Burhans Enterprises originally opened a hookah cafe in a space that had been (most recently) storage for a lot of junk. Going back from then, we've heard that there was (briefly) a club called "Dance 2000" in that space. 20-somethings in town may remember an arcade in that spot called "Got Game." Mark thinks that originally the old Ohio Market was up front in the World's Best Bagels storefront, and that our space was the warehouse storage space for that grocery. We need to check that out with the nice folks at the Athens Historical Society and Museum, though.
In the November 2006 election, all three members of Burhans Enterprises LLC voted in favor of the state-wide smoking ban. Frankly, we were having so much fun with the restaurant side of things that we were about to give up the hookah business anyway! At any rate, here are some photos of the renovation of the space.
Here is the front door as we first put our faces to the glass to peek in.
When we first looked around inside, the prospect of creating the space we had in mind was a bit daunting.
There was no kitchen; the photo at left shows the area where we ended up making the kitchen. There was a large cold prep table in that room that Joe Limoli kindly let us keep. When we eventually got it clean and plugged it in, it worked beautifully. Thanks, Joe!
The bathrooms were painted black all over. Such a charming decorating scheme! But we decided to change it anyway ;-)
Below, Ry paints the wall in the big room.
The view above shows the storage area/hallway to the left and the kitchen to the right. (It's the view you'd see on your way back from the restrooms. The storage area was previously an office; we opened up the partition wall.
Above: We had Jon Scott and Butch Daft put in the new plumbing in the kitchen. They are definitely professionals! Left: Electrician Kenny Young was wonderful too. We were really lucky to find him.
Below left: Joshua Lane, who competently and cheerfully did all kinds of construction for us, shows off his framing skills. We wanted a fountain, so I described what I wanted, Joshua built it, and after finding the right tiles, our pal and fellow musician Matthew McElroy tiled it. (below right)
Two flower pots (one upside down and one right-side up) formed the fountain itself. Taa-daa!
Below you see the restaurant, still in its hookah bar phase, soon after we opened.
Meanwhile, we had to figure how to get folks to walk down the alley to try our place!
The alley was pretty funky; not particularly great grafitti (above); we figured we might be able to do better. Our painter friend Khoa set to work and soon we had a masterpiece.It extends all the way along the alley... it's impossible to get a picture of all of it! Here you see our blue door in the left of the picture.
Here are a few more recent pictures of the interior:
