answer is HERE!) Also manning the table was our chief engineer, Jesus Acosta, who took time from his Yelp Elite Status VIP hour smörgåsbord to help us set up and serve. Then he ran us drinks such as the fantastic infused sangrias from Avante Garden. Speaking of drinks, our very own SlimRITAs was featured at their own table in the cocktail area – hope you got to try them!

We dashed straight from the Hoedown to our Holiday Forbidden Beer Exchange, a celebration of rare craft brews co-hosted by TX Girls Pint Out. An impressive lineup of beers included several aged St. Arnold’s Divine Reserves, limited editions from Deschutes, Goose Island and even Cigar City were all enjoyed along with Freetail Porter Ice Cream and brew bakery brownies from Happier Desserts.

Friday we hosted a doctor’s office for a private Holiday Cookie Decorating Extravaganza! Over 30 doctors and staff busied themselves at our array of cookie decorating stations featuring a variety of frostings, sprinkles and sanding sugars. The most creative of the group occupied the Cookie Creation Station to churn out assorted holiday shapes and even some more unusual cookies, such as a Bucky the beaver cookie, with our sugar cookie dough.

Later that day Kitchen Inc transformed into the first of two Holiday Markets as the Café filled with an array of delights ranging from fudge to empanadas. Many of the familiar faces of our kitchens were there sampling and selling their holiday specialties, along with a few exciting new partnerships such as Wateroak Goat Dairy, which boasts a variety of freshly made flavored ricottas and chevres.

We expect even more deliciousness at this week’s upcoming Holiday Market, which will also feature a Holiday Craft table where guests can create their own gourmet gifts such as Cocoa for Two with handcrafted marshmallows and sugarplum & snowball edible winter bouquets. The ladies of Redbird Marketplace will be on hand with all your holiday craft needs as well as teaching guests to create mosaic ornaments.

Think we had a busy week? The craziest day was still yet to come! I rose in the wee hours of the morning on Saturday to prepare nearly 40 Quarts of freshly made royal icing for the 2nd Annual Gingerbread Build-off in Market Square Park. Despite near crisis (an unruly egg white curdled our second batch and my mixer’s motor threw a fit) I was able to get the quarts of icing to the 25 participating teams just in time for them to start building their incredibly gingerbread creations which ranged from Godzilla wrecking a city to the San Jacinto Monument.

All the while, myself and a staff of volunteers, including the ladies of Redbird Marketplace, created a gingerbread wonderland for all ages in the Craft Area. Throughout the day we helped children (okay, quite a few adults too) create well over 100 gingerbread creations. With an unexpectedly awesome turnout, I ran to the store and back to the kitchens to make twice the amount of royal icing we thought the day would use, totaling over 30 quarts!

We took a break from the kitchens to enjoy a stroll through Saturday evening’s Lights in the Heights, one of my favorite Houston activities. Then, on Sunday, came back for more to make boozy egg nog, Mexican hot cocoa and New Mexican Christmas cookies for our First Annual Holiday Cookie Exchange with the Dessertology Meetup Group. Guests brought a dozen cookies to share and a dozen to exchange, each leaving with an impressive assortment of holiday treats ranging from traditional shortbread to pumpkin chocolate chip.

This week we’ll be hosting our second Holiday Market on Friday, December 17th from 5-8 p.m. and are encouraging all to stop by to sample and shop because, well, nobody likes a skinny Santa!

On Sunday we invite everyone to join us for An Enchanted Christmas where the ladies of New Mexico Green Chile Co. and I will teach a traditional New Mexican Christmas in a unique hands-on cooking class featuring centuries-old recipes for posole, tamales, natillas and biscochitos. We’ll dine in faralito light with “falling snow” in our café and there will be plenty to take home. Tickets are available on our Cooking Classes site and limited to only 15 guests.

It sure has been fun this Holiday Season and I’m already looking forward to the next one! We hope to see you around at our upcoming events and thank those for attending everything that we’ve hosted! Pictures from our events are always posted to our Facebook page and we invite all attendees to add their own photos too!

First and foremost, a gargantuan and endless THANK YOU to everyone who helped make our Grand Opening a success (yes, I am calling you all out one by one). As a token of my appreciation, our Grand Opening participants are currently enjoying a priority access period to our reservations calender to book our kitchens during the high demand Holiday season. These guys are all rock stars and will be taking the Houston food scene by storm!

To everyone who attended our celebration, thank YOU. It wouldn’t have been any fun without you. As a new business with a somewhat abstract concept that has never advertised, I am truly amazed at the crowds we managed to draw in. We hope you all had a great time and hope to see you again soon at one of our upcoming events. Our Events page is being updated daily and you can now reserve private parties online!

For those of you who missed it, pictures are on our Facebook Page with a few highlights below.

The café awaits - custom copper lighting display by my boyfriend, Jesus Acosta, and decorated with photography by the talented Andrew Rebman.

Happy eaters of PeopleFood by Hannah Curry, our first chef demo.

A few awesome ladies that I love:

Posing with Lucy Corona of SlimRITAS, who had the most amazing margarita themed outfit ever.

Pouring beer with the TX Girls Pint Out for our beer and dessert pairing.

Posing with my mom, who I cannot begin to thank enough for all her hard work!

Chef Diego working the crowd for our most popular demonstration, photography by Andrew Rebman.

Chef Sandra Shafer drew quite a crowd for her silky scallops and delicately seasoned mussels.

Nearly midnight and Alex Gregg is keeping the crowd going strong with his mixology class.

Let the thank you speech begin…

To my incredible and supportive boyfriend and Chief Engineer of Kitchen Inc extrordinaire, Jesus Acosta of MatadorMoto, for being there every step of the way, fixing everything that breaks, creating brilliant solutions to the most complex of problems, carrying the heaviest of kitchen equipment, designing extravagant custom lighting displays out of basic plumbing supplies, keeping me calm, indulging me when I need indulgence and reprimanding me when I need to be put in my place…the life time I plan on spending trying to thank you will never be enough.

To my mom, Audrey Archuleta, who began contributing to Kitchen Inc nearly two decades ago when she nurtured my very first entrepreneurial efforts as early as Kindergarten. For those of you who met her, she needs no introduction. Thank you, for your faith in me, support when I need it but never overbearing when I don’t, for never judging your crazy daughter when she quit her cushy six-figure job to pursue a wild dream, for raising me to do things for myself and giving me the skill set I needed to make this happen, and for all your last minute hard labor pulling our opening together!

And to our participants, thank you for your incredible understanding and ability to pull through in the face of adversity. I’m so happy to have you all at Kitchen Inc, wish you all the best of luck in your new ventures and am so certain of your success! Thank you to PeopleFood for bravery in doing our first Chef Demo of the day even though she had never done one before; to the sisters of Redbird Marketplace for manning our Kids Corner and brightening our café with your beautiful aprons; to Fandango Catering for a delicious demo and amazing gazpacho; to Chef Sandra Shafer for pulling through an incredibly seafood tasting withOUT ovens, as if by magic; to Cuisine by Sallie for making ravioli and preserving sanity with all your chafing dishes; to Lucia’s Especialidades Argentina for frying all your empanadas by hand on that little electric cooktop and completely rocking the Demonstration kitchen with your passion and humor; to TX Girls Pint Out and Troy Witherspoon of Petrol Station for making our beer and dessert pairing; to Alex Gregg for keeping the crowd entertained well into the night with your awesome mixology; to Artisana Bread for all of your hard work and understanding in the gas fiasco, being always lovely no matter what curve balls are thrown at you, making the best bread in the City and completely wowing all of our guests with it; to LaCake Petite for waiting for us for TWO whole years and sweetening up our kitchens with your heavenly cakes; to Pure Catering for handing out fresh and delicious food throughout the entire afternoon and evening with such a lovely display; to Offenbacher Fudge for awesome presentation and a untiring team who greeted our guests with fudge from start to finish; to SlimRITAS for getting our guests started off right, with a margarita, and letting us enjoy your great company well into the late hours of the night; and to Kristi’s Kitchen, Porch Swing Desserts, Salad Secrets, New Mexico Green Chile, Desserts ‘n More, Jill’s Crumbles and Grizzaffi Coffee for adding your specialties to the deliciousness of our evening……
THANK YOU!!!!!!

Still here? There’s a few more:
Thank you to Adam Brackman of Urban Deal for finding Kitchen Inc the perfect home (all landlord issues aside) and all of your incredible connections; to the Downtown Management District for hosting and publicizing the Night in Market Square that drew such an awesome crowd for our event, Sarah Kuntz of Accion Texas for making our small business loan happen (we’d have no equipment if it weren’t for you), St. Arnold’s & No Label for your bada*s brews, my best girlfriend for understanding when Kitchen Inc took over from proper attention to her birthday, and anyone else I may have forgotten who helped make Kitchen Inc a reality and our Grand Opening a success!

Thursday, October 14, TWO days before Grand Opening
Battle of the glass companies ensues and our storefront is built out. Fire permitting is finally completed and gas clearance arrives from the City. An appointment is made with Centerpoint to get us some gas! At the last minute, we’re hosting an unexpected event for the Houston Green Scene at our kitchens. A last minute cancellation from Byrd’s Market left the important GreenWeek dinner without a home and we couldn’t turn them down.
At 9 pm, 30 or so of Houston’s biggest green scene players are rushing dinner through a space that they’d magically transformed into an elegant dining room, my mom and I are plastering a wall with American Clay, Alex “Classy” Glass, his sons, their wives and even an infant are outside putting the new glass in, my boyfriend is perched 20 feet in the air on a ladder on scaffolding putting in the lights for our café. Everyone is saying that I am remarkably calm. The Green Scene crew calls me in to the dinner to make a quick speech about Kitchen Inc and I get to receive applause and meet No Impact Man whilst covered in dry wall mud and plaster and emitting a sweet aroma of Simple Green.

Friday, October 15, ONE day before Grand Opening
Rosemarie from Artisana Bread arrives bright and early to mix an incredible assortment of doughs to proof and rise for the event. She works diligently in our Bakery all day, awaiting the time Centerpoint will arrive and grant her use of an oven. Boyfriend and mom are on site handling final cleaning and decorating and I’m running around town to secure all the final food, wine and paperwork needed for the big day.
Our donations of St. Arnold’s and the keg of El Hefe from No Label for our beer pairing have been procured and our walk-in cooler happy to receive them. A bottle of brown helps get me through the day.
Around 2 p.m. I put in a call to Centerpoint to check on the status of the gas. They can’t find a request in their system for our gas! Paranoia, phone calls…there was a mixup between my contractor and the plumber (the plumber must request the utilities permits) over the Centerpoint scheduling due to the fact that my contractor can’t properly understand Spanish. Or so I gather from a phone call between my boyfriend and contractor while I’m on the phone with Centerpoint straightening out the situation. “What kind of contractor can’t speak Spanish?” my boyfriend yells and hangs up the phone. It’s okay, Centerpoint is going to send a technician out. I just have to pay an overtime fee of $150. Okay, I can handle that. We *need* the gas!
All Grand Opening participants are notified of the problem and encouraged to bring electric burners and butane warmers that they might have. We wait. The dough waits.
At 4 p.m. I call Centerpoint again, where an unusually sympathetic woman takes charge of our problem and begins a relentless campaign to contact the technician who can come restore our gas service. For two hours she calls, but not a single soul in that entire division will answer their office or mobile phones. Not one. At 6 p.m. she declares that she must go home, but has left voicemails with my number on every possible line. Naturally, no one ever calls.

Saturday, October 16, SHOW TIME!
Our Grand Opening participants trickle in to set up for their demonstrations and tables. I’ve procured an electric burner top and amazingly, our chefs have brought in many of their own. They work together seamlessly, an oasis of elegance in a sea of chaos, to exchange burners, propane and chafing dishes. Posters are hung, last minute problems solved.
I’m preparing the dishes for our beer pairing and covered in ganache. It’s all finally happening. At 4 p.m. sharp, our first guests arrive for our first chef demonstration. The will continue to arrive in a constant stream until after 10, filling Kitchen Inc with the roar of a dense and well-fed crowd. It feels like half of Houston is here!

Sunday, October 17th, 4 a.m.
I arrive home. The last of our guests left well after 3 a.m. and one even had to be driven home. I haven’t thrown such an incredibly successful party since high school. I’m infinitely grateful to people that I’ve been grateful to for a long time, and to new people I’ve met recently who I think I will be very grateful too again in the near future. A party two years in the making – what a beginning!

This past Sunday evening in downtown Houston, over 100 people poured into the doors of the soon to open Kitchen Inc headquarters on Franklin Street. Some colorful sidewalk are by yours truly lead the way into our Café and the Standard Kitchen, where a diverse array of deliciousness slowly filled our table. Spicy crackers, thai hot sauces, brittle and toffee, and even margaritas lined the Standard Kitchen. We took groups of 25 on guided tours of our kitchens as the crowd enjoyed the potluck and perused the space.
From 4 to 9pm, I spoke non-stop, explaining our kitchens, answering questions and getting to know many people who, having communicated over e-mail so long, I felt as though I already knew. With construction still in progress, scaffolding lining a few walls and plywood where a stainless steel bar should be, the atmosphere was certainly chaotic. If I hadn’t done this the previous Sunday, I would have been nervous.
The previous Sunday….
The day before Open Kitchen 1 came impossibly fast. One second I had a week ahead of me to spend scrubbing grease off worktables, sanding wood and deep cleaning everything. The next moment it seemed my hands smelled eternally of bleach and Simple Green and Open Kitchen was eminent. I arrived at the site Saturday morning to find that my crew had left early on Friday having mistakenly left a vast array of missing ceiling tiles, a broken A/C unit, no doors and a maze of ladders. A thick cloud of dust covered everything in site from whatever it is they had been doing. Naturally, I panicked.
A lot of hard work and some wonderful help from a pair of strong hands later, things begin to fall into shape. The ceiling in place, the ladders hidden. Now I just had to make refreshments for 75 people!

The crowd gathers in the Standard Kitchen.

I awoke Sunday a rowdy blend of anxious anticipation and trepidation. What if they don’t like it? What if no one shows up? What if the other A/C unit breaks and everyone melts? Luckily the day flew by and I had little time to ponder over my questions. At 4:30 sharp, guests begin to arrive, even before the 5pm start time!

Unfortunately, having gone to pick up ice, I had just arrived too! Our first guests awaited me at the door, cakes and tartlets in hand. What a lovely site. At least I no longer had to worry that no one would show up.

The next few hours flew as I walked everyone through the kitchens. The enthusiasm in the room was beautifully contagious. An excited chat of new businesses and hope for the future filled every corner. Two years of working on Kitchen Inc, it was remarkably rewarding to experience.

Over the course of two Open Kitchens, over 200 people visited our facility, each expressing a desire to launch or grow their food business with us and showcasing an inspiring level of passion and excitement. WOW. The response has been overwhelming. I can’t wait for the real open kitchen in the next few weeks when each of these amazing businesses will be able to get started in our kitchens, and I’m sure you can’t either. So then, back to work for me!

In case your new to the blog, my landlord’s name is Spire. Hence the play on words. Here’s the story:
The language seems fairly simple…

landlord agrees to reimburse the tenant for its share, defined as one 
half of the monetary amount of the cost of the Working Drawings upon 
submission of an invoice from the Architect in charge of their 
preparation within 30 days of the submission of completed drawings

I submit an invoice from the Architect showing the amount I’ve paid. I submit completed drawings. The landlord reimburses me for half of that.
Anyone have trouble understanding that? Good, we didn’t think so.

Unfortunately, our Landlord, somehow does. They like to say things like:

we are simply not able to agree to an amount when the proper documentation has not been submitted

So far, the only additional documentation they’ve requested is further detail and clarification on a single invoice component that amounts to less than one eight of the amount being billed.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the world worked that way? If I find a $50 item on my rent bill that I don’t understand, that allows me to forgoe my contractual obligations to pay an ENTIRE $1,000+ bill in time?
Wow, these guys are setting a fabulous precedent as a Landlord.
I would be happy to play by these rules if I didn’t already know that when the tables are turned, the rules would change.
I’d draw up a contract to have both parties agree to the new set of rules, but since they’d fail to understand the language or honor the contract anyway…

One of the most popular e-mail requests for interested Kitchen Inc users is “when can I come see the kitchens?” It’s also one of the more frequent requests I get from my friends and family as of late too. While I can post endless descriptions to the website or add pictures to our Facebook albums, nothing is going to substitute for an actual visual of the space.
I decided to host the Open Kitchen series to provide that to the community but of course, we can’t always have tours once people are actually working in the kitchens. Thus, we’re working to create a 3D Virtual Tour of the entire Kitchen Inc space!
Our 3D model is accurate in every detail, right down to the brand names of the equipment. The tour will allow anyone to virtually walk-through the Café, kitchens and all shared areas, right from the comfort of their home computer. It will also allow us to model events and other potential uses of the space. Interested in arranging seating and staff for a Pop-Up restaurant? No problem. We can model it all, right in 3D!
As you may have noticed, we’re very fond of using technology to improve access to Kitchen Inc and make our clients’ lives easier. Applications, Reservations and now touring the site…it can all be done online and it’s all happening *very* soon!

My awesome resident engineer and designer at MatadorMoto has been working on the model for a few weeks now and it is nearly ready to launch. Naturally, we’ll send out a proud newsletter announcing the final launch. For now, here are a few teaser screenshots to whet your appetites:

An aerial view of the space.

Overview of the Standard Kitchen.

As a side note, our model is probably more than 3 Gig and definitely took more than 3 hours to build, but we wanted to get another song in everyone’s head.

We’ll be hosting an “Open Kitchen” next month for everyone to tour the space, ask questions and get to know one another. Management will be available to answer all your questions and we’ll have copies of our Licensing Agreement for you to sign and register on site.

The Open Kitchen will be a potluck, so feel free to bring your specialties and show off your future KitchenInc products. We’ll have plenty to drink and light refreshments too. This will be a series of family potlucks that we will be hosting at the site so all Kitchen Inc users can get to know one another.

Feel free to post questions and suggestions for this event, along with what you are bringing on the Facebook Event Page.

While we’ve used the last six months to source equipment from all over the Houston area and deliver it ourselves, many of the larger items such as ovens would have to come from a restaurant supplier. That day finally arrived this past Monday when I took delivery of all our heavy equipment items!

A sample of the trash I needed to clear out before the equipment could fit.

An exciting day, I arrived at the site at 9am sharp, expecting to find my crew hard at work cleaning and getting ready to take delivery (we’re not lazy, btw, the Condo association upstairs just won’t let construction start before 9am). Instead, the space was entirely empty and the area where the equipment would have to go was covered in pieces of drywall, tile and steel. To make matters much worse, our commercial loading zone was occupied by a moving crew working on someone’s condo. Only 100 units and someone picked to move in on MY equipment delivery day! I managed to track down the movers and they reported they’d be finished in less than an hour. Okay, things might just work.

Now where is my team? A quick phone call to my Contractor reports that everyone is running late for various reasons (truck problems, tied up with the City, etc) but will be there shortly. Luckily, my equipment is running late too! I continue filling wheel barrows and trash bags trying to clear space for equipment. Nearing 10am, a few of the guys arrive and set to help cleaning and soon the enormous box truck arrives with my equipment. Alas, the moving guys are still in the loading zone! I run around frantically trying to get the movers in the loading zone to move their pickup from the zone as City regulations prohibit parking in a commercial loading zone unless actively loading/unloading but they’ve disappeared into the lofts. I suppose I could call to have them towed, but what good would that do when I have to park NOW?

We manage to find a space for the equipment truck across the street. It looks like all of our equipment will have to travel a block down Travis – ridiculous. A few more of the crew arrive and we’re able to hoist the ovens up the stairs using a ramp and a dolly. Naturally, it starts to rain.

The real challenge comes with the double convection oven, which is so tall and heavy that we’re afraid it will topple onto someone’s head. Our plan was to take it apart into two 600 lb pieces but in some bizarre twist of circumstance, no one has brought their tools today and we can’t find a wrench: I’m on the bike and not in my truck, my Contractor came in his car and not his work truck, etc. A hunt begins and I manage to track down a small adjustable wrench from a mysterious tool bag I noticed in the utility room – I think it belonged to an electrician who was looking at the panel but I never did see him – and we managed to make do. The oven came apart and made it successfully into the space!

As for me, I left for home covered in drywall bits, insulation and soot; and just as I hopped on my bike a true Houston downpour let loose, adding rain and mud to the list of things covering my messy self. Let’s just say I ended up pretty happy that the cooking competition I was supposed to be in later that evening had been canceled because I was *exhausted*!

Now that the equipment is in, I’m itching to get the gas lines turned on so that we can play! Unfortunately it will be another couple of weeks before we’re ready to turn on the gas.

Pushing an oven down Travis St.

Free to build at last! This Monday morning I met with my contractor, landlord’s project manager and the landlord’s building engineer to discuss final transition of the space from their team over to me. With a few tasks remaining on their end (new air conditioning vent and minor details such as an entrance to my space) they reluctantly agreed to allow my contractor to begin work. The meeting also revealed a couple of interesting details that put their construction in a slightly new light.
1. Spire’s building engineer, the chief project manager for all construction, suffered a serious family emergency just as construction begin on my space, leaving an inexperienced administrative assistant and a new contractor to deal with this project.
2. As a result, miscommunication ensued and mismanagement run rampant. Recall my discussion of Spire telling me they had gotten “their own plans drawn” that didn’t have anything to do with my permits? Throughout the first few months I tried consistently to notify Spire that the approved drawings were not posted on site, that I had the permitted plans and wouldn’t they like them? As it turns out, the “plans they had done on their own” turned out to be nothing but the floor-plan my architect had included in the lease. Their work was done entirely off an 8 1/2 x 11″ sheet of paper while my detailed HVAC, MEP and architectural drawings sat in an office untouched. Their administrative assistant said that she was unaware that the plans I’d had prepared encompassed their work in addition to mine. “It’s in the lease,” I pointed out. “I’m sorry if I’d assumed you had read it.” She attributed this gross error to a “simple misunderstanding.” I coughed.

The Omega crew tearing down the house!

All the shock of this revelation aside, my contractor, the ever so awesome Omega Construction (and you can fan them on Facebook too), hit the ground running the very next day. They demolished all of the necessary walls, tore out some frames, and negotiated moving a surprise gas line all in a day’s work. Despite my usual penchant for sarcasm, I say entirely without it that this team has accomplished in less than a week, more than what Spire’s team achieved in an entire month. As a result, my landlord’s building engineer has seen the light and will likely hire my team to do their remaining work as well.

It’s only a few days into our construction and we’ve hit more than a few snafus. The first big surprise came the first morning when we discovered a mysterious gas line whose existence in a wall set for demolition had never been indicated. Naturally, this just happened to be the main gas line for both of our main cooking lines! In compliance with code for handling major gas lines (we’re back to sarcasm now) the previous owner’s contractor had failed to properly support the line and had simply left it propped up by some boards. Wow.

To further entertain us, we also discovered that the refrigeration units in the existing buffet line are not only hammered together in one giant 15+ ft long piece, but have also been screwed into, glued upon and generally banged up in every possible way.

Our intentions to reuse these units as under-counter refrigerators in our kitchens will likely have to be scrapped. Even more fun, the units are so massive they will have to be disassembled just to fit through the door, rendering any attempt to sell the units virtually hopeless.Still, the excitement of finally having my crew in the door and entering the final weeks of construction overpower any frustration. Walls are coming down, walls are going up… and we are happy.
We will continue to post pictures as construction continues both here and on our Facebook Page.

April 16: Permits have been ready for a few weeks. Landlord advises construction begins Monday. Expected time to completion, 3-4 weeks.
April 20: Landlord advises they were unable to begin construction due to a table with granite and tile on top of it on the right side of the room. Physical capabilities of all employees of selected contractor now viewed with utmost skepticism. Sheer laziness suspected culprit.
April 28: Met with my contractor, which shall heretofore be referred to as “Good Contractor” as opposed to “Evil Contractor,” which shall heretofore refer to Landlord’s contractor, at the site. Construction has commenced and seems to be moving along. Neither permits or plans are posted on site as required by City. Competence, in addition to physical capabilities of “Evil Contractor” now viewed with increasing skepticism.
April 29: Email battle ensues. I advise Landlord that appropriate permits and drawings are not displayed and the situation must be remedied. Compliance with the City Government takes backstage to movement of granite and tile.
May 3: In response to countless emails regarding lack of permits, landlord concludes with essentially “none of your business.” Reporting status: work will be complete in less than two weeks; imperative that all tile is removed since “final cleaning” is imminent.
May 10: “Good Contractor” procures our final building permit and confirms with the City that the permits for Landlord’s work have not been obtained.
May 11: In response to being advised that the City reports permits are not in place for the current construction, Landlord replies “you must move the stone.” [Read more →]

Not wanting to simply demolish and waste the 20+ feet of buffet that lined the existing restaurant space, I turned to Craigslist to find someone who might find a use for it. This being Houston, surely someone could use a buffet! I made the mistake of advertising the buffet as free to anyone willing to do the work of removing it from the site. Dozens of emails poured in within a few hours. Many were strangely picky for something free – “what is the exact color of the granite? Can you send more pictures? How much does it weigh?” One email stood out from the pack. It was from a couple who had lost their restaurant due to Hurricane Ike damage and were looking to rebuild. They’d be commuting from up north and doing the work themselves, but had a truck and tools and were ready to assess the materials.At the time, my landlord’s start on construction was eminent, so I got the interested couple into the space soon and explained they could help themselves to the buffet and to any of the tile on the walls. I was initially concerned about the weight of the granite as they were an older couple, but they assured me their sons would be in to help. We made arrangements to meet the following weekend and they could spend the day attacking the tiles with an air hammer. [Read more →]

…or punch in the face, rather.

On Friday, April 9, I was assaulted by a stranger who was parked in my driveway in the Washington Ave. corridor. The man was about exactly twice my size, very angry, and didn’t take well to women who tell him what to do. Apparently unable to deal with frustration verbally, he decided to punch me in the face with all the physical strength of a 6’4″ over 250 lb man and then promptly fled the scene, with a great deal of assistance from his friends who were standing by to help him get away and help deal with the police as though this had happened before.

Never having interacted with a man who would hit a women before, I simply stood in front of him and took the punch. I’m not sure if I saw it coming, but it was completely unexpected. I was taking to the E.R. where I my earlobe was stitched back on and diagnosed with a severe jawline fracture. Later that week I had metal plates inserted into my jaw (not fun) and begin a couple of months of recovery.

I am now speaking somewhat comprehensibly and even moving on to less liquid foods. I’m even getting sick of ice cream. While this is a personal matter, I wanted to let my KitchenInc crew know why I’ve been silent as of late and why construction has stalled a bit. My landlord is supposed to be handling their end of the build-out as we speak, but we me unable to do more than email for the past month, little progress appears to have been made.

If the dirty details of my assault interest you, I’m blogging here. While I tend to make light of things on this blog, this is a serious incident that has taken its place amongst the more life-changing moments of my life. I apologize to everyone for it interfering in our KitchenInc progress and will recover soon and get this project back on track so we can GET COOKING!!

I must confess, I’d been scribbling proposed layouts for the 907 Franklin space since the first day Adam showed it to me. When I showed up at the Mirador Group office, my architect, Todd Blitzer, explained he’d be handling the drawings. “Hey,” I reprimanded, “some of us don’t get to draw for a living.” Then I told him about how I’d studied architecture as a teenager and he begin to forgive my micromanaging.
The drawing below portrays perfectly how I work. However shocking it may be, nearly a year later, all of the notes, numbers and random lines still mostly make sense to me!
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It is only a few days before Christmas and we have just received word from Acción Texas that our loan has been approved for the full requested amount. We are making progress on the lease and permits and despite the fact that I had sincerely planned on being open for the 2009 Holiday Season, I am happy with the current state of affairs. We have the space, we have the funds – we’re good to go in 2010! As one of those people who jumps full on into the Christmas spirit with remarkable fervor, I couldn’t have been happier when I received the approval.
The following day, December 23rd, I receive a phone call from Acción to finalize closing arrangements. I am at my family home in rural New Mexico preparing the house for Christmas Eve celebrations and get little to no reception on my mobile there (thank you, AT&T). It is hard to determine the result of the conversation since it is cutting in and out but it appears that our loan officer, a woman I had not spoken to before, was asking me when I could come in during the next few days to close on the loan. When I explained to her that I was already out of state, traveling for the Holiday as most people do, she grew angry that I had not notified the organization of my travel plans. She explained that the application had been on file for too long and that I had to close before the end of the year or the application would be thrown out. I would have to start the process all over again with increased competition and no guarantees of success. Never mind the fact that the application had been on the books for a few months due to the organization’s over-extension and no fault of my own. Never mind the fact that no one had notified my of a year end closing dead line. Somehow, I should have notified them of my plans to travel at Christmas time through a magical telepathic sense that the loan would have to close immediately after receiving approval. Interesting. [Read more →]

Season’s Greetings from KitchenInc! While we are happily baking away at this most wonderful time of the year, we regret to inform you that our kitchens will not be open for the Holiday season as we had expected. Negotiations with our Landlord and construction planning have delayed our project further.

We wish you a wonderful Holiday Season, a Happy New Year and look forward to having you all in our kitchens next year!

Six months of lease negotiation and the landlord’s lawyer found a problem only now, after we had signed the lease. Convenient, perhaps? Now we are stuck with the impossible task of obtaining a convoluted permit or rewriting language in the lease that we had worked all Summer to achieve. Saner women may have given up at this point; resigned themselves to the great strip mall in the ‘burbs; but I persisted. I refused to consider an alternate location, not only because we had invested so much into the space already and announced it to our clients, but because I am plagued by a innate stubbornness that has been making my life difficult (and wonderful) since the moment I emerged from the womb.
The item in contention was our front door. Our landlord had agreed to build a new entrance to our space and since they refused to allow a recessed door, the entryway would have to extend onto the sidewalk. I was initially in favor of the sidewalk entrance. In my Sim-Houston sidewalk cafés and street vendors line the streets. Unfortunately, in the real Houston, downtown sidewalks are of a sacred nature. The irony of this fact, given that sidewalks are either neglected in or non-existant in most parts of the City, has not yet occurred to them. The proposed door would require an “Encroachment Agreement” to allow our intrusion onto the sacred sidewalk. The process entails a few checks to the City, a lot of waiting and then eventually hiring a Civil Engineer to show the City what lays under its own sidewalks. Yes, it is disconcerting to me as well. The City should probably know what is under its own sidewalks. Alas, then who would pay the Civil Engineers?
To further complicate matters, our financiers also require a fully-executed copy of the lease prior to approving our application. They continue to put pressure on our organization to either close on our loan or get out of the application pool.
Mr. Bad-news-from-Dallas Lawyer insisted that no lease would be executed until we received the Encroachment permit. We waited, impatiently, only to continue tripping over the permit details of our slippery sidewalk. As the year draws to a close we realize that we must amend the lease and proceed with construction in whatever way we can. A temporary door was proposed.

Happy Anniversary to me! This Holiday Season marks the second anniversary of the conception of KitchenInc. Yep, I’ve slowly been building this up for two whole years. While we may not yet be open for business, I’ve spent the past two years learning the ins and outs of the food industry, eaten my way across Texas and enjoyed a few other interesting adventures along the way. To celebrate our anniversary I’ve made a list of some of the more memorable take-aways from my two years in TX:

• Turned down for a loan by over 20 banks and assorted lending institutions despite being a former banker
• Successfully lived off of one year’s banker bonus for over two years, reaching new levels of frugaltiy
• Purchased, learned to ride and compltely, utterly destroyed my first motorcycle
• Wrote an 80+ page comprehensive business plan complete with a financial model that projects every detail right down to the TX Franchise tax – convincing anyone to actually read has been the biggest challenge
• Met the love of my life at Rudyard’s one evening after offering to buy him a beer
• Explored every inch of and fallen absolutely in love with the Hill Country
• Learned how to two step and actually kinda liked it
• Become a taco truck connoisseur

Most importantly, I’ve built a home here and the foundations of what I hope will be a great business. Thanks, Houston, it’s been a great ride!

Growing up in rural New Mexico I learned some unusual things at an early age. I learned that you shouldn’t make friends with a calf, no matter how cute, because eventually he will grow up to be hamburgers. I learned how pipes explode when they freeze and just how many apricots you can eat before you get sick. One of those valuable life lessons was this: bad things come from Dallas.
This was due to the ever increasing invasion that plagued my State. The surgically modified hordes of platinum fluff, sugar-daddy in tow, swarmed New Mexico in search of ski hills and culture. We were taught as locals to react with two key tactics: 1) raise all prices and 2) insist that you do not speak English when confronted.
At this point you are likely wondering what any of this could possibly do with KitchenInc. Let me indulge you. Since leaving New Mexico some eight years ago I have given little thought to the Dallas invasion. However, this past fall I have been forced to remember that childhood adage: bad things come from Dallas.
After months of negotiation, signing the lease for 907 Franklin at last was a most triumphant moment. I celebrated with homemade pizza and an Argentinean cab I’d been saving. I had signed not one, but FOUR copies of the lease and dutifully handed over my deposit check. It could not possibly get more official. We would open in time for the 2009 Holiday season. Such optimism, such joy was mine!
Several weeks later, after sending endless “WTF?” emails, our Landlord’s local middleman responded with most unexpected news. A lawyer in Dallas, in his final review of our lease, had decided that he did not like some of the wording and also noticed a mistake in our rent calculation. The wording in question obligated our landlord to complete build-out of our new entryway as part of the “Landlord’s Work.” Lawyer was uncomfortable with this clause since the ability of the landlord to complete the door depended on City permits that were not yet received.
Fine, we would simply have to wait until permits were in before final execution….or we could amend the lease with proposed language that invalidated the landlord obligations we had spent months negotiating out. “You pick,” the lawyer seemed to propose as though we had much of a choice in the matter.
Well then, how long would it take to obtain the required permits?