I hear you, and I’d be bothered by a smoker also, especially if it were a cigar smoker. Here’s what I think about this kind of situation.
In the case of BBQ restaurants that are going to produce smoke, the permitting process should include notifying neighbors in the vicinity who might possibly be exposed to the smoke, and listening seriously to their input. If agreements and understandings are clear about the restaurant, the permit should be issued on a multi-year but limited basis, say 5 years. During that period, new complaints would not be recognized, but as the deadline approached for renewal, the City should consider these new or additional inputs as part of the permit renewal process.
I just don’t think a restaurant, a business, should be given a permit to operate and then have that permit revoked the way it was at Mike’s. Yes, it’s like the smoker in your area, but at a really different scale.
But tenants can change much more often than 5 years. I can understand the restaurant who wants certainty that they can work for a longer time in a specific location but I can also understand the home owner/renter who complains about the restaurant - I don’t think it is an easy situation with an obvious solution.
Yes, and that’s a good point. I think in the case of tenant turnover, the onus should be on the landlord to advise renters of the permit agreement and duration.
I just threw out 5 years as an example of the concept. It could be less, but too much less would discourage new restaurants from even trying. Too much more would defeat the purpose.
Chef Christian Graves of Jsix announced he was leaving San Diego last month. Christian was a mainstay of the San Diego dining scene for many years and will be missed. He says it’s just too difficult and costly to run a restaurant in San Diego,
Don’t know what exactly what that means for Jsix, but while I mourn the loss of Christian I welcome Chef Sinsay and wish him luck. I hope he can have a “long impactful change” on the dining scene in East Village and create a great new menu of his own.
But one has also to say that the food at JSix has drastically declined over the last 2-3 years. I would have been sad a few years ago but today I shrug and move on. (And I also don’t agree with all his takes on the SD restaurant scene)
They’ve had issues no doubt, but the economics probably had more to do with the decision. It sounds like they are going out with a scorched meat policy.
We are getting here more into philosohpical/political territory but he sounds like he doesn’t like the increase in minimal wage because it might make it in the short term more difficult to open a restaurant. This is in my opinion very much short term thinking as increased minimum wage had mid and long term very positive effects. If you talk with any European (or read European newspapers) and want to pinpoint what might be the biggest problem in the US society to have better education, better food at home/cooking any many other things it will always be that many Americans don’t earn enough money with one job and have to have 2-3 jobs. This has such a trickle down effect on many aspects of life, less time at home to be with kids and how they perform at school, hardly time at home to cook - more highly processed food and no value in family time at the lunch/dinner table etc. (And yes, not everything is perfect in Europe and this is a very complex issue but people only requiring one job to feed their family will be the biggest step forward. )
In addition I find sentences like “Hell, I want to make little tarts for $20 an hour. They’re not learning a ton, but, still, they’re getting a check.” very disrespectfull to the work of others and he takes his culinary input as too important. Based on 3-4 last visits to JSix in the last two years he is running some of the worst kitchens in SD based on the food we got at those visits. For somebody who implies that people could learn at lot by working with him his recent track record is lousy (not only based on our opinion but how empty JSix was on all visits. ) Unfortunately I am not joking that the food on those visits was worse than a visit to Applebees or Cheesecake Factory - it is always good to do some honest self reflection about your own work on a regular basis.
His comment about the $20/hour to make little tarts kind of rubbed me the wrong way too.
Yes, the restaurant industry is up in arms about all the minimum wage increases across the country. It’s an issue, it will work itself out, but the sky is not falling. In in the non-commercial end of the business and we’ve paid a living wage for a lot of years + a generous benefits package.
JSix is one of the few places which looked much worse after a renovation - we really liked the place before the renovation but found the ambience completely lacking afterwards - it looks like a very cheap imitation of a French brasserie made by somebody who never visited one but just read about it and was on a tight budget.
And as much as I like the cooking of Chef Sinsay he is changing his employer faster than a prostitute her “lovers” in a brothel - I would be surprised if he is still at JSox in a year.
I liked the earlier version too, but I disagree with you about the current one. It’s different, but I think it’s attractive, not a cheap imitation of something or other.
Anyway, we’ll see what happens food-wise there, soon enough. Even if it turns out to be a short-term romance.