First, a bit of history for those who don't know: for nine years Ola Lola's Garden Bar was well-known, popular burger restaurant and bar. Last August, we decided to shut down to do some much needed maintenance to get the house and the business ready to put on the market. We reopened just the bar - no kitchen, no food. We quickly realized that wasn't going to work. We had too good a reputation as a restaurant and too many people expected us to have food. When they found we no longer served our famous burgers, they went off in search of other edibles.
We talked with a couple of friends who have a food trailer with an excellent reputation and following. They were unhappy where their trailer was parked and were looking for a new location. We talked about bringing the trailer to Ola Lola's, to do the food side of the business. The only problem was they were leaving for the best three months of the season. When they got back on the island, they moved the trailer to Ola Lola's. Better late than never, even if the "season" was over and we were headed into the doldrums. We had food - really good food - again.
That was in April. We were finally getting recognized for having food, and the MiraSur (the name of the food truck) followers were catching on to the fact that they were open again and here at Ola Lola's. For personal family reasons, they couldn't be open on Monday but wanted to be open on Thursday. We changed our hours to match since it didn't make sense for one of us to be open without the other.
Which brings us to this week, wherein the rollercoaster that has become our lives continues.
On Saturday Matt (MiraSur owner and chef) told us that as of Sunday, they were closing. Ceasing operations. Their reasons are all good and all related to family and health. They plan to sell or rent the trailer. If we know anyone who is interested...
Not the best moment of Sunday.To salvage anything of the summer season we need to be strong for the next month and continue to have food. That set us scrambling. Basically, we had five days to do a complete restaurant start-up.
First we changed our days and hours back to Friday to Monday. That gave us an extra, fifth day. Then we had to find people to run the operation since Elaine's reasons for being out of the kitchen - working to start the therapeutic riding center - are still in place. Phone calls and texts to our former crew said yielded "yeses" but other work and schedules meant they couldn't start full time. So now Elaine is stepping in - TEMPORARILY - to get it going.
Then there was a menu to work out. Fortunately, we could base it on a simplified version of the old Ola Lola's burger menu. At least we all know how to prepare everything on that menu. The start-up learning curve would be much shorter. Once we had a menu, there was shopping and prep. We had to let our local baker know we were starting up again and wanted his bread. At first he wasn't too happy. He's trying to cut back himself and didn't want to take on the extra commitment. In the end, he agreed to do it because it's us, it's Ola Lola's.
The original conversation and plan was to use the MiraSur food trailer and operate out of that; it is all set up and ready to go. The more we talked through it, the less sense that made. The Ola Lola kitchen was never actually "designed." It evolved organically along with the menu. It really fit better than the food trailer. And, everyone involved is familiar with it. It's that whole learning curve thing again. So-o-o-o, now we had to completely clean and reset the kitchen, which hadn't been used as a commercial kitchen for almost a year.
Kitchen cleaning and food prep are going on as I write this on Thursday. Final shopping and prep for fresh stuff with happen on Friday before we open. .
Here we go! Again! And yet another chapter in the Ola Lola's story.
Change is good. Right?
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