STARTED AS STRANGERS, ENDED UP FAMILY.

The year was 2010, it was October and newlyweds Jacques and Christine, still hungover from their  August nuptials, booked a last minute trip up the coast to Seattle in search of the hair of the dog. After an excruciating one and a half hour flight, they rolled out of the baggage claim, only to discover they'd been stood up Jacques' best man. They called Stephen, a prophetic young man of 28 years. Being new to the town himself, Stephen panicked and took the couple to a sausage and beer haus where the group feasted on brats until Stephen's neighbor and Jacques' old friend from days gone by, Karl, burst onto the scene with his lovely heroine Kari and a bottle of tequila. 

The crew floated about town, from gothic clubs in old churches to cave like bourbon bars, all the while catching up on the past, whence the topic of the future inevitably arose, and with it, the couple's plans to venture East and settle in Detroit to start a restaurant. And there he was, Karl's friend Leslie, a baby-faced Hungarian-Polish boy, semi-freshly out of culinary school and soul searching in Chicago. It could be weird, like an awkward and messy match making gone wrong, but everything sounds like a perfect plan in the fog of a three day Pacific Northwest expedition so they agreed to meet that December when everyone planned to converge on the city of Detroit for the holiday. 

Less than eight weeks later, having said goodbye to jobs and friends and family, the couple departed San Diego and drove East with little more than their cat, a vague plan to open a restaurant, and several composition notebooks full of concepts.