Overwhelmed, understaffed, under capitalized, over ambitious, unrealistic. Whatever the reason, we just could not follow through with our idea of a consistent, affordable all inclusive food truck court in East Liberty. The majority of specifics were handled, the vendors were lining up and public interest seemed to be peaking. Despite the pieces seemingly coming together, this was a puzzle that i simply could not put together in a timely fashion.
What i learned from this experience of dealing with red tape and going through the proper/legit channels was this – do it the old fashioned way if you want to do it quickly. There is always something cool and interesting to be done, the ideas are always there as is a certain amount of short term resource and willingness to see them through. Once a drop of paperwork gets thrown into the mix, all of a sudden the whole process seems to seize up like a drop of water into melted chocolate. The only real comparison i have is to that of the series of large dinners that we pulled off in the Salt space over the course of the two years before construction really came together. We didn’t have permits or plumbing or heat or exhaust or lighting or sound or plates or equipment. We did however have lots of balls and a proportionate amount of chops in the kitchen. And what being successful comes down to with these types of off-the-cuff events is having just the right amount of balls and chops to do things on the fly without sacrificing anyone’s safety and still keep the original vision intact. This is by no means the end of our doing-things-because-we-can phase. It will, on the other hand most definitely be the end of the announcing-the-launch-of-such-things-on-my-blog-way-too-far-in-advance-so-every-agency-that-might-care-will-and-then-mess-with-me-because-THEY-can phase. Keep an eye out for pop ups within other restaurants, pop ups in cool spaces around town, pop ups with other chefs and most importantly pop ups that won’t have any seats available for the man.
