A blog about hospitality, entrepreneurship, and building community.
When I opened Allmine, I thought I was opening a restaurant. And I was—but what I quickly learned is that a restaurant is rarely just a restaurant. Over time, I began to understand that I was also building something far less tangible and far more enduring: a gathering place, a living room for the neighborhood, a home for ideas and conversation, a space where food, people, and purpose meet and continue to shape one another. This blog grew out of that understanding.
Roxana’s Notes is where I reflect on what it means to live in this work of hospitality. It’s about the quiet, almost invisible gestures that make a guest feel at ease—the bread arriving warm enough to still feel alive in your hands, the pause before the second glass of wine is poured, the way a team moves together when the room is full. It’s about the bigger, less romantic realities too: the long nights spent reworking a menu, the uncertainty of keeping an independent restaurant steady in a changing economy, the heartbreak of watching other beloved places close their doors.
In my years as an entrepreneur, I’ve learned that a restaurant is an ecosystem as much as a business. It holds farmers and vendors, cooks and servers, neighbors who bring their friends, and families who make a tradition out of gathering around the same table. It holds their milestones and their rituals, their laughter and their silences. And it holds the weight of knowing that these connections don’t happen by accident—they’re built with care, choice by choice, every single day.
These notes aren’t business manuals. They aren’t marketing copy. They’re meditations on a life rooted in hospitality—sometimes practical, sometimes philosophical, often both. I write about why we choose ingredients that honor their origins, what it takes to keep a restaurant alive without losing its soul, and why a simple, well-made meal shared among people who care about each other can feel like an act of belonging.
Whether you’re another restaurant owner, someone dreaming of opening your own place, or simply a guest curious about the world behind the table, my hope is that you’ll find something here worth lingering over.
At its heart, this blog is about connection: between craft and care, between a restaurant and its guests, between the work we do and the lives we touch. It’s about food that hugs you back—and the people who make that possible.
Welcome to Roxana’s Notes.
Roxana's Note: On the Quiet Closings
You can feel it when a place goes quiet. The lights stay off, the chairs stay stacked, and the regulars who once knew exactly where to sit start looking for somewhere else to go.
You can feel it when a place goes quiet. The lights stay off, the chairs stay stacked, and the regulars who once knew exactly where to sit start looking for somewhere else to go.
In the past few weeks and months, a few restaurants in Oceanside have quietly shut their doors. All we saw was a brief social media post, a final shift worked like any other, and a last dinner service that no one realized was the end without farewell dinners or public send-offs.
Closures like these don’t always make headlines, but they leave a mark. Even if it wasn’t your spot, the absence still registers. Because a restaurant doesn’t disappear on its own. It takes with it a team of people who built their days around that space—cooks, servers, dishwashers, bartenders, hosts, vendors, suppliers and the guy who cleans our lines. People who had regulars they looked out for, dishes they took pride in, rhythms they could follow with their eyes closed. When a place closes, they lose more than a paycheck, they lose their footing, their routines, their sense of belonging.
I’ve heard people wonder how a restaurant that seemed busy or had been there for a long time, could close so suddenly. The truth is, it rarely happens all at once. It starts when the flow becomes unpredictable—when costs creep up faster than sales, when once-steady regulars begin coming in less often, when the gap between a good week and a tough one becomes too wide to cover.
Restaurants, like any small business, depend on rhythm. Not just in the way the staff works together, but in who comes through the door. The couple who dines out every Friday. The neighbor who swings by for a glass of wine after work. The family that returns again and again. When those patterns shift—even slightly—it can ripple outward faster than most people imagine. It doesn’t take grand gestures. Just small, regular choices that say: we want you here.
We all go through seasons. Life gets busy, tastes evolve, new places open and draw our attention. That’s natural. But in an industry where the margins are razor-thin and stability is always delicate, even a quiet change in habit can be felt behind the scenes.
No single person can carry a restaurant. But a community can create the conditions where it can hold steady, especially when that support becomes part of a weekly rhythm. That kind of consistency doesn’t just sustain a business—it shapes the spirit of a place.
At allmine, we’ve felt that kind of support. We see it in the familiar names on the reservation list, in the friends who bring more friends, in the regulars who have made our food part of their lives. We feel it every time someone tells us they brought visiting family, or that this is where they come when they need to exhale.
So this is both a thank you and a reminder. That restaurants don’t survive on hype. They survive on return visits, quiet loyalty, and the kind of presence that doesn’t have to announce itself. We know we’ve built something that people return to, that they feel a part of. But I’d be lying if I said we didn’t feel the tremors when the landscape shifts. We do. Every local restaurant does.
This is not a plea, it is a reminder that the places you love need you to show up. Not all at once or in grand gestures but in the regular rhythm of your week.
We do feel lucky that our community showed up, and keeps showing up. But we don’t take it for granted. We know that the trust of a neighborhood is something you earn every day.
So here’s to the people who keep showing up. Who understand that behind every open sign is a group of people working hard to keep the lights on, the dough proofing, the glasses filled, the refrigerator fixed. We see you. We’re grateful.
We’ll be here, baking the bread, turning the music on, pouring the wine, cooking the food that hugs you back.
And every time you choose to walk through our door, you’re choosing to keep that rhythm going.
See you soon.
Roxana