Open for Business


Well, RR opened for business this weekend!

Let me tell you, we were putting finishing touches on everything up until the minute guests walked in on Friday at 3pm. The stress of last week was probably far worse for my health than a bloomin' onion from Outback, but we had happy guests this weekend and that's all that matters. While there are still PLENTY of things to do, I think things will calm down going forward.

One of the checklist items that caused total consuming madness for awhile were those darn tipis. It turns out there is a part II of my tipi tutorial. There is an internal liner that gets roped--tightly--inside. The rope is scratchy. I think if we put our hands through a patch of thorny plants, it might have been less painful. Then, we had to build the futons because they were delivered in pieces. So the last several days leading up to opening night went something like this. Put up ropes for liner, put up liner, put together futon, set up tipi. Rinse. Repeat. Four tipis are complete, but we haven't even started step 1 for the last tipi. 





I imagine this summer will be full of firsts, so we also checked off sleeping in a tipi. 


Friday was our first night open to the public. We open at 3pm for check in and just to open our bar. We only had 2 walk-ins for beer & apps and 3 overnight guests (2 for dinner). So it was a very soft, calm opening. On Saturday, we had 15 reserved for dinner (steaks were on the menu!!), 11 of which were overnight guests. We expected chaos, but we did pretty well. Sundays, our chef has off, so that's when J & I step up to the plate for cooking pizzas. I'm happy to say that one of our guests asked me if I went to school for cooking pizzas because they were so good!! 


Can I remind everyone that I have never been a cook or server in my life? I had one 6-month stint working at Carrabba's, but I was a hostess. And more recently, I worked a few catering jobs, but I didn't do much more than dish washing for those. When I was younger, my mom used to volunteer for Bingo nights at the church (in fact, she still does … 40 years strong). In any case, she used to take me with her when she couldn't leave me at home alone and I would play "waitress," which means the little old ladies with raspy voices playing Bingo would give me money to get them coffee from the snack bar. Nine times out of 10, I had to ask the Bingo caller to make an announcement and ask who ordered coffee from the cute blond 11-year-old. 

So, there is a bit of a learning curve for me with this restaurant business. We have the hospitality/lodging part down. We can clean a toilet like no other. But, pouring beer from the tap, opening (and knowing) wine, remembering food orders, building salads, carrying big trays of food … brand new territory. 
J is definitely more experienced than I am, but we are both learning A LOT about food prep, food care and food in general. We both passed our food handler's test. We learned from the food handlers test that you should not go to work if you have loose bowels and diarrhea. Well, damn it. J can never go to work then.

Our chef is a phenomenal cook. She makes us taste everything & we are eating good. I would say I might gain weight from this experience, except that I haven't stopped moving at all. In fact, I am dancing as I am typing this. Okay, maybe not, but today was really the first time I had a few minutes of downtime in the past 2-3 weeks. 


So yeah, long days, long hours. Start at 6:30am (no more sleeping in until 9am for us!), end by 10pm or so. We are so busy, we haven't even played the Bean game!! But, rest assured, we are having fun in this new adventure. 

And I've only flooded the kitchen twice via the commercial dishwasher so far … fair to say we are off to a good start for the season?

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