The fox, the chicken, and the sack of corn.

The first time I read this riddle, I became obsessed with it all. Mostly the visuals that played in my head. The way I imagined the boat, the color of the fox, the type of corn… etc. For those not familiar, the question was how do you safely transport them all across the river using a boat that can only carry the farmer along with one item at a time. Of course, the chicken cannot be left with the corn, and the fox cannot be left alone with the chicken… so how exactly does one do it?Well, quite easily actually, that is as long as you don’t over think factors like weather, size of the boat, the type of fox, or whether or not the farmer is holding the corn in one and the fox in the other while neither are technically on the boat…. trust me it's none of those things, but I am sure many of you already know this answer. If you don’t, you can find it here. Why am I bringing this up, you ask? 

Well, our beloved Republica, De Noche, and Lilia recently became the puzzle, only instead of a boat it was an announcement regarding their future, but before we could make that announcement, we had to make sure that everyone was okay with what was coming. Ultimately, Lilia was moving to the De Noche space, De Noche was going to consolidate into República, and No Sabo, a concept by former Repúublica alumni, was going to be taking over the Lilia space, offering a lunch program. 

When you hear it that way, it's all somewhat easy to follow. That is, until it was time to provide the reasoning for the move, as well as the timing of the announcement. You see, with our executive chef leaving República, it was a given that Chef Dani would be promoted to that role. After all, over the last year, her work (as well as the work of her team at De Noche) has gathered a cult following within our own community. Consolidating the two and expanding República beyond its tasting menu made perfect sense to us.

Indeed, much of these changes were triggered by our now former executive chef’s decision to pursue his own path. The truth is, we welcomed and encouraged it, not because he did anything wrong or because we were not proud of what he had built over the last two years, but because we believe in the natural progression and evolution of our cuisine.

So this was our plan:

- Announce the departure of Chef Lalo one month in advance via our newsletters and social media.

- Give Chef Lalo the green light to announce his departure via his own media space, as well as his plans for the future.

- We agree to not announce the new chef or the change of concept until two weeks before his scheduled departure, thus assuring that people do not feel discouraged from attending his last days as executive chef at República. 

- We wait to make any other announcements about the new chef and concept via newsletter or social media until Chef Lalo has his last day of service.

Here’s the thing, most people wouldn’t put so much thought into when to announce the departure of a chef, especially at this level. Some would even close the restaurant down for a week or two just to give enough space in the transition… we did not feel it was right to do that. Call it romanticism, call it loyalty, we just didn’t feel right simply moving away from this chef until the very last day. But also, paying out two weeks of payroll and closing until a new menu was developed was something that would have crushed us at the start of summer.

All of this had to happen on the same weekend. Which it has, with Thursday being the first day under Chef Dani’s guidance at República. And so, challenge number:1, check… kinda. I will come back to this. But now there is Lilia. And this one was just as tough. For starters, how do we take an already successful restaurant, in fact a NYTimes 50 Best restaurant, and simply move it elsewhere after it has an established reputation of greatness in its current location… but also, why?

To be honest, this one is much tougher for many reasons, all of which are based on longevity and not based on its current success. We chose to move Lilia to the North Park Blocks because we didn’t see the perception of the South Waterfront neighborhood changing anytime soon, from the lack of parking to its somewhat hard- to- navigate location. It is for those reasons primarily that we didn’t see it gathering the accolades, recognition, and all- around love that it deserves in the long run. As much as we love the building, it also had a number of limitations: external bathrooms, insufficient air conditioning, lack of walk-in refrigerator, and so on…

Also, let me say this, Lilia is not just one of the best restaurants currently in this city–, in my opinion, it is one of the best restaurants in the history of the Pacific Northwest. Anyone that wants to debate this with me is just going to have to show up three days a week at the local farmers market to tell me otherwise. But based on the fact that there isn’t anyone in this town executing a whole new menu week in and week out, all rooted in hyper-seasonality… well, I might be biased.

And so we decided to make the move, but, before we could do that, we had to undergo ALL of the legal and technical proceedings for our landlord and our neighbors to approve the change. Only one minor problem:, the word got out to the press before we had the chance to do any of that, which meant our current landlords were not happy, especially before we had the opportunity to have that conversation with them. And, although we were not abandoning the space, we were now going to change the concept to No Sabo, a daytime concept celebrating Chicano comfort food, which, despite what some might think, is nothing like the existing Mexican concept on the other side of the building!Fast -forward to now… all the announcements made by others and none really by us because, up until this morning, we didn’t feel comfortable without talking to our landlord.

That’s it! That’s why you are only hearing about this from us, just now. 

And even after all of that, this is only the logistics of it all.

I haven’t even begun to touch on the “other” stuff. Going back to the original announcement of República, more importantly the wording of it all, THAT part right there is what brings my anxiety to peak levels. You see, the challenge here was, how were we, as a company, going to say how grateful we were for all of our previous chef’s work, while talking about how excited we are about the forthcoming changes?How were we to explain to the public that we are taking a great thing we built, and come to the decision to move away from the current concept  into something more ____________.

And that right there is the greatest challenge, because the truth is, we can’t say the new thing is going to be better, nor can we say the new thing is going to be NOT as good as the last one. Even if we said the new concept is going to be “different,” it has to follow reasons as to what makes it different. And if those reasons aren’t good enough we were going to set up our people and concept for failure. If it sounds too good, then there was a chance that some people would simply skip out on the remaining four weeks of service and wait until the change came.

But even then, outside of marketing talk, factually, this new transition for República isn’t better, nor is it worse, it is simply evolution. It is everything we set out to do from Day 1, the same way the previous concept was everything we set out to do… from day 1!

Like a really great artist, our work keeps evolving; reflecting the times, our growth, and the influences around us. Musicians do this all of the time and for the most part as an audience we welcome it. As a hospitality group, we continually get better and better with time and experience. Yet here we are, tip-toeing around how to say that without sounding dismissive of our past or arrogant about our future. And hence, the fox, the chicken, and the sack of corn.

Again, it isn’t better, nor is it worse, it's simply the next phase in our continual evolution. And of course, we would love nothing more than to have you be a part of it.

See you at dinner (or lunch) soon.

{Oh, one last thing, for those wondering what will happen to De Noche, rest assured, is not fully gone yet, consider this a pause.

More big things are coming! }