TO GABRIELLE HAMILTON OF PRUNE,
IN NEW YORK CITY

September 16, 2020

Dear Gabrielle,

A link to your article in the New York Times was forwarded to me from my youngest brother James, who lives in Bushwick with his family. Your essay hit home in so many ways, and inspired me to share our restaurant story. 

My husband Jerry and I are the proprietors of a 55-seat Italian “pizzeria con cucina” called Bar del Corso, on Beacon Hill, in Seattle. In the summer we have 88 seats. We live in the same neighborhood as our restaurant. Our commute is one mile. 

We met in 2002 at the counter of the Harvest Vine where he worked and a few weeks later at Victrola Coffee Roasters, then again at a party. A week later I slipped a note through the mail slot where he worked, and soon after we started going out. We fell head over heels for each other. Two years later, after quitting our jobs at the same time, we spent three months in Italy, living like students and occasionally working or studying. We traveled all over the country, me discovering Italian cuisine, truly, for the first time. My husband took me to places he loved or we tracked down osterias in our Slow Food guide. We went to the Salone del Gusto in Torino; I hiked up to a monestary and had my first Cynar on ice with a twist. We went to Sicily and soaked up the Mediterranean sun in Agrigento. For Thanksgiving we were in Bagheria and had hard-boiled eggs, a glass of zibibbo, and involtini di pesce spada. We’d have aperitivi and collazione and espresso several times a day. We were interviewed on RAI1 when we were walking through the “Acqua-Alta” in Venice. From our hotel room, we learned of the tsunami in southeast Asia that ravaged Banda Aceh. 

When we returned to Seattle, we took all the experiences and ideas, and packed them up with all of our stuff into a U-Haul, and drove across country to Washington, DC where Jerry had been summoned by Peter, then chef-owner of Obelisk, 2Amys and formerly Pizzeria Paradiso, to come run the kitchen for a year or two, learning the ins-and-outs of the actual business of running a restaurant. We joined the Obelisk restaurant family, who took me in immediately. Meanwhile, I found a job at a branding and communications firm called Axis, where I found a work family of my own. We lived in the District of Columbia for two years, eating lobster rolls, and blue crabs, going up to Fells Point in Baltimore for beer and shrimp, or New York for any number of culinary delights: pizza all over town, pastrami sandwiches at Katz Deli, Italian pastries on Mulberry St, Austrian pastries at Caffe Zabarsky. We ate at Prune on one of our trips to New York. It was a highlight of that trip. My husband said it was a perfect little restaurant.

We bought our house in Seattle from DC via a million phone calls and emails and barely got it (we didn’t have a big down payment). Our friend Bob in Seattle helped get the inspection. I remember making a really big decision about it just as I was going into the subway at Farragut West on the way to a pitch meeting. 

When we returned I found work at Phinney Bischoff, one of the design houses that I admired, and Jerry worked at Crow, which was just opening. We started working on our business plan, securing about a third of the necessary opening costs from one investor, and trying to wrap our heads around how to raise the rest of the money. We started a blog about the pizza oven we built in the backyard. Friends in the industry helped us throw parties where people could meet us, taste the food and donate to help us with our opening costs. It was old-school, crowd-funding. Some people from the neighborhood, and a few friends gave us small loans. A couple loans came from people we had never met. Going to a stranger’s home and presenting your business plan is a humbling experience. We were able to raise the money in about 6 months. We still didn’t have a space picked out and that was, for a year or so, one of our biggest obstacles. We were determined to find a place in our neighborhood. 

And then it happened: the landlord for one of the spaces we had been looking at as a possible option, albeit a much smaller footprint than we wanted, called to say that one of his tenants and he were parting ways. It was the old Beacon Pub space, a dive bar that we never expected would move. But they were ready to go. We signed a lease and decided to finally get married, after a 9-year engagement. We flew to New York City, and in the winter of 2010, with a handful of family and friends, got married at the top of the Rockefeller Building, two days after a huge blizzard. Our wedding dinner was at Hearth. We got the keys to what would be our restaurant three days later.

We will readily admit that we have a pretty charmed life, but both of have worked very hard for what we have built. My family always struggled to keep-up-with-the-Joneses, but we had much more than other folks did. My parents both worked hard and budgeted to get my brothers and I into college, even as they went through their own personal struggles. I had a comfortable home, two loving parents, and access to health care and education. After college and some post-college flailing about, I started working in video game design in Los Angeles in 1994, and continued my graphic design career after moving to Seattle in 1997. 

My husband grew up in Washington State, in Kitsap County. He started working in restaurants at age 14, working his way up, and moved to Seattle where he worked at the Westin Hotel, and later ran the kitchen on a cruise ship that traveled in the Inside Passage. His first trip to Italy was in 1985-86. He had $1,000 to make it there for a year. He ended up working in the kitchens of La Briscola, il Pescatore, Bastianelli al Molo, and da Domenico. After that trip, he went to work at Sandro’s in NYC.

When we met, he was a fixture in the kitchen at the Harvest Vine, then a 25-seat restaurant in Madison Valley. I would regularly pick him up from work, and be invited in for a glass of wine or a bite of family meal. Sometimes I just drove by when he was at work to watch him through the window, sprinkling salt – I was completely taken. The soul of the restaurant world was still very new to me. What I learned is that it is a family, not unlike other industries, but with something deeper, perhaps because of the shared experience of being in the weeds, of dealing with a needy guest, or the satisfaction of getting all your tickets fired and delivered without a hitch. At the same time, the “food industry” was about to explode, with a dearth of new cooking shows and competitions, followed by the social media train that was just over the horizon. Having been in media, and having had the challenge of developing brands and presenting brand strategies to clients, I felt there was a similarity to what a seasoned server does on the floor whenever they approach a table, discover what people want, need, how they can be persuaded, and ultimately satisfied. So I came into the business knowing that, and lending my talents that way, but also learning so much about hospitality. As glamorous as people see our industry, as all small restaurant owners know, you eventually end up on your knees, scrubbing behind a piece of equipment, righting a wobbly table, or figuring out why the ice machine isn’t working, or any number of menial tasks…you end up wearing many hats.

March 20th, 2021:

A few months have come and gone, and I have found time to continue the story.

Our restaurant was coming upon it’s 9th year in business when the pandemic hit. We saw what was happening in China, then Italy, and knew that the wave would probably hit us, but I think like many Americans, we really thought we’d be immune somehow. Maybe it was collective hubris. The weeks before the shutdown, people were coming out in droves to support us and we were thrilled, and terrified. We knew that we had the backing of our community but we wanted to keep everyone safe. Some folks came to get pizza after getting one of the last flights out of China. A good friend of mine had just been in Hong Kong for the New Year’s celebration. Were they okay? I refused to work at my own restaurant right before the mandate came down from our governor. I prayed for a shut down and it came.

Carolin at The Harvest Vine was the first person we called the day after it was announced. If it were not for her sage advice and repeated reminders to breathe, we would not have been able to make the quick decisions we made that hazy Monday.  We let go of our entire staff except three of us, just so they could get a head start to apply for unemployment because we anticipated it becoming jammed. Even with that measure in place, some of our staff unfortunately had to wait weeks for their checks. It was a mess. We decided to do takeout, so we put a sandwich board out, and posted it on Instagram, and people came and stood in line and we sold out but that was also a mess, and didn’t feel that much safer and was stressful and was not sustainable. I know that is a run-on sentence but that’s how it felt. Like a snowball rolling fast down a hill. We couldn’t get masks or sanitizer. Luckily our supplier had plenty of toilet paper even as grocery store shelves were cleared out. And we watched blatant racism against Asians happen in our city. That was March 2020.

We realized we had to get a decent take-out system in place to keep going. It was our first pivot. Seattle was nice enough to set up food pick-up zones and make signs and get them to all the restaurants. We were featured on the news. I looked terrified and exhausted but tried to stay positive. Our friend Brooke and her daughter were there for take-out that day, and talked about the cookie boxes we made. The weekend after shutdown and a week of frantic take-out via lines around the block, our friend Brendan offered to help us set up a proper system via Square, and was another angel who walked us through calmly, and did enough trouble-shooting to get us going for the following week. We continue to use the system he set up. We made paella one week, then started doing lasagne which sold out in minutes. Other favorite dishes came back online, and we stumbled along with that for awhile, as daily envelopes arrived from the unemployment security office.

Of course, maybe we want to but shouldn’t forget: our president at the time was not helping the situation and was in fact making it worse. Dangerously worse.

April was very hard for us. We were concerned about our staff, we were concerned about public health, and we needed to figure out how to stay afloat. We had to trust that help would come, and it did. Help came from our friends and family. Help came from old friends from high school days. Help came from our landlord. It came from our loyal customers and people who showed up to see what they could do. We traded meatballs for hand sanitizer. We checked in with our fellow restaurant owners in the neighborhood, two of which had just opened in the past 6 months. Everyone had to pivot. Pivot became a big word in 2020. We decided to make food for people who were in need, or working the front lines. So did so many other restaurants who saw a way they could help. It wasn’t just restaurants; it was everywhere. Food was donated. Boxes of potatoes would show up, or cases of eggs. At one point Allice, who has been with us since nearly Day 1, procured hundreds of whole chickens that we turned around and cooked for meals or donated to food banks. She also worked with one of the Hmong flower vendors, so we sold their flowers for awhile. I sold art though our website to raise money. We had a GoFundMe for our employees healthcare which helped them stay insured until we got one of the PPP Loans through the Small Business Association (SBA) with the hope that the loan would be forgiven later on. It seemed risky but everyone told us to do it. 

There were days where it was a bit too much. We wanted to move forward, but we also were putting on the brakes. More than ever, we had to be on the same page, so we opened up communication with the staff, made decisions together and addressed our personal comfort levels. Utilizing all our skills and talent became important as was checking in on each other’s mental health. We have shared all the events of this year together, but it is clear that it has hit some folks harder than others. All the good and bad things that happen in life also happened this year. I know a few times, and even now, I needed a little something to take the edge off, and that was something new for me, for better or worse. The combination of fear, frustration, trying to stay strong through all the turmoil in our country I guess in some ways, opened us all up to being vulnerable. In April I was besides myself with fear for my family and friends in New York: my brother and sister-in-law and my nephew (9-years old at the time), and my friend Jaime who I spoke to one day when she was walking in the closest outdoor space she could find: a cemetery by her apartment. All the while that we talked I could hear the sound of ambulances all around her. I could hear the panic in her voice.

May was also rough. It didn’t seem like our systems were perfect yet and caused so much anxiety, the last thing we needed. We didn’t know if we would get a loan or if everyone was going to get their unemployment checks or if we could even keep going. Many days I began my morning with a shot of tequila or would just sit in the shower and let it wash over me. When I mentioned this to the Two Erins, they said, “and this is different from Before Times?”. The two Erins are former neighbors, best friends, and are both married to fellas named Josh, and have been frequenting our place for years.

In the summer, things were rocky, but we started to get used to the changes. We continued to work, wearing our homemade masks. Aside from the restaurant, I am also on the board of the local lawn bowling club. Lawn bowling is a niche sport and we have a beautiful club in our neighborhood, that’s been around since 1942. It’s been something important to me in the last few years, not only as a place to do something that I love, but a community to build upon, protect, nurture, and fill with people. It was tough not being able to meet and bowl which led to some tough days negotiating between what we wanted to do and what we needed to do. We were able to pivot there as well, setting up some new systems and relying on common sense and communication. 

After all the pivots and things started to settle down, we were able to reopen at a very limited capacity and started to get used to wearing face-coverings continuously, even though it was hot and we had trouble hearing each other through the masks. We took the temperature of all of our guests.  We washed the menus (now in sleeves) and at the lawn bowling club we put up caution tape and washed the lawn bowls and jacks, and set up reservations for that too. There were days when we thought, perhaps we will look at this time fondly, as we are starting to understand what is really important in life. But for obvious reasons, I will not romanticize this period: 500,000 Americans lives lost and counting for starters.

Of course, that’s not to mention the events of summer, civil unrest after the online death of George Floyd as many Americans were stuck in their homes, unable to look away. What was there to lose at this point? I went to Capitol Hill, aka CHAZ and that first couple days it was beautiful. We sat and listened and spoke our truths. I realized that I have had my own story on the spectrum of racism, and it hit home. While things devolved, got diluted and white supremists took over the space, while it lasted it affected change. Artists came out to cover the boarded up businesses with art and messages of hope and resilience. Throughout that time, things did improve for us even if we were fighting through it, finding ways to escape or cope. Luckily for us, we have amazing green spaces and we took advantage of them: rowing on Lake Washington, biking along the boulevard around the lake, closed to cars, and walking in our neighborhood. People smiled with their eyes. We even a trip to the ocean and a first foray back into a restaurant, taking note of their safety measures and taking necessary safety measures ourselves. We gardened again and found the time to make art. These precious things we had let slide because we were just keeping up with the pace of the restaurant.

Time got weird for all of us and things started to blur but in the summer we were able to seat people outside though there was a curfew. We also were able to sell to go cocktails! People bought kits and helped buy lunches for the community. We saw the same patrons place take-out orders almost every week. We made sure to give thanks as much as possible. Our landlord Ron, for instance must be thanked because he helped make things happen that allowed us to continue in a safe way. We were lucky enough to be able to expand our patio, so plans were made and put into motion. We started doing reservations and our customers loved it. Once we got used to it, we learned to love it too. We braved days where the air was so thick with smoke from wildfires that we couldn’t have people inside, or outside so we didn’t have much business those weeks. The news came to shine a light on the situation again. Restaurant people fought hard, setting up support and lobbying groups.

Winter came and things became hard again, although we were in a good position. We watched certain restaurants close, permanently or temporarily. Some friends left town altogether to make a larger change for themselves. A very close friend was diagnosed with breast cancer, and that became a new focus of concern. Some restaurateurs bravely set up tents, and propane runs became a weekly task. The winter weather, while bad here, was not as bad as other parts of the country. We got through the election with trepidation and hope. We got through the holidays, quieter this year. We saw a horrifying racist attack on the Capitol. We saw more people die. We kept our heads down and kept working.

And here we are on the anniversary of the shutdown. Our staff members are starting to get their vaccinations, finally. And we’ll see where it goes from here.

There’s more to the story, especially as we get closer to “normalcy”. We are all going to be nursing wounds. I hope we can learn from this experience even if it takes years to process, ever mindful of how fragile life is. I won’t forget what’s been lost but I hope to find the joy and happiness in life and appreciate the little things. Today is the first day of spring and I plan to smell the flowers.

Angelina Tolentino
Co-owner, Bar del Corso