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IanBoden

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Adrian Dantley

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  1. I've been moiling over the last hand full of post this week for the last couple days trying to organize my thoughts and figure out how to say what I'd like to say, as a lot of what's been said has been on my mind for sometime now, and I think this might be the perfect forum to say it. Instead of pre righting and reading over it several times I'm just going to go for it, so please excuses my terrible spelling and grammar as I'm a cook not a writer"¦. Just prior to opening The Shack I had been working for another company that more or less opened a restaurant for me. As I did not see eye to eye with this group on vision or business I realized that working for someone else wouldn't be in my cards. There was a restaurant down the street from our house in Staunton that I had done a pop up at and it was for rent. My thought was to open a temporary restaurant in that space to have some income to support my family and myself while a wrote a business plan for a larger built to suit restaurant and hopefully entice some investors in the mean time. Yes The Shack was supposed to be a temporary spot for 8 months, hence some of our issues with HV/AC which we didn't have at all, noise, limited work space in the kitchen and limited space for check out etc. Things do change! Our third service open we were excited and honored to have Joshua Ozersky dine with us, and everything changed!!!!! Over the last nine months The Shack has gotten more media attention then I have gotten over the course of my 23 year restaurant career. As you may or may not know this is a blessing and a curse. People speak of hype a hell of a lot when talking about The Shack. The reality is that we did not create the hype, that was created by people whom have enjoyed there time with us and of course the media. That's not to say that I'm not grateful for every thing that's been said. I get a bit emotional about it quite honestly every time a read anything about it. Especially because this place is such a personal restaurant to me and my wife. It's named after the little shack that my wife's grandma Tissy's raised her 5 kids out in Swoope VA about 20 miles from here. Unfortunatly I never got to meet her, but this place is an homage to this woman that meant so much to my wife and her family. Look I tell this to every reporter, food writer, blogger that every speaks with me, the press is great and I feel blessed, but it doesn't mean shit. I still wake up every morning come to work and run a restaurant. If i don't love what i do then non of this means a damn thing. The attention is gravy but it's not what drives me on a daily bases. I didn't open the shack to be on the cover of a magazine or wine awards or get recognized. I did it to do what I love, which is cook food that makes people feel good and hopefully they connect to it. Thats it! Once again I feel very fortunate for all of the attention, but if it all went away I wouldn't be upset as long as I can run my business and support my family doing what I love then every thing is good in my book. Some realities that we are currently dealing with. We have already taken steps to fix our lack of HV/AC, so things will get better. We are hoping to expand our kitchen in the next several months so we may deal with issues as far as timing of courses. We hope to deal with some dinning room noise issues in the near future to help with the sounds as we are only 400 sqft and a brick building that's close to 100 years old. And of course we strive every day to put to the best food we can. Yes as a chef your only as good as your last plate, but everyone has an off day. I hope this helps people understand what and who we are. In the future if there are constructive things to say about what we do please do not hesitate to contact me, as I'm not an ego driven chef and will not disregard criticism. Thanks for reading this. Ian Boden Chef/Owner The Shack
  2. Just a heads up for all of you that might be traveling our way. We recently add a deck to our building to capture our over flow. Currently we can not serve food outside but we do serve beer & wine. So if your making the trip and you do have to wait we'd love for you to enjoy a bottle of wine while you do so! We are hopping in the near future to add a small snack menu, and eventually offer the entire menu.
  3. As the chef of a restaurant that doesn't take reservations please allow me a moment. The reality of reservations for a restaurant my size (26 seats) is that it costs us money in more ways then just no-shows. The cost of a reservations system is prohibitive for us, opentable which in my opinion is the only system worth using is around $300 per month plus a per person charge from $.25 - $.75. In addition to this, I would need to hire someone to be at the restaurant to deal with reservations, as I'm the only person in the restaurant till around 3pm. As far as dealing with pre payment or credit card guarantees, some folks get offended by them while others will go to the credit card company and have the charges overturned. I've dealt with this in the past and it takes up a lot of time, and no one ends up happy. Once again, with a small operation things become a lot more complicated when it comes to reservations. I hope this sheds a little like on this issue from a small restaurant prospective.
  4. Greetings All! Figured I'd jump on and say hello. My name is Ian Boden I'm the Chef/Owner of The Shack in Staunton VA. I'll do my best to post every couple of day's to help keep those that are curious of the goings on at the restaurant informed. Currently we have some exciting guest chef events in the works for this summer and fall, if you'd like to keep up with it in real time feel free to jump onto our Facebook page where we post our menu daily, generally about an hour before service. You can also check out what we do in the kitchen by following me on Instagram and Twitter. If your interested in any recommendations for dinning or wineries to check out when you come out to visit us - HINT HINT - i'd be happy to help guide you. Look forward to speaking with you all, and having you be my guests!
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