"I gotta say, getting ready for a restaurant that is open about 20 hours of the day is a whole new ballgame for me," wrote Izard in a blog post in November.
Starting at 11 30 a.m., the waiters would arrive and ready the restaurant for the lunch service; olive oil would be used to polish shoes before being placed on the tables; knives would be used to scrape dried food stains from the previous day off the waiters' suits.
He laughs, finishes his tea, gives me a kiss on each cheek and takes up his position at the front of the restaurant, ready for the lunchtime rush.
In Coney Island, Brooklyn, the original Nathan's Famous has still not reopened, though workers have been lugging in sheets of plywood to get the restaurant ready for the peak season that starts Memorial Day weekend.
We asked readers to send us a photograph that captures the soul of their businesses, and so far, the submissions — which you can see here — have included photographs of a very lucky pig, the first shipment of the season, a restaurant ready for Valentine's Day, and an owner shoveling out her business after a heavy snow storm.
They were ready for a confrontation, the restaurant's employees threatened to call the cops, and the car behind us fled the scene.
In Ulster County, where tourism is a $420 million industry with roughly 40 percent of that accounted for in the fall, tourism officials report that hotels and restaurants are ready for visitors, though a few minor detours might be involved.
Soft-drink and restaurant groups were ready for a prolonged fight.
They hope that the restaurant will be ready for customers — no reservations — by mid-October.
The local obsession with the Red Sox is such that David Wells, the former Yankee and Red Sox pitcher, and a night owl, likes to call Boston Picturetown, rather than Beantown, because of all the fans with cell-phone cameras in restaurants and bars, ready for deployment like civilian paparazzi.
