I have done a lot of things in my life, but opening a restaurant may be one of the craziest.

The restaurant is called Spice Odyssey Grill, and the name fits because this whole thing has definitely been an odyssey. Some days it feels like we are building something special. Other days it feels like the building itself is trying to kill us.

We did not open some giant corporate restaurant with millions of dollars behind it. We opened a small neighborhood place in Hiram, Georgia. We have around twenty-five seats inside and another twenty-five or so on the covered porch. It is the kind of place where the owner knows the customers, the customers know the staff, and everybody notices when the air conditioner is not working.

And believe me, they noticed.

The Food Was the Easy Part—Sort Of

The original idea was simple: serve good food, treat people well, and build a restaurant that people actually want to come back to.

Of course, nothing involving a restaurant is ever simple.

We have had some great dishes and some dishes that needed work. We learned that spanakopita can go from delicious to soggy faster than you can say, “Who forgot to drain the spinach?” We have debated fresh spinach, frozen spinach, feta brine, clarified butter, regular butter, par-baking times, oven temperatures, and whether Greek meatballs are starting to taste suspiciously Italian.

You would think cooking food would just be cooking food.

It is not.

It is chemistry, timing, staffing, preparation, equipment, consistency, and sometimes pure luck.

A customer does not care that your cook called out, the freezer door is bent, the kitchen is ninety-five degrees, and the delivery truck brought the wrong item. They ordered dinner, and they expect dinner.

Honestly, they are right.

Then the Chef Left

Our chef had to leave for a couple of weeks because his mother was sick in Kathmandu. That is obviously more important than any restaurant, and family comes first.

The problem is that restaurants do not