Miyabi is finally open.

Round one.... FIGHT!

So the evil empire is finally open and right now.. I'm kinda nervous but not crazy terrified actually. A much better state than I was anticipating. While the place is ridiculously nice, after going there and experiencing everything for myself I can see there's a lot our restaurant has going for it that's going to help us compete.

Here's something that really caught me by surprise... Their menus!

Uh, so this place has a rep for being super fancy right? I mean you guys remember the pics of their building from the earlier posts. That place was crazy fancy. I would have figured fancy place equals fancy menus or at least something as nice as ours.. uhh I guess I was mistaken. WTF!? Why does this menu look like something from a Dennys? No wait even Dennys has nicer menus than this place! Just a crummy piece of laminated paper! Could it be any more boring too? Jeez at least use the paper with texture huh?

Of course there there are a lot of benefits to making their menus like this.. I'm sure they cost next to nothing, also...I'm thinking these menus might be temporary. Perhaps they know they may need to make adjustments later depending on how things go against us. That could be bad. This place has a history of pricing things super cheap to drive the competition out of business.

Luckily for us it appears that right now, they aren't super cheap! This brings me to one of our big advantages right now... price. Their prices are not cheap and even ridiculous in some cases. They charge more for everything, food, alcohol, and even birthday songs! Of course their restaurant is nicer than ours but in this poor economy how much is that really gunna be worth to people? Especially if the food tastes essentially the same. Also a lot of the things that are significantly more expensive at their place are things that relate to large parties. Things like Share charges(ours $5 vs $7!), Birthdays (ours $2.50 vs. $5.50!), Sake (our lg $8.50 vs $12.50) and party gratuity(our 15% on 8ppl or more vs. 18% on 6ppl or more!). This is significant be cause more than 45% of our customers are large parties. Sorry i don't have copies of our menus up so you can compare stuff yourselves.. I'll try and do that next week.

Another one of our advantages we can see from their menu is their the lack of variety. Their menu is extremely limited! There's only two, 3 item combinations and they are crazy expensive. 3 item combinations are very popular at our restaurant. Their cheapest one is 26 dollars which comes with filet mignon, jumbo shrimp and chicken, vs. our equivalent that is only 20.95. Ours even comes with more food.

oh hey i found our menu inserts.. (We print ours on textured paper!)

Looking at our menus you can see that we pretty much have any kind of combination of items possible. I'm sure their limited menu makes things vastly simpler for their staff but does the customer really care about that?? How do you guys feel? Which menu do you like the best?

Okay now imagine you're going into Miyabi... except there's less construction doods blocking the entrance. To me Miyabi is wacky. There's not many things I can think of to compare it to. Definitely not any restaurants I've ever been to. The closest thing I can compare it to is... an Indian casino... I dunno if you've ever seen an Indian casino but they are these luxurious, gigantic buildings always way out in the middle of no where. They feel weird cause in Vegas you go into a casino and its nice but your in a big city so it feels natural.. with an Indian casino your like..what the heck is something like this doing here in this field? Going inside this place your just like W, T, F, it feels kinda over the top and out of place.

I took all the following pics with my cell phone..sorry if they suck and don't really give you a sense of the space.

First thing you hit when you come in is the waiting area\bar. In this pic you can see part of the host stand to the right of the image, next to that is the entrance to the main dinning area and next to that is the bar which is hosted by 2 very bored, pro looking bartenders.. Oh we went there around 6pm so while it wasn't that busy it was still a bit early.

If you pan your view to the left you can see more of the waiting area in front of the bar and a window looking into the sushi bar. One thing i didn't take a pic of cause i thought it was cheesy but everyone else seemed impressed by it was the vaulted ceiling above the waiting area. I thought it was cheesy cause its painted like a night sky..only not cool like what you see in Vegas... I will admit the waiting space does have some real potential for extreme coolness if only they had ninja actors wandering around on the ledges above the space. You can kinda see one of the ledges at the top of this pic. Can you imagine how cool it would be to be sitting in that bar then suddenly out of the corner of your eye you see a ninja silhouette moving around above you? Awesome. Remember Ka?

Here is a pic of the sushi bar right next to the waiting area. Really nice.. and really expensive. The most impressive thing I found about this sushi bar was how the sushi chefs appeared to actually be Japanese. Nan desu ka? Anata no sushi wa totemo takai desu! Bakka!

Here's another pic of the bar.. really nice but again their selection of stuff was much more limited compared to ours. They do have Asahii though.. I wish we sold Asahii.

Here is a pic of the entrance to the main dining area, err from inside the main dining area. This leads out to the waiting area\bar. The dinning area is separated from the waiting area so you cant see it while waiting.. Its strange... Because you cant see where you're going to eat, it kinda makes going to eat feel like the moment you get to go into the theater for a theme park ride after waiting in a staging area. You don't know whats on the other side or what to expect. Is that good or bad.. .i dunno.. it does add to the wackiness. Are there other restaurants like this?

You can also kinda see in this pic how the main dining area is broken up in smaller areas. I would guess that's good for when its slow. They can close areas off to make the vast space not feel so vast and empty.

Check this puppy out! Yes your eyes are not being deceived that is a real Floor Vento Max Grill Five Thousand. A thing of beauty ain't she?. The standard grill at "we have tons o money" Miyabi. Instead of smoke being sucked out from above the grill using a giant hood like our stone age grills this sucks the smoke from vents around the grill through a duct system under the restaurant. The result is a smokeless experience. A smokeless experience does have a couple advantages ill admit. First well.. the restaurant wont get smokey which can kinda suck.. also because there isn't grease filled smoke every where they probably wont have as much grease to wipe off everything.. I hate grease. I wonder if they also make the restaurant easier to cool? A lot of hot air comes in through our hoods during the summer. : (

There is one DISadvantage to this smokeless wonder... NO Japanese fire! Japanese fire is when the chef makes a giant ball of fire on the grill and yells.. Japanese FIRE! heh also no Japanese volcanoes.. That's where a chef creates a volcano out of an onion slice and makes smoke come out of it! Hey that's 2 disadvantages. woot. Actually the chefs performance at Miyabis sux ass! He doesn't really do any tricks.. No Japanese Fire, volcano or Japanese chu chu.. LAME! Whats the point you know?

Here's another pic of the main dinning area from where I was sitting. nice huh? I wonder what it will look like in 6months? broke down? ghetto? I hope so but probably not..

Here's a pic of their curtains.. I wish we could have curtains like this.. apparently we used to have curtains like this but they always got soaked with grease and are kind of a pain to walk through constantly so they were removed... permanently.

Here is a pic of their plate and sauce cup thing... its interesting how they have unmarked plates compared to our plates that have our logos on them. I would imagine its a lot simpler to replace these.. not a bad idea.

They give you your sauces in these 3 sauce things.. Going left to right you got your shrimp sauce, ginger steak sauce, and finally your mustard/radish sauce. I didn't like the first 2 sauces which we have but i have to admit i did like the mustard sauce. Something that is interesting about how they serve their sauces is you cant really pour one particular sauce on your food with this thing. At our restaurant we serve all the sauces in individual sauce cups so if you wanna drench your food in shrimp sauce you can just pic up your shrimp sauce cup and pour. You cant really pour an individual sauce from this cause they will all spill out.. you either have to be content with dippin your food in the sauce thing or ask a chef for his sauce dispenser.. The reason why this seemingly small thing is significant is cause our customers really like to drench their food with sauce.

Notice the vent on the grill?? No smoke getting away from that thing.


Here's another pic from inside the main dining area.

Oh the wait staff service was nothing special... Except MAN I did love it when our server implied we were being cheap not ordering drinks by asking if we had just come from church.. AWESOME.. I love being mocked.

Here's my food.. look yummy? Oh I also figured out how to use the white balance at this point. Anyways that food better look yummy.. it cost me 20 freaking bucks before tip. That is the Rib-eye steak dinner for $18.75. What you see there is what I took home.. I didn't eat too much as i was mainly focused on just trying to test stuff out and observe.. Unfortunately for as little as I ate... 2 hours later... yup you guessed it.. I had the shits.. I think they use too much oil when cooking this stuff.. That or someone spiked my food! Everyone knew we were from Masato since people we've fired now work there..

So uh.. Yes Miyabi is nice... but it also feels out of place. Its very expensive, it doesn't have much personality, and it doesn't seem to cater to what is very popular at our restaurant. Am I worried? Yes... but well see. I think as long as we work hard to keep our restaurant clean and work on fixing some stuff up we should be able to easily compete. You know I could see Miyabi working in a bigger city like LA or maybe Sacramento but in small ghetto Savannah it really seems like a bad idea. Will I be going back to Miyabi? uh no I cant afford it!

Now how has Miyabi's opening been effecting us?? Well predictably our customer count has been down significantly recently. I wanna say like 40% average? This is to be expected though in the short term at least right? Of course people are gunna wanna check Miyabi out.. I mean I wanted to check out it too. Luckily?? uh Miyabi isn't solely to blame for how slow its been at the restaurant.. Apparently right now its a historically slow period. I guess cause school just started people are more focused on homework then going out to eat. Ive been told restaurants every where have been experiencing a big slow down.

Finally this just in... one good piece of news.. sources have told me that Friday Masato actually had MORE customers than Miyabi.. While our numbers sucked, only 300 something(usually we do over 400), they apparently only got around 200 customers! Woot! Rack one up for the little guys.

On to random southern stuff. I found this interesting maybe you will too. I mean its so bizarre and I've only seen it here in the dirty south.

You know how dem G's like to pimp out their cars and slam dems as low as they can go on the west coast? Well on the South East coast dems what balling like to raise dare rides as high as dey goes.

Let me introduce you to what I call.. Wagon Wheeling it. I see this all over the place here.. Doods rolling around with GIGANTIC sized rims that look like chrome wagon wheels to me. I mean doods cars will be like 2 and a half feet off the ground! In cali you'll see guys with rims like this on their Denalis but on their Monte Carlos? Wacky southern people. Anyone ever see this before? This is a nice example that i walked by one day going to Chic-Fil-A. You see how hes got that pic of the hulk there?

Banner pics!

As promised, here are some pics of our coming soon banner. I think it looks pretty good! Only around 350 bucks. Woot!

Beaufort is a go!

A lot has happened since my last update... mostly because my last update was so long ago.. sorry. Uh some of the biggest and best news to share is we finally have financing for the Beaufort location! woot! Yes for a while, a long while, we were continuing the Beaufort project with out financing.. We've mainly been using money from Masato's to pay for stuff in Beaufort. Problem is that Masato doesnt make enough money to fund some of the big expenses we have coming up for our build so we had to get some outside financing.. OH and costs have been getting ridiculous.. Its amazing how many fees, deposits, taxes or what ever you have to pay to start a business.. We had to do this pre construction meeting with a bunch of Beaufort officials and it was basically a "how many fees can we think of so we can squeeze as much money out of these chumps as possible" meeting. LAME!

Rent a center is no more! Now there is only Junsei Japanese Cuisine! Well... new business coming soon at least. We actually have a really sweet coming soon banner with our logo up right now but uh, I forgot to take pics of it last week. I'll post it up next week I swear!

With Rent a center gone we are currently in the demolition phase of our build.. Basically clearing out all the old crap from the inside. NO ACTUAL BUILDING ALLOWED! We should get our building permit this week..I hope. We currently have a contract with our building contractor that says the restaurant will be completed 3 months from the time we get our building permit! That means i think we'll be open sometime in October... sheesh thats a long time.

Here's the logo i guess we decided on.. what do you think? i threw this together in like 3 hrs.. Just found a bunch of other restaurant signs and then started pulling ideas out of them to form this. I wish we had spent more time iterating on it but I always get told we need stuff last minute and no one here ever gives me any feed back. I hope it doesn't suck too hard. All this stuff will be tweaked some more but the main elements are final.

The guy whos building our sign really liked the design. err of course he might just be saying that so we give him money.. When the sign is built onto the restaurant it will be self lit.. like with neon and lights on the inside instead of the exterior lights currently shown.. i had to use the exterior lights cause i didnt know how to create the proper lighting effects in MAX.

Hey look whats scheduled to open in a few weeks!

Jeez this place looks insanely nice huh? Like so nice you would never want to eat there right??

Freaking gigantic! Our spies have told us they will have 18 tables vs our 14 and their sushi bar will be a lot bigger than ours.. they also apparently pay their bus boys over 10 bucks an hour vs our 6.25 an hour... err actually 6.55 an hour as of yesterday. All of their staff are paid more than ours.. ouch.. but here's the thing.. their food is gunna have to be very expensive.. i cant imagine them being able to make any money charging our prices.. with the cost of building that place and all of the extra payroll costs there's no way!

The era of people waiting over an hour to eat at our restaurant will soon be over..

I gotta admit their sign looks really cool! what do you guys think? No im not talking about the state farm sign.. the Miyabi sign!!

Well thats all i got for this post.. now onto the random crap that i throw in so you feel like you guys are getting your moneys worth..

Doesn't this look like some bad model special effect from an old movie?

I think this is a well composed picture.. every once in a while I accidentally snap one. Does anyone want to see what my foot looks like after its been bitten by fire ants??? I hate fire ants. WTF! Why are there fire ants every where in Savannah? Why do i keep getting bitten by freaking fire ants!?

Finally, uh, Hey uh would anyone else like to blog with me on this blog?? I suggested this to some people before but never really pursued the idea. I'm just thinking it could be cool cause i cant update this very frequently and I'm sure lots of other people have interesting stuff to share.. Come on it will be fun.. You could post about anything.. If anyone is interested lemme know.

Updates

Uh one thing you all might find interesting is how busy the restaurant has been lately.. Is the crappy economy and 4 dollar gas having an effect on sales!? The answer is.. YES! I think. Yes lately things have slowed down which really sux. On our busiest days, Friday and Saturday where we normally get well over 400 customers a night, lately we have had under 400! That is distressing cause those 2 days are like our money makers. Also lunch has been slowing as well. Our lunch numbers are probably down like 17-20%? Maybe its cause its finals season?? We do have a few random busy weekdays which have helped off set the slowing weekends but still i would say on average we're down from a couple months ago.

Oh yes its been hot here lately but i dont thing the restaurant has become unbearable.. yet.. i mean its definitely warn inside. The ACs are crankin! At some point ill try and let you all know how much our electric bill is..heh Anyways im pretty sure its not the tempurature of the restaurant that has been hurting sales..

Sagging sales arent the only new things that have been going on lately..uh Recently I've been training to be a sushi chef! Thats actually pretty fun! Heres a couple rolls i made.. what do you guys think?


Err dang that cutting board looks dirty up close!! Ignore that please.. i swear i scrubbed that before i used it. This what we call a beginner sushi. Its half California roll and half Charleston roll.. about as non japanese as you can get. Perfect for the ignorant southerner who is afraid of anything un american.. The cali roll side is avocado and fake crab and the Charleston roll is pre cooked shirmp, cucumber, mayo and lettuce. No raw fish in the beginner sushi!( guess this means this roll is good for me too since i dont like raw fish!)


Here it is cut. When you start training to become a sushi chef you always start out making easy rolls. Things like the california roll, or the crunch roll shown below. This helps you get good at actually rolling and cutting sushi. Rolling and cutting are tough!! Especially cutting! JEeez you guys should have seen some of the first rolls i made.. gaaw if you even want to call them rolls.. They were like blobs of rice with crab mushed inside.. heh I really struggled at first and felt like i was letting my japanese ancestors down. I could just hear them saying " Nani!? You carr diss sushi!? BAKKA! You are a discrase! You are NOT AH JAPANESE!" Many times i felt like taking the sushi knife and disembowling myself...but i didnt.. I just kept at it.. and one day.. i dunno it just kinda clicked. The only thing i can compare learning how to make sushi to is... learning how to drift. You just have to do it to really get a feel for whats going on. Its really hard to just make perfect sushi from watching someone..




Our crunch roll is very simple.. just shrimp tempura and some hot sauce. I would say things that make for a good sushi is not too much rice, a nice tight roll(so it dont fall apart) and evenly sized pieces that are cut straight. Thats all the stuff that i strive for in my rolls. Now whether i achieve that or not when i make sushi is another thing.. Im still a wee bit inconsistent and apparently im slow. I feel like i got the basic rolls down but i still have a ways to go. The last things you learn are nigiri and sashimi.. I havent started learning either of those yet.




Since weve taken over the restaurant weve been trying to make improvements here and there.. Trying to de ghetto things a bit if you will... Here is one of our latest de ghettoing actions.. New Menus!!!(menu on the left is new if you didnt realize) Dont they look beautiful!?? JEez yes we were actually handing the one on the right to people to order from! WTF! Classy huh? Man if you think it looks nasty on the outside you should have seen the inside! I hope you like soy sauce stains.. Oh we also raised prices too in the new menu.. On average everything went up about 95 cents.. inflation sux! You know what else sux??.. Apparently our beautiful new menus only have about 8 months before they end up like our old menus.. DOH! Uh weve done some other things to improve the place but i dont have pics of them yet.. ill show you next post..

Things are continuing to move at the Beaufort place.. We finally got our plans finished from the architect today so we can apply for a building permit.. Hey he was only 2 months late finishing those! Sweet!



Uh while we've been waiting for the architect ive been building a mock up of the restaurant based off the drawings we had to try and help us come up with ideas for the interior.. Here's what i got so far.. What do you guys think??





NO SERIOUSLY!! i need input! Im kinda running out of ideas.. im just making this up from some pics ive downloaded from various sushi restaurants ive found online and from another smaller Masato restaurant.

I got more pics here
http://sokasaki.albumpost.com/album35?page=4
http://sokasaki.albumpost.com/album35?page=5

So what do you guys think?? Unfortunately no textures or lighting.. please use your imaginations! Sorry my modeling skillz are so weak!

Oh the sign is crap and is just a place holder.. i just wanted something that i could shine lights on to illustrate an idea i had for lighting up the side of our building.... If people have ideas for signs that would be great too.. unfortunately the city of Beaufort has lots of restrictions on what we can do with our actual sign.. thats why i was thinking maybe if we lit up our building in a cool way we could stand out more and still comply with the gay laws..

If anyone cares here's a couple random things about where i live.. So before mankind developed the area i currently live in... it was like a freaking rain forest.. actually i think most of the south is(was) like rain forest.. Its actually very pretty when its not being clear cut. My buddies house actually has a small patch of forest behind his house between him and the Home Depot... While im pretty sure he doesnt really appreciate it, i like to sit outside some times and just kinda chill in his small back yard where there's a surprising amount of err wild life. My current favorite critters are... THE LEETALL LEEZARDS!

THeres a ton of these little doods! I love cameleons.. I used to have some when i was younger..but they all died.. cause we didnt feed them enough..

Another interesting thing about living here is there's an army airfield like right next to us.. REAlly like 2 miles away.. so all day its like being in a warzone with choppers and cargo planes flying around constantly..

I actually kinda like this.. its cool seeing and hearing this stuff. chuchuchUCHUCHUCHU hu chuhu huhu (thats the sound of an apache flying over..)

Well thats all i got for now.. I hope everying one is doing well!

Oh yeah.. CAN SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME

W

T

F

This is!??

THIS SUCKER WAS HUGE!!

!!!REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAA!! "AHHH GET IT OFF AAAHH!! gUUAAGGHh!!"

!!!REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAA!!

Tempura Soba ga Oiishi Desu!

I was in the little Asian mart here the other day and I saw some soba noodles and got to thinking.. "Hmmm I like soba,... Hmmm I havent eaten it in a long time cause no place sells it here,... Hmmm I know how to make soba,... Hmmm soba tastes good with tempura,... Hmmm I recently learned how to make tempura at the restaurant,... Hmmm I have a restaurant where I can make Tempura," Then it hit me... "WHAT THE!!!? Hey I can make tempura soba!!!" ( my brain is slow )

Here is a little write up about my creating one of my most favorite foods, tempura soba.


Im really lucky( i guess) the restaurant has all the ingredients i need for my creation besides the noodles and the soup base which i got at the tiny "asian market".


We make tempura almost exclusively for sushi ingredients but also have it available separately even though I have never seen any sold separately since Ive started. So far up to this point ive only made tempura used in our sushi which includes shrimp tempura for our Crunch rolls, asparagus tempura for our Calypso rolls and the soft shell crab for the Spider rolls. When I started this though i realized that if i knew how to make asparagus tempura i could probably use that process for some of the other veggies we use for teppan. Mainly the zucchini, onions and carrots (hell yeah!). This was the first time I've tried to make tempura out of those veggies.

Besides the noodles, soup base, the shrimp and the veggies you also need the tempura batter stuff which is like flour. When we make tempura we have one bowl with just the batter and another bowl that has batter mixed with water. Ill explain more about this later.


Here's something you might not know. Before you can batter the shrimp for shrimp tempura you have to first kinda crush the back of the shrimp using your finger tips so it becomes longer and so it isnt curled. You really have to be careful with how much pressure you apply while err crushing since its really easy to tear the shrimp apart.


Once the shrimp have been prepared its time to batter them up!


First you cover them in dry batter mix which i think helps make more of the liquid batter stick .


After the dry batter you put them in the wet batter making sure to thoroughly coat them.


Our shrimp tempura has tempura flakes cooked on them. To create shrimp tempura with flakes we need to do a couple extra things. First, before we put the battered shrimp in the fryer we need to create tempura flakes in the oil. All you have to do for this is pour some tempura batter in the oil. You can see what happens in the photo when you pour the batter in the oil, it kinda turns into these little flakes which you gather up in a wire mesh spatula/scooper thingy. Once you have enough flakes gathered up in the scooper thing you lay your battered shrimp on the scooper over the flakes and then submerge the shrimp and the flakes in the oil err while trying to roll the shrimp around on the flakes. Finally you have catch the shrimp in the oil and press it against the side of the fryer to get the flakes to stick on it while its frying. This whole maneuver is actually really hard.. im not very good at it.. i couldnt document it cause its so hard.


The result after the flaking maneuver is something like this.... This isn't one of my better shrimps.


After you let it fry for about 30 seconds you can take it out. Notice the flaky stuff all around it. Oh hey theres the wire mesh spatula/scooper thing I mentioned earlier!


Heres a bunch that I did. Not my best work, oh and I some how managed to knock them off the plate right before I took this pic so that didnt help their appearance either..uggh..


The vegetable tempura doesn't need flakes so for that you just batter it up like the shrimp and put it in the fryer without all of the flake steps. Very easy!


Yummy Japanese onion ring!


All the veggies finished.


Veggies, shrimp and noodles with soup. Making the noodles is easy just put them in boiling water for like 2 minutes. Be careful not to over cook the noodles!! For the soup just mix the bottled soup base with some hot water. Be careful not to make your soup too strong! Finally just put the noodles in the soup and add some chopped green onions. Of course you can serve this how ever you like with the tempura separate from the noodles or you can add the tempura too the noodles and get something like this!
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Booyah! Success! Victory! Lets Eat!!

What do you guys thinK?? Not bad huh? This actually turned out really good. Better than most restaurants i would say and i dont not say that lightly. I was pretty damn surprised. This example you see here was my 2nd attempt at making this stuff. My first attempt did not turn out so good with the noodles being over cooked and the soup being too strong( be careful!). You know what would make this 100% better??

http://sokasaki.albumpost.com/album23/sobasmall01
Fresh hand made noodles!! >__O Hey a guy can dream cant he?


So last post I told you about a little problem our business is going to face in the next 3 months. A little problem that really.. is going to be a big problem. Start humming the empire theme and take a look at this.


This is the future site of Kyoto Miyabi Savannah. Apparently over 3 million bucks has been invested in this and its less than a mile away from our restaurant.

Here's their website... jeez kinda ghetto..
http://www.capitaljapan.com/

Uhh but apparently this place is really nice inside. Uh much nicer than our aging place.
http://www.capitaljapan.com/Miyabi.html

Also because they are a well established franchise their staff is supposedly way more professional and capable than ours too. They only use indonesians for their teppan chefs or something.

Now we do have some advantages over this place such as our location is a million times better than theirs, our prices are cheaper, and we are well known in Savannah. Unfortunately though, if you ask me none of that is gunna matter come summer time. Cause for all the good stuff we have going for us..there's one horrifically bad thing going against us.. something so bad.. i really believe this little adventure of mine could end prematurely.. like this summer.

You see during the summer the inside of our restaurant heats up bit, to a cool.. 90+ degrees... 90+ degrees!!!!!!!!!!! Can you imagin eating dinner inside a smoke filled, humid, 90+ degree restaurant during the summer?? WTF!! I CANT!! Ive been told the restaurant has always been like this during the summer, even back when i first worked there. I dont remember this but apparently I did experience it. Youre probably saying well just turn on the AC! Well Even if our AC is working and is blowing out cold air as hard as it can the restaurant will still be hot as hell!! Apparently our problem isnt with our ACs blowing out cold air theres actually a problem with the way the building has been built!!! It has something to do with how the hoods above our grills are sucking out too much air and its creating some kind of wierd air flow issue that renders the ACs almost useless! AHHHHH!!!

Now, youre probably thinking "oh come on.. if the Masato has survived all these years with a problem that bad why would this summer be any different? Why do you think your restaurant could go out of business?" Heres the thing, the reason why the restaurant has survived all these years even though it has had such a huge prob, i believe, is because of one thing... LACK OF COMPETITION! ALL that changes this summer!! We will no longer be the only premier Teppan restaurant in Savannah. If people want to eat teppan Japanese food they will have 2 choices.. One restaurant thats fairly expensive, hard to find but will be a hospitable 79 degrees inside or a reasonably priced restaurant, that is very conveniently located, but is 90+ degrees inside! What do you guys think?? I think even if people have been coming to Masatos for years 90+ degrees vs. 79 degrees will be too much. People will pay the extra money to not have to eat in an uncomfortable environment if its avaliable.

According to the other partners theres not much we can do. Calling an AC guy wont help since the AC units arent the problem. What we really need to do is some major structural stuff i guess which unfortunately is out of our budget.. uggh..

So uh yeah the whole Masato vs. Miyabi battle could be over before it even starts.. They know our weakness and are totaly going to take advantage of it when they open this summer.