"Dang it!"

Since this is the first official Chef E blog, I thought I'd start by explaining a few things about the restaurant's closing. Everyone's speculated, but allow me to set the record straight before continuing with the next phase of Chef E's Soul Food Restaurant.
As many of you know, we started out with only five tables, but with one of the most ambitious soul food menus in Minneapolis. From the very beginning we were under - funded. In fact, when we opened our doors, we were already minus more capitol than most start-up restaurants. In spite of all of this, we became very successful in a very short time. So much so that folks lined up for nearly 2 hours on one occasion just to sit at a table. At the time, Soul City Supper Club (a 150 seat soul themed supper joint) opened right next door to me in an effort to push me off the block and buy me out. This attempt failed. Still they had the two things that I needed to grow - space and a liquor license. People began coming to my establishment to eat or take out, and go next door to drink and dance. Then, unfortunately, because more and more people started wanting to sit inside Big E's, my take-out numbers started to suffer. This caused me to take on the first set of partners -The Kassab family - a group of Middle Eastern small convenience and gyro store owners. This marriage was arranged by the bank and I had little say in the fact that they now owned the bulk of the shares. Our management styles and philosophies were completely different. They wanted to run the restaurant as if it were one of their gyro shops (with cheap inventory, substitutions and rudeness) Oh, I nearly forgot... A COMPLETE IGNORANCE OF THE FOOD THEY WERE SERVING! When I could stand no more, I walked out (literally) Exit Big E from Big E's and enter JASON DANG.
He had acquired the Soul City Supper Club next door and was having a lot of difficulty keeping the doors open. So here's the beginning of the end. We struck a deal that I would utilize his (empty) space by providing my menu and name, while he would run all aspects of the bar. Like the previous partners before him, he promised that creative control would rest in my hands - since the formula already worked. And, like the previous partners the "Piracy" soon began. Mr. Dang began taking credit for the entire restaurant. Those of you that have visited the restaurant, know that it is my wife MELANIE that does most of the artwork. She and I collaborate on all of the design ideas of the restaurant. Yet Mr. Dang took full credit for the restaurant's motif. He even went as far as taking credit for the menu and the recipes, stating that he gathered them all from growing up the only Vietnamese family in black neighborhoods in Chicago and compiling soul food dishes as he picked them up (an outright untruth he later revealed to me that he used to make his African American customers more forgiving of his Asian family owning a soul food establishment) Read more about this in an article published in an Asian community news weblog (AAJA Link Blog "Food Porn" August 16th, 2005)

aajalink.blogspot.com

So, for the second time... Exit Big E from Chef E's Soul Food and Blues.
Shortly after, I read an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune by CJ (local gossip columnist) that read with all of the "food fights" I had with two sets of partners, maybe the real problem was me. Well, she's right! If it comes down to serving quality soul food with good old fashioned Southern hospitality then I'm morally bankrupt for wanting to do so versus calling my customers stupid, or exploiting them... yeah - I'm the problem.
But enough, that's all I have to say about that whole mess. On to bigger, better and more hospitable times with the re-opening of a new Chef E's Soul Food Restaurant. Back when folks thought to themselves, "Now that young man was raised right!" Besides, I hear the third time's a charm!

- Chef E