11/10/2016
I am deeply saddened to officially announce that we have closed our restaurant. The Willeyville was a 5 year journey for Krista and myself. We have had a great ride in those five years and were honored to have been able to serve some amazing guests, work with some amazing people, and do some amazing things.
We started this restaurant with the ethos of being the most scratch kitchen in the city. Not because we wanted to show how bad ass we were but because it tasted better. We wanted service to be fun but professional, and the ambiance to be casual, like an old pair of jeans. I know that we hit the marks we aimed at and appreciate the 3 ΒΌ years we had.
I want to thank our loyal employees who were my extended family. To see you all grow in the time we had together has been deeply gratifying. We set out to create a family and because you all bought in to our vision we will have friendships to last a lifetime, of course filled with drama, ill timed non pc remarks, etc, I would have it no other way. The hard part of the industry is so many people pass through our lives, all of you played a role.
I want to thank my kitchen staff who were the definition of professionalism, respectful to each other and our product, fun but knew when to turn serious, etc. Your willingness to just do things the right way from day one even when it is so much harder made my job so much easier. At the end of the day we spent many hours together but the time just kind of flew, i always looked forward to coming in! (I'm extending this to our opening kitchen staff, quite larger then the closing staff. You all played a role in developing our culture, good and bad. I lacked the emotional tools needed to handle the job early on so my apologies, that helped me grow as a man and a leader. Thank you for bearing through my growth.)
I really want to thank our loyal guests who enjoyed my culinary adventures. It is really humbling to see so many guests enjoy the fruits of our labor, hair brained flavor combos, new techniques not quite perfected. Our mission was to always try to go above and beyond to make you happy push ourselves but never make our guests feel like we were a bunch of pompous asses.
This was the very best time in my career and will always be a benchmark for anything I may attempt to do in the future. If I never get the privilege to follow through with another dream at least I have this time to say I did what I set out to do 18 years ago when I left culinary school, god I am getting old!
Thank you all for letting me live my dream, even for a little while,
Chris Di Lisi-chef/owner-the willeyville
