We’re two weeks into being back at the restaurant in Altadena and it has been the best kind of whirlwind. Words can’t hold the gratitude we’re feeling right now. The outpouring of kindness and support means everything to our little family up here.
If you’ve been following along, you already know that Betsy s is like a diamond, in that we’ve pressurized about a decade’s worth of activity into nine delirious months. I often talk about experiences being neither good nor bad. Each and every thing— from catastrophic wildfires to business and marital separation to an attempt at fleeing LA—has led me to this exact moment in time. Many chapters have closed. We might even be at the end of a volume with a new book just beginning.
I’ve never felt more clear on a path and, at 47, more certain of what to spend my life doing. Sitting at the center of the aforementioned whirlwind, I find myself completely at peace, never happier and deeply in love with life and what I’ve chosen to spend it doing.
With a new life resuming in Altadena, last Saturday night I closed a chapter (but certainly not the book) at The Ecology Center. Every September, a veritable who’s who of cooks, chefs, volunteers, friends, neighbors, and supporters turn out for the biggest annual farm dinner and fundraiser for a place I care so deeply for.
This was my first time at the helm, and while I was billed as the chef, this was the purest expression of a culinary barn raising there ever has been. A dozen professionals, each more talented than me in their respective disciplines, volunteered to come and clean green beans, butcher fish, scrub carrots, and pull together a magical dinner for 200 people on a perfect evening.
I’ve been an evangelist for the farm since the first time I set foot there and as I finish my tenure, I leave humbled and profoundly changed. I’ve said it before and it bears repeating, the farm caught me when I was falling. I arrived in the mud season, to constant rain and mud caked on everything. My little trailer was a damp haven that did its best to keep me warm during some dark days and nights. Farming, as with life, moves at a pace you can’t control, only surrender to. I tried to remember that during those lonely nights with the coyotes.
Inevitably, spring started to arrive in earnest and the days were a little longer. Almost overnight the farm was overflowing with all kinds of beauty—smells, animals, produce, volunteers. Things started feeling a little better with a little village of friends and co-workers.
About that time I realized that I could never do the work there alone so I reached out to a few folks from the then closed Altadena restaurant. Everyone was treading water with the idea that we’d open again. I was 1000% sure that it would never happen and wanted to do everything I could for that team. Fully braced to be rejected, I called Joey and Tom and asked if they wanted to spend the summer on an impossibly beautiful farm a mile from the ocean. I didn’t exactly mention the 14 hour days or herculean mission I signed us up for, but they know me so I’m sure it was understood.
To my surprise and tremendous relief, they said yes. Or more accurately “Fuck yeah i’m packing right now,” and “Ok yeah, I think so. Probably”
And so began the most free summer of adult life. We worked our asses off wrestling a restaurant on a farm into something we really wanted it to be. We all felt so young and righteous and to the credit of Evan and the entire farm enterprise, we had the keys execute on our vision. It’s not that we had a personal agenda, we felt compelled to do right by the farm and the farmers and truly amplify the incredible work that goes on in the field.
Truth be told, we may have gotten a little carried away, but that’s what it means to pretend you’re young.
A few weeks ago we packed up and came home to open Betsy. I’m not always great at endings and the work to do at the Ecology Center is endlessly dynamic. I’m proud and grateful that a team has succeeded us to try and find the balance that we were looking for over the summer. Saturday night was an opportunity to finish this part of the story on a high note and leave the door open for whatever the flow of life offers in the future.
I could never fully express my gratitude to Evan and The Ecology Center for finding me when I needed it most and not just nursing me back to health, but providing the place, time, and context for me to become the man I want to be. Again, words can’t hold the gratitude I’m feeling, but thank you all the same.
Also, I am a hippie now. I fought it for years and I must accept my fate. Peace.
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