Kitchen B | Bainbridge Island, Washington

As I enter my final year of college, I'm soaking up all I can in the world of hospitality, with a focus on design and sustainability.

I opened my first restaurant at the seasoned age of seven.

A name which had no meaning other than that of a seven-year old’s idea of what restaurants are called, “Kitchen B” opened its doors in a small corner of my family home’s kitchen.

Kitchen B’s first customers (and investors) were, like many great ventures, my ever-supportive parents. An apron on and a notebook in hand, I’d interrupt my parents from whatever it is that parents do, hurry them to the closest table so as not to lose their attention, and take their orders. Coffee or tea? Mac ‘n cheese or hot dog? Side of salad or side of fries? I’d even printed out a few menus which I’d proudly designed on Microsoft Word. Kitchen B’s offerings, I should note, were imaginary. So, too, was the cash with which I was paid. 

Soon after Kitchen B proved itself a permanent fixture of the neighborhood (or, in this case, the kitchen), my Dad returned home from a trip to California with my very own, real-life, straight-from-the-source, restaurant check holder and waitress name tag. Admittedly, the check holder did say “California Pizza Kitchen” — I hoped my Washingtonian customers wouldn’t catch on — and the name tag included only five of the seven letters in my name — a matter of miscommunicated spelling, my Dad later told me. But a check holder is a check holder and a name tag, a name tag, and Kitchen B was — in my bounteous imagination — doing better than ever.

A few months later, my parents brought me to a restaurant supply store in Seattle where I, a seven-year-old dressed in pink Crocs and denim overalls, walked the industrial, Home Depot-esque aisles in absolute wonder. There is something quite marvelous — even now — about seeing all the little pieces that make up a restaurant like parts to a dollhouse —plastic menu covers, white tablecloths, wicker bread baskets, serving platters, plastic pitchers, and even those half-aprons with the three pockets that real waiters at real restaurants always wear — in one place. I imagined my own local family restaurants’ owners picking out their supplies in this very store and wondered — hoped even — that it was as enchanting to them as it was to me. 

Imaginary as the food may have been, or few the customers who visited, Kitchen B still occupies a special moment in time. Now, fifteen years later, I still dream of opening a restaurant — maybe a grown-up one in New York’s West Village or London’s Covent Garden — with the wonder perhaps only a restaurant supply store can inspire.

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Though ideas for careers have come and gone, I’ve always kept hold, somewhere, to the childhood dream of opening a restaurant.

I’ll complete my final year at Georgetown University in May 2024. While Kitchen B taught me a lot, the restaurant industry is not like what it used to be, and there’s plenty more to learn. In the year preceding my graduation, I’ve set myself the task to soak up as much knowledge as I can of the hospitality industry across three broad categories: business, sustainability, and design.

Within Georgetown’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, I am pursuing a degree in Global Business. “Business” is taught in the broadest sense with no tie to a particular industry or focus. My goal here is to connect insights from my business studies to the hospitality industry specifically. 

Sustainability, too, is important to my core values and has largely defined my professional experience thus far. A glance at my résumé and I seem perhaps most well-suited for a career in renewable energy, land restoration, or sustainable/impact investing. However, I plan to bring my experience in questions of sustainability to the hospitality industry, asking what the hospitality industry can do to ensure a thriving planet for the next generation of Kitchen B children. 

Finally, restaurants, to me, are about creating a world through design. World’s are best crafted through thoughtfully selected lighting, materials, typefaces, and even sounds. When I think of a few of the most well-designed restaurants I’ve visited — Montauk’s Crow’s Nest, Seattle’s The Whale Wins, Brooklyn’s Pilot — each set themselves apart in the details: the Crow’s Nest’s weathered wooden pergolas, the Whale Wins’s marble-clad wood burning oven, and the hand-painted welcome sign that sits at the entrance of Pilot’s 1924 restored racing schooner. 

I thought I’d share my findings on a public platform — the place you’ve found me now — with the hopes that I can collect my knowledge in one place and learn from others nearby.  

Looking forward.