Part of the reason why it has taken so long to build this restaurant is that I romanticized the whole process. I envisioned myself coming home from Europe and building Union with old friends, bringing everybody together. When I left Alba on an early morning train, I felt like a ripped-up five-dollar bill. As I watched the big fields and trees shoot past my window, I was hit with a vision and desire to create this restaurant, and then everything started to make sense. I don’t know if it was a survival instinct kicking in—some desperate realization that I know what I want to cook and don’t need to wait for somebody to show me anymore—but after that, I felt like a million bucks. I rode that feel-good train all the way home. But in feeling good, I got too many heads involved in my restaurant project. They clogged up the process with their visions and ideas, and the momentum got slower and slower. Bad decisions were made. And now that there is finally a clear, bright path to the finish line, I am so damn tired of the place that some days I feel I would chuck it in the river if I could. Needless to say, I have shed the romance. I’m trying to find the cold edge that is needed to create and protect your own business—to “toughen up,” as my business partner Kate told me the other day. It has taken me a while to get here, but there is no room left to be anywhere else. So I am putting the building crap and the romance behind me and getting back to what propelled me here in the first place: the farm, the food and the desire to cook it.”