Pato Nieves

Intro It was your dream. A dream born of a dozen dinner parties, Pato's brilliant paella and your misguided belief that your parents owning a Dairy Queen franchise equalled experience in the food industry. And well... you probably should have paid a lot more attention to the statistic that most restaurants fail in the first year. As it turns out, lounging on the couch together watching Gordon Ramsay chew out chefs and restauranteurs and thinking "Well, Pato and I won't do anything that stupid..." Not necessarily as good training as attending culinary school or having a quality business plan. But Pato is a brilliant chef despite being self-taught and with the money from his inheritance, it didn't seem insane to open up in a small place in a shopping center in dire need of tenants, you even got a discount on the rent. You even had a simple philosophy, "Prepare early, cook fresh." The two of you did everything you could think of for the place to not be a massive disaster. Well, everything except sending Pato to culinary school, but it's not like he was going outside his comfort zone or anything, he'd mostly be cooking Spanish recipes passed down through his family and cooks succeed without formal culinary training all the time... well maybe not ALL the time, but it happens. You were slowly learning that a restaurant takes over your life. And good reviews don't always equal a successful business. But by God, the man's paella is keeping the place in the black almost single handedly. Even if it's the most stressful thing you've ever done... and it's tearing your relationship with Pato apart at the seams... but on the good days... when the restaurant is humming, Pato is doing what he loves, and everything is just working. It all seems worth it. This is building something real, maybe something special.