The actual physical commercial kitchen that we inherited (purchased) from Abe was a perfect microcosm of the larger mess, in the shape of a hotel, that we purchased (inherited) from Abe. Not having any actual restaurant experience beyond dropping bucket-loads of money in them, I wasn’t savvy enough to see the pratfalls to success that were, unfortunately, the foundation of our venture; nor was the bank, and most importantly, neither was the gentleman that did the property inspection for me and the bank. He was touted as an expert in 1) old buildings and 2) commercial kitchens; when viewed in retrospect, he knew as much about commercial kitchens as I did – that kinship of ignorance equated to a tasty recipe for disaster.
In August of 2007, I flew out to Denver, and then drove to Hot Sulphur to be present at the mechanical inspection. At this point, we were still contractually able to walk away from the deal - no harm, no foul. If things were obviously askew, i.e. if there were blazing, flying, roaring red flags – red flags that someone would be looking for before throwing their life and money at a lark – we could’ve still simply said at that point ‘thanks, but no thanks.’ Anyway, I meet Mr. Inspector on a sunny Saturday, and he takes me on a tour of the physical being that is The Riverside Hotel. I’ll skip the discussion of the roof, the foundation, the crawl spaces, etc., and jump right to his assessment of the commercial kitchen – his advertised area of expertise.
“All in all” he began, “the kitchen and the equipment are in decent shape, considering their age. Let me show you a few things that you’ll need to address for the Health Department. See this gap on this (food prep) table? Food particles can collect in that and it’ll be a trap for bacteria. There are four or five of those in here that need to be covered up. Here’s another one. See?”
Didn’t seem like too big a deal; get a little silicone, a spatula and ‘presto’, no more little bacteria farms. He continued:
“One thing you’ll have to fix pretty quickly is this fluorescent light fixture. First off, the bulbs can’t be exposed like they are – they could break and send glass bits shooting all over the kitchen; definitely bad for business if people have glass in their food.”
(I stood in awe while listening to this expert assessment.)
“Plus, the grease on those bulbs has caught all those little bugs – again, you don’t want those gnats falling off those exposed bulbs and ending up on dinner plates. I’d get a new compliant fixture first chance you get.”
(I hastily took notes – no glass in the food or bugs on the plates. This info was killer to a novice such as me.)
Next he went to the equipment. “The stove works fine, again, considering its age; all of the burners work and both of the ovens. It’s missing a knob here, but you should be able to find a replacement pretty easily.”
“Fume hood works fine” he said, as he flicked the switch and the blower motor creaked to a rolling crescendo.
“Here’s the ice machine”, as he opened the door and showed me copious amounts of crystal-clear ice cubes. “No worries.”
Then, “three stainless steel dish sinks; everything drains and flows nicely.”
Good, I thought. Draining and flowing is good.
“Now I have to show you a few areas of concern that I have with the walk-in (cooler).”
I’d been in The Riverside kitchen maybe a dozen times to that point, but I never knew that that there was a walk-in cooler in the back room.
“Cool”, I thought. Then I saw the cooler.
Outside of the cooler, perched upon an 18” square platform that was precariously affixed to the wall was a black machiney-looking thing, with a little motor, a small tank and coils that looked a little like a mini-distillery; in total, it was a mechanical contraption that Tom Edison would have regarded as primitive.
Pointing at this little humming conundrum, Mr. Inspector said “this is the compressor. It’s on its last leg and will have to be replaced. I’m actually amazed that it runs and cools at all.”
He then opened the cooler door and said “you won’t believe this!”
To those of you who don’t know anything about refrigeration – I was you at that point – on the opposite end of a compressor there would be a condenser, with cooling coils and a blower to disperse the cold air about the space. In reality, suspended from the ceiling of the walk-in, there was a condenser, resting on a rotted piece of plywood which was affixed to the ceiling by pieces of cheap, electrical flex conduit. The cooling coils – picture a small car radiator with frost all over it – were fronted by a $10 box fan that was attached to the whole Goldbergian contraption with 100 yards of the finest duct tape. A continuous drip of water from the condenser found purchase in a massive pot situated beneath it on the floor; there was science project fungi floating in that pot. I shit you not.
“Oh my!” said I. “Is this up to code?”
“Not hardly!” said our commercial kitchen expert. “You’re looking at a few grand to get this whole thing up to snuff. Plus, you’ve got a few more of those bacteria catchers in the gaps between the floor tiles and the walls that you’ll need to caulk. I’m guessing you’re looking at $3000 - $5000 to get this up to code.”
“Wow!” I thought. ‘I didn’t even know that there was a walk-in cooler, let alone a walk-in cooler whose main functional attributes would have been a hysterical stand-up routine at a refrigeration specialist’s annual award banquet.’
So there I was, standing in this commercial kitchen, with a commercial kitchen expert, on a beautiful August day in the mountains of Colorado. I was looking at, ....what... not much bad shit... really? Some silicone caulk, a new $30 fluorescent light fixture and maybe $3000 - $5000 to get the walk-in up to shape.
"That’s it???"
"Geez, I’d have thought it to be much worse. Lucky me!"
To be continued…….
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