Mike Mitchell has landed at Chambar as their new general manager. You’d have to be a restaurant wonk or a friend of his to find that remotely interesting, but there’s a good reason why I’m posting about the appointment.

He’s had a few unlucky years in a row, so much so that starting a year ago I began referring to him fondly and through no fault of his own as “The Master of Disaster”. I might err in the following timeline, but this is my read from memory of the range of unfortunate events that befell him since we parted ways three years ago (we used to work together).

He left the Beach House to manage the pan-Latin Century, which never really took off (any place where management have secret service-style earphones just has to suck by definition), and then he became one of the managers at CinCin following the exit of Sebastien Le Goff to Lumiere. If Mitchell had stayed on here, he might be running the place by now (or at least be in the bosom of the Top Table family), but he left when he was offered the GM position at Metro down by the Pan Pacific. Metro, of course, was a restaurant that never flew either. To make matters worse, he pretty much destroyed his leg in a snowboarding mishap in the midst of the restaurant’s post-opening dive. After a medical sabbatical (during which he was universally referred to as “the cripple”), he took on the operations job at FigMint, which recently closed for renovations and then shut down for breakfast and lunch. Sigh.

Now at Chambar and fit as a fiddle, he will be working a room full of people again, night after night. He’s very good at his job, so it’s good to hear that he has landed somewhere where he can do what he does and have people there to enjoy it. I’m sure it must feel a little foreign to him and his feet might hurt after his first week of full-on flotation, but I suppose that’s what it’s like when you come back from years in the wilderness.

I’d say break a leg, but I’m afraid he actually would. 😉

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