Month: May 2018

I’d bought all the free time and goodwill I could, but there was no stopping the train. We were moving back to Austin and there was no taco that could turn it around. I gave halfhearted pleas, but it was no use. The lack of movement for the previous month and a half had kicked the leg out from the half-assed tripod of hope I was balancing on. A few more gigs, an apprehension from revealing the entire truth to the breweries that had opened their doors for us, and a few more lonely cash register nights.

One of the big rules of cooking on a low budget is to not get high off your own supply. That taco you just ate might have “cost” you 59 cents, but it really cost you $4.50. At this point there was nothing left to do but eat my own tacos (literally and figuratively) and pack it up.

The last gig we ever did while living in New Orleans was at a brewery that saw three people come through on a Saturday.

Three…people.

Every single brewery owner I encountered in New Orleans was a saint. Not in the traditional way, believe me they were getting high on their own supply as well. They were a saint in the way that someone sleeps next to the beer tank, employs friends even though they don’t have enough money to pay themselves, and doesn’t give a damn about food permits so long as you make good food and don’t act like an idiot.

I mention this paragraph, because as much as it pains me that I had three people come through (two of which bought $85 worth of tacos, which, holy shit), it hurt to see them struggle. A month after this gig they closed the brewery, three people can’t sustain an expensive dream.

I got drunk in an old bar the size of a toolshed that night and vowed to be more selective. Advice I quickly forgot.

We packed things up, loaded the car, and drove back to Austin.

When we arrived back in Austin I had an email waiting for me. It was an offer to open a stall at the St. Roch’s Market new concept next to the convention center in New Orleans.

Little to no downpayment, guaranteed customers, high visibility stall with no similar food-type competitors allowed. Fuck.

Riding high off of success bred by ignorance from the New Orleans Wine and Food Experience we continued, what in essence, was a bluff. I never thought it would work. Somehow fast forward a week later and I’m drinking beer on a patio at a brewery in New Orleans and I hear the foodtruck yell out the name of the person listed on their website as the tap room manager.

I pound four beers.

After the booze kicks in with seemingly nothing to lose I approached the tap manager, mumbled a few words about tacos, and hoped for the best.

This shit is all about luck.

Lucky to be there, lucky to be somewhat drunk, lucky to be desperate. Most of all lucky that they needed someone to pop up the following Friday badly. Without hesitation I said yes, begged friends for a Restaurant Depot card, and bought way too many ingredients.

We sold out our first day. Then again, again, again, and again.

We moved on to more breweries in the rotation (some more profitable than others) and learned that as long as you’re helping people keep butts in their bar stools there isn’t really a such thing as “health code”.

New Orleans is a magical city. One where a random dude can decide he wants to make tacos using an oversized turkey roaster and a pancake griddle and no one is really going to stop him (unless his food sucks). We were riding high. Broke, drunk, over-worked, and pretty happy. The one thing they don’t warn you about though is tourist season. You don’t see it coming, you hear about it, but you don’t believe in it. Like some mythical creature that turns everyone’s wallets into bear traps and the city into an abandoned heat wave. If you were one of the 10 people at the bar ordering tacos, better believe that the extra seasoning was sweat.

A string of bad gigs at the start of this season crapped all over the high times. From snagging $500 in cash on a Friday happy hour under the table, to being lucky if we moved 20 tacos in an entire evening, it was rough. I’m not happy, wife’s not happy, tacos aren’t happy, liver…it’s New Orleans so the liver is still happy.