if you’re thinking about opening a restaurant
just don’t.
not everyone should open a restaurant.
it’s brutal, cutthroat, embarrassing.
your friends and family won’t come.
your concepts won’t play.
you can’t compete with restaurateurs or city planners.
you’ve got an idea,
but not a passion—
you’re just bored, or desperate,
or worse.

reminds me of that chinaski quote:
find what you love and let it kill you.
cliché, but you don’t love this.
this’ll just bankrupt you,
and your wife will leave you
again.

but him\

i’ve never heard someone
talk so lovingly about cold soup.
i don’t know if i’d choose making love
over this here bowl of watermelon gazpacho.

or the secondhand excitement you’d feel, contagious as it was,
for that ribeye cooked medium rare, drizzled with chimichurri,
sharing in the hunger and satiation,
it’s flesh carefully devoured on some lunch break
between another 12-hour shift
where he wouldn’t eat again until 2 a.m.,
two hundred and fifty table-tops later.

i didn’t even know they let bartenders
cook staff meals in the kitchen\
but John
maybe took his greatest pride in just that.

warmed bellies,
filled with love,
absolute strangers and friends
and nothing to tell the difference between them.

the man knew spanish wine too.
and gin.
almost let gin kill him once.

but that’s what makes a comeback story.

it’s that man that earned his stripes
and the middle finger that comes with it—
to the restaurateurs,
and city planners,
and most importantly,
you, motherfucker!

so don’t open a restaurant.
visit his.
leave a kind note on the bill\
he’ll frame it.
never caring much
for social media.
caring more for people.

-

i’m at a restaurant
and the service sucks
and my date is quiet
and the soup is cold
but it wasn’t supposed to be.

i miss my best friend tonight,
and especially
the way he taught me how to love something.