The Restaurant Cont...

Antonio the Chef, he's quite a character! He has been a chef for Greek restaurants for over 20 years so he totally rocks!!! Every time a new customer comes in, they rave about the food and promise to tell all of their friends about our food...by the looks of it, they have been! We have more than doubled our daily business in the last month!!! It is becoming too much for one chef and one waitress to deal with, which is actually a real blessing since our Ari and I are financially supported by the work I do at the restaurant.

This is Lopez...he does EVERYTHING and he does it well, actually his nick name is the Professor because he knows exactly where every little thing is, how everything works and how to fix things when they don't work! He is one of the hardest working people that I have ever met. Lopez works all day long, sometimes seven days a week doing all of the behind the scenes work that allows the restaurant, the farmer's markets, the on-line olive oil shipping business and the catering to run smoothly and for us to be successful. Besides being a very hard worker, Lopez is a very kind and helpful person. I feel really lucky that I get to work with people that I genuinely like. : )

Antonio and I during a break in the action! : ) Some days it is so horribly busy that I am actually RUNNING to get people their orders, etc...because it's usually just Antonio doing all of the cooking and me doing all of the hostessing/waitressing. I don't know how he manages because he works mon-sat 11 a.m. to 1o p.m. and he is the only Chef we have! At least Alice and I can take turns and give each other days off here and there.

We usually grab a quick meal between the lunch rush and the dinner crowd at the "family table" up near the cash register. Lupe' is the one in the middle, she does a lot of the behind the scenes work to help with the food preparation for the farmer's markets and she has been entrusted with a few of Alice's secret recipes for some of our "specials" we serve in the restaurant. : ) (Seriously, I don't even know any of the family secret recipes yet! Alice keeps telling me that she wants to teach me a few...we'll see.)