We were all sad," Lorilynn Mason reported on the closure this month of her restaurant, Longshoreman's Daughter, after more than 11 years. "We held a wake - wore black, wore veils, gave speeches. Kind of like a funeral."
She amended that quickly, "I'm excited that they are there. I'm glad they will be a daytime business, but I hope they add dinner, too."
"They" are Nandita Polissar and her husband, Nayak, who purchased the landmark restaurant from Lorilynn. Nandita hopes to win over loyal Fremont diners from Longshoreman's (also known as LSD) to Silence-Heart-Nest, scheduled to open in early March.
Nandita has worked with Lorilynn's suppliers to get the same products and services everyone came to expect.
Lorilynn agreed to teach her the recipes of trademark dishes - Texas Eggs and Mac & Cheese - so Nandita can maintain at least half of the same menu, the rest being other vegetarian specialties she's crafted and served to satisfied customers over the years.
Changing focus
Lorilynn admits she could have sold her business to anyone, but she waited. "They kind of approached me," she said, "I wasn't in a hurry to sell it."
Two years ago, pregnant with her daughter, Lorilynn decided she needed to do something. "I felt like I wasn't doing a good job on e.t.g. (her coffee shop), I wasn't doing a good job on the restaurant and I wasn't doing a good job for my family. I had to downsize something."
"e.t.g. was my first thing," Lorilynn explained.
"I miss everybody," she told me about closing the restaurant, "that whole community. But I'm going to get to be in e.t.g. more; I get to focus on e.t.g. more. A restaurant takes more time."
Lorilynn's time comes at a premium these days. Besides raising her 2-year-old, she's got a seriously long commute. She moved to Los Angeles with her husband, a magazine photographer, and yet she keeps the business running here.
"He has to be in Los Angeles," she explained, "or he'd be a has-been."
L.A. sounds like a purely practical location for her right now. "I feel like I'm living on a farm. I have to drive out to get provisions," she said. "It's like driving to Bellevue for groceries."
A change of pace
When the opportunity to buyLongshoreman's came up, Nandita admits to one reaction, "Oh, yes!"
After 19 years on the north end of the Ave in the U-District, they'd looked to relocate. Nandita proclaims freely, "We're thrilled to be here!"
Nandita sees herself here at least another 19 years.
"I just love the community," she enthused, although, she'll miss the size of the community in the U-District and the farmers market that grew up across the street.
Still, our close knit, and often cheek-by-jowl community, has won her over. "In 19 years in my old location, my landlord never ate lunch at our restaurant," she mused.
In Fremont, landlords do shop and sup at tenants' businesses, as do neighbors, friends and customers who feel like family. Nandita enjoys the way area folks already stop by to offer tips on survival, to sell signage and to ask about the progress on her transformation.
"Lori did such a good job," Nandita admires of Lorilynn's connection with the neighborhood. "She's such a creative individual.
"We love her place, but we'll change it," Nandita admitted reluctantly.
Many influences
Silence-Heart-Nest has, at its root, a strong spiritual basis. The restaurant grew out of Nandita's personal dedication to meditation and tranquility, her way to live "service with a sense of joy."
Before work brought her family to Seattle, she studied meditation under Sri Chinmoy in New York, and he named the restaurant. The word combination in the restaurant's name forms a poem and a concept for what Nandita tries to create in the restaurant each day.
Now her transplanted staff, also dedicated to meditation, will gather before opening and after closing to meditate together. Nandita wants to create an atmosphere of peacefulness.
"I don't claim to have a corner on it," she assured me, "but it is a conscious part of our life."
Time spent in Thailand served as "a kind of watershed" for her. She remembers spirituality being lived in the streets, the robed monks walking amid the shops and shoppers, their beliefs part of daily life.
Now Nandita hopes to combine her wide spectrum of influences into a mix with Longshoreman's, and create something new but familiar for diners.
Lorilynn sees herself passing her creation onto careful and caring successors. She had many people interested in buying Longshoreman's - to open a nightclub, another bar or something equally over-served in the neighborhood she still calls home - but she waited for the right match.
"Once it opens and people see," she stated emphatically, "they will see it is a good change. They are going to be nice, neighborhood people."
Lorilynn knows Silence-Heart-Nest will serve good food and give people a good start on their day. "Eat healthy," she advises the 20-somethings that crowd our nightclubs, "then go out to smoke and drink!"
Kirby Lindsay likes to eat healthy - before she eats cookies, then takes long walks along the Ship Canal. She welcomes your comments at fremont@ oz.net.
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