I’m sorry to say that this newsletter is a day late. With my newfound insistence on carving out some time for myself and for writing, and for all of you who have made the time to subscribe, I truly wanted to stay on schedule and publish every Thursday. But life as a restaurant mom sometimes has other plans.
On Wednesday, Tae Tae had an excruciating stomach ache. There were tears, cries of pain, refusals to eat or drink anything, so he stayed home. Which meant that I stayed home, cradling him on the sofa while Googling whether I should take him to urgent care. Right before the babysitter arrived at her usual time, T finally agreed to eat something— a farmer’s market apple packed with fiber and pectin —and then went to the bathroom. Afterwards, he exclaimed “my tummy doesn’t hurt anymore!” and my suspicions were confirmed that I was experiencing the joy of having a constipated toddler. I arrived at baroo less than an hour before service.
All this to say that I’m behind this week, as many working parents find themselves when your child is struck with even a banal ailment. So my plans for my newsletter this week are on hold and I wanted to share an update on life parenting a toddler now that our restaurant is actually open. The last time I touched on this was in a letter written months before we opened and and which focused on my apprehensions and hopes. Now that we’re open, I can say that my maternal fears have been assuaged somewhat but also replaced by other worries. And some of my hopes are still yet to play out, but I have discovered new, unexpected joys in this restaurant mom life.
I’ll start with the main thing that I find particularly challenging in navigating parenting while running an all-consuming restaurant business. We don’t have family in Los Angeles. I now more deeply understand, empathize and envy the people I know in the US who moved to their far-flung hometowns after having kids. I’m looking at you Bell’s Los Alamos! (Though Greg’s hometown happens to be in the verdant Santa Ynez Valley so basically they’re living the dream.)
My one piece of advice to all parents: Do not open a restaurant in a town if you have zero family there. Just stop. We are finding our way, but I would absolutely not recommend it to anyone if you have a choice. When I talk to fellow restaurant owners and chefs in the US who have young children—where both parents are at the restaurant or at least work full-time—they have supportive family around. Some rely on their families to watch their children regularly, on weekends for example. Or at the very least, in an emergency, or if their child is constipated, they have backup.
Right now, my backup plan is that I’m eagerly awaiting my in-laws’ retirement from their own restaurant in Seoul. After 20 years of hard work, Kwang’s parents have put their restaurant on the market. Someone please please buy their restaurant so they can come to Los Angeles for summers and to escape harsh winters. We want to treat them after their decades of sacrifice and physical and mental strain, to try and give back in return all the generosity and love they’ve shown us (and Kwang for his entire life). And we want them to be here with our son when he’s constipated.
As I mentioned in my last newsletter on this topic, our only option when we opened (since we don’t live in Copenhagen where MAD Digest tells us there are subsidized 24-hour, 365-day daycares (!!!)) was to hire a full-time nanny. We needed someone to pick him up every day from preschool, bring him home, feed and bathe him and put him to bed. One problem is that restaurants don’t make full-time nanny money. At least, not our kind of restaurant and certainly not at opening. But Kwang and I sucked up the financial cost for six months so we could open our doors and settle down a bit. We were so fortunate to find a Korean ajumma who lives nearby who used to run an after school music program for preschool kids. She adores our son and spends time researching and implementing DIY educational activities to teach him math and the alphabet (both Korean and English). We couldn’t have found anyone more perfect.
But as hard as the financial pressure was on us, the schedule was even harder on our son. Tuesdays to Fridays, we saw our son in the morning before school and then didn’t see him until the next morning. Long asleep when we came home anywhere between 11pm to midnight, Tae Tae missed us inconsolably. Our koala baby spent six months wailing at school drop-offs, having to be restrained by his teachers when we left to stop him from running after us a fifth or sixth time for one last hug. On Saturdays, the babysitter picks him up from the restaurant before service, and T would anxiously and repeatedly ask us how long until she was coming, and then when she appeared, burst into tears and shout, “I don’t love halmoni!”. We stopped sending him to school on Mondays since we are closed. But even after six months, Tae Tae’s distress every single day didn’t abate.
So to make our family life more sustainable, we now only have the babysitter three nights a week—Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Tae Tae is elated that we now pick him up on alternate dates, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and bring him to the restaurant to play, eat and spend time with us. On Tuesdays, I leave the restaurant early with T and Kwang stays until close which allows our managers to leave early. And on Thursdays, Kwang goes home early and I stay and close up.
We were overly optimistic that T could stay at the restaurant with us for at least a few hours of service on these days; but our highly energetic, now elated four year old boy proved that was unwise.
There was racing around the dining room, hoping to be chased by us and barely dodging our servers balancing trays of food. There was the night he painted some of the fruit used behind the bar, put them into an empty sanitizing bucket and proceeded to show every single guest in the dining room (a full house!) his fruit artwork. There were endless hours behind the bar with Jillian, our angel of a bartender, creating mountains of bubbles in the sinks. There were screams of delights and tantrums. It was chaos. Jason, our beverage director and front house of manager and also an angel when it comes to T, offered kindly, “But I love chaos.”
I set up a desk for Tae Tae in an alcove in the kitchen; hung a cloud-shaped mirror and filled his desk with art supplies and tablet-based Montessori activities. But unless he is sedated with videos on his iPad, T will not sit still or quiet himself so that our guests could serenely enjoy our tasting menu. Because he is four and their nature is not to be quiet or still.
If we had a pizza joint or even old baroo, we would let Tae Tae stay and be chaotic until he was old enough to not be chaotic. But new baroo is ultimately a special occasion fine dining restaurant. Even if our version of fine dining is more relaxed and we welcome families to bring children, most of our guests who are parents do not bring their kids. They have left them behind to have a rare, quiet night out without chaos. So, thinking about our guests, we decided we had to take Taehoon home earlier. Now on Tuesdays, I take him home around 6pm.
We’ve made these adjustments recently and T is more relaxed which means I’m more relaxed which means Kwang is more relaxed. It’s a circle of growing ease with our new life. It’s not ideal by far, and anytime I spy something on social media about or run into restaurant chefs or owners with kids, I obsessively try to analyze how they make it work. Is there some thing we can do to make our family life better, our son more resilient and happy, our restaurant more successful, all at the same time?
For now, after all my analysis, it all seems as good as it can be. I am thankful to Jillian for letting T help her fetch ice for the bar and taping up T’s drawings behind the bar after she kept him busy asking him to draw various vegetables and fruits. I am thankful for Jason for being an amazing “uncle” to T every day T is at baroo, and to Sean, Gene, Matt, Lana, Alex and our entire team who have demonstrated depths of patience and empathy in the face of chaos. To the guests who smiled at T while he sat at his desk or darted around the dining room. To Kwang for always being in a mindmeld with me when it comes to balancing T and the restaurant. And to T for flinging the doors of the restaurant open when he leaves early with Kwang to shout one triumphant last goodbye, “Bye umma!” before he goes home to be tucked in by his father.
Someone on our team could quit, something in our restaurant could break, our restaurant could get even busier, or T can get constipated and this delicate balance gets thrown out of whack in an instant. But I’m learning to rock with it, sway like a tree branch in the midst of a gale, unbreakable but not immovable.
xx mina
I so love reading your updates Mina! I can only imagine the stress and the never stopping learning experience of all of this. I bet this could break the majority of relationships but Kwang seems to be so grounded and rock solid I know you guys will enjoy the ride, no matter how chaotic. We are sending you guys lots and lots of love from Portugal, we really miss you and we will brave the US soon enough just to visit you and to eat at Baroo! When we will be there, we will be happy to be on babysitting duty :)