Shopping

Like all things, restaurants go through a cycle from concept to reality and the change along the way. Alan just announced that it's time go food shopping and that is a sure sign that we are about to open! The only thing left is for Jim and I to learn how to use the deep fryer!

Jubilat

I wanted to mention Jubilat, which is one of the best Polish butchers anywhere, and they happen to be located on 5th Ave. in Brooklyn. I really urge every to stop by their shop if you enjoy hand crafted sausages and other meat products, as well as loafs and hard sausages. But interesting enough, I was searching on Google to see if I could learn anything more about them and I ran across an online Journal housed by the University of Massachusetts, Amherst with the SAME name!.

"Jubilat delivers the best in contemporary poetry along with art, interviews and prose... In addition, Jubilat re-introduces lost or neglected talent that may have been passed over by the standard canon."

At least for us at Schnack, sausage is an art form! Especially the lost art of hand made kielbasa! If anyone knows more about what the word Jubilat means in Polish or any other language, please let us know :)

Big Day

It was a big day today and we got a lot of paperwork done!! But more importantly, we got the sign up. It looks amazing. It uses the logo that Jason Oranzo designed for us, and then printed out in a very large size. Alan and our sign maker, John Lippett, then traced it in wood and made it into a 3D sign. In other good news, our new dishwasher is in, too! It's state of the art and cleans and sanitizes in 90 seconds! Also confirmed today is that we will have Jever and Dentergems on the Beer menu, along with an American beer called "Schwag!" There is one more we are not yet sure of!

Got the Lic.

I just heard yesterday from Jim that we are all set with our Beer and Wine Lic. That means we will be opening up very soon :)

I also saw that Jim got our Carling Black Label billboard up. It takes up a whole side of the dining area. You can read more about Black Label here

Alan's field trip

Not much to report. Alan left on a quick trip to Germany last night. Our website work continues. We have settled on the final design, and the graphics are now being cut and the initial HTML produced. The same team that is doing the website might also do the design for the menu but we are not sure yet. If not, we will do it ourselves next week.

Our handyman Brent ended up in the hospital today for a few hours. He's ok, but I wasn't able to get into Brooklyn to work on the menu as I was trying to find out where Brent was and make sure he was ok! He is!!

I did get to spend some time online and I was able to find this link about Schnack and some of Alan and Jim's other projects. Also, Alan's TV show has been picked up for the fall season on Discovery Home and Leisure. They are currently running some video of him off of their home page, which can be seen here, but I'm not sure how long it will last!

We have been meeting about the menu for the last month. Hopefully tomorrow it will be more or less final, and then we have to decide if we are going to make it super fancy in Quark or just publish it directly out of MS Word. The good news is that we are going to be using Jubilat as one of our major suppliers. They make hand crafted Polish sausage and deli meats and are located in Brooklyn. We used them last year at the Gowanus Yacht Club; the "Yacht Club" was famous for the "Polish," which is a garlic enhanced Kielbasa called a Swojska. We will be serving Swojska along with a more basic Kielbasa and their Knockwurst. Along with regular store bought bacon we will be serving Jubilat's slab bacon, which is meaty, ham-like and not overly salted (ok it has salt but not as much as cheap store bacon which seems to have ONLY salt!; if you're on a low-salt diet stay away from the Bacon!!)

We want to get some other Brooklyn products on the menu. We are hoping to get a great NYC cheesecake like Juniors; I hope we can get it!

What else? Well you'll have to wait until the website is ready, or until you can come into the store, but the menu will also include Schnackies, our version of "sliders"....small grilled hamburgers for a buck (or so). We will also do double and triple burgers that contain multiple Schnackie patties. And of course we will have lots of Beer! Four types on tap plus a few bottles and cans, and for those who enjoy it, Root Beer as well (probably Boylan's).

We are trying to get the new web site up and running. It's going to be a few more weeks.. BUT the address is set! http://www.schnackDOG.com/

We have been hoping to get open by March 15th, but it now looks like we will not be open until the last week in March or maybe even the end of the month. The good news is the physical space is all ready!  The walk-in refrigerator is running, and we have all of the decorating done, including a 4ft x 6 ft baseball card and a huge beer billboard (approx. 8 ft x 16 ft). A friend of Schnack, Phil, donated some cool stuff including a nice sound system.