Bliss and Vinegar: A Culinary Memoir

Chapter 1: Things Can Only Get Better From Here

On the bleakest day of the bleakest year in the bleakest part of town, I arrived at the Commissary Kitchen, a nondescript building in a run-down warehouse district on the wrong side of the railroad tracks. Career-wise, it was debatable whether this was a vertical or lateral move, or perhaps a downward spiral. It certainly did not feel like a promotion.

I parked next to a food truck with “Spaghetti Eddie” emblazoned on the side. The parking lot was filled with banged-up Suburus and Volvo station wagons, a rustic pick-up truck, and a white van that could be used for either a catering job or bank heist. The unmistakable scent of reefer hung in the air (turns out the commissary was surrounded by cannabis grow houses). Tractor trailers barreled down the nearby service road. Every building within a one-mile radius was fifteen shades of gray.

The Commissary Kitchen was built as a business incubator for fledgling caterers, food truck operators, wholesale bakeries, and restaurant pop-ups — in other words, for people short on cash but high on hope. It attracted an eclectic mix of foodie entrepreneurs — young men with thick beards and savings pulled from their barista tip jars, holistic new mothers on a mission to heal the world with vegan ice cream and lactation cookies, and burrito hawkers…