I. The Weight of a Sunday
There are days that arrive already carrying something. You feel it before your feet hit the floor; a particular stillness in the air, the way a room holds its breath. This was one of those days.
It was Sunday. And it was familiar in the way that only the most important moments are: not because you’ve lived them before, but because some part of you has been quietly preparing for them all along.
I thought about October 22nd, 2020. Our opening night Pop-Up. The five of us who were there that day, huddled around something we barely understood yet, moving through five courses that felt like twenty. There was no storytelling back then — just food on plates, ideas that hadn’t yet found their language, and a kind of frantic sincerity that I look back on now with equal parts affection and embarrassment. When I think about the tortillas from that night, I still wince. What the fuck were we thinking? But that question is its own answer. We were thinking too hard about the wrong things. It took years to unlearn that. To reset. But I’ll get to that.
That Sunday, I put on my lucky blue flower shirt. The one I wore the first time Olivia and I went out together, February 5th, 2019, before either of us knew what we were becoming to each other. I wore it again that September, a few days after she flew down to join me in Mexico — where we lived together for a stretch of time I can no longer measure precisely, only feel the edges of. It was never long enough. Some things aren’t.
The shirt felt right. The day felt familiar. I let both of those things carry me forward.
— — —
II. The Morning Read
The first thing I read that morning was a New York Times piece on Redzepi. I don’t know what I expected, but what I found was something that unsettled me in a specific way — the way only a mirror can.
His relentlessness, his obsession, the hunger to do what hadn’t been done — I recognized all of it. I’ve lived inside that same drive. But his methods, the way he wielded that ambition against the people around him — the poking, the cutting remarks, the culture of fear dressed up as excellence — that’s where I had to put the phone down and sit with it for a minute. It reminded me of the Dave Chappelle bit about Kramer at the Laugh Factory. The one where Chappelle watches this man unravel on stage, and rather than horror, what he feels is clarity: that’s the day I realized I’m 80% comedian, 20% Black. There’s something in that — the way we contain multitudes, the way our worst moments can coexist with our best intentions, and the responsibility we carry to know the difference.
The worst thing I ever did in this business was storm into a prep shift after I’d told the team, more than once, never to play Morrissey. I walked in to find a room full of young brown people — people I loved, people who trusted me — listening to that man’s voice fill my dining room. I lost it. Not violently, but loudly, and with the full weight of why it mattered, repeating every terrible thing Morrissey had ever said until the room understood. I don’t regret what I said. I regret that it had to be said at all.
Something similar happened at Comala. The bar manager made a joke of it — told me it didn’t matter because we weren’t in service yet. Pre-opening, he said, like that was a kind of amnesty. I let him have it. I’ve thought since then that I should have fired him on the spot. But Daniel turned out alright in the end. Some people just need to understand what room they’ve walked into.
I put the phone away. The day was starting.
— — —
III. Before Service
The night before, I’d chased a streetcar I couldn’t catch, then walked home in the cold without a jacket — which is a perfectly on-brand way to arrive at the final chapter of something. By the time I got in, my throat had already begun to tighten. The talking, the weeks of it, had finally caught up with me.
But standing in that room before service, I felt none of it. I looked around and thought: just another Sunday. Which is the highest compliment I know how to pay a team — that after everything, they could make the extraordinary feel ordinary.
The takeaway that night was salsa macha. Every guest would leave with a jar, sealed and labeled, a piece of the kitchen to carry home. It was the team’s idea. It made me quietly proud in the way that small gestures from people you’ve built something with always do.
I asked Andres, our GM, to update the menus before service — to make sure Chef Olivia Bartruff was credited as Culinary Director, and Samuel Sinks, newly promoted, was named as Chef de Cuisine. It felt important to say their names out loud in that way. To let the menu be a record.
I called one final lineup. I told them I’d keep it short — there would be more to say later, at the end, and I didn’t want to use up all the words too soon. I thanked them for the vision, for their belief, for the particular courage it takes to build something from nothing and keep showing up even when the shape of it is still unclear. I thought about how lost some of us had been in the beginning, and how that lostness had slowly resolved itself into something real.
I asked Olivia to say something. She paused, and then became emotional — listening to her made me emotional, a quiet wave moving through all of us who were standing there. She kept it brief, the way she always does when something matters most. Today is about joy, she said. Whatever happens, I want everybody to be happy.
And so it was.
— — —
IV. My Brother
Before we opened the doors, I looked over at Manny.
My brother is the kind of person who doesn’t announce himself. He arrives, he works, and somewhere along the way he has quietly held everything together without anyone noticing — which is, of course, exactly the point. You barely see him take a break. He moves through a room like a border collie works a field: purposeful, tireless, always aware of what’s drifting and what needs to be brought back in. And then, when the work is done, he simply disappears. In quiet. Out quiet. It’s always been that way with him.
The last few days, he had done everything — wine, dishes, trash, kitchen support, whatever gap appeared, he filled it. I’ve thought about what these final weeks would have looked like without him, and I can’t quite finish the thought. Some people don’t need a title to hold a room up. He’s always been that person for me.
— — —
V. The Room Fills
The guest list had been assembled with the kind of intentionality I usually reserve for a menu. Every name was chosen. Every seat meant something. There were at least twenty more people I wished I’d had room for, and the weight of that — of a life rich enough in people that you can’t fit them all into one room — is its own kind of gratitude.
I watched them arrive. The room filled slowly, then all at once, the way good things do. The playlist opened gently — something easy, unhurried, giving the night space to find its footing. I already knew how it would end. I had known for weeks. After the last toast, after the last goodbye, we would close with Blind Pilot: We Are the Tide. We would ride out in glory, or something close enough to it.
It was 5:15. I was already thinking about the ending.
I looked at Manny. You okay? He shrugged the way he does — yeah, but I think I’m coming down with something. I thought: me too. By six o’clock, my voice had begun to go. The illness I’d been outrunning since the night before had caught up, and I found myself passing off dish deliveries I’d wanted to make myself, handing over moments I’d been saving. There’s a particular grief in that — in being cheated out of the last few miles of something you’ve carried a long distance.
The night before, I’d had a group of former employees come in. I brought every course out to them personally, told every story, made sure they understood what hospitality actually is — not the performance of it, but the real thing. It was my way of honoring what they’d given, of saying: the care you poured into this place, I’m pouring back into you tonight. You are never too far from this table.
— — —
VI. Jeff Agoos
At 6:30, my dear friend Jeff Agoos walked in.
If you don’t know the name, here is what you need to know: in the second leg of the 2003 MLS Cup playoff against the Galaxy, with San Jose down 2-0 on aggregate, Jeff Agoos scored in the 21st minute and ignited one of the great comebacks in the league’s history. The kind of goal that changes the temperature of a game, that makes the impossible feel suddenly, stubbornly possible.
I was exhausted by the time he arrived. My voice was half-gone and I still had four hours left. But I saw him walk through that door and something shifted. I didn’t have the option of feeling worse. I channeled whatever he’d had in him that night in 2003 — that refusal, that forward motion — and I kept going.
The room was full. The dishes were coming out perfectly. The flowers, the finishes, the pacing — everything was as it should be. There was nothing left to adjust, nothing to fix. I had built a team that didn’t need me to hold it up anymore. That’s the whole point, and it still took my breath away to see it working.
One of our cooks (Alejandro), who had the day off, came in anyway. Nobody asked him to. He just showed up. I don’t have a better definition of what this place meant to the people inside it.
— — —
VII. Jose and the Corn
I should tell you about Jose.
Jose is the reason our tortillas are what they are. Most people who’ve eaten at Republica don’t know his name, and that’s the nature of this work — the most essential contributions are often the quietest ones. But my former partner Lauro and I knew. We learned it the hard way.
About a year into it, we were struggling to get any consistency out of the masa. We’d cycle through purveyors when we couldn’t figure it out ourselves, which was embarrassing and expensive and never quite right. One afternoon, Lauro and I were standing over a pot of nixtamalized corn, staring at a new varietal we didn’t understand, watching it refuse to break down the way it should. We’d had a dishwasher for a couple of months by then — tall, quiet, kept to himself. He walked over, picked up a spoon, lifted it, looked at us and said: you overcooked it.
We stared at him.
He said: you’re not supposed to run it on high. You have to let it sit. Low and slow.
I said: We did that. But also, how do you know that?
He said: I was a tortillero in Mexico my whole life.
Lauro and I looked at each other. Then we laughed — the kind of laugh that comes from relief and awe and a little embarrassment all at once. From that day forward, Jose ran our corn program. The quiet man who’d been washing our dishes turned out to be holding the answer we’d been looking for all along. That’s the restaurant business. That’s also just life.
He stayed late that Sunday. The kitchen got crowded and he started to feel like he was in the way, so he found a seat and just watched. I went over to him at one point and asked what he was still doing there. He said he wanted to see it through.
By 8:30, when our last seating left one table open, I went to the kitchen and told the team we had one more cover. We’re out of the fish, they said. Out of the cauliflower too. I said: make it up. They laughed. Who’s it for?
Jose.
They looked at each other. Then: okay. Sit him down.
I found him near the dish pit, drinking a beer alone, already a little emotional. I walked him to our last open seat — a small table near the back — and told him to sit. That he’d earned this.
In four, almost five years of working with us, Jose had never once sat down for dinner at Republica. That night, dish by dish, he heard the stories behind every plate he’d helped build from the morning’s first prep. He tasted the food he’d been waking up early for and coming to make, and he finally understood what it meant when someone pushed back from the table and said they’d never forget this meal.
He cried. I’m not ashamed to say I was close to it myself.
A couple at the table nearby watched all of it — the way the team kept coming over, refilling his glass, leaning in to talk. They pulled me aside. Is that guy a chef? they asked.
He is, I said. And he’s the person behind all of the corn you ate tonight.
They didn’t say anything after that. They didn’t need to.
— — —
VIII. An Envelope with Five Stars
By the time Jeff finished his meal, he stopped me to tell me it was one of the best he’d ever had — his partner beside him, both of them lit up in the way that people are when food has done what food is supposed to do.
At Republica, every guest leaves with an envelope. Inside: the story of the restaurant, the philosophy behind the menu, the components of each dish, and a handwritten note. The envelope is sealed with wax, stamped with the profile of our dog — a Colima dog, one of the oldest breeds in the Americas, indigenous and enduring. Jeff’s envelope had his name on it, and above and around the name, five gold stars.
He looked at it for a moment. Then he looked at me. A slow smile. Nice touch, he said.
One star for every championship he had ever won. The kind of mark you see on the crest of a club that has won something worth remembering. He understood it immediately, the way athletes understand the language of that kind of recognition.
Later, my friend Scott appeared — no reservation, family in town, but he came anyway, because that’s who Scott is. He brought the last of his mezcal and two veladoras, the small glass cups we’d always used to drink it. We stood together, poured, and said nothing for a moment. He told me he was proud of me. He hugged me and left.
Scott had been a customer of ours since the early days at La Perlita — since before any of this had a name. Watching his life change in the years since, the same way I’ve watched so many lives change, so many people find something in this place that they needed — that’s the part of this work that no review can capture and no closing can take away.
IX. Y Llegaste Tú
Before the last desserts went out, I slipped away to the host stand to grab my phone. I had timed the playlist carefully — hours of thought had gone into how this night would sound, how it would move, how it would feel when it finally arrived at its last hour.
What I hadn’t planned for was the song that came on in that unguarded moment.
We’d moved through jazz, through brass, and then — without warning — banda. Banda El Recodo. Y Llegaste Tú. And You Arrived.
I stood there and let it take me apart.
For six weeks, I had been careful. Every time someone tried to offer a eulogy, every time the congratulations took on a valedictory weight, I would redirect them. Not yet. Keep it moving. But standing alone at the host stand, with the kitchen still firing and the dining room now a quarter full, I loved, the song found the one crack in the wall I’d forgotten to seal.
The lyrics, even in translation, were almost too precise:
Before I met you, everything was sad.
There were many cold nights, a great void that used to fill my heart.
But when you arrived, you took so much pain from me.
You motivated me to love you. My life changed.
When you arrived, like spring in the cold winter of my heart —
entering my soul like a sweet note of a tender song,
bringing with you a sweet dream full of illusion.
I looked up. Across the kitchen pass, I saw Olivia.
And I understood, again, for maybe the hundredth time, that she is the reason any of this exists.
— — —
X. Why We Started
Most people don’t know the actual origin story. Not the polished version — the real one.
It was spring of 2020. Olivia and I had signed a lease on a small studio in Southeast Portland, two people in close orbit around each other, not yet willing to name what we were. Lauro had a habit of showing up in the middle of the afternoon with a beer and nowhere else to be, and the three of us would sit in the backyard and talk — about food, about culture, about Mexican cuisine and what it deserved and what it was being denied. One day, watching Olivia prep for one of her weekly pop-ups, Lauro and I started talking about what it would actually look like to do something real. Something that said what we believed.
I mentioned a space we’d seen the week before. He said we should take it. I said it was a terrible idea. We went back and forth the way you do when you already know what you’re going to do but aren’t ready to admit it. And then Olivia looked up from what she was doing and said: if you two don’t do it, I’ll do it for you.
We had our money together that night. Three days later, I signed the lease. The business plan followed. And just like that, Republica existed — or at least the idea of it did, fragile and terrifying and alive.
The truth is, I did it because I was afraid of losing her. We weren’t anything official yet. We were just two people who had become essential to each other without either of us quite saying so. Opening a restaurant together felt like a way of making that undeniable. If we failed in six months, at least we’d have had six months.
Somehow, it became six years.
In January of this year, Olivia and I made two decisions, almost simultaneously. The first was to close Republica. We had gone over the numbers, the circumstances, the things that were no longer in our favor, and we arrived at the only honest conclusion. The second decision was harder. We had spent six years building something together — a restaurant, a language, a life — without ever quite building a relationship. Not one with a title, or an anniversary, or the ordinary architecture of two people who belong to each other. We had become one person in many ways. She was my closest friend, my collaborator, the one whose presence made any room I walked into feel navigable. But at 32, I knew she had given enough. She had given more than enough. And ending it — as painful as that was, as final as it felt — was the most honest thing we could offer each other.
She found a new job. A good one. She’d already started the week before.
For the record, this is the first time many people including our staff have heard this news. We did our very best to keep this to ourselves.
It wasn’t easy. But it was better than the alternative.
And so I stood there in the last hour of the last service, watching her work the pass with the same grace she’d always had — unhurried, precise, generous in the way that great cooks are generous, giving the food its dignity — and I thought: after this, she won’t be here. Whatever I do next, it won’t be this. It won’t be her voice from across the kitchen. It won’t be the particular comfort of knowing she’s there.
The tears came before I could stop them. I walked to the back of the house and stood very still, trying to put myself back together.
My brother was still moving through the room, pouring wine like the night had just started. Across the floor, Luigi — the partner of Elena, one of our earliest employees, who had come back to help us close — caught my eye and raised a thumb. You good? I shook my head. I sat in the little waiting area in the back and let it pass through me.
Then Sam, my chef, came out. He saw my face. He didn’t say anything. He just put his arms around me for a moment, and then he went back to work.
I followed him.
— — —
XI. The Last Toast
Miguel poured the champagne into twelve glasses — a bottle brought by Kelsey Glasser, owner of Arden, who had made sure we were sent off with something worthy of the occasion. We gathered everyone together. The kitchen, the floor, the people who had come back to be here for this.
I tried to find the words for what I was looking at.
I thought about the birthday parties they’d missed. The summer days given over to prep and service when the rest of the city was outside. The weeks someone came in sick because the alternative was letting the team down. Manny, fighting through something that morning. Sam and Hannah Ruth, the week before. Alejandro, who wasn’t even on the schedule, who left someone else’s birthday party and showed up because he couldn’t imagine not being there. Olivia, who burned her hand badly enough to require medical attention and stood at the pass with it submerged in a container of cold water and did not stop moving. The show must go on is a cliché until you’ve watched someone live it.
I thanked them. All of them. By the end of it, I didn’t have words left, only the feeling underneath them.
I turned to Olivia. She was already emotional. The room held its breath. I looked at Jose, who had just spent an evening hearing the stories behind every dish he’d spent years helping to build. I had saved his last course to deliver myself.
We raised our glasses. Miguel counted us in. And then it was over.
— — —
XII. The People Who Showed Up
There is a version of this story that is about a restaurant. About a concept, a cuisine, a critical reception, a run.
But the real story is about the people.
Hanna Ruth, Ernesto, and Elena who once left but came back. Jorge, who we met the week before but felt like he had been there all along. Ray — our former GM, who had moved on and came back anyway, just to finish the ride. Manny, my brother, who has carried more than anyone will ever fully know, in ways both literal and not. Andres, who grew into his role until it fit like something tailored. Miguel, whose knowledge of wine became a kind of education for everyone in the building. Sam, who grew from someone I believed in into someone the whole kitchen believed in. Olivia, who gave this place her hands and her palate and her years.
Every one of them deserves more than a paragraph. What I can say is this: you build a restaurant with your hands, but you sustain it with people. And I was lucky, in ways I am still counting.
— — —
XIII. After
Something crept in as the last guests said their goodbyes. I had expected relief — the particular release that comes at the end of a long effort, the exhale of completion. Instead, what arrived was a quiet I didn’t know how to hold.
I was supposed to be looking forward. There are plans. There are things coming. There is, as there always is, a next thing. But standing in that room as it emptied, I felt the full weight of what we had made and what we were letting go of, and those two things did not resolve neatly.
Monday was harder than I expected. It took more than I thought I had just to leave the house. Tuesday, I was still somewhere inside it.
I didn’t anticipate that. But here we are.
More coming. I promise.