Last week i introduced our "new restaurant" Capriccio Ristorante. Well...after just one week of that announcement i have received a lot of feedback (e-mails and in person) that some of the tapas are sorely missed. Specifically, the Peras Serranas, the Manchego Frito, the Tocino Ahumado (pork belly). So here we are again at the drawing board. But this time it should not be too difficult to bring back some of our great Tapas. On the other hand, the pastas have been very well received. So I think we are pretty close to the formula.

 

Please stay tuned as we continue to tweak our menu over the next couple of weeks. You can check out our current menu at our website by clicking on the link::

Hope to see you there soon!

 

Gerry

On Friday morning I received a frantic call from one of our cooks telling me that our water main had burst and Capriccio was flooded. You can imagine my anguish as I drove to the restaurant.

When I got there i saw water gushing out of the main pipe coming into the front of our building. I guess the cold weather did its job on this old pipe. All the water that hit the trees in the front of the building had frozen and it looked beautiful (couldn't really enjoy the view until later when the emergency was resolved). Here is a picture of what it looked like:

 

It so happens that I was at Mezzanotte with a new plumbing company i was trying out. They were clearing a plugged drain. As soon as I saw what was going on at Capriccio i called them and told them to drop what they were doing and come over to help me. They were at Capriccio in a matter of minutes. They stopped the water flow and fixed the pipes.

But inside the restaurant we had about 1 inch of water in the main dining room. With the help of two wet/dry vacuum cleaners, a couple of large squeegees and a lot of muscle work we were able to clean the mess. Then Adriana went to Kroger and rented two carpet shampooers (which i didn't even know existed for rent at Kroger!). Since we don't have padding under the carpet we will not have a problem with mold. After shampooing the carpet everything looked as if nothing had ever happened. My deep thanks to my kitchen guys that work hard in getting everything back to normal (Andreas, Claudio, Pepino).

 

Today, as I was driving to Capriccio to open for lunch, I received a call from our hostess telling me that another pipe had broken and there was water all over the place. I couldn't believe this. When i got there i found out that the main pipe by Jones Rd. had broken and water was spewing hard and high (about 10 ft in the air). How long had this been going on? I have no idea but i will most likely see a huge water bill for the month!

Well, it turned out that a father and son team of landscapers were driving by and decided to stop to offer help. I said thank you but what can a landscaper do?? actually, a lot! the son had recently been laid off by a company that did contract work for the city of Houston repairing water mains!! Now...how lucky can i be?

Here is a picture of the hole they had to dig to find the broken pipe:

 

 

So, without getting too philosophical, I truly believe that God is always watching and helping. On the face of adversity there is always a positive sign. How lucky could I be of having skilled plumbers near me to help me avoid a larger disaster, twice? I am just extremely thankful that we came out of this virtually unscathed.

Thank you God!