HOUSTON — A West Houston restaurant is still without power weeks after Hurricane Beryl. Its owner says he’s been getting the runaround from his landlord and CenterPoint.
Chef Jimmy Nguyen says he's told every morning that the power will be fixed but at the end of each day, J.A.M. Viet Kitchen on Westheimer is still in the dark.
Nguyen says he is losing tens of thousands of dollars a week and doesn't know how much longer he can hang on.
When Hurricane Beryl hammered the Houston area on July 8, the winds knocked down power lines behind the restaurant, starting a fire that burned shrubs, trees and the fence.
Nguyen said they haven't had power since.
“It was horrible for us,” Nguyen said. “This first two weeks is more like, ‘Hey this is a storm, a hurricane, everyone is going through it.’ But then the third week and days after days, there’s something wrong.”
Since then, the chef has been working to get the lights back on every single day.
“CenterPoint told me one thing, the landlord told me one thing, the city told me one thing,” Nguyen said. “So I don’t know what’s going on.”
When his staff shows up for work, like they did when we were there on Thursday, he has to send them home. Most of them don’t qualify for unemployment.
The chef says he’s losing $30,000 a week without power and not able to do what he loves best.
“We’re not just selling our food, we’re selling our culture, expressing it through our food,” Nguyen explained.
If things weren’t already bad enough, Nguyen says he forgot to renew his insurance policy at the start of last month. The situation has now put his business at its breaking point.
Yesterday, CenterPoint told KHOU 11 that stolen electrical equipment was preventing the linemen from reconnecting power to the shopping center, but that the power would be restored Thursday night.
It wasn’t.
On Friday, CenterPoint told KHOU 11 there was damage to the customer-owned equipment and they're waiting for the property’s electrician to make repairs before linemen could safely reconnect the power.
For two days KHOU 11 has been trying to get in touch with the landlord of the property but has not gotten a call back.
Nonetheless, customers haven’t lost hope.
They keep showing up at Nguyen's door, hoping the power is back.