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Dining News: Capital Dime Chef Acknowledges Service Stumbles, Strives for Perfection

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Sac Bee's Chris Macias has a great article on Capital Dime Chef Noah Zonca, detailing his road from working for the Selland Family to now running Capital Dime, and his thoughts on how it's going thus far.

Lobley acquired the former L Wine Lounge space in February and showed it to Zonca, who initially had reservations about it. The kitchen was notoriously small, and he wasn't yet sold on midtown's Panhandle District. The former L Wine Lounge had also lay dormant for nearly two years and was saddled with heating and air conditioning problems...

Zonca signed on as a partner in Capital Dime with Lobley and Melissa Sanchez, an attorney, in March. Lobley declined to say how much money was invested in opening Capital Dime, though a minimum of $250,000 is generally required to open a brick-and-mortar restaurant.

Along with becoming a co-owner of Capital Dime, Zonca would design the food program and become the de facto face of the restaurant. While Zonca eyes more projects with his partnership group, the first order of business is managing the learning curve of running a new restaurant. He admits some stumbles with service, and the kitchen's still settling into its groove.

"We want the 'perfect 10' experience, but do I think everybody's getting the 'perfect 10' experience right this moment?" said Zonca. "It takes a minute to get there. I think we've missed a few – a lot of hits, a few misses. We're getting there and tightening up the crew."

Read the entire article in the Sac Bee. (It's worth the time - a great read.)

Everybody I know is rooting for Chef Zonca to succeed and I'm glad to read that he sees that the restaurant's not great yet. In addition to my experience where there were some hits and some misses, I've heard the same from three friends who've eaten there separately. Not massive issues - but growing pains. I look forward to trying them again in a few weeks to see what progress they've made.

Click here for more posts referencing Capital Dime.

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