My first memory: It was a Lebanese restaurant called Cedars I think and I had looked at purchasing the restaurant from them but I could see it wasn’t going to last to long, so I waited until they closed.

I trained Shotokan Karate at the dojo next door so I kept an eye on it. Sure enough one day I noticed it had closed and I called the landlord that day. We looked at it and said we would take it at 900.00 a month. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it at the time. It could have been a po-boy shop, a nice restaurant, or a coffee shop.

At the time there were no coffee shops with good fresh in house pastries, it was all institutional stuff so I decided to make it a pastry shop disguised as a coffee shop. It was really dirty and painted baby blue all over and the hard wood floors were covered in nasty carpet. We did all the work ourselves and I met Ralph Jupiter who helped me and has become my maintenance, jack of all trade fix it man ever since.

I also remember the night before we opened I was sitting in the dinning room with some friends and was admiring how nice everything looked. The floors had been restored, fresh paint and all the little decorations, it was really nice. Then the first day when I stocked up the pastry case wit fresh croissants, brioche, danish muffins and scones was a very proud moment.

I didn’t know if was going to make a living are not but I felt like I had build something from scratch on my own, and if felt great.