Sick of Soffits

Are you sick of soffits? I am. But, it is all part of the process. If opening a restaurant were all about food, it would be easy. But, this is hard stuff. It gets harder everyday – just when I think I have it figured out, I get a curveball. Like the ventilation system for the oven or the acoustic material for the ceiling. It’s non-stop.

                                                                                                                                                               

Speaking of ventilation systems, I am busy trying to choose an oven hood. I am concerned about the people who have offices above the restaurant site and I’m working to make sure that they don’t smell food all day. The people who work at the bank next to Alison at Blue Bell  sometimes complain that they can smell food coming through the wall. I reply that I can smell their money. But, I’m just joking. It’s nice to smell food cooking when you walk into a restaurant. But, any smell – even a good smell – isn’t so great all day long if you’re sitting at your desk. At the restaurant, I thought we were immune to it. But about halfway into our “30 days of cookies” holiday promotion at Alison at Blue Bell , even we got sick of the smell of baking cookies. Sorry,Amelia.                                                                                                                                                               

                                                                                                                                                             

 

One option is to have a regular ventilation system with ductwork running up to the top of the building releasing smells high into the air. But that means we’ll have ductwork running up the side of the historic building. Another option is running the ductwork through the building. But, that eats up potential office space. A third option is getting an ultraviolet hood. It uses ultraviolet light to pulverize the air particles that carry food smells. Since it minimizes smells even before they’re vented, there’s no need to run ductwork inside or up the building. Sounds good, but UV hoods run 30 to 40 thousand dollars more than a regular hood. None the less, it looks like that’s the way we’ll be going…unless something else comes up – which I’m sure it will.

   

That leaves us with the acoustic situation. As the Los Angeles Times  so eloquently put it, I’m striving for “a comfortable sound level (somewhere between bedlam and the grave).” I spent two hours meeting with Steven Schultheis at S&S Resources. It was a great meeting and I learned a lot. Their acoustic material will absorb 80% of the noise in the main dining room. Now, here’s the tricky part…we want to put the acoustic panels in the recessed areas in-between the soffits. But, we can’t penetrate the ceiling in the main dining room because it is fire rated. So, we’ll have to clip the material to the soffits. And of course, all this impacts the lighting design that we’d already settled on. The panels are 1 to 2 inches thick so they’ll limit the bounce we get from the lights. You need something for the light to bounce off to get a nice glow. It’s always something!  

Enough of ventilation and acoustic material. I have some cooking to do. I just picked up some kosher gelatin. I’m using ideas from Eileen Talanian’s new cookbook Marshmallows: Homemade Gourmet Treats  to create a kosher marshmallow dessert for my upcoming class in NYC . Then, in a few weeks, I’m helping Eileen launch her new cookbook with a reception featuring sweet and savory marshmallow dishes . When things get bad there’s always my marshmallow blaster. It shoots mini-marshmallows at high power. A great, non-violent way of dealing with aggression. I’ve been using it non-stop for the past 2 weeks. Go ahead…make my day!