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Eric Tjahyadi believes an incredible experience at a great restaurant comes from a place of love, hope and the energy of the entire team combined. The team needed all that energy to deal with a 10 p.m. curfew that was in place until outdoor dining was shut down. “We’re all connected in a way,” he said.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Eric Tjahyadi, his brother and chef Erwin Tjahyadi, and their father, Tjhing Sen, have learned a few things about switching it up in the last few months. Their Pasadena restaurant, Bone Kettle, has been shuttered and reopened and shuttered again as state and county officials have struggled to regulate businesses and issue public health mandates during the pandemic. Just a few weeks ago, customers could sit outside at socially distanced tables, watching the cars creep by as they waited for waiters to arrive with pitchers of steaming bone broth they poured over an arrangement of noodles and herbs. Then the state released updated restrict
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Remember those days when you would walk into the restaurant and every seat up front at the bar would be taken and there’d be just a narrow aisle between the crowd at the bar and the one at the long communal table, and the wait staff carrying hot broth would have to shimmy through it, trying not to spill as they served?
So reminisced the employees now working shortened hours at Bone Kettle in Pasadena about the time before COVID-19.
Before the little family-owned restaurant on Raymond Avenue had to shut its doors in the spring.
Before it reopened for takeout and a brief stint of plexiglass-partitioned, reduced-capacity indoor dining.