MT VERNON, IL--The kitchen was hot and humid. The all-too clean scent of the commercial dishwasher mixed with the smell of cooking meat. Men were shouting and pots clanging against metal, the air thick with powders, spices, and tastes. It was hectic, loud, and not for the easily stressed--It was a commercial kitchen.
Meanwhile, on the outside, a serene atmosphere of fine dining. Nicely dressed women sipping wine. A family orders a pizza. Soft music playing. Hosts smiled widely, and servers politely asked the patrons for their orders. Who would guess that these two, seemingly opposite worlds coexist?
Laura Thacker, restaurateur, knows they do. She knows the struggle of having restaurant.
Thacker, now in her 40’s, owned , the Ninth Street Grill for nine and a half years. Though From catering the Grand Prix in downtown Detroit, to serving on a cruise boat in Japan, she has experience. At the time she opened her restaurant, however, it didn’t seem like the obvious choice. With a busy family, her life didn’t really have an openings for her own career. Furthermore, she was living well-off in suburban Kansas, in a neighborhood with big houses and pools in every backyard. Why leave this modern paradise?
Well, to Thacker and her husband, this paradise was more like purgatory. When they got the chance, they picked up for rural Southern Illinois. When asked why she started the restaurant, Thacker hesitantly replied.
“I didn’t want to see my children raised in the atmosphere of consumerism and entitlement that surrounded us...So an opportunity arose to purchase an old commercial building in a small town, far away from any big-box stores where no-one got dropped of at their private schools in their escalades. We had the means to realize our dreams, so we was all like, YOLO.”
Despite her hopes of rural life, she found that it, also, was not what she was looking for. She claims her greatest failure “was probably a romanticization of small town life, and thinking that I could overlook the small minded, religious, fanatic contentedness with ignorance, that is small town America.”
Challenges faced her, left and right. Most of her employees did not even have high school diplomas, and the highest most of them ever hoped to achieve was a degree from the local community college.
As she described her day, she quickly dispersed any misconceptions about an owner’s place in the restaurant in somehow less demanding or hands-on: “Being an involved restaurant owner is the worst position in the restaurant, because everything that goes wrong is ultimately your fault, and immediately your problem.”
She also had two children at home, battling for her attention. Her oldest daughter, Hélène Lupa, now 19, fondly remembers day “being alone in the restaurant” while they were working. And when Thacker wasn’t dealing with them, her employees’ personal lives were just as much of a problem. She claims that she was able to help them see out of their sphere of undereducated poverty and believes she made a positive impact on most of their lives.
However, even her efforts to change her area were not enough for her family. After several years of this lifestyle, she was forced to seek other education options for her children, leading to her being more stretched between her family and her restaurant. Her husband, Robert Lupa, was luckily able to help her: “I had a software engineering job that I could do remotely, and was able to spend more time with my children.”.
With her children commuting an hour and a half each way to go to school, she was able to still work at the restaurant, but also fulfilling her children’s educational needs. But, as usual, the restaurant was demanding. She often had to make tough decisions and decide which need her more, children or restaurant. She admits that some of those decisions were wrong, but, as she says “That’s the whole point of choices.”
As the restaurant grew more popular it grew needier. When asked about those years, she replied “I look back on it fondly, like war veterans look back on their time in combat. The same kinds of bonds were formed there, from physical peril, lack of sleep, and a constant sense of impending doom.”
She put a lot of time and work into her restaurant, and, most of her customers seemed to believe it was well worth it, the restaurant really seemed wholly her own creation, a fine dining restaurant with a neighborhood bistro feel. However, she speaks about the restaurant like it is one big facade. The gritty grease and work of the kitchen, and the smiling politeness of the dining room, seemed like completely different worlds. But she thinks restaurant work is just like any other blue collar job.
“It’s a service job, so you have people who take a lot of pride in their ability to do and make…Very physical, demanding job, so people literally put their bodies on the line to produce something that is then devalued by people who can only move paper and make phone calls, who, incidentally get twice the salary.”
Thacker may have some resentment about her customers, but, this is unavoidable in a job where your entire purpose is to serve people. The number one thing Thacker would say to someone about being a customer in a restaurant, is to remember, “They are coming into someone else’s workplace and...Treat them as respectfully and professionally as their barber, or lawyer, or co-worker, do not confuse ‘server’ with ‘servant’.”
Thacker’s time owning a restaurant was obviously complex emotionally, physically, and socially. A few years ago, as her eldest daughter has about to graduate high school, she decided that her time with the restaurant was over, for a number of reasons. So, her family and her moved away from rural Illinois back to another “suburban paradise” in Michigan. We’ll see how long that will last before another crazy scheme.
Now matter how much she told me about how physically and mentally stressful it was, no matter how much she told me about the struggles she faced, she seemed happy she had run the restaurant. She had no regrets. In fact, when I asked her if she would do it all over again, she immediately said yes.
As she described her average day in the restaurant it almost seemed nostalgic. The clatter of dishes, pots and pans, mixing with the soft music of the dining room, made a sort of strange dual world that was restuarant life. In the dining room, you could see well dressed men and women enjoying a meal, while only a few steps away, a chef in a grease-laden apron could be seen, wrist deep in pizza dough. Out front everything felt cared for and nicely used, like generations of happy diners had sat in that very seat and enjoyed the very same food you were enjoying right then. In the back, everything has cleansed with industrial sanitizer, and stainless steel. However, there was one universal constant in the restaurant world: The smell of good food.
Meanwhile, on the outside, a serene atmosphere of fine dining. Nicely dressed women sipping wine. A family orders a pizza. Soft music playing. Hosts smiled widely, and servers politely asked the patrons for their orders. Who would guess that these two, seemingly opposite worlds coexist?
Laura Thacker, restaurateur, knows they do. She knows the struggle of having restaurant.
Thacker, now in her 40’s, owned , the Ninth Street Grill for nine and a half years. Though From catering the Grand Prix in downtown Detroit, to serving on a cruise boat in Japan, she has experience. At the time she opened her restaurant, however, it didn’t seem like the obvious choice. With a busy family, her life didn’t really have an openings for her own career. Furthermore, she was living well-off in suburban Kansas, in a neighborhood with big houses and pools in every backyard. Why leave this modern paradise?
Well, to Thacker and her husband, this paradise was more like purgatory. When they got the chance, they picked up for rural Southern Illinois. When asked why she started the restaurant, Thacker hesitantly replied.
“I didn’t want to see my children raised in the atmosphere of consumerism and entitlement that surrounded us...So an opportunity arose to purchase an old commercial building in a small town, far away from any big-box stores where no-one got dropped of at their private schools in their escalades. We had the means to realize our dreams, so we was all like, YOLO.”
Despite her hopes of rural life, she found that it, also, was not what she was looking for. She claims her greatest failure “was probably a romanticization of small town life, and thinking that I could overlook the small minded, religious, fanatic contentedness with ignorance, that is small town America.”
Challenges faced her, left and right. Most of her employees did not even have high school diplomas, and the highest most of them ever hoped to achieve was a degree from the local community college.
As she described her day, she quickly dispersed any misconceptions about an owner’s place in the restaurant in somehow less demanding or hands-on: “Being an involved restaurant owner is the worst position in the restaurant, because everything that goes wrong is ultimately your fault, and immediately your problem.”
She also had two children at home, battling for her attention. Her oldest daughter, Hélène Lupa, now 19, fondly remembers day “being alone in the restaurant” while they were working. And when Thacker wasn’t dealing with them, her employees’ personal lives were just as much of a problem. She claims that she was able to help them see out of their sphere of undereducated poverty and believes she made a positive impact on most of their lives.
However, even her efforts to change her area were not enough for her family. After several years of this lifestyle, she was forced to seek other education options for her children, leading to her being more stretched between her family and her restaurant. Her husband, Robert Lupa, was luckily able to help her: “I had a software engineering job that I could do remotely, and was able to spend more time with my children.”.
With her children commuting an hour and a half each way to go to school, she was able to still work at the restaurant, but also fulfilling her children’s educational needs. But, as usual, the restaurant was demanding. She often had to make tough decisions and decide which need her more, children or restaurant. She admits that some of those decisions were wrong, but, as she says “That’s the whole point of choices.”
As the restaurant grew more popular it grew needier. When asked about those years, she replied “I look back on it fondly, like war veterans look back on their time in combat. The same kinds of bonds were formed there, from physical peril, lack of sleep, and a constant sense of impending doom.”
She put a lot of time and work into her restaurant, and, most of her customers seemed to believe it was well worth it, the restaurant really seemed wholly her own creation, a fine dining restaurant with a neighborhood bistro feel. However, she speaks about the restaurant like it is one big facade. The gritty grease and work of the kitchen, and the smiling politeness of the dining room, seemed like completely different worlds. But she thinks restaurant work is just like any other blue collar job.
“It’s a service job, so you have people who take a lot of pride in their ability to do and make…Very physical, demanding job, so people literally put their bodies on the line to produce something that is then devalued by people who can only move paper and make phone calls, who, incidentally get twice the salary.”
Thacker may have some resentment about her customers, but, this is unavoidable in a job where your entire purpose is to serve people. The number one thing Thacker would say to someone about being a customer in a restaurant, is to remember, “They are coming into someone else’s workplace and...Treat them as respectfully and professionally as their barber, or lawyer, or co-worker, do not confuse ‘server’ with ‘servant’.”
Thacker’s time owning a restaurant was obviously complex emotionally, physically, and socially. A few years ago, as her eldest daughter has about to graduate high school, she decided that her time with the restaurant was over, for a number of reasons. So, her family and her moved away from rural Illinois back to another “suburban paradise” in Michigan. We’ll see how long that will last before another crazy scheme.
Now matter how much she told me about how physically and mentally stressful it was, no matter how much she told me about the struggles she faced, she seemed happy she had run the restaurant. She had no regrets. In fact, when I asked her if she would do it all over again, she immediately said yes.
As she described her average day in the restaurant it almost seemed nostalgic. The clatter of dishes, pots and pans, mixing with the soft music of the dining room, made a sort of strange dual world that was restuarant life. In the dining room, you could see well dressed men and women enjoying a meal, while only a few steps away, a chef in a grease-laden apron could be seen, wrist deep in pizza dough. Out front everything felt cared for and nicely used, like generations of happy diners had sat in that very seat and enjoyed the very same food you were enjoying right then. In the back, everything has cleansed with industrial sanitizer, and stainless steel. However, there was one universal constant in the restaurant world: The smell of good food.