71Above, located on the 71st floor of the US Bank Tower, is the tallest restaurant West of the Mississippi River. But getting everything up that high is not an easy task.
Everything the restaurant needs, from toothpicks to cooks’ coats to fish, has to be brought up from the bottom of the building, said executive chef Vartan Abgaryan. This means chefs have to plan ahead and decide what they need beforehand, NBC4's media partner KPCC reports.
The journey from storage rooms to the 71st floor can be a long one. Guests can reach the restaurant in two minutes using two banks of speedy elevators, but there are fewer freight elevators and they tend to be busier and slower. It can take as long as 20 minutes to get to 71Above on freight elevators.
Not expecting that at first, Abgaryan spent a few days coming down to the ground level storeroom consistently before he finally realized he could not keep doing that. So he hired a porter.
