Today the new door was installed at Ba, hours earlier the Grill in Tucson shut it’s doors perhaps for ever. Julia and I started the Grill 16 years ago on our student loans and our friends sweat. It was a hit on day one, and created thirty part-time, and twelve full-time jobs. Grill fed hundreds and hundreds of people each week, 24 hours 7 days a week, moving $600K through the local economy each year.

Grill was truly a restaurant by the people for the people. I had always hated the economic disparity of cooking. I.e. The higher up I got as a chef, the less my friends and I could afford to eat in the places that I cooked. So Grill was my answer to that, we kept the prices barely above cost and treated everyone like family. It took the customers some getting used to but they caught on.

Grill was a positive economic force in the blighted neighborhood, luring many hip business to the block after opening. It took away business from Denny’s and Coco’s and showed that restoration was better than tearing down old buildings for strip malls. It was one of very few independently owned 24 hour restaurants left in the South West, and proved that you could serve fresh food done well and still be successful.

Grill ran its course and I am sad, but we will raise a glass to it at Ba very soon.

http://youtu.be/aZtQhVp6an8

The absolute best part of running a restaurant is creating jobs and teaching people skills. True, the skill of cooking isn’t a big money-maker but it sure has served me well, on and off the court, if you know what I mean. Building a restaurant draws on every skill that I learned in all the low paying and volunteer gigs I have had in my life.

We have  hired only local, independent crafts people, laborers, and tradesmen, and bought equipment and supplies from independent merchants. We are proud of that and we have been rewarded with a karmicly correct quality  built place.

Manny Vargas, our next door neighbor has become our very first official employee, and Ba is his first official job. We made Manny a taxpayer. Ha ha. Fortunately, Manny is very talented mechanically and wants to persue a career in automotive technology. In the meantime he is learning a lot about plumbing. Riaz has shared his considerable concrete skills with him, and I have tutored him in the art of drains and water lines. We installed the first toilet together, but for the second one Manny was on his own. He did great and for the rest of his life Manny will know how to install or fix toilets.

Respect that when visiting his work.

Drain line Inspection: Check!

Plumbing inspection: Check!

Framing Inspection: Check!

Drywall Inspection: Check!

That’s all you got? Really? Ok. I’m gonna go finish building my restaurant now. I’ll call you for the final inspection.

Later.

So the day after sand blasting my ears were still ringing. I got no work done because I was so wiped out by the changes to the space. I called some professional  dry wall laborers to help me hang the sheet rock. Three of them showed up on Monday morning and started right in on it. They looked down their nose at hanging the insulation so Riaz and I gladly grabbed the pink fiberglass and hung that. I have lifted enough sheet rock in my life to not need to prove that I can do that to anyone.  You would think that guys who hung rock every day would love to have a break and do insulation, but no..go figure. I am happy to trade a driver for a stapler today.

After five trips to the building supply store for a thousand bucks worth of drywall,  screws, and insulation we were done. The last piece went up around 6:30.

I ran home to hand out candy to the trick and treaters. Happy that construction was now over (in a mission accomplished sort of way) and that we now begin the finish. Or we have finished the begging and now start on the end. You know what I mean. It is all paint and fabric and light from here on. The stuff that the guests will see.

A year to the day of our very first party at Ba.

So close, yet so far.

The framing inspector has signed off on the walls! Now we have permission to put our restaurant together. Next up sand blasting! After weeks of experimentation and consultation Riaz and I decided to grind the kitchen floor by hand. This took hours and created a biblical cloud of dust.

We considered renting equipment and doing it ourselves, then got a recommendation from SpaceCraft in Hollywood. Pricy but known results and proven craftsmanship.

They showed up two days later with a 20′ ft long truck and a hopper of sand the size of Yuma. The three of them and myself spent two hours taping and wrapping to protect stuff, then they let this machine rip. It was without exaggeration the loudest thing I have ever heard in my life. The sound of a wind so strong it dissolves bricks in an instant is something to behold. The three took turns inside the room blasting, while the other two worked on the truck feeding sand into the compressor. I just stood outside agape looking at the cloud of dust covering the whole corner.

At 5:30 that day they were all done and I had me one clean ass restaurant! 90 years of lead paint and asbestos linoleum glue gone!

Wow! What a month. Three final plumbing inspections.  We passed, the inspector was very fair but very strict. You the taxpayer should be extremely pleased with the value you’re getting from him. He did come by the job site (Ba) the day before the final inspection to give us some notes on what to do to pass. That was very big of him. I really appreciate that. So as soon as he signed off on the work I was allowed to call for the framing inspection.

Well… That inspector was not as nice. or fair. He looked at the wood frame walls Julia and I made and told me to bolt them to the brick walls and to hire a deputy inspector to watch that being done. We did and the deputy inspector told us to hire an engineer to design the work. We did and he told us to use 5/8 bolts 8 inches deep every 16 inches, and cemented with epoxy (50 dollars per tube) . So we did. All that took 8 days and $2,000.

My little wait station now has better earthquake retrofit than a four-story children’s hospital.

But the worst part is that when I called for a re-inspection we got a totally different inspector!!! The new one was nice and did not even look at all of the work we had done.

Grrrrrrrrrrr.

But we passed and now can apply the finish coats. I celebrated by installing a toilet! Ba now has a toilet!

Michele Cantarella, and Kat Hellman that’s who.

I have known Mick since the 2nd grade but I still cannot explain him. People ask me too all the time, but Mick couldn’t explain himself either. He speaks in a language he made up himself. Literally. Best I can do is send you to his website: www.mickphoto.com

Kat Hellman is one of the kindest people I have ever met, ever. She is a talented therapist, loving mother, and is married to Mick,. Which makes her either saint or martyr. I think: Saint. More importantly she is Ava’s mom.

The main thing is, Mick and Kat are my friends and they like to eat in restaurants.

I know that this is supposed to be a blog about french food, but I am not finished with the plumbing just yet.

So,  if you are going to serve beer and wine you must have a urinal in the mens room. No one at the State alcohol office knows why this is, but they enforce it. So that takes a week and three hundred dollars.

If you have a urinal, you must have a water hammer arrest valve on the water pipe. City rule. Keeps pipes from bursting. OK. $150, eight hours.

You must also have a floor drain. Because people, well you know, sprinkle.  $300, 3 days.

If you have a floor drain you must have a trap primer, to keep the floor drain from drying out and getting stinky. $180, 1 day.

You will also need a vent on that drain. To the roof. With a clean out access. $50, 1 day.

Oops. You connected the vent pipe  up-stream of the drain pipe. Do that again. $50, 2 days.

All for a urinal you did not want, and that no one knows why you must have.

Gender equality indeed.

Spent the entire week trying to solve the urinal riddle:

1) The State says that if you serve alcohol you must have two gender specific bathrooms and the men’s room must have an additional urinal.

2) The City says that if you are building new bathrooms they must be ADA compliant.

3) With the addition of the  urinal  there is not enough room for two ADA compliant bathrooms by about six inches. The pissoir is 14 inches deep.

If you know the answer to this riddle help me out. I did spend the week assembling and installing a urinal. A first for me, and I have done a lot of plumbing!

So if you use the men’s room at Ba and wonder why there is a urinal in the corner know that it was not something I wanted.

You aim too,  please.