Sometimes you have to go visiting . . .
It is just past noon, and the restaurant is swamped with people, all of whom want, it seems, a Long Island iced tea and a glass of water.
The young woman doing the mixing behind the bar is silently mouthing curse words, rolling her eyes and swabbing her forehead with her right arm.
Most of the lights are still out. The exploding electric substation from the day before and a big surge when the power returned trashed the meter out back.
Every few minutes, someone emerges from the restroom to inform the young woman there are no lights. She politely explains once more that a repairman is on the way.
“I’m understaffed today. A delivery guy is late, and my air conditioning just went out,” the woman sighs. “I just had to open a restaurant.”
Stick around anywhere for long enough, and people will tell you their story.
Her name is Giao Giang. She is 28, and perhaps the most improbable restaurant owner in America.
As a 24-year-old, newly minted University of Colorado Denver marketing graduate, she was managing $1.2 billion of state money as budgeting director for the Department of Higher Education.
“Yes, this all seems weird, but what can I tell you?” she says with a big grin.
She is in her fourth year owning L’Asie Fusion Bistro at 603 E. 6th Ave. She was making close to $80,000 a year with the state but wanted to own her own business, something she and her sister, Mi, 30, might immediately make money at.
“I didn’t want a boss anymore. I wanted to be the boss. A restaurant sounded good at the time,” she said.
Yet she and Mi knew nothing of the business.
“All I knew was money,” she said. “We knew, too, if we worked hard, we wouldn’t fail.”
You have to figure things out, she said.
They got the lease on the Sixth Avenue building but had no real money and no idea what to do with the place.
Too broke to hire contractors, they gutted it. They finally hired one — trading him food for work — to put it back together.
“L’Asie?” Giao Giang heard it was French for Asian. They went with it.
They had no cook. Mi’s husband, Andy, had been a sous chef at a restaurant, mostly prepping vegetables. Figure it out, they told him. Andy definitely has it figured out.
They opened Jan. 6, 2007. Out of money within months, Giao was back at work, this time as budget director at Metropolitan State College. She kept the job until the restaurant got on sturdier legs.
Today things are better, if still a bit wobbly. The lawyer, the menu designer, her hairstylist and her yoga instructor still get paid with certificates for food, as did the air-conditioning guy when he arrived.
“Failing simply is not an option for me,” she said as the early-afternoon crowd began filing in.
“In those early years, nothing was easy. I don’t cry, but I cried a lot back then,” she said.
Most of the lights are still out, and the server and the electrician she called hours ago still have not shown up. Orders come in. She jumps to her feet.
Budget directing doesn’t look so bad now, I say as she carries a tray of water and Long Islands out to the patio.
“My dream always has been a love-hate thing,” Giao Giang says with a half-smile. “Today, I hate it.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
