asparagus23's blog

It's been over five months since Health Commissioner Bechara Couchair visited LSK and met with food business owners.  What's happened since that visit?

Our steady stream of health inspections has stopped.  The "new" head of Food Protection that attended the meeting, Sandra Alfred, has already left her position, returning to a post in the Animal Care & Control Division. So the Head of Food Protection is once again a vacant post, as it had been for 1.5 years before Sandra Alfred briefly filled it.

LSK tends to use Facebook and Twitter (logansqkitchen) to give ongoing updates about events.  Our blog is turning into the place for more in-depth discussions of food policy, and the work we do to support food entrepreneurship in Chicago.  Lots coming up in next couple of weeks...

The Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival will take place July 23-25th-- a Friday thru Sunday celebration.  We've hosted some of the planning meetings of the art curators, and the energy and dedication is really terrific.  The community along Milwaukee between California and Fullerton Avenues is really firing on all cylinders. 

As I write, Chefs are upstairs prepping a dinner that celebrates the rabbit.  This was what I dreamed would happen when we were designing and building LSK.  It's an extra restaurant for chefs to use-- cook with their friends, have underground dinners, play with their food-- you get the idea.

So LSK is calling all chefs.  We're offering Mondays and Tuesdays as Chefs' Nights-- come and use our facility for ten bucks a head.  Kumbaya, as Rick Tramonto said in Time Out Chicago this week.  This is the place for it.

Logan Square Kitchen put up new light fixtures this week. The curved ceiling tracks will hold more hanging fixtures.

This week is dedicated to sound system, security cameras, internet access, lighting, among the many miscellaneous items. It's the hard part of the project, when you've got lots of relatively small details to hunt down and resolve. Ben, Brett and Drew of Chas. Bender, our general contractor, are fabulous people who care about the Kitchen as much as we do. We're lucky to have such a terrific partner on this project.

We may have our first chefs cooking in our kitchen next week! Stay tuned...

We have equipment running again...hurrah! Thanks to Jeff, Brett, Ben, Drew, Andy and Matt for working hard. Now we'll conduct equipment start-ups and TAB, or 'test and balance' of our mechanical equipment. All our refrigeration is working well, and now it's time for HVAC, hoods and gas equipment.

Dining room floors have been finished, and look beautiful thanks to Alex and his team. On to final lighting, sound system, and other finishes!

Our replacement parts did not arrive Friday to fix our hood. Now, Monday/17th is expected install date. We're also looking forward to our health inspection sometime this week, so we're busy putting the finishing touches on the place. Stay tuned...

We had a setback this week in our electrical systems. All our beautiful new equipment was installed and ready for testing when some transformer work by a certain electric utility (who shall remain nameless, faceless, and unreachable) caused our circuit panel in our large exhaust hood to burn up. That was Tuesday. Our great team has new parts arriving today, and we will be starting up the hood around noon, in hopes that the parts we've replaced solve all our issues. So think good thoughts for the Kitchen, she needs all your great energy.