Tag: Leasing

OUT OF THE KITCHEN, INTO THE MARKET Former Kata Robata chef Seth Siegel-Gardner, hunting for a location to lease for the as-yet-unnamed new restaurant he and fellow NYC transplant Terrence Gallivan plan to open in Houston within a year: “We were talking to a real estate agent whose number we had called off a building that we had been eyeing for weeks. So there we sat, our grand vision for the space and our impending total world culinary domination about to be laid at the feet of this person whose name was plastered on a poorly constructed sign on the side of our future culinary castle. First question out of the landlord’s mouth was, ‘Do you have the financing?’ We lie and say yes. The rest of the conversation is a blur, the amount of acronyms this person uses, you’d think they were passing codes to Russia. I make mental notes for all of them and spend many hours that night on wikipedia finding definitions that lead to an endless amount of real estate knowledge, but which will nonetheless take the majority of my adult life to truly understand. On the drive home from this meeting, Terrence and I didn’t talk much. Instead, we said what we experienced were a lot of ‘blow-outs’ — a kitchen term used to explain the feeling when words can’t describe the frustrations, disappointment or just plain exhaustion of the situation.” [Food Republic; previously on Swamplot]