The Year I Never Closed my Restaurant
Realizing I don’t love my restaurant anymore is an odd phenomenon. It’s easy to ascribe this feeling to a moment, to the burnout anyone in the hospitality industry can undoubtedly relate to. And it’s difficult to know how any permutation in the events of this past year might have resulted in a different outcome. But, if I’m being honest with myself, these feelings began long before the pandemic set in.
Opening barcito, my neighborhood cafe and cocktail bar, at 26, without partners, required a full immersion of myself — work-life balance assumes the two are distinct, my work was my life, and vice versa. That’s typical of openings, of the first months and years it takes to establish a new business, especially in an industry as fickle as restaurants. Not to mention restaurants in Los Angeles, or restaurants in Downtown Los Angeles. But as the years slipped by, the promise of a more hands-off approach felt increasingly elusive. Any time a breakthrough felt imminent, some unexpected wrench shattered those prospects. In the before-times, I’d pick up the pieces, certain I could re-assemble the path to the life I hoped to achieve. This pandemic was akin to a nuclear bomb. There are no pieces to pick up. No line to be drawn from black to light.
During the first weeks of lockdown, I’d take surface streets to arrive at my restaurant, surveying the damage along the…
