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A techie turned restaurateur wrote an essay about all of the reasons why operating a restaurant in SF is hard without once writing the words “tech worker”
She blames the cooks, their drug problems, and ramen and pizza for her own restaurants failure 
The culture you create, the way you train your employees, the way you deal with the changing face of operating in SF, that’s on you. An essay about closing a restaurant without saying “we got this wrong and we could’ve done so much better” is some childish shit
The truth is Tawla opened in a space that’s never sustained a restaurant for an extended period of time with an ambiguous cuisine in the era of $15 minimum wage, tech cafeterias and delivery apps. What did they expect? For things to be easy?
If a tech worker had to deliver a product daily that worked perfectly and was getting paid minimum wage to do so, there would probably be less “headspace to innovate”
I went to Tawla once. It was fine. It was also $250 for 3 people. They are not victims. If you play the game, know the rules. They had all of, if not more financial resources than the average restaurant has. They owe SF cooks an apology for blaming them for their failure.
This is not about a “higher order of thinking”—I can assure you everyone wants healthcare. But taking $300+ dollars out of each paycheck IS NOT an option for most restaurant workers. People know the risks, and they they reluctantly take them.
The only person we are blaming for beet and goat cheese salads is Bauer. It was an automatic ticket to getting 3 stars.
No one will miss Tawla and it’s condescending as fuck owner who has no connection to restaurant industry or it’s workers, at all.
The opening part of that essay is all about a cook that was supposedly highly valued but homeless, and the restaurant just couldn’t figure out how to help.
It’s not complicated. You loan them 5-10k with a written agreement for how they’ll pay you back
It’s not complicated. You loan them 5-10k with a written agreement for how they’ll pay you back
Instead of helping, she uses him as her thesis in one of the worst “restaurants are hard” essays ever written.
During the hapa days one of my cooks daughters got an infectious disease back in Mexico. He was distraught. We loaned him 7k. His daughter got better. He paid us back. It was a simple case of people taking care of each other.
