Teri – Thanks! I’m glad you enjoyed coming to our place so much back in April! Give the boys a chance, they’re still new to it all, it took us awhile to get into the rhythm of things too and realize that we could actually let some of the logistical stuff slide in exchange for spending more time with our guests.

It was so different from the warm feeling you and Henry give, welcoming us into your house, mingling with us, even when you have stuff to cook, at the beginning, explaining everything as we went along, and chatting with all of us during each course and then at the end of meal over coffee. I’d far rather come back to your place for that and even pay more for the experience and you charge less!

Umm, hmm… I think you might have made their point for them…. most of us do some amount of screening based on the email or phone call and gut feeling.

But on the subject, I did hear from a few friends and Casa S guests that they felt it was a bit too secretive – not getting the address until last minute, asking who recommended them. But remember, this is their home, and, they’re new to the game, so I imagine that they’re being very security conscious. We were the same way when we first opened up, I used to ask people the same thing – who recommended them, and sometimes I even contacted that person to see if the one asking for the reservation was “okay”. I was new to BA and to having strangers come to the house like this, I don’t think it’s really that out of line – sometimes I think I’ve gotten too lax about it these days. As to the address, it adds a little air of mystery to the whole thing – true, it’s usually done more with pop-up type dinners where the location moves each time, and doesn’t necessarily make sense for a fixed spot, but I didn’t find it off-putting.

S – no question it’s tough to review someone I know’s place, though I don’t know how cozy we are – I met Mun and his partner once a year ago – still, no question that on the puertas cerradas I don’t do negative reviews. If I don’t like a place, I just don’t write about it, which is different from regular restaurants – though I think if it was a friend’s restaurant, the same would be true. I like Mun and I know that in the first few weeks of having a place open, there’s a lot of figuring it all out and getting it all to work – if you look back at when Casa SaltShaker first opened, I served up some food that was pretty questionable sometimes. And, it’s all different tastes too – on our “past menus” pages on our website, I post the good and the bad commentary (why oh why do I do that?) – sometimes someone thinks a dish is “crap” and sometimes at the same dinner someone else loves it.

The vegetable tempura was room temperature, but I assumed that was intentional, and the shrimp was hot – Mun was making it while we were all having our champagne, and laying it out, so I just figured he planned it that way. I didn’t think it was greasy, I thought it was light and crunchy, and really quite good. If that sushi was “as bad” as the takeout places near where you live, I want to know where they are because I’m going to start ordering from them! The curry, yeah, none of us was really happy with it, but it wasn’t like it wasn’t edible or something. On the bibimbap I was surprised too that there wasn’t some kind of seafood (and yes, I thought the shrimp on three courses in a row was a little strange), but, once I dug in it was so good, I didn’t care. Besides, I don’t think given the size of the courses that it was really a main course, it was just a series of four plates that were all roughly the same size. I somehow doubt Mun is buying the chocolate cake from someone else, he doesn’t strike me as the type to not have made it himself. The tip thing – well, I covered that. Different from us though, he’s actually got waitresses, whereas Henry and I do it all ourselves, which I think contributed to why we got negative feedback when we did it at the beginning.

Expensive? Yes. But everything here is getting that way – we’ll probably have to raise our price soon, and I know that many of my colleagues already have. Worth it? I say yes. You say no. Wasn’t there a song about that?