Eater Boston - On the House: The Opening of Juliet in Somerville's Union SquareThe Boston Restaurant, Bar, and Nightlife Bloghttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52682/favicon-32x32.png2015-12-31T13:00:03-05:00http://boston.eater.com/rss/stream/91781622015-12-31T13:00:03-05:002015-12-31T13:00:03-05:00On the House: Flakes of Snow, a Quiet Hum, and the Next Chapter
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<img alt="Juliet, through the window." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_K2H7NmnhVGkggw1UHfV-aLK0Ww=/0x571:2448x2407/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/48472977/on_the_house_photo_8.0.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Juliet, through the window. | Photo (and illustration below) by Katrina Jazayeri</figcaption>
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<p>This is the eighth installment of <a href="http://boston.eater.com/2015/9/29/9414121/juliet-somerville-series-restaurant-opening">On the House</a>, biweekly essays by Joshua Lewin, illustrated by Katrina Jazayeri, documenting the opening of their first permanent restaurant, <a href="http://boston.eater.com/venue/juliet">Juliet</a>.</p> <p><span><br><q class="pullquote">"Even though I had nothing, in the traditional sense, to qualify me as a chef or a business owner, I had something convincing and compelling from my early twenties. From that era with the chicken, and my dad shouting at me from the back steps, and me wanting to sleep the long permanent sleep. I had something from that time." —Gabrielle Hamilton, Blood, Bones & Butter</q></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Twenty minutes after I first sat down to write this, my fingers were quivering over my laptop keyboard as my body temperature was slowly dropping. I could have gotten up to turn the heaters on. I sat directly below one of them. We have two, at opposite ends of the long white-walled corridor that is the dining room at Juliet. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>I sat frozen in my seat feeling a combination of dread and excitement that combined into paralysis. I have a to-do list so long that completing an item on it, blacking it out in sharpie on index card or bisecting it with a clean line of a number 2 pencil across a legal pad, doesn't leave me with any of the usual elation, instead only providing a reminder of how insurmountable the mountain of tasks appears. I used to live for the feeling of completing these lists, one line at a time, meticulously but efficiently and ahead of schedule, leaving plenty of time for running new food cost models and labor strategies, developing recipes, writing thank you notes, and practicing things like online networking and social media. I haven't felt that kind of joy of proficiency for some time now. I don't remember the last time I wasn't carrying over line items from one day's list to the next, reconciling them into categories of still relevant or too late. The terms and tasks are often unfamiliar now. Anything extra is rushed through at the very end of one day or very beginning of another.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>My eyes were frozen in place. The cursor was blinking irregularly. Had the computer frozen too? No, there it went.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>That evening brought the first snow this winter, unless the few slowly falling flakes I saw the day before while running along the Charles River — part of a mix of rain and slush and bouncing hail stones — count. I'm not sure that they do; no one else seems to have seen them. I haven't been sleeping much lately. Who knows what I saw. I was actually so tired, or preoccupied, at the time that I ran my intended route in reverse and somewhere between three and four miles I jerked alert from a ten-minute daydream quite unsure of where I was for longer than a moment.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>It's easy to find my way back to Juliet, though, so without thinking about it too hard, that's what I did. The restaurant is quickly accessible from a number of major roads serving as a center point for commuting routes passing through Somerville and Cambridge, as well as Boston and beyond. Picking up any of those roads is simple, and then it's never more than a few miles back to the tall windows, currently adorned with paper leaves, that look into the restaurant. Or look out of it, if you are inside enjoying a hot cup of coffee while waiting for your bus on a cold day.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>If you live in the Union Square area, there's a good chance you make at least occasional use of that bus stop, which is visible from where I start or finish my morning run. A sight that is also visible to me from my place at the eight-foot stainless steel table that we had custom-built as the centerpiece of the kitchen, and therefore the restaurant. Early in our planning stages, we realized, in Katrina's words, that "custom is not in our budget." We splurged, though, for a few front and center accents like this table, the redwood counters, and an antique store find that became a custom light fixture, the first one you'll see looking in through these same windows. Those windows have been papered over since April. Most of them still are. However on Christmas Eve we pulled the paper down from two of them, leaving the almost-but-not-quite-complete room on full display.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>I begin and finish most of my runs from these windows now. Katrina's lightbox "Juliet" sign glowing from the inside looks particularly impressive at sunrise, which is good, because soon I'll be seeing a lot of sunrise. I fell in love with the idea of "service all day" over half a decade of serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner at Beacon Hill Bistro. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>I hate to close. Restaurants, especially ones with big windows and open floor plans set in busy neighborhoods, should be open as much as possible. It's been almost two years, though, since I had to perform like that. Since then I've come to appreciate sleeping in too. Or at least beginning the morning with hot coffee enjoyed slowly, and some time to read, run, write, or otherwise do something that isn't the thing I'll do all day.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>I quickly forget about that, though, looking through these windows, the sign illuminating the room around it. The rest of the lighting hanging quiet, a medley of carefully selected but easily installed track and pendant pieces which delineate the room into its various practical parts even though there is no actual separation. The kitchen equipment was delivered and installed over the course of the past two weeks. There is a gallant formation of unseen undercounter refrigeration units humming away along each wall and under each work surface.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>I imagined I could hear the hum of those units from the outside. I couldn't, but the sound is stamped in my mind. It catches me now each time I open the front door of the otherwise silent building. For months the sound of Juliet was saws, and hammers, and drills, and brown paper lunch bags crumpling or two-liter bottles fizzing off upon opening as contractors and subcontractors stopped for lunch. Then for weeks the sound of Juliet was silence as we waited for deliveries and watched them quietly installed. Then one day the the hum of the low-lying equipment replaced the silence. That gentle but apparent reverberation will be a short-lived signature and will soon be drowned out by running water, stacking plates, orders called out, silverware on china and the tap tap tapping of knives through onions, shallots, garlic, carrots, celery, and herbs. But for now, we hum.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The snow indeed fell that night. I think I've seen Juliet without snow for the last time before our now-imminent opening. Our last poppy has withered, as if on schedule, seeing us through just about to the the completion of construction. Tomorrow our electrician will be on site to finish his crucial work that will allow us to begin calling for inspections. We'll call, but won't expect much movement in that direction until the first week of the new year. We'll enjoy one more holiday with family, and each other. A rare treat. We'll savor it as best we can and try for a few hours to put checklists out of mind.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>There are plenty of details to still to complete. All important, but none comparing to the magnitude of the construction phase that is now ending. We have some paint touch-up and other carpentry finishes to oversee. We have to lower a custom table by a few inches. Not sure yet how we are going to pull that off. Right... that table. Staff handbooks to </span><span>edit</span><span>, vendors to contact, photos to stage, forgotten equipment to track down and purchase, window cleaning to schedule. There are to-do lists two pages long to burn. I have a new bright shiny oven; I can toss them right into it now.</span></p>
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<img alt="On the House illustration 8" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/uQc8E-GaowLxiwFIsJM-Anpats0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/5865433/on_the_house_illustration.0.jpg">
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<p dir="ltr"><span>It was hard to pull a quote for the top of the essay this time around. I've been reading Gabrielle Hamilton's memoir for the third time this week. Crammed (along with a half dozen other books, again) into a weekend bag on a recent trip to New York City.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>I've read and reread Gabrielle's work often. I could paste a few sentences off every third page as an epigraph and each would fit. The first time I read the book, the chef I was working for had just given a short and abrupt, at least to me, notice that he was leaving. I read twenty sleepy minutes at a time during my morning commute to the restaurant where I was suddenly working seven-day weeks, 14 hours per day, which lasted about two months until the chef could be replaced. I put my name in for the job but wasn't promoted. I know now to thank god I wasn’t. It took most of those two months to finish reading; I fell asleep every few pages.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Gabrielle spoke to me directly then and still does now. It's the story of an individual exorcising her past through diligent work in the kitchen. Work that evokes ghosts long dead and premonitions of her future. Work that at times she might prefer to leave behind but which she always finds herself back in the middle of. As far as I can tell, for the better.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr">She became something of a patron saint in my eyes. I found direction quickly in her story and meditated on the chapters there regularly. When the restaurant finally replaced the chef, and when I had finished training him, I finally took three days off. I ran to the bus station, <i>Blood, Bones & Butter</i> in hand. I wasn't in New York's East Village two hours before I was eating at Prune.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>An hour and a half later I walked out disappointed. To this day I can't explain exactly why, but it hurt. Like I had just waited at the tomb three months for Jesus to pop out and then reluctantly walked away unfulfilled. The food was great, the service was good, the restaurant design was charming, maybe beautiful. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>But I went looking for pilgrimage and left a casual tourist. Which was probably part of the problem. Management of expectations. I was looking for religion in a restaurant aspiring to (and succeeding greatly in securing) neighborhood greatness. Prune was just fine. I though, had some searching to do. And plenty of time in which to do it.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>On this most recent trip I was headed back to Prune, where I am happy to report I had a fantastic meal shared with wonderful company. One that will be remembered for a long time, hopefully as long as I will remember anything. The tables have been moved around a bit from the floor plan that was there years ago. The heavy iron table bases, distressed mirrors, friendly staff, and tiny open kitchen are the same, as is most of the menu. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>It was exactly what we wanted. A simple procession of one woman's favorite things. Radishes, well salted with butter. Egg, cooked hard, </span><span>on</span><span> mayonnaise. Beans, gently cooked, but long enough (immediately setting them apart from the majority that are not), and floating in their smoky broth adorned with a few sliced sausages. A perfect salad of nothing but mustard greens to finish, dressed up with pantry staples, in this case a few of </span><span>our</span><span> favorite things: garlic, lemon, anchovy. If the neighborhood weren't pressing from the outside trying to get in, we might have begged for a thick slice of cheese and another half-bottle of wine and prolonged our respite. We'd had our turn, though, and gave up our table, wading out into the clear East Village evening. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>I wonder if I can be so lucky one day to share the kind of stories that inspire a whole career, the kind of restaurant that even dares to set expectations that rival religious experience, even if later to fall short. Luckier still to make good later on those expectations, once properly clarified. To touch a life or two in such a profound way while making memories for the guests we seek to reach every day, the ones who live in our neighborhood. My neighbors.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>This will be the end of </span><a href="http://boston.eater.com/2015/9/29/9414121/juliet-somerville-series-restaurant-opening" target="_blank">On The House</a><span>, at least as far as Juliet is concerned. Eater might have preferred more facts and figures. More: today I did this, yesterday I did that. Sometimes my staff might like a little bit more of that too. Sorry Eater. Sorry staff. I can’t operate that way. What happens right now doesn’t mean anything to me without understanding how it fits into what’s gone before and what might happen next. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading. More importantly, I hope you feel like you know us a little bit better and so might enjoy our next chapter even that much more.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The first time I thought seriously about a restaurant of my own was also in the snow, just a few years before the impending snowfall that day, standing in front of those windows into Juliet. Like, a for-real restaurant of my own. Not the bed-and-breakfast I planned to retrofit into my sister's (unheated) side porch bedroom, or one of another dozen half-cooked ideas I had to make money cooking and serving food before I was 15.</span></p>
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<p dir="ltr"><span>It was fun and fulfilling to stand there and look back on that cold night, three stories above Beacon Hill where the thought that this could be possible someday first hatched. Fun to realize how many ideas from that night did indeed become some small part of what we've now built. More fun still to think how many ideas from those childhood years have poured their way into the foundation here as well. Most of it of course is much different than what I envisioned that evening. Whatever it is, it is ours. Nearly ready. Partially on view. While I do often now find myself in this temporary paralysis of nerves, I know and am looking forward to the cure. Soon, very soon, I'll step back behind my cutting board to put head down and return to the work that found me while I was searching for something different. </span></p>
https://boston.eater.com/2015/12/31/10694184/juliet-on-the-house-8Joshua Lewin2015-12-16T10:30:02-05:002015-12-16T10:30:02-05:00On the House: From Someday to Any Day, Juliet Is Almost Here
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<img alt="Katrina and Josh in their nearly finished restaurant." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dmIgw1ymGsNhbQxH_1CgcrCy3Ik=/0x0:1280x960/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/48180839/juliet_on_the_house_photo_7.0.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Katrina and Josh in their nearly finished restaurant. | Photo (and illustration below) by Katrina Jazayeri</figcaption>
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<p>This is the seventh installment of <a href="http://boston.eater.com/2015/9/29/9414121/juliet-somerville-series-restaurant-opening">On the House</a>, biweekly essays by Joshua Lewin, illustrated by Katrina Jazayeri, documenting the opening of their first permanent restaurant, <a href="http://boston.eater.com/venue/juliet">Juliet</a>.</p> <p><q class="pullquote">"Because the Jungle is full of such tales. If I made a beginning there would never be an end to them." —Rudyard Kipling</q></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>I am writing this seventh installment of On The House from inside Juliet for the first time. Today, about fourteen weeks after beginning, Juliet looks more like a restaurant than a construction site. It’s quiet in here. I can think in here. The paints, stains, and other finishes are inviting and warm. The lighting is impressive. Most of it was installed over the weekend with a few finishing touches yesterday. Yes, we finally decided on the lights.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>I am writing from a countertop placed at bar height in the front windows. It looks out over Union Square, a bus stop, and the high traffic corner of a neighborhood in flux that is Washington and Webster, where commuters from Charlestown, Cambridge, Boston, and beyond all come together in Somerville and are forced to get a look at our storefront before continuing on to wherever they are going.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>About a year ago we started to brainstorm a specific business plan with these corners in mind. Fifteen thousand people live within a half mile. We are two of those people. Another countless number use this intersection on their commute to work, school, or play. They go by car, bus, bike, and foot. Someday, they might go by train. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Juliet is located at 257 Washington St., just outside the busy center of the square. This space itself was barely an idea when we first started planning. It was an option from the beginning, but while we kept the specific location flexible, we weren’t flexible about the target area being right here in our own neighborhood. A view like the one from these windows, we’ve been chasing for a long time.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>This countertop was here in the space’s former incarnation as a neighborhood favorite coffee shop. We preserved a number of elements from that shop, although they’ve each been refinished and made our own. There is this counter, painted to match the framing supporting our solid slab redwood service counters. The hardwood floors which run throughout, stained with a custom blend by Katrina. Remnants of those floors have been repurposed into a lightbox-style sign, and a few more will find their way into menu design. A few prominent pendant and globe light fixtures left behind will compliment the additional warehouse style and schoolhouse glass pieces we’ve added. There is a fading wheat paste mural of a coffee-drinking man on our back door. We’d been fed a rumor that he might be a former employee. Katrina tracked down the artist who explained he was a representation of the people he used to see on the street, running for the bus. Whoever he is, we expect we’ll keep him around, at least in spirit.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>We’ve spent a lot of time this year talking about the past and how we got to where we are. Talking about what motivates two people to open a new restaurant when there are already plenty of perfectly good — and a number of absolutely great — ones nearby. We’ve met our neighbors and told them our story, the story about two people who come to food and hospitality from very different backgrounds and meet in the middle over the love of sharing, storytelling, and technical proficiency all at once.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Eight months ago we potted herbs and flowers into some old wine crates that I had packed up my books and tools in the day I walked out of my regular job for the last time, almost exactly a year prior. Two temporary restaurants, a couple of invitations to the James Beard House to prepare dinner, three countries, and a host of American cities later we stood outside on Saturday mornings and shook hands. We discussed likes and dislikes and the changing neighborhood. We answered the question "When will you open?" with "Soon." We believed that.</span></p>
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<img alt="On the House Illustration 7" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/d2PETVGYhJQ9be5nTGMfO91w47I=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/5337671/on_the_house_illustration_7.0.jpg">
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<p dir="ltr"><span>Last weekend we finally cooked the Juliet menu for the first time, although in an alternate location in Boston. We are confident but cautious about a part of our concept that we think is very unique to us and has been a piece of our planning since the first hypothetical conversations we had about an unnamed future restaurant. Some of those conversations took place right here on this countertop in that old neighborhood favorite coffee shop.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>We intend to take a high-service dining counter that serves just a few at a time, overlooking a gleaming open kitchen where the highest professionalism and craftsmanship are on display, and slot it right in like a jigsaw puzzle around the core of our operation. That core is a quick and efficient casual menu focused on the daily commuter and those fifteen thousand neighbors we’ve been doing our best to get to know for months. We want to open our doors and serve them first. We want to offer them both the everyday and the extraordinary all at once. We won’t hide either one. If a smattering of food tourists make their way to Union Square to see our show each week, we look forward to welcoming them too.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>We previewed the breakfast menu for our full-service counter, reaching those would-be tourists to Juliet first, along with a few vigilant individuals from our neighborhood who made their way by as well. A brief role swap, and also something of a farewell to downtown Boston, where I’ve spent the majority of the last decade cooking as a commuter myself. Boston stamped us with approval that morning. Soon we’ll pack our eggs and butter, radishes and grains, caviar and brioche, and unload them closer to home where they’ll stay for quite some time.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr">We talk a little bit less about the past now and a lot more about the future and especially the present. Juliet is no longer <i>someday</i>. Juliet is <i>any day</i>. We received the majority of our kitchen equipment early yesterday morning. An oven is holding us up, but only a little, along with a three-bay sink. That sink, which was a long production to procure in the first place, was inexplicably shipped separate from its components and via two different carriers. I signed for the faucet this afternoon, but the rest will keep me awake for one more excruciating night. The three-bay sink is an integral piece of our health department application. I’ll be contented to see it arrive.</p>
<p><span>This time when we say "soon," though, we mean it. Well, we meant it the first time. But this time we are right. I know now that I am writing one of the last — but not quite the very last — dispatches from the process of opening a restaurant. Soon I’ll be back to running one.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Those wine boxes won’t see another season. We didn’t line the bottoms with anything to protect from water damage, and I’m sure they’ve rotted inside. That’s ok. They’ve been with me a long time. It’s been an unbelievably warm December so far. There’s a new poppy flower planted like a blowing flag in one of those crates. The warm weather might have brought some new basil or cilantro with it as well if those hadn’t been completely picked over by someone in the neighborhood some time ago. It started slowly, almost imperceptibly. Eventually it was disappearing in large clumps, leaving behind gaping holes and spindly dying sticks. I am hopeful that we just have a big cilantro fan in the neighborhood. It can be a divisive ingredient, but I do love cooking with it. I hope it wasn’t just plucked and tossed aside without a further thought. Cilantro makes me happy; senseless vandalism makes me sad.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>We fought to keep those poppy flowers alive through the spring. This late bloomer will see us through to the end of our construction project and with a little luck might still be precariously bobbing around in the wind on opening day. But if not, that’s ok too. It’s a beautiful sight through these windows for now. </span></p>
https://boston.eater.com/2015/12/16/10287954/juliet-somerville-on-the-house-december-updateJoshua Lewin2015-12-02T10:27:19-05:002015-12-02T10:27:19-05:00On the House: A Rare Thanksgiving With Family While Waiting for the Floors to Dry
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<img alt="Juliet's exterior." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/T3AYc8BWIB8LgRRVIu1xw7yR1eg=/470x0:3189x2039/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/47785153/FullSizeRender__5_.0.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Juliet's exterior. | Photos and illustration by Katrina Jazayeri.</figcaption>
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<p>This is the sixth installment of <a href="http://boston.eater.com/2015/9/29/9414121/juliet-somerville-series-restaurant-opening" target="new">On the House</a>, biweekly essays by Joshua Lewin, illustrated by Katrina Jazayeri, documenting the opening of their first permanent restaurant, <a href="http://boston.eater.com/venue/juliet" target="new">Juliet</a>.</p> <p><span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><q class="pullquote">"If I knew the way, I would take you home."<br>—Robert Hunter</q></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Major holidays are, in my family, like most others, major events. The ones that fall between October and January especially. That includes Halloween, both Christmas and Hanukkah, New Year’s Eve. Sometimes Kwanzaa. Most of all, Thanksgiving.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>You could call our family a lot of things. My mother, betraying her Virginia roots and a basic inability to say something negative directly, might call it varied or widespread. My stepmother, Jill, comes complete with a similar innate ability to deliver a complimentary description of just about any event or thing. She usually means it, and she really digs it in with a smile when she doesn’t. Coincidentally, considering the holiday at hand, at her most vulgar she is most likely to deliver something like, "You turkey." She’d call us broad. Maybe far-reaching.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Those not among the matriarchs might call us something more like an aberration. Like a maniac had cut out favorite character descriptions from arcane fairy tales and pasted them all back together into a new story in a scrapbook. Admittedly, we tend sometimes toward cynical. I prefer to agree with the moms.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>I’m the oldest of six children. That includes a relatively even distribution of siblings, step-children, and halves. There are a few marriages on both sides. At least five sets of grandparents war politely for the right to host the holiday celebration. Extended families include innumerable aunts and uncles. One couple stepped in as guardians to three of us for years, adding another contingent of family extensions and one more pair of enthusiastically engaged grandparents. Grandma and Grandpa "Wolf," parents to the "Wolfie" brothers. I’m sorry if you had a run-in with those characters along the way, but I love them. I’ll never forget my first beer in a bar at the age of fourteen. That’s a story for another day.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>We’ve got both Catholics and all sorts of Protestants, as well as plenty of Jews. Union organizers and executives. Mob enforcers and cops. Waitresses and saloon owners. And me. Logging into Facebook for updates can be an exhilarating experience.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>I was born on Thanksgiving Day in 1984. So was Scarlett Johansson. President Kennedy died on the same day (November 22) in 1963. Not Thanksgiving. The holiday was about as late as it gets that year and didn’t land on the calendar until November 28. The yearly celebration quickly took on added importance to me. Also to my family, who went out of their way to recognize my birthday around the busy holiday preparations or proceedings.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The instances that my birthday fell on the fourth Thursday of November number only five. The day I was born, then again six years later, neither of which I can recall. Somehow there was an instance in 2001 that I also can’t seem to recall. I do remember waking up halfway through dinner after drinking all morning at our high school football game. I say they forgot about me. On Thanksgiving! My birthday! Their story is a little different. Then there were two more pretty close together, 2007 and 2012. Those I remember. I spent them both in restaurants. Working.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>For years I caught some shit for that. Somewhere around the time I turned 13 (November 27 that year), Jill’s mother Lil took over the majority of Thanksgiving cooking and hosting responsibilities. We would make our rounds before or after, but she controlled the main event. I developed a reputation for being able to put away three to five pounds of mashed potatoes on my own. Five years of that and Lil had finally adjusted her shopping list to compensate for my appetite. Around year six I stopped showing up.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>I got a quick glimpse into where Jill inherited her delivery style.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>"Gram says we missed you for Thanksgiving again but at least we have plenty of potatoes to share." A smile just about audible over the telephone. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>I should have been thankful emojis hadn't yet entered the vernacular.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>A few years later the phone call stopped. They came to understand that I didn’t have much choice in the matter. Outside of finding a new line of work. My holiday plans were decided for me the minute I took a sous chef job at a busy downtown bistro in the ground floor of a boutique hotel. Half the staff salaries were paid on the proceeds of those fall and winter prix fixe reservations alone. And I came to love those holiday services anyway. Most of all; Thanksgiving. </span></p>
<p><span>It took a couple of years for me to really get the hang of the Thanksgiving service when we would serve 200 or so hungry revelers. Not including the copious solo orders from the bar or the early birds for breakfast. Eventually I learned to dig into it gleefully. Carrying around memories of kitchens of grandmothers and aunts and mothers as we paraded around town on the annual holiday procession. I remained serious about the mashed potatoes. Every day, but especially that day. Any of my sous chefs over the years at Beacon Hill Bistro will attest to my physical effort each year, personally passing twenty-pound batches two-and-a-half times over ten hours of Thanksgiving dinner over the wire mesh to be pureed with nearly equal parts dairy and plenty of salt and hand cracked pepper.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>"Goddamn if Lil thinks she has something to say about potatoes, she ought to take a look at this…" Delivered under my breath but with a smile from ear to ear.</span></p>
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<p dir="ltr"><span>We were serious, too, of course, about the turkey. We’d buy great birds (thirty of them) and treat them to a long process celebrating the best of all the parts. I’d cut it all off the bone in one piece, then make a sausage out of the thigh meat (larded with the backfat of my beloved Mangalitsa pig, which was usually delivered a few weeks before Thanksgiving) and stuff that sausage back into the turkey breasts, roll it all up in its own skin, and very slowly poach it in a stock made from its bones until fully cooked. Then we’d air-dry the skin a couple of days before slowly reheating it in the oven slicked with butter, salt, and pepper. Once hot it was dipped in the deep fryer for a crispy, tender, juicy turkey that is easy to slice and serve. A technique I learned then modified over the years from an early mentor who could have been channeling my own Grandma Wolfie as he drilled into our heads that when it comes to the holiday service to </span><span>"be ready, be ready be ready…" and "use an electric knife."</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The accompaniments are important also. Although I have built a reputation in heavily researched, globe-trotting menus, I cook Thanksgiving with two feet firmly on American soil. Happy to pull inspiration from my family's roots up and down the East Coast and just a bit south and west. Oyster stew is cooked in juice pressed from local crab apples, the dressing (stuffing, but not stuffed) a combination of cornbread and Jewish-style rye. Desserts, nothing but pie — maybe just a few light surprises to keep things interesting. No matter how many we used to serve, I’d try not to forget to call mom, so she could remind me about her favorite Thanksgiving ever and pretend she needs my advice on cooking the turkey (she doesn’t.)</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>This year I had a lot to be thankful for. After toiling about in that downtown basement for years under the fluorescent lights, I’m building my own restaurant, an opportunity afforded me based on a lot of hard work, the trust of a handful of believers, and a city-wide reputation I never imagined when I first signed away any future holidays so many years ago. I have a partner who somehow manages to wrangle my constant visioning and dreaming and sprinting forward into something sewn up tightly and presented beautifully for our guests, fans, family, staff, and supporters, without whom I’d likely still be under those fluorescents, a skilled but content malingerer feuding with my ambition while grilling steaks and rolling omelettes in the basement for faceless tourists and a few beloved regulars just above. I’ve published essays both fun and meaningful in major media outlets, including my first this year in print. I have an audience and a platform from which to share my ideas even beyond the kitchen walls. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Speaking of walls, ours are finished. The floors too. In fact, those floors are why I don’t have too much to update from the construction viewpoint this week. A combination of a couple of mundane events turned the clock against us this time. The cold weather hit for a few days just as our floors were being stained. That would be fine on its own, but at the same time our electrician came down with the flu. The plan was to install the HVAC at just the moment the paint on the walls dried, but just before the stain was applied, the heat speeding up the drying process that was instead halted by the cold air as he recovered.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>He’s back to work now. The heat is ready to fire. The floors are dry although still awaiting a final coat of stain. Tomorrow we begin something referred to as a "punch list." It means the scope of agreed work is just about done, but like a first draft. What’s left is editing. Punctuation. Smoothing, finishing, polishing. Then we look at the final stages, including equipment and countertop installation, mounting some shelving, finally deciding on those light fixtures. I suppose we should buy some dishes, pots, pans. Napkins?</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>While those floors dried, I drove. Jill lives about two hours from the city, a few doors down from Lil. Jill hosts Thanksgiving now and handles most of the cooking, with a little welcome help from my sisters. Lil’s husband Bud took care of the potatoes this year. It concerned me to hear that. Bud is a handyman, a football star, and a hell of a conversationalist. But potato puree? He handled the job with ease. I would have used a little more butter. I suspect there was some margarine. He got the salt and pepper right, and there were even potatoes to spare. Granted, I don’t eat like I used to. And you know what? Margarine on toast after school or scooped over the top of hot potatoes used to please us just fine. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Shrinking appetites aside I think I’ve regained a taste for taking the holidays off, for enjoying them with family. For the relaxation of cooking well for and in sight of twenty instead of ten times that. For arguing over the remote with little nieces and nephews who prefer Frozen over the Macy’s day parade. Cloudy With a Chance Of Meatballs over Dallas Cowboys football. Settling finally on Ratatouille, just in time for the little ones to fall asleep. I’ve regained a taste for it for sure. And I’m thankful to be in the position to have the choice.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Maybe one of these upcoming years I'll fly to South Carolina. Instead of calling mom to indulge her in confirming that yes, it is still okay to drape the turkey in thickly sliced bacon before roasting, I'll see if she’ll meet me in Charleston. We can find someone else’s boutique hotel to eat lunch at. I’ll sip bourbon outside. She’ll just have tea, but she won’t judge my preferences. At least not out loud. I’ll bring her one of those boneless rolled turkeys. They take up to three days to prepare just right. I think she’ll find my Mangalitsa larded sausage a fine stand-in for her market-bought pork products.</span></p>
<p class="caption"> </p>
<p dir="ltr"><b>Oyster Stew</b> <i>(Serves 20)</i></p>
<p><span><i>We haven’t published a recipe with this series yet. Sorry. It’s a hard transition from plywood to mirepoix. Here’s one to enjoy as soon as the weather turns cool. It’s as good at Christmas as Thanksgiving. Oysters aren’t just for sundresses and patios. You could embellish this with pork or spices. The holiday kitchen is busy enough already, though, and this is one you can pull together in just a couple of minutes once the potatoes are cooked. Jill would just snip fresh chives with scissors over the bowls when finished, which is pleasantly sufficient. I prefer a big mix. Parsley, chives, tarragon, chervil the most likely. I can’t get enough, though; I love the flavors of herbs competing against each other a bit, vying for attention over the clamor of the family table. I might also add dill and even thyme or cilantro. Lemon zest.</i></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"> </p>
<ul>
<li><span>4 large red bliss potatoes, peeled and cut into ¼ inch dice</span></li>
<li><span>2 tablespoons butter</span></li>
<li>
<span>3 leeks — white part only, halved lengthwise and then into ¼ inch half-moons, </span><span>rinsed well and drained</span>
</li>
<li><span>12 ounces hard cider</span></li>
<li><span>10 ounces heavy cream</span></li>
<li><span>3 tablespoons chives or mixed herbs, finely chopped</span></li>
<li><span>4 dozen local oysters, shucked with liquid reserved</span></li>
</ul>
<p> </p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>In a medium-sized pot, cover the potatoes with cold water and add a generous pinch of salt. Place the pan over medium heat and bring to a simmer. Lower the heat and cook the potatoes until they are just cooked through. Immediately remove from heat, drain, and cover with cold water until cool.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Place a heavy bottomed sauté pan over medium heat. Add the butter, and when the butter melts, add the leeks and a pinch of salt. Cook the leeks, stirring frequently to avoid browning, until tender. Lower the heat and add the potatoes, cider, reserved oyster liquid, and cream. When this comes to a simmer, add the oysters and cook just until the edges of the oysters begin to curl. Remove the pan from the heat, add the herbs, and adjust the seasoning with salt and freshly ground black pepper.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Place two oysters in each bowl and divide the broth among them. A few hands will go up when you ask who loves oysters. Indulge them or reserve the extra for yourself while you do the dishes.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Juliet 6b" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Xhl99JT_QcMeJqsJxTpn9RImKhQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4315933/IMG_6922.0.JPG">
</figure>
</p>
https://boston.eater.com/2015/12/2/9834912/on-the-house-juliet-thanksgiving-memoriesJoshua Lewin2015-11-19T16:41:28-05:002015-11-19T16:41:28-05:00On the House: Abandoning Autopilot and Nearing the Start Line
<figure>
<img alt="Juliet, under construction." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KdCMZizQKPzK2ZyxkQETHyJN1oo=/0x0:3264x2448/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/47700145/image1__5_.0.0.JPG" />
<figcaption>Juliet, under construction. | Photo (and illustration below) by Katrina Jazayeri</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is the fifth installment of <a href="http://boston.eater.com/2015/9/29/9414121/juliet-somerville-series-restaurant-opening" target="new">On the House</a>, biweekly essays by Joshua Lewin, illustrated by Katrina Jazayeri, documenting the opening of their first permanent restaurant, <a href="http://boston.eater.com/venue/juliet" target="new">Juliet</a>.</p> <p><q class="pullquote">"He could shave with a straight razor on a transatlantic liner in a storm. The electric razor fosters no comparable talents." —A.J. Liebling</q></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>In certain places, at certain times, certain experiences are just about automatic. One could try to fight them, but why bother? This idea could apply to significant events of all stripes, for sure, but in this case I’m thinking along more mundane lines. The everyday goings on that propel us through our days, the natural chain of events that take us from waking, to breakfast, work, lunch, work, play, dinner, sleep, and whatever else in perfunctory succession in between. Hundreds of variable minutiae that make each day unique, but don’t require, or prefer, our direct intervention.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>These things happen largely in the framework of our typical days. We don’t notice them, but they are there. Pushed out of our comfort zone for any reason and the autopilot feature clicks on a little less frequently, for shorter intervals. Forcing us to think our tasks through with greater attention, to get in the way of the inadvertent experiences, interject our will into the small things, interrupting the natural course of simple events. But we can’t interrupt it completely. Nature is still going to have its say.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Those were the thoughts that lodged in my mind and remained fastened there as I rounded mile six and turned left to route my path up, around, and on to the span of the Golden Gate Bridge at 6:30 a.m. That’s 3,000 or so miles from my house, my restaurant, my life — in other words, no small disruption of my mundane. That’s three hours earlier than I normally do anything of any degree of significance in the morning. By the end of this run that would take me still twice across the bridge, once away from and once right into the by then well-placed San Francisco sun, I’d be logging exactly three more miles than I ever had run continuously before.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>San Francisco has its own special experiences built in, including the ones that — even 3000 miles from home, living outside the comfort zone on high alert — manage to wedge their way in without intervention or permission. That’s where nature creeps in. One of my favorite recurring experiences each time I visit San Francisco is that I have no choice but to witness the sun’s gradual morning climb over the bay. It’s automatic. I don’t adjust to time zone changes rapidly, so I basically have no choice but to wake up in time for the sunrise when I jump back three hours.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>That’s how I found myself with tightly laced sneakers heading out just before the first rays of the heavily diffuse light of a typical bay area morning broke the dark and shortly after with the sun rising over my right shoulder, slowly warming my creaking knees and pushing away the cool fog in creeping wisps as I moved forward. One foot in front of the other I found myself winding along the waterline, watching casually as pelicans occasionally glided low across the water, bellies dipping gently onto the surface as they scanned for breakfast. Then up and around the hilly climb overlooking a repurposed military development turned recreation and community center for a new vantage point over dog walkers and yoga classes in the fields below, the Golden Gate Bridge still about two miles in the distance. Left foot, right foot, incomplete thoughts still bouncing around in strange paths like oval marbles in my just-waking skull. Those two miles disappeared behind me; five miles became six, then seven. Who stops running with their toes at the entrance to the Golden Gate Bridge? Eight miles. Back again, that’s nine. Why leave off at nine when the next one is all downhill? Need to go that way anyway. Ten. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Somewhere along the fifth mile it all just became compulsory. It would have taken more effort somehow to stop at five than to make it to ten. A bigger interruption to turn and trudge tired legs back downhill than to shuffle them easily over the bay water and then back again before slowing to a gradual, unforced completion a few miles and a new record later. All I had to do was open my eyes that day, choose not to get in the way too much, and natural experience took care of the rest.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Or maybe the past 650 or so words are really just me stalling a bit. Postponing whatever it is I have to share this week. Likewise, maybe miles eight, nine, ten, were just me enjoying the autopilot of one foot in front of the other while indiscriminate thoughts rattled around with minimal consequence and without deliberation. Kicking the can of responsible thought and decision another ten, twenty, thirty minutes into the future.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Juliet 5 illustration" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/w3VH3dNlphP94KMTcD47lEcS1QA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4283373/Screen_Shot_2015-11-19_at_4.37.27_PM.0.png">
</figure>
</p>
<p><span>Why all this sudden celebration of delay? Because a week ago our contractor looked at me and matter-of-factly asked if we had picked a target date for opening the restaurant. Open the restaurant! Until now it’s been someone else’s job to build the restaurant. Now it’s our job to open it. Months ago I never thought I would hear those words, would have done anything to bring the day closer. Now it’s suddenly rushing forward faster than I am ready for. Our contractor has put on an excellent performance throughout these past months in bringing our vision to life. I’m sure he took a little bit of satisfaction in seeing me squirm at the questioning. I’m holding him up now. He didn’t say as much, but twelve weeks ago I was pushing him to move faster, break ground sooner, check boxes more rapidly, deliver on milestones quicker. Now I’d like him to buy me a few extra days somewhere. He deserves that satisfaction.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>We landed back in Boston on Monday morning about 3 a.m. Time for a nap before our standing construction meeting on Tuesdays. We walked in to the sight of our wood floors unsheathed after eight or ten weeks under protective wrapping. The next day they were sanded down to their blonde surface, exposed like a freshly shucked oyster after years of grinding away on the sandy floor of the ocean. Years of weathering stripped down and laid raw. Tomorrow those floors will be stained a pigment that Katrina decided on after weeks of back and forth debate. We’ll have a week of limited activity as those floors dry and cure, and then we will charge into the details. Shelving, table bases, chairs, stools, doors, and knobs.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>None of it is automatic now. Every agonizing decision needs to be made quicker than I prefer. There is no letting nature take it on while the mind bounces around as it will. Hours like this feel like days again now. Days like weeks. But what I would give for a few more of those days! How different than when we started…</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>We have chosen a target date. I’m not going to tell you what it is just yet, but I am going to do everything I can to meet it. We’ve put out a few well-received employment offers to some really exciting potential candidates. We are fielding inquiries from others and accepting more. We are happily taking donations for Toys for Tots with a collection box just outside the restaurant. We’re hoping you’ll pull the door and peek in when you drop off your toys. We are ready to show off a bit. Juliet is now something to behold. We’ve scheduled one last pop-up event before we settle in to a real address for good, a preview of our prix fixe breakfast option at Juliet, </span><a target="_blank" href="http://bcae.org/index.cfm?method=ClassInfo.ClassInformation&int_class_id=13786&int_category_id=2&int_sub_category_id=5">hosted by the Boston Center For Adult Education</a><span> on December 5. We’re selling gift certificates </span><a target="_blank" href="http://www.julietsomerville.com/gift-certificates/">on our website</a><span> and are looking forward to seeing them redeemed.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Like in the previous four installments of this column, the epigraph at the top is culled from phrases that I stumbled across throughout the week. The intention being just another look at what is going on inside our heads as we build our first restaurant. Unlike the previous installments, this quote from A.J. Liebling doesn’t relate as directly to the writing or the construction work this week at the restaurant. But when I thumbed open the book and the first thing I read was a sentence like that, I knew better than to fight the urge to purchase it. Finally, something I could do naturally and without careful consideration or without running ten miles in a strange city in order to elude the raging storm in my head. I can’t do that everyday; I don’t have time to do all that laundry. What a well-placed distraction this was! I had no choice but to buy it. I’m looking forward to a few more phrases like that. The kind that get stuck rattling around in your brain, expunging for a minute whatever internal debate might be torturing you in there. Thank you, Liebling. Thank you. </span></p>
https://boston.eater.com/2015/11/19/9764450/on-the-house-abandoning-autopilot-and-nearing-the-start-lineJoshua Lewin2015-11-04T13:00:02-05:002015-11-04T13:00:02-05:00On the House: An Old Dream Finally Begins to Take Shape
<figure>
<img alt="Juliet, under construction." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/TdjXpp35YbGIpOHgMGK4yHFfED4=/0x0:3264x2448/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/47582525/IMG_1697.0.0.JPG" />
<figcaption>Juliet, under construction. | Photo (and illustration below) by Katrina Jazayeri</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is the fourth installment of <a href="http://boston.eater.com/2015/9/29/9414121/juliet-somerville-series-restaurant-opening" target="new">On the House</a>, biweekly essays by Joshua Lewin, illustrated by Katrina Jazayeri, documenting the opening of their first permanent restaurant, <a href="http://boston.eater.com/venue/juliet" target="new">Juliet</a>.</p> <p><q class="pullquote">"Some people see things that are and ask, Why?<br>Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not?<br>Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that."<br>—George Carlin</q></p>
<p dir="ltr">Late fall some years ago I was reading along to the <i>Boston Globe</i> food section with my aunt and grandmother. The restaurant I was working at, to which they lived nearby, was the subject of the weekly dining review, a column I had read diligently for years. I still do.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>My restaurant career, allowing for some gaps along the way (as well as some creative license to avoid incriminating any past employers), had already spanned close to 12 years. Likely as many job descriptions as well as I made my way from dishwasher to busboy and followed that path to front-of-house manager. Eventually I made my way back through the kitchen. As the sous chef now of this restaurant, I was responsible for, well, all the plates written about. At least to some degree. Their execution, of course, less than their creation. </span></p>
<q class="pullquote float-right">Then I'd begin a long day at the cutting board.</q><p dir="ltr"><span>My day would begin by discussing pros and cons from the previous night’s service with the chef. Next, a quick check on the quality of any prepped items remaining, followed by a glance at the lists detailing the work that the staff would need to complete before heading into another busy evening. More often than not, I’d make a few changes to what I saw there, and then I’d begin a long day at the cutting board. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Beef butchering gave way to fish fabrication as I would rush to complete these major tasks in the relative quiet of the early kitchen, pastry production cooks keeping me company with light conversation before the majority of the staff arrived an hour or two later. Once the day was in full swing, my attention was diverted regularly to clarify recipes or check the quality of work underway. If the day demanded, I might patiently walk a prospective job applicant through the basics of how to get around in our kitchen. After the tour, I would have to tie up at least one eye the rest of the day, watching to make sure one of his hands didn’t slice off a piece of the other. Not that that was terribly likely. See it happen once, though, and you’ll make sure it never does again. All the while I remained centered at my cutting board, dicing garnishes, checking portions, and otherwise preparing one of the line stations to be ready for service while overseeing the rest.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>That’s a lot of work, and it takes up a lot of time. My family knew how much I was working. Reflective of an endemic problem in our industry, they were likely concerned about how much I was earning for that effort as well. It wasn't unusual that I might turn to them for small loans to cover rent and other minor expenses. </span></p>
<q class="pullquote float-left">I might have anticipated their reaction halfway through reading the largely positive review when they realized my name wouldn’t be mentioned anywhere in it.</q><p dir="ltr"><span>Had I thought about it, I might have anticipated their reaction halfway through reading the largely positive review when they realized my name wouldn’t be mentioned anywhere in it. I, of course, would have been terribly surprised if it had! Before I had time to grasp what they might be thinking, though, my aunt was already fuming that I hadn’t gotten any credit. It took a minute, but I got my head around her argument and quickly talked her down.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>I was just happy, after a decade-plus of working around the open flames, noisy hood vents, and likely grease burns of kitchens all over New England, to have a management role in a restaurant featured in a full-page review in the paper of record. A good review, too! I was second in charge of a restaurant covered by the press, and the press liked it! Soon I had her wincing along with me at any minor jab in the remaining paragraphs, as if it had been an attack on me alone. Named, or not.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The next day I walked into an impromptu meeting upon my arrival at the restaurant. The chef, managers, and owners got together and read the review aloud, its positives and negatives weighed and discussed. For the rest of them at the table, this was a time-worn standard operating procedure. I let my excitement pass without letting on too much once I recognized this wasn’t a high-five session. They’d all been through this before. </span></p>
<p><span>"Guys, the <i>Boston Globe</i> just ate all our food and wrote about it." A voice in my head. "Growing up we didn’t even read the <i>Boston Globe</i>. Now I’m in it! Kind of. And not in the police blotter either!"</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>I didn’t pay close attention to that meeting. I was stuck in my own head. I took the time to process my excitement and get my work face back on. It was a Thursday, which would be a busy night and would open us up to two or three more busy days as we wound up for and charged through the weekend. So that event came and went. The review was written; we read it. We liked it, mostly. We went back to work. Thirty minutes delayed too, and I had a lot of fish to cut.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>That excitement, buried as it was under a pile of shallots, carrots, celery, potatoes, whole fish, and pork pieces, over and over again, never quite subsided. It just got pushed to the side as I got on with keeping the food coming out of the kitchen to match the vision of the chef and the standards of the owners, happily playing my part.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Juliet illustration 4" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4-zvps7Ey_WsJgS6zkxSnrZpraY=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4230099/on_the_house_4.0.png">
</figure>
</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>A year or so later that memory was playing out in my head as I was offered the top position at that same restaurant. The one that got attention, full-feature reviews from the premier newspaper (as well as many others). Reading that review that day, my excitement hadn’t taken me as far as a real moment of "what if that were me they were writing about?" Of course I had imagined it, dreamt it, hoped for it someday. Someday was always a lot further than today. I had run kitchens before as I built my resume. A chain restaurant here, a pub there. Taking the experience for what it was before making my way back into the ranks of small independent restaurants. Where the food is better, the hours longer, and the pay...variable.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr">There I was, though, my name slipping onto the coveted last line of the single page menu, and quickly one of the weekly papers wrote about it. Just a paragraph. My aunt taped it to the wall, a three-inch square of text underneath a 12-by-16 portrait of her crossing the Boston Marathon finish line the previous spring. She is generous and indiscriminate in her ability to celebrate accomplishment. Additional press followed, including, eventually, a full review of my own merit in a major outlet, followed not long after by a small revisiting by the <i>Boston Globe</i> reviewer herself.</p>
<q class="pullquote float-right">I was too busy for thinking like that.</q><p><span>As it was reading that original review, when that first paragraph came out, I didn’t have much time to think about what if I did this for myself someday. My own restaurant. I was too busy for thinking like that. But sometimes at night, asleep, I could dream about it.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Here I am, though, again. Juliet is well on her way to being built and closer to being ready to welcome our first guests. At the beginning of what is now more than a year of planning, Juliet was a dream with little grounding in daily reality. Our staff was toiling nightly in Boston, halfway through a six-month contract at a busy downtown cocktail bar — our first major steps. We were preparing to take to the road to cook at the James Beard House. Hell, we hadn’t even seen the first of the February snows that would have us spend half our prep hours shoveling for most of a month. Juliet was still a pile of someone else’s plywood.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>When I started writing this column six weeks ago, so she remained, a pile of plywood. Our plywood this time, maybe half of it in the right place. Studs became exposed as walls came down and powder kicked up. Floors leveled, chalk marks spelled out crude representations of what someday would be a drain, a counter, an electrical outlet, a door. Somehow it looked even less a reality at that point than it did sketched by Katrina on graph paper.</span></p>
<q class="pullquote float-left">Who doesn’t enjoy seeing their work take some real shape after laying weeks of foundation?</q><p dir="ltr"><span>Last week a lot of that changed. We passed our first round of inspections, the rough inspections. Happening partway through the building process they cover electrical, plumbing, building (more plywood), and even a screw inspection. Pass, pass, pass, pass. Once those are out of the way, the space starts to take on its eventual character. It’s an exciting time for us and for the builders. Who doesn’t enjoy seeing their work take some real shape after laying weeks of foundation?</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Almost immediately the subcontractors arrived to finish the kitchen walls in their characteristic glossy white. Plasterers arrived; studs and framing disappeared behind boards ready for paint. Better choose a color.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Eight-inch shiplap boards went up, window to wall, from baseboard until about six feet high. A small shelf was installed to wrap the dining room at shoulder height, a row of pinnable board and a custom modular hanger next, all designed to give Katrina instant ability to change the visual details of the restaurant as quickly as we can change the menu. Finally, boards for a few feet more. Now that looks even better than the picture. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span></span><span>Counter framing was re-measured and secured, ready to accept a counter top, which we still have to decide a material for. We're behind on that. Speaking of behind, we better choose some light fixtures, and it’s about time to decide on the tables and chairs. We have some options, but thankfully we are running out of time!</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>On Halloween Eve I walked in the front door to watch a mass of blood-red liquid seep from one far wall until it reached halfway across the kitchen floor. Surprise, our floor is bright red, and no quarry tile in sight.</span></p>
<p><span>Suddenly weeks are falling fast. What was hardly an idea a year ago, a dream the year before that, and a joke not five years back, is now nearly built. Maybe those reviewers will come in here to write about this one someday. Maybe soon. Maybe not at all. I have a lot to think about still before we worry about that.</span></p>
https://boston.eater.com/2015/11/4/9669620/on-the-house-old-dream-juliet-somervilleJoshua Lewin2015-10-21T11:00:02-04:002015-10-21T11:00:02-04:00On the House: The Importance of Flexibility and Listening
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<img alt="Construction is well underway at Juliet." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/MC-9JIXmD3cevjIclM7HF5XslcQ=/0x0:3264x2448/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/47481879/IMG_1642.0.0.JPG" />
<figcaption>Construction is well underway at Juliet. | Photo (and illustration below) by Katrina Jazayeri</figcaption>
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<p>This is the third installment of <a href="http://boston.eater.com/2015/9/29/9414121/juliet-somerville-series-restaurant-opening" target="new">On the House</a>, biweekly essays by Joshua Lewin, illustrated by Katrina Jazayeri, documenting the opening of their first permanent restaurant, <a href="http://boston.eater.com/venue/juliet" target="new">Juliet</a>.</p> <p><q class="pullquote">"Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings." —Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft</q></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>At Juliet we have a neighbor who stops by any time he sees us outside. He’ll have his dog Shaggy with him. His dog hates Chinese food, but this neighbor doesn’t mind it, although he prefers pupusas. For the best, he likes to walk over to East Somerville. Like his dog, he also has negative opinions on food. Some of the restaurants around the neighborhood he is a fan of; others he is not. He’s not afraid to tell me. And why should he be? This is his neighborhood too, and he is looking forward to having a new restaurant here on this corner. When it opens, he wants to enjoy it. He’d also like to consider working here, and I don’t see much reason why he shouldn’t. If everyone could be so open about their likes, dislikes, desires, and fears, my job would be a lot easier. Most take a subtler approach. We do our best to hear to all types.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Shortly after we first leased the space that will be Juliet, long before any construction had begun or was even planned, we spent a few Saturdays out in front of the empty storefront to meet the neighbors. Saturdays bring a big farmers market to Union Square and a lot of foot traffic right past the restaurant. The neighboring business, a design firm/retail shop called </span><a href="http://loyalsupplyco.com/" target="_blank">Loyal Supply Co.</a><span>, cut us vinyl lettering to apply to the windows. Katrina drew up some simple flyers. Looking something closer to official, the early stages of branding in place, we started having some conversations.</span></p>
<p><q class="pullquote float-right"><span>We met neighborhood residents who have strong opinions about breakfast prices, grass-fed beef, coffee quality, and bike racks.</span></q></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>We met neighborhood residents who have strong opinions about breakfast prices, grass-fed beef, coffee quality, and bike racks. We met residents who had more casual opinions about bread options, outdoor seating, and wine. Residents who had read about our plans, some of whom later supported our Kickstarter effort and are looking forward to our opening, and some of whom would prefer if we weren’t. Luckily not too many of the latter. We met allergy sufferers. The gluten-free, by way of medical necessity or just preference, were particularly keen to express their frustration with local breakfast options. As was the vegan contingent.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Gluten-free I was well prepared for. Vegan, less so. We are always happy to work with guests with dietary restrictions and preferences. In the case of vegan diners, in the moment, this generally means presenting a dish intended to be vegetarian with some omissions. An incomplete dish. But, given advance notice, we are more likely to design menu items designed with specific restrictions in mind. When a dozen of our neighbors express the same frustration with area dining options, I consider that pretty clear advance notice.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>I’m tasting and testing vegan-friendly recipes for possible inclusion in our menu program, dishes that would be as satisfying to any guest as they are to the vegan one. It’s a choice made happily but one that likely would not have been made without getting out and having those conversations. More importantly, without being flexible enough to hear them.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Those conversations happened about five months ago. We are getting much closer now to being able to put some of what we learned out there to practice inside walls. Walking in the front door of Juliet now, you can see a skeleton in place and the beginnings of pronounced features. Now it’s just time to dress her up.</span></p>
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<img alt="On the House 3 illustration" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/cBV7uibwtB02HFome-eZyTVZeVU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4184647/On_the_House_3.0.png">
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<p dir="ltr"><span>Katrina and I can do something this week that will be incredibly satisfying. We’ll walk in, and mimicking the path of a future guest, we’ll take a few steps to the front of the counter which is now in place (although still missing its top). At the counter, with pen and paper in hand, we’ll do the first dry run of service at Juliet. We have notebooks (folders, dry erase boards, pinned notes, scrapbooks) full of gently competing notions of what happens within those walls. But now we have the life-sized 3D model. Some of the lines in the notebook will be scribbled out. Some will be highlighted and starred. Many will be revised. In any case, many question marks should disappear.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>We’ll be walking across a plywood floor in the newly framed bathroom as we make final decisions about wall color and tile shape. Exposed studs are still visible in the walls of the kitchen as we sign off on floor color. The majority of the broad elements are decided, many of them completed. We’re moving much deeper into the details. Schedules are now counted in numbers of weeks, not months.</span></p>
<p><q class="pullquote float-left">It becomes a line crossed out in a notebook, a magazine clipping unpinned from the wall.</q></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Like the early menu conversations, we have to remain flexible now too. Our vision of finished construction does not always match up with the reality of building materials or regulation. Before blueprint drawings were even completed, there were concessions made. Later, in our current stage, expense comes into play. Sure, that solid stone looks beautiful, but at $175 dollars per square foot, it isn’t in this budget. It becomes a line crossed out in a notebook, a magazine clipping unpinned from the wall.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>We come to this project full of ideas, but sometimes we hear:</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><i>“That’s too expensive.”</i></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><i>“That’s not allowed.”</i></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><i>“That’s illegal.”</i></span></p>
<p dir="ltr">Or even,<i> “Listen, that’s just a bad idea.”</i></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Gasp.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Keeping a flexible mind helps ensure those concessions become part of a thoughtful plan instead of just omissions leading to an incomplete finished product. Just like the menu discussions. We could do things exactly our way, every time. But I find our finished product is better served by listening. Our art is better achieved by being willing to meet halfway. </span></p>
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<p dir="ltr"><span>We achieve our goals by exposing our feelings, our history, and our dreams through the hard — seemingly impossible at times — work we are willing to perform to deliver a product of indisputable quality, in how far we are capable of striving to help someone feel comfortable, happy, entertained, satisfied. Listening is an important step not to be skipped in this equation. We can’t be afraid of the red revision marker. Or, more accurately in our case, the ubiquitous fine-point Sharpie. For now we get to apply that way of thinking to light fixtures, counter heights, sinks, and paint swatches. Pretty soon we’ll get back to applying it to taste, presentation, and service. Regardless, we’ll continue to do our best to listen as much as speak.</span></p>
https://boston.eater.com/2015/10/21/9582562/on-the-house-the-importance-of-flexibility-and-listeningJoshua Lewin2015-10-07T11:00:02-04:002015-10-07T11:00:02-04:00On the House: A Time for Spreadsheets; a Time for Travel
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<img alt="Juliet, under construction." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/U0tC2snw95tUrqwo9T2fEqpTmi8=/0x0:3264x2448/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/47353898/onthehouse2.0.0.JPG" />
<figcaption>Juliet, under construction. | Photo (and illustration below) by Katrina Jazayeri</figcaption>
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<p>This is the second installment of <a href="http://boston.eater.com/2015/9/29/9414121/juliet-somerville-series-restaurant-opening" target="new">On the House</a>, biweekly essays by Joshua Lewin, illustrated by Katrina Jazayeri, documenting the opening of their first permanent restaurant, <a href="http://boston.eater.com/venue/juliet" target="new">Juliet</a>.</p> <p class="caption"> </p>
<p><q class="pullquote">"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." —Marcel Proust</q></p>
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<p><i>The Boston-area restaurant community is coming to terms today with abrupt news of the death of chef Geoffrey Lukas. Geoff was a close acquaintance and early supporter of our efforts. He shared much of our affinity for deeply understanding the traditions that inspire our cuisine and influence our restaurants in other ways as well. He was present at the event where we nervously announced Bread & Salt as a company to a group of friends, fans, and local media around our table for Persian New Year 2014. That was a major event for us when we produced the same pop-up one week apart in both Boston and New York City. </i></p>
<p><i>Geoff enthusiastically cooked alongside me for the Boston leg and threw in his own creative efforts behind the entree course, a delicious duck with grains and garlicky greens. He couldn't join us for the New York stop because he was on his way to Iran. </i></p>
<p><i>A few months later I was off my post at Beacon Hill Bistro and planning to take Bread & Salt from pop-up production to full-on hospitality company. Six months after, we took on our first full-time contract to open "Bread & Salt at Wink & Nod." A full year later, all the effort we poured into Persian New Year paid off big when we were invited to cook that event for the James Beard House. We arrived in New York City with a great plan, a tested menu, and a full energetic staff. </i></p>
<p><i>The year before we were just two over-extended individuals leveraging the help of our friends and supporters to launch a new company across two great cities. Geoff was there for us then, and we'll remember his help on that day, along with his continued support, for years to come. As we continue to share our current progress in building Juliet, seeing plans realized that are years in the making, I’d like to dedicate this edition of On the House to Geoff, another traveler. I’d like his friends and family to know how important his efforts were to us at a crucial time and how much we appreciated the effort shared between us.</i></p>
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<p>The sun was already hot by mid-morning as we watched a mule-pulled tour wagon clod to a stop at the corner of Bourbon and St. Philip streets. Lafitte's Piano Bar. Two nights before, Katrina and I enjoyed a purple voodoo frozen daiquiri from Lafitte's. Not likely to ever drink one of those again. But lots of people will, and now we know what it’s all about. We took it to go. Sipped it while crisscrossing the darkened streets of the French Quarter. The experience was rich with novelty. The simple joy of immersion in something you simply cannot do back home.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>With that novelty still fresh in our memory we laughed as the tour guide took requests from her delighted passengers. Five voodoos, two world-famous Cajun bloody marys, one hand grenade (that's right), and a handful of Abita, brewed about 30 miles north of the city. I’d never had one until we checked into our Airbnb in Trem</span><span>é</span><span> and found the refrigerator pre-stocked with it.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The bartender arrived cart-side and dispensed the drinks.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><i>"Thanks, Mary."</i></p>
<p dir="ltr"><i>"Yeah."</i></p>
<p dir="ltr"><i>"Whatcha doing tonight?"</i></p>
<p dir="ltr"><i>"Working."</i></p>
<p dir="ltr"><i>"Damn. All day, too?"</i></p>
<p dir="ltr"><i>"Yup."</i></p>
<p dir="ltr"><i>"Well, we’ll see you around here again then."</i></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The conversation was halted by a simple command; cart and passengers disappeared around the next bend. Friendly and simple, natural. Like so many similar conversations we’d played witness to over the past few days as streetcar conductors called out to coworkers and friends driving alongside, or neighbors crossed paths and reacquainted themselves over intersections and from balconies.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>That was our last morning, book-ending a short trip to New Orleans. The (long) process we've embarked on to build Juliet is exhausting and all-encompassing. Generally exciting, although at times surprisingly rote. It's important to have something to look forward to. Imperative that we keep ourselves fresh as stacks of paper pile up with official-looking stamps and signatures. Checklist after checklist completed, or nearly so, only to be added to once again. Most of it important, educational, fulfilling, or even fun as we learn daily and develop a fuller understanding of our business. Some of it carries the risk of burnout along the way.</span></p>
<p><q class="pullquote float-right">When we can, we sneak away.</q></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>It would be easy for us to hover over the details onsite. But as demolition wraps up and the shape of our plan begins rising in the new framing, most tasks on site are better left to the professionals. Our presence at times is at best distracting. Not that we don't observe and contribute along the way. We do. Heavily. Providing clarifications on measurements, clearances, and the placement of eventual equipment among other things. We’ve done a lot of planning and discussing to get to this point. There is a time for oversight, and there is a time to allow action to progress unencumbered. In moments of the latter we exercise with no triviality the option to engage with the world outside of our neighborhood. God knows when we’ll have the opportunity again, so when we can, we sneak away.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>This travel allows time to collect and record — things as well as experiences. Both importantly influence our method of hospitality as we collect, process, refine, and remember those things which become, or maybe have always been our favorites, destined to be shared with our neighborhood at Juliet. Without taking the time to experience new things, we'll stagnate over these spreadsheets and documents. A two-dimensional life does not a fun and immersive experience make. Our vision for Juliet is a place to celebrate those collected experiences and share them through the menu, the service, the design, and the overall experience of just being in the place. There is a time for spreadsheets, and there is a time to keep our experiences fresh. It would be a mistake to ignore either one.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>I love to travel, but it's also possible I'm not so good at it. It works for me. But I can only imagine what it must be like to observe my process. I am a reduced to a comma string of contradictions from the moment I swing the front door closed, maybe even long before. I relish the unexpected but somehow am brought to my knees the moment any bewilderment enters into my experience of a developing situation. I strive for the authentic in any new place but am driven mad at the risk of missing some important attraction in the same. I prefer to enter a new experience without the crutch of the bulleted list, but from the moment I step on the subway, bags in hand, the fear of making the wrong turn hangs a low cloud. A cloud which threatens to spill a storm of fraying nerves like hail all over the thing, grinding the expected joy of indulgence to a chore to be overcome.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>As we dashed out the door on this latest pursuit I carried my requisite overfilled bag, stuffed with clothes I won't need and books I won't open. A novel (two actually, and a third stored on my phone), two non fictions, one cookbook, the latest issues of two or three magazines — which I am as unlikely to open in flight as I am at home.</span></p>
<p><q class="pullquote float-left"><span>I want to have room for every great idea I’ve ever dreamt up.</span></q></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>This all parallels neatly to my unfolding experience of planning and building at the restaurant. I want to have room for every great idea I’ve ever dreamt up. A line for all of our favorite ingredients and dishes on the menu. A countertop in every variety of marble or floor finished in every shade of stain to catch my eye. Deciding on a built-in seating arrangement in one corner eliminates the possibility of a communal adjacent. Paneling the walls in one fashion means… But the bag can’t fit everything without busting its zippers. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Early on, our vision for Juliet was nearly complete, informed by our experiences as guests and sometimes staff at restaurants around the country and the world. There were many routes to see our eventual vision through. Lack of tools and strategies is never an issue for me. Narrowing the collection though — another story. I never want to leave any favorites behind.</span></p>
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<img alt="Juliet illustration 2" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/IcOsae4V5fJIkjtnndd1fNhZWCY=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4134832/On_the_House_2.0.png">
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<p dir="ltr"><span>We knew Juliet had to serve various types of customers daily. We pulled together various design ideas to provide the commuter-friendly experience necessary at our transportation hub of a corner of Union Square, while at the same time preserving some space in the restaurant for guests looking for a more leisurely experience. The eventual solution was to provide plenty of space for those casual customers to enjoy us everyday, while creating some seating right over the action in the kitchen for a limited number to pull up a chair and enjoy fuller meals. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Breakfast, lunch, or dinner, prepared with the care and attention to detail they’ve come to expect from our company. Instead of carpets and upholstery and gilded mirrors, we’ll punctuate this experience by bringing the customer up close and putting on a show. The entire kitchen is designed around this performance for a small audience while the remainder of the restaurant functions for a different customer altogether. We hope and expect to find a lot of crossover between the two groups. Generously sharing everything we love about two styles of dining out of one beautiful space. We’ve built a level of modularity into the visual design of the dining areas as well. A collection needs some rotation, and this flexibility will allow us to have room to celebrate and display our favorite visual elements with the same dynamic nature of a daily printed menu.</span></p>
<p><q class="pullquote float-right">We get used to a calendar that doesn't account for things like weekends — and dinners with family.</q></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Embarking on this trip, we left immediately from our weekly construction meeting. That's Tuesday, 11 a.m. Weekly reflection is necessary. Constant gauging of the progress of the week prior; setting and adjusting expectations for the week to come. Monday is no good for this. In restaurants we get used to a calendar that doesn't account for things like weekends — and dinners with family. Any time is a potential and valid work hour. But for now, we aren't operating a restaurant. We are managing a project that requires input and coordination with contractors, subcontractors, signage manufacturers, floor installers, city clerks, and fire inspectors. Most of those people answer the phone on Mondays, rarely on Sundays. Lots of information flows on Mondays. That phone call we've been waiting days (weeks, months, ...) for is bound to come in. Monday is a day of readiness. So we have the meeting on Tuesday.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>This latest meeting was a productive and important one. We had the opportunity to measure progress following the first full week of real construction. A plan is one thing, but you learn a lot when you start tearing holes in things. We made important decisions about where walls begin and end, plumbing routes, equipment location. And flooring.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The subcontractor for the flooring came through the door ready to work, about fifteen minutes before our meeting finished. Unscheduled. Technically an interruption. In this case a welcome one. My unease about decision-making throughout this restaurant building process? This man has none of that. Resolute in his knowledge, he does floors, and he is ready.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><i>"So, you'll need about an eighth inch all the way around. Well…you'll need to look at height tolerances here."</i></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><i>"Right."</i></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><i>"If you can, you'll want to do it three times here. Yeah, this will be great. We'll get this figured out no problem here."</i></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><i>"We'll have hardwood for these last few feet here."</i></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><i>"Ok, great. So you'll need a transition."</i></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><i>"We have this salvaged flooring here."</i></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><i>"Yeah, perfect, just run it the opposite way here; then we'll install a metal strip. Almost no height. Cool."</i></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><i>"Anyway, yeah, here are some color samples. And some pictures of some finished work. Look, you do whatever you want with the color, but I gotta tell you, just stay away from these light grays here. Trust me, they'll show everything. I like the red, here."</i></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>So I have a color to choose, but otherwise that's done. We do our best to surround ourselves with good people throughout this process. People who can listen to what we are trying to do and aren't afraid to let their experience show as they bring our vision to life. We like to think we do things a little bit differently. Juliet is a very personal project, and we're putting a lot of our collective favorites into the framework here. Not every part of this process is neon lights (some of it is) and murals and marble counters; we have a lot of simpler realities to contend with as well. It's easy to fall into the status quo when it comes to basics. Like floors. We've recruited an enthusiastic team, ready to tackle status quo with us. Juliet is different. From the floor up. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>A few hours later in New Orleans the passengers of the mule cart have enjoyed their drinks from solo cups and finished their tour of the French Quarter. We are back on the plane. A dog barks. Below deck somewhere I guess? Stored with the luggage...I don't remember ever hearing that before. I won't forget it now. It's seared into my memory along with overhead views of the Mississippi River. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The barrel of the windsock on the tarmac is horizontal, looking like the siphon of a geoduck clam. Flashes of Seattle in my memory and an afternoon tea tasting four years earlier that has influenced our plans for tea service at Juliet. The tail wind will bring us home even faster than we got here to begin with. It'll be Friday evening before we land. Just another work day to us, and we are heading full on into a productive weekend. Will we choose some counter tops and tile in the upcoming week? Come closer to finalizing menus for opening day? Maybe. There are labor models to run and re-run as our first employment offers go out to key staff. We don't have much chance to swing the hammers right now. But we've got good people on that too, and we have plenty else to do to bring this project further to light.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr">The plane levels out after an aggressive ascent and we sail over puff ball clouds. I am reminded of the last takeoff we enjoyed, the beaches of Nice giving way to clear blue ocean as far as the eye could see. So clear the ocean floor was visible from far overhead. Mussels ordered by the pound and carafes of rose as the horns blew of nearby of ships bound to or returning from Corsica. Of vegetables a la plancha for breakfast in the open markets of Barcelona. Coffee by the pot, omelet fine herbes, salade aux camembert, and late-night steak frites in a Parisian cafe. Any cafe. More domestic memories too, of the places that upon experiencing them become imprints on the mind, referenced with ease through keyword associations and regular daily experience.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I recall the two-part essay I read on the flight south, some years old, Francis Lam’s reflections on iconic New Orleans spot Cafe Du Monde in <i>Gourmet Magazine</i>. The tactile memory of the grooved tin can initiated a flood of experience so much more than any particular coffee shop should ever aspire too. No matter its tourist value. The steak frites enjoyed the night prior at The Delachaise, outdoors, with a great sightline to the passing St. Charles Streetcar. Late at night, after a traffic delay rerouted us from our original plans. The only steak frites to ever really evoke Paris in my memory.</p>
<p><q class="pullquote float-left">Away from work, away from home. The third place. The neighborhood place.</q></p>
<p><span>I daydream of the day a two-part memoir emerges in honor of our cafe which is more than a coffee shop, not yet built. The fruit of not just our labor and our technical skill. More than the sum of our experience. The place where you meet the people you know on neutral ground. Away from work, away from home. The third place. The neighborhood place. The place that you wander into almost without thinking because it is a part of your daily local experience. Or as a traveler, the place that everywhere else you go just reminds you of. I’ve been traveling the neighborhoods of the country and the world. Tasting what they have to offer, listening, even cooking alongside their inhabitants when they'll indulge me. The sum of those memories, applied to our technical skills in cooking and hospitality, will be available and inspiring new ones to our own neighborhood soon. But first, the floor.</span></p>
https://boston.eater.com/2015/10/7/9469503/on-the-house-juliet-travelingJoshua Lewin2015-09-23T11:00:03-04:002015-09-23T11:00:03-04:00On the House: Dust and Demolition Signal a New Beginning at the Future Home of Juliet
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<img alt="Construction begins at Juliet." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/n-LMKpXJNVWH3Z5wUnQf2Bs5mpI=/0x0:3264x2448/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/47248182/On_the_House_photo_1.0.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Construction begins at Juliet. | Photo (and illustration below) by Katrina Jazayeri.</figcaption>
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<p>"On the House" returns with an in-depth look at the opening of Juliet in Union Square. New installments will appear every other week.</p> <p>For much of 2013, Eater Boston ran a weekly series called <a target="_blank" href="http://boston.eater.com/on-the-house">On the House</a>, featuring dispatches from Steve "Nookie" Postal on the trials, tribulations, joys, and frustrations as he opened his first restaurant, <a target="_blank" href="http://boston.eater.com/venue/commonwealth">Commonwealth</a>, in Kendall Square. Today, On the House returns. This time, we'll dive deep into the opening of <a target="_blank" href="http://boston.eater.com/2015/5/18/8619137/juliet-somerville-josh-lewin-katrina-jazayeri">Juliet</a> in Somerville's Union Square. It's the first permanent location for the Bread & Salt Hospitality team, led by Josh Lewin and Katrina Jazayeri. With construction now underway, Lewin will be sharing updates every other week, accompanied by illustrations and photos by Jazayeri, giving an inside look at what it takes to open a first restaurant.</p>
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<p dir="ltr"><q class="pullquote">"I can't explain it. It's what turns you to powder, being ground between what you can't do and what you must do. You just turn to dust." —James Salter, <i>Light Years</i></q></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>I’ve never been so happy to see a man in a respirator mask. Demolition kicks up a lot of dust. Especially when drywall shatters. Or unexpected air ducts emerge, artifacts unearthed after decades sealed, unused, behind walls. Dust in this case, and demolition, means we are finally underway with the construction of our debut restaurant, Juliet. Before beginning this process I’d never have imagined the relief found in simply seeing something torn down and reduced to a pile of off-white powder to be swept to the side by a sweaty figure in a</span><span> particle</span><span> respirator.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>In beginning this process, about fifteen months ago, I received copious warnings. Cautionary but generally encouraging input on how to pick a location, negotiate a lease, forecast revenues, plan for disasters. The basics. Nobody bothered to so much as mention anything about the period of time that happened about 14 months in, or a little less than one month before last Monday, when that first wall finally came down. The period of time when plans were set, money exchanged, contractors and subcontractors had earmarked pages in their scheduling books, and the permits submitted to the city for approval. And then, everything stops.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Forgive me. This period was mentioned. Cautions were offered to make sure this time — along with liberal allowances for any resulting delays — was budgeted for in the fundraising plan, for instance. Because if it wasn’t, well, we would run out of money before completing our project. The basics.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>What wasn’t mentioned about this period was how to mentally prepare for the switch that flips in your brain when the exhaustive process of researching, planning, and coordinating is completed; the resulting work is filed with the city for approval. And then everything simply stops.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Fourteen months of intense continuing education in site selection, project management, building materials, regulatory requirements. A graduate level attempt at improving interpersonal communication and expectations management as a group of people struggles to convey their goals in a construction vocabulary even more foreign to myself than the vocabulary of a high-performing restaurant is to my enthusiastic contractor. A layman’s indoctrination into the sights and sounds of the life of the builder, the plumber, the electrician, the landlord, the city inspector. Not to mention a lifetime of dreaming.</span></p>
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<p dir="ltr"><span>All this comes to an abrupt halt one day. Intense daily effort, always mental and often physical; struggling to maintain forward movement in uncertain territory, but making it. Really making it. Regular progress as the vocabulary begins to make a little more sense, a timeline emerges, renderings look less like stick drawings and start to take on real life. The forward movement is won easier, if only in incremental measures, daily. Then comes the crash directly into the immovable wall of waiting. A waiting which in this case would prove to be easily measured in just days, but each of those days carrying the weight of weeks.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>During this time there are a few phone calls to field. Clarifications of details, introductions requested. Research on topics such as take-out packaging and floor stain. Tasks all paling in comparison to the previous efforts instantly ended. Somehow even more than before we seem to run into friends on the street asking about our progress. Constant and merciless reminders of the waiting. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Then one day the required signatures are applied and notifications of approved permits are unceremoniously emailed among the team. In our case, this happens late on a Friday morning. The city inspectional services closes early Fridays, and this particular weekend is a long one, for Labor Day. The way I count them, that is four additional days of delay. But somehow now each day just feels like a day. The brutal pressure released with the expectant commencement of work. It’s only a matter of days now. No longer the full immovable stop of uncertainty. In its place the anticipation of imminent reprieve offered by the sight of concrete, drywall, and a bit of hardwood crumbling together into a pile of dust to be wiped away and leaving clean the slate; the foundation of a dream.</span></p>
<p>To build that dream, first we have to tear down a bit of what was in place before. We are excitedly working through that process now at Juliet, and I am looking forward to sharing some of that with you along the way. Being the first time, I really don’t know what to expect. Oh, we have a plan. Plans actually. A through nearly Z. Developed with the help of advisors and informed by years of personal experience. I don’t anticipate the plan, or any of the contingencies even, will work out just the way we’ve worked out on paper. In this column you can look forward to an inside look at what it takes to get from the day we punched the first hole in the drywall to the day we prop the door open and invite you for breakfast (and lunch, and dinner). Katrina and I are looking very much forward to having you at Juliet; but for now, I hope you’ll enjoy this story of how we get there.</p>
https://boston.eater.com/2015/9/23/9381985/on-the-house-juliet-construction-beginsJoshua Lewin