Things are finally rolling in terms of construction. The permits were approved on Monday and today the first crew showed up to grind the concrete floors. These guys did not have an easy job as there was some old nasty tiles and lots of glue that had seeped into the pores of the concrete foundation over the years. But fueled by some Ozo Coffee that Justin had brewed up complimentary early this morning, these guys were still going strong when I returned to check on them after 8 hours on the grinder.

When I first saw that this Chinese restaurant space was up for lease back in November I kind of gave it a, "eh, can't hurt to check it out". The windows were a little dingy, the blinds were sort of half open and it was hard to see in. My enthusiam, if I even had any at that point, waned even further. 

The May 2010 Food & Wine has a special section devoted to the resurgence of the taco in the culinary world, "Taco World". Hot shot Chicago chef Paul Kahan recently ventured into the taco business, opening up Big Star Taqueria in Chicago. A side bar in the Food & Wine "Taco World" article features Paul's favorite finds as he traveled the country in search of inspiration for Big Star. Among the four taquerias Chef Kahan cites - Pica's in Jackson. 

"This Jackson Hole spot makes its own tortillas every day. Kahan particularly loves the richly caramelized al pastor tacos."

We love the al pastor tacos as well Chef Kahan. Here's a photo of the great pastor spit being mounted.

We've spent a lot of time going over a number of options for our tables. As much as possible we want to incorporate re-used, recycled, salvaged content but we were coming up short in the area of tables. We've been scouring craigslist for options and came up with a few things that could have worked but were either cost or labor prohibitive. Reclaimed flooring was the original idea and we immediately stumbled upon some pretty cool fir flooring that had been ripped from an old Boulder house. But the labor cost and time to assemble were too much to overcome. We looked into having some pretty sweet tables custom built from reclaimed teak - only problem was they'd be made in India and shipped over, not real cool as far as we were concerned. 

We finally came upon a simple idea courtesy of the fine folks out at Resource. 

The solution - birch veneer doors of which there were an abundance of at Resource. Our fine carpenter in-residence for Pica's the next few weeks, Shawn Hoven, gave the thumbs up and got to work right away. Each door produces two tables. 

We're pretty psyched about how these are turning out. 

Gluing up the solid wood wrap.

Our gain is someone else's loss. Today we took occupancy of 5360 Arapahoe, Suite F, which up until yesterday was open for business as Sam's Chinese and Vietnamese restaurant. Sitting in the space today, going over some of the planning, quite a few people walked up to get lunch and were surprised to find the door locked. I hope those people can be converted into fans of Pica's (come back in six weeks).