![]() For Restaurateur Chris Cusack, Things Were Wonderful Until They Weren't. Chris Cusack, the public face of Treadsack. Photo by Chuck Cook. Six days before Christmas 2. Darth Vader strolled into the Thai food restaurant on North Main with the bad news: The joint was closing and everyone was out of a job. To be clear, it wasn’t the dark- helmeted, planet- exploding villain himself who lowered the boom, but a 3. Chris Cusack who wore Vader’s visage on an ironic Christmas sweater. Cusack, who co- founded the management group that oversaw the highly acclaimed restaurant Foreign Correspondents, had called for the meeting during off- hours to tell the handful of staff who showed up what every employee already knew: Foreign Correspondents was kaput. The day before, head chef PJ Stoops told the employees that Cusack and one of his business partners, Benjy Mason, had told him that the restaurant was closing after December 3. According to employees interviewed for this story, Stoops said that Cusack and Mason had no intention of giving the employees a heads- up, and it didn’t sit well with him. But something else was said that day — something that caused Stoops to wrap up his knives, shake employees’ hands and walk out of the restaurant for good. Days later, Canard, the bar that shared space with Foreign Correspondents, also closed. Restaurateur Chris Cusack’s star glowed more and more brightly and Treadsack just got bigger and bigger and it was all so wonderful. How to Get in Shape for Cheerleading. Cheerleading is not only about fun, it's not a game, it is a serious sport. To be the best you can be, it is very important to. Just over two weeks later, the company’s other renowned chef would also quit. But now the eight employees gathered at the meeting were being subjected to a patented Cusack spiel, a paean to his own talent and vision, peppered with a few boilerplate references to how proud he was of the staff. So Alex is one of the American characters in Street Fighter. Every fighter is from a different country and usually represents that country’s. Some children just aren't into sports, but that shouldn't mean they have to be glued to the tube. Creative kid fitness, experts tell WebMD, may be as simple as a walk. ![]() ![]() Because, hey, like, dress up for this. You’re telling us we’re out of jobs. The least you could do is wear a fucking button- up.”After a while, Olivera couldn’t take it anymore. He stood up and began shaking hands with his now- jobless friends, ready to make an exit.“. I’d worked there for six months.” To Olivera, it seemed consistent with what he felt were the smug airs Cusack and Mason displayed on the few occasions when they showed up at the restaurant — primarily to talk with Stoops and his wife and fellow chef, Apple Stoops. It also seemed fitting that, of all the wrong names for Cusack to throw out, he said his own. For years, Cusack had been the face of the critically acclaimed restaurants and bars managed by his group, Treadsack, given gushing articles in local and national media. Cusack’s concepts weren’t driven just by celebrity chefs, but by his own self- promotion and mythmaking, lapped up by friendly food critics who never looked behind his company’s curtain or talked to the lowly waitstaff. When Cusack announced that Treadsack was opening three restaurants in less than a year, local media called it “ambitious,” without asking how the instant empire would actually be financed or whether it would even be sustainable. In a typically fluffy piece for the industry news- slash- advertorial site Restaurant- Hospitality, Cusack said the restaurants were projected to generate $2. It’s unclear if that number, seemingly plucked out of the air, took into account the state and federal liens that Treadsack was racking up — IRS liens that today stand at roughly $1. Cusack, Treadway and Mason did not respond to multiple requests seeking information about any payments that may not have been reflected in the clerk’s records.) Employee interviews and internal company records reviewed by the Press reveal that, as Treadsack’s flagship restaurant, Down House, came perilously close to being shuttered by the Texas Comptroller’s Office, and Foreign Correspondents hemorrhaged money, employees had to deal with bounced paychecks. Meanwhile, Cusack spun vinyl under the name “DJ Christopher Zane,” bought a Tesla, got married, honeymooned in Switzerland, got divorced and posed in a convertible sports car for Local Houston Magazine’s photo shoot of successful bros, called “Reigning Men.”The focus on Cusack has worked well for Treadsack’s low- profile money man, Joey Treadway — the Emperor to Cusack’s Vader. According to employees interviewed for this story, Treadway sank a personal fortune into Treadsack, while still working in finance at the De. Teen Mom 3 was an American reality television series that premiered on August 26, 2013, on MTV and concluded its run on November 18, 2013. It chronicles the lives of. To be in shape for games, basketball players must condition themselves for long-lasting endurance. Thank you for your continued support of Deadspin. Disclaimer: You are leaving a Gizmodo Media Group, LLC website and going to a third party site, which is. Making custom chenille patches and monograms for more than twenty years. Our custom designed patches have a wonderfully artistic texture and style. One of the big surprises of the young baseball season has been Chicago White Sox outfielder Avisaíl García—sold to fans of the South Siders upon his acquisition. Find out how your support can impact the lives of our students and help shape the future of the Appalachian Region. Montrond Auto Group. Despite — or perhaps because of — the fact that Treadway has the most on the line, he has remained in the background. He did not respond to multiple requests for comment. With Cusack and Mason similarly tight- lipped for this story, it’s difficult to tell what the company’s plan is for the future. Or if there even is one. Down House had an ethos; a mission to embolden and educate the community, which in this case was the increasingly hipsterized Heights. Housed in the former Heights Bank building on the corner of Yale and 1. Charles Darwin’s country estate — generated buzz even before it opened.“Down House aims to blow your coffee- loving mind,” Culture. Map Houston trumpeted in February 2. It’s like the coffee shop, evolved,” Cusack told writer Sarah Rufca, who followed up six months later with something that reads like a love letter to Down House that was meant only for her heart- clasp- lock diary. In a headline calling the place “Houston’s newest, cutest cult of coffeehouse cool,” Rufca wrote, “When it comes to the pantheon of adorable, Down House is just above a butterfly landing on your finger and slightly below a panda falling down.”Paradoxically, it seemed, Down House’s perfection could potentially be a problem. As Rufca noted: “The only issue with Down House is the possibility of too many people liking it and wanting to be there.”Treadway had tapped Cusack, his childhood friend, to be his business partner — after working at Outback Steakhouse, Cusack had success with helping run the popular Austin coffeehouse Thunderbird. Cusack chronicled the experience of opening Down House — and quite possibly changing the very way less enlightened folk think about eating stuff — on his blog, writing in July 2. A lot of the thrill of doing this is the idea that we’re making an effort at bringing something new to people in town. This is a huge challenge for a city who knows what it likes and isn’t particularly interested in changing its mind about it. But I have a lot of faith in Houston, and I think we can really contribute to raising the consciousness and enjoyment people have with casual dining.”For a general manager, Treadway hit up another friend, Forrest De. Spain, who had put himself through college managing restaurants and nightclubs, and who gave up his NASA engineering job to come aboard. Renowned chef Chandler Rothbard would helm the kitchen.“We got lucky — we got a good location and we got an outstanding chef,” De. Spain says today. He would think that’s hilarious, and that he’s playing this joke on the entire city of Houston, to call it . As pretentious as all the talk of “educating the community” could be, the Down House training manual put customer satisfaction above all else. From instructions on employee grooming and wardrobe (including what style of skirt was acceptable for female staff) right down to rules against smoking or using a cell phone during work hours, Down House demanded professionalism. At the same time, De. Spain says, Treadway — whom he no longer considers a friend — “is very cutthroat and ruthless,” which De. Spain says he found out when Treadway let both him and Rothbard go. De. Spain, who had given up his job and was living off his 4. When asked about Treadway’s relative silence versus Cusack’s love of the spotlight, De. Spain said, “Anytime I see Chris’s name on anything, I’m like, . If you want to know anything, you talk to Joey.”Rothbard was replaced with Benjy Mason, and as Down House’s business grew, so did Cusack’s visibility. In 2. 01. 2, he gave a 2. Bioneers, which bills itself as “a fertile hub of social and scientific innovators.” In a Bioneers statement, Cusack is quoted as saying, “I want to have a clear and direct effect on the farmers and ranchers we work with (and by extension, the plants and animals they work with).”Before long, Treadsack acquired a very old, very low- key neighborhood icehouse, D& T Drive Inn, and spruced it up with charcuterie and a huge selection of craft beer. It was an instant hit. Thanks to Down House’s popularity and Cusack’s surface- level charm, Treadsack was guaranteed good press even when he just talked about opening a restaurant. In August 2. 01. 3, Houston Chronicle critic Alison Cook heaped lavish praise on the company’s forthcoming restaurant Hunky Dory, featuring beloved British chef Richard Knight, formerly of the wildly popular restaurant Feast. In addition to describing Cusack as a “do- it- yourself contractor,” the article’s news peg seems to be this: Treadsack decided upon a location and a “chipper name” based on a David Bowie album — thus establishing hipster cred. Additionally, Cook wrote that Knight was practically salivating over the imaginary restaurant’s imaginary feature — “a very big, sexy wood- burning grill.” Also, “the look will be clean and contemporary, with glass- window walls under wood- trimmed gables that give a nod to the Victorian architecture that persists in the Heights.”But nothing topped Culture. Map’s fawning coverage of Treadsack’s plans, written by food editor Eric Sandler, who would go on to become perhaps the group’s biggest booster. As always, Cusack touched on educating the masses, suggesting that, thanks in part to Knight’s influence, the average Houstonian’s Cro- Magnon palate had evolved to the point where it would not flinch from a foreign flavor profile as if it were fire: “We’re at a nice point where guests are a lot more educated about food. On Treadsack’s website, Benjy Mason stated, “We truly believe that Foreign Correspondents and Hunky Dory have the potential to be interesting and important on a national scale and at the same time solid neighborhood restaurants for the Heights.”The chef would be PJ Stoops, who made his name in Houston’s foodie scene as a fishmonger.
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