The first item up for discussion at the Tustin City Council meeting agenda last night was the beer and wine permit for Traditions restaurant, a six-month old Indian restaurant in Tustin that I reviewed here.
You'd think it would be a simple matter, but it turned out to be anything but. The almost half hour discussion dug up contentious past issues regarding Roderick's, the restaurant/night club that occupied the building before it, and problems associated with getting the property owner to sign off on the conditions of the new permit.
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The intricacies of the legalities gets even more confusing than I care to elaborate here.
In the middle of all this is Traditions, who according to City Councilman Doug Davert, “walked into a snake pit” when they signed the lease to do business there more than six months ago. Because of the ongoing issues with the property, which stretched 10 years according to the councilman, Davert said that he had nothing but sympathy for the family-owned business.
“All we're trying to do is operate a simple restaurant”, pleaded the Traditions owner when he had a chance to speak. “All we're trying to do is get a simple beer and wine license,” he added.
By the end of it, the City Council granted the license to Traditions.
To watch a video archive of the meeting click HERE.
Fast forward to the 17:00 minute mark. The discussion lasts until the 37:00 mark.
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.