Photo: courtesy of Journeyman

When you open your own restaurant, you learn to expect the unexpected.

Tse Wei Lim and Diana Kudayarova, co-chefs/owners of Journeyman in Somerville, certainly have.

Tse Wei Lim
Chef, Journeyman
PRK Guest Contributor

For the second year in a row, we’re spending our summer building a restaurant. On June 18th, at the end of a busy Saturday night, a driver crashed his SUV into Journeyman’s front wall, nearly bringing down our roof in the process. There were still guests in the restaurant.

After emergency services evacuated the building, we and Ben, our contractor, spent the wee hours of the morning propping the ceiling up with whatever we could find. Sadly, we finished well after last call – we could all have done with a drink. By the next morning’s light, the damage was really quite impressive – a brick column thrown a full 8 inches out of line, the entire length of the facade cracked, and our antique window miraculously intact.

So we’ve spent the last four weeks closed, while the front wall got demolished and rebuilt from the ground up. The window, which survived the crash, didn’t survive the demolition. That photo, above, is what our restaurant looks like with no wall. To be continued…

Diana surveys the re-build