Quality, Not Quantity

When I started into this crazy career in the food business I was encouraged to move around and experience different things. “Learn as much as you can from different chefs”, they said. “You can learn something from everyone…even the dishwasher”, they said.

What they never told me is that at some point you need to stop that foolishness and stay put for awhile. They never told me that someday I would be judged by my personality and who I had worked for—how few jobs I’ve had and how long I stayed at them. No one ever let on that it really doesn’t matter how talented you are in this business, only how well you are liked and how stable you look on paper.

Now you might already be saying to yourself, “What’s this gonna be about?” Mainly it’s about standards.

I’ll tell you up front. I’m having a hard time finding a job I like. One I respect and can stay at. And one at which I am respected for the time I’ve put in, the dues I’ve paid, and the knowledge I’ve accumulated. Guess what…I never will. That’s what I’ve learned as the boiled down distillation of a 25 year career.

A quote from the revered chef Fernand Point stuck with me very early on; “The difference between a good restaurant and a great restaurant is the sum total of a lot of little things done well.” Fernand Point has been called one of the greatest chefs in the history of modern gastronomy. In the early to mid-1900’s he trained some of the most famous French chefs on record—Paul Bocuse, Alain Chapel, and the Troisgros Brothers to name a few. He is also credited as integral in the creation of nouvelle cuisine.

When I say nouvelle cuisine I don’t mean the minute portions and the artsy-fartsy, fancy-schmancy presentations that TV commercials lampoon and diners rebuke. That’s not at all what nouvelle cuisine is about. Look it up. Anyway, I digress…

The first real chef I worked for, and still the greatest influence in my career, was a guy who rather than attending culinary school, served an apprenticeship at world renowned Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. There he learned, from the ground up, the ends and outs of true 5-Star dining at its best. If something was not perfect it wasn’t served. I’ve eaten there. It was perfect. Every bite.

A few years later I had the opportunity to work for a guy in a small French restaurant who couldn’t cook his way out of a paper bag with a sharp knife and a blow torch, but he had some great stories about training in France. He could talk for hours about the staff of 35 in a restaurant that only sat 50, most of them getting paid little or nothing. You’d start out as a young “commis” peeling potatoes, and if you stick it out and show potential you might in a few months or a year learn how to cut one of them into frites. The chef screams constantly. The best you can hope for in a day’s work is that the chef says nothing to you.

If your food isn’t perfect—your pommes puree is pasty, your sauce tastes flat or doesn’t have a shine to it, or your fish flakes, you have to do it over. It may be a good idea to duck as well, because the plate may be headed your way…airborne. If the chef catches your mistake before it gets to the plate he may raise the baton he carries and give you a whack with it. You may even get a set of knuckles across the mouth if he’s in a bad mood. But if you want to be successful this is what it takes. You put up with it, and you get better.

This is the culture of people who produce arguably the world’s most talented and respected chefs.

In many American cities we have few if any restaurants that would make in a city like Paris or New York. We have a climate of corporate engineered mediocrity. We have food critics that compare rather than judge, and in small towns they can’t be honest or they’d really screw up the economy of the local industry. Truth is most of these people have never experienced excellence. They don’t know that they’re not getting it.

I have been very fortunate to have received excellent training, as well as to have experienced amazing food. If you have never eaten at a 4 or 5-Star restaurant, you don’t know what it’s all about. You can’t. It’s kind of like an orgasm. Until you’ve had one you can’t possibly understand what it’s all about. All the reading, talking, listening, even watching cannot prepare you for it, and it can’t be duplicated or imitated.

I got to eat at Lutece in New York back in the 80’s when Andre Soltner was at the helm, and his restaurant was considered the best in America. It was mentioned in movies. Anyone in fine dining in the U.S. knew the Lutece name. I remember the menu well. It was simple. Rudimentary dishes following the classical menu style and syntax. Caviar, crabcakes, roasted lamb loin with turned vegetables fondant style, salmon stuffed with a pike mousse and wrapped in puff pastry, Grande Marnier soufflé, and a layered terrine of raspberry and blackberry ice creams.

I could have made it sound more exciting, but the truth is that’s what we had. Simple.

I can’t dress it up anymore than what it was, but I can tell you that the flavors, smells, and textures were ethereal. Like nothing I’ve ever had before or since, and I’ve had all of those items many times. If you weren’t there you couldn’t understand.

The next great American restaurant that I remember was Charlie Trotters in Chicago. Five stars as well. Been there. Just the bread alone was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever eaten. Small, round pillows of chewy French bread; the surface covered with tiny bubbles of air encapsulated in crunchy layers of dough that exploded against the palate with each nibble. Kind of like the gastronomical equivalent of popping bubble wrap! I hated to keep asking for more of them, as we chefs usually pick out the level of refinement in diners by their inclination towards bread, but I couldn't stop eating them.

As for the rest of the meal, the freshness, skill, and passion that was put into every plated morsel was unbelievable. This, a restaurant that serves no beef, no chicken, and no broccoli. [Regrettably C.T. does have some foam in his repertoire] Dinner was around 15 courses, each consisting of about 3 bites of perfectly prepared and properly presented fresh ingredients. The service, impeccable. No less than five expertly professional staff members attended our table of two during the 3 hours that we were there.

Hubert Keller’s Fleur de Lys in San Francisco. Four stars. I had cauliflower mousse with a potato chip for an amuse when I first sat down. I can still taste it today, and I’ve never quite been able to duplicate it. I hate cauliflower, except Hubert’s. The dessert I had was the most creative, most perfectly designed and executed plate of food I’ve ever experienced. And I can’t begin to tell you how simple it really was. Merely done well, with immaculate attention to detail.

The au poivre sauce on the magret at Jean Louis’ place in Vegas, to die for. Le Cirque, Vongerichten's Prime, Michel Richard's Citronelle, New York's Union Square Cafe and Aureole, and Charleston's Restaurant Million. All amazing examples of culinary excellence and unwavering standards.

I could have worked at any of them at one point early in my career, and in fact was given the opportunity and declined. I had a chance to work at Le Cirque during the Boulud era, but I folded and headed for my own idea of success, a decision I kick myself for daily. I was offered positions at Gotham Bar and Grill (a new place in NYC that I had never heard of), and at the infamous Rainbow Room. I was offered an introduction to a chef named Jean George Vongerichten at an unassuming little place called Lafayette in the Drake Hotel. Never heard of him. Less than two years later he was the hottest young chef in America, and still today everything Vong does ends up being front page news somewhere in the world. Who knew?

One year I was honored to go to a fund raising event in Charleston, SC where there were 15 or so of the most celebrated chefs in the southeastern United States hawking their wares, signing their books, and showing off their stuff. Honestly, most of it was crap. Too contrived. Too much effort to “wow” the folks and not enough passion and mechanical integrity. Just one man’s opinion.

Emeril Lagasse was beginning to become a household name through his books, but he hadn’t made it to the Food Network yet. Nice enough guy, but his dish was just this side of disgustingly inedible. He was there glad-handing those hoping to say they’d met him, and scooping out this awful crawfish pie that looked like lumpy mud and tasted like salty, mahogany colored papier mache.

In contrast, the then Asian executive chef from the Greenbrier was quiet, humble, and proudly dipping up the most incredible stuff in the room. I remember ham and wild onions (ramps) in a cream sauce ladled over something else. Chicken I think. Simple, but well prepared and excellent in every dimension.

My parents, like most parents, always said, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all”. I had a therapist tell me many years ago that this is one of the worst things we tell our children. I get it now. This is exactly what breeds mediocrity.

Recently I worked for a guy who told me a story about a chef in New York City who sent him to the basement for several weeks to peel and tournet potatoes. Though young in his career, he thought he should be on the hot line makin’ it happen. He thought the chef was an arrogant jerk and swore that he’d never be that kind of chef. The only thing good about the basement to him was that he got away from the chef screaming and throwing things.

My thought upon hearing this story was, “Yeah, but I’ll bet you got pretty good at turning potatoes didn’t you?”

Then I thought, “You’re the prick. You’re the kind of guy that creates an atmosphere of mediocrity!” “You’re the guy that thinks everyone deserves a chance and that there is no such thing as a mistake…just gentle little learning experiences.” [puke]

If someone is not standing over you screaming at you, pushing you to be better than you really are, how the hell are you to ever reach excellence? Will you always just be satisfied with what you can accomplish on your own—what someone tells you is good to keep from hurting your tender feelings?

Well, that guy and I parted company in a short time. We just couldn’t see things the same way.

Seems that I have a talent for pissing people off with my inability to conform to standards that are lower than my own. I think that it’s not so much my difference of standards, but my utter lack of discipline in keeping them to myself that gets me in trouble.

I was reading the story behind Thomas Keller, and how he came to be the chef and owner of what is considered by many today to be America’s greatest restaurant, The French Laundry. Seems that Tommy had a hard time playing well with others too. He went through a string of bad situations where he thought that his boss’s ideas and standards were mediocre at best, and that he could do better. After getting fired over his attitude and living on credit cards until the family was nearly bankrupt, he stumbled upon this charming little building in the middle of nowhere. He got the place for a song, fixed it up, and the rest is history. I’ve never been to the Laundry, but I’m told you have to plan that trip about 6 months out or better. Aspiring young chefs camp out on his doorstep to beg for a chance to work there for free.

I wonder if Thomas Keller, during his European training, was coddled and told, “Your consomme garnish is not uniformly cut, but we’ll serve it this time.” Or, “That sauce tastes scorched, but maybe no one will notice.”

Bourdain tells a story in Kitchen Confidential about screaming at a line cook for the risotto, and the cook just ignores him and keeps cooking risotto. Doesn’t matter to him how long the customer waits—that the rest of the table is in the window. The rice is going to be perfect, and you ain’t gettin’ it ‘til it is. Now that’s what I’m talking about!

When I started out I wanted to be the best I could be. I figured out pretty quickly that I had natural talent, and after a little exposure to “real” cuisine I developed passion. I went to the best school that I could. And I’ve spent the rest of my career resting on the laurels of prodigious knowledge and innate skills. I needed a job so I went to work for the first guy that would hire me—a guy that was happy to serve shit food to avoid pissing off the staff. Then I just repeated that scenario over and over. That’s the secret to my success.

Companies have hired me because they wanted my skills and experience to “take the business to a new level”. What they always fail to realize is that they are the reason the place isn’t operating at the desired level. It isn’t skill, or talent, or even passion that they lack. It’s personality. It’s truth! It’s authenticity. It’s the drive to achieve something that no one else is achieving regardless what other people think or feel. The weak ones will leave, yes, but they will be replaced by strong ones who will be driven to achieve excellence every day.

If the doors open in 20 minutes and the staff has screwed up everything except the frangipane and the coffee, then guess what—you serve goddamn frangipane and coffee. Maybe you fire them all and start over tomorrow (keep the pastry chef).

Disagree? I don’t blame you. It’s a drastic and oppressive way of looking at things. The government will fine you. You’ll spend months in court settling with damaged and offended, frail ex-employees. I understand. It’s tough in our country today with everything run from a remote corporate office, and upper management that has become so sensitive to the needs of the people that they have become functionally ineffective. But just know that this is one reason why there are only seventeen Mobil rated 5-Star restaurants in the U.S. as of December 2008, and only 140 with four stars.

So 25 years later I can say that I have learned something from everyone I’ve worked with—even the dishwasher. And the thing I learned best from the dishwasher is that washing dishes for a living when you’re really young and starting out is okay. It’s a beginning. But when you can’t even get a job washing dishes after pouring your heart and soul into the cooking biz for a quarter of a century…you fucked up, dude.

By the way, those colorful little guys at the top of the page are perfectly cooked baby beets from my buddy's first food show competition! The judges loved those things. And the splash of magenta color on the plate behind them...beet foam. My idea [God bless it].

No matter what, ya don't send it out 'til it's perfect.

Lady Justice & A Shot Of Tequila

“Everyone is crying out for peace, yes,

none is crying out for justice” -Peter Tosh

Turns out that this blog isn’t just about food. It’s also about injustice.

Our business is a unique one. When I was coming up in the food biz in the eighties and early nineties the back-of-the-house in a restaurant was a wild place to be. And fun too. There was always a raging battle going on between the hardcore beer and tequila swilling cooks in the trenches, and the prima donna waitstaff in their pressed shirts and ties with pockets full of cash and cocaine. At the end of the night though all bets were off, all hostilities forgiven, and we were a happy (drunken) family that would close down the closest bar together. Sometimes we’d go home together, sometimes alone. But we’d live to do it again another day—always. And a talented cook or waiter could get a job anywhere, anytime.

Those days are gone. Our world has changed and left no one unaffected. Corporate politics have taken over every facet of our lives and careers. Good for some, not so much for others. I am “others”. The story I need to tell here is a controversial one—the one that no paper will print and no news anchor will recite.

I got fired—again—this time for sexual harassment. A close friend got fired for sexual harassment within a couple weeks of my fiasco. My previous job I lost for ethnic harassment. Truth is that neither of us did anything that merits what our employers’ solution caused, and will continue to cause for the rest of our careers. And we are not alone!

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), in 2006 employers in the U.S. paid out over $48.8 million in damages for sexual harassment claims. $59.8 million was paid out for non-sexual types of harassment. Between the two categories there were 35,059 grievances filed with the Commission. Of those thirty-five thousand plus claims 18,991 were found to be without merit. That’s over half. Those are the folks whose stories are never heard—until now.

In early 2007 I was hired for a lesser position by the largest foodservice company on planet earth. I was to be promoted to a reasonably prominent position within a few weeks but I never was. I was given the responsibilities of that position because there was no one else to take them, but I was never given the title or the salary that went with them.

I was left to manage a demographic of people who refused to rise to the level that was expected of them. They didn’t have to. They had been there for years and would inevitably outlive me or any other manager that passed through. They knew this. And they also knew that the laws of political correctness and human resources would always be on their side. Never mind that our labor costs were soaring, our sanitation grade was plummeting, and our bottom line always had a little dash to the left of it. These people had jobs for life. And they had my boss’s phone number on speed-dial.

The boss figured out that business was rapidly changing for the worse and that I should never have been hired so I was transferred to another property. Now I didn’t want to be there, they didn’t need me, and things just didn’t go well. Accusations of being difficult to get along with followed me and soured the relationship with my new supervisors immediately.

We had in this new location a lovely young administrative assistant from Mexico. She spoke mediocre English, had absolutely no sense of humor, spent the day in her office sending Spanish instant messages to her friends and shopping online. She embellished our financial records and she refused to utilize the time clock to record her hours. She was the person who prepared our payroll and typically paid herself for forty or more hours when she was usually only there for 25 and only worked for 6 of those. Yet, you guessed it...job for life...no matter what!

Each month we received a packet of training materials that we were to present to our staff in a brief round-table forum. This particular month the packet we got included only the Spanish version of the materials. It was this same week that we were extremely slow and bored. And I had decided to quit smoking. This never goes well for me.

Now, I love the Mexican people. I’ve never had a problem with Latin people on any level, but I thought that it was hilarious that we had gotten these posters only in Spanish. I thought, “Heck, I guess that not only is our country going Spanish but so is our company.” I saluted this concept and took a moment to honor my Hispanic friends’ culture. I taped the posters to the wall above the stove. On either end of the line of posters I proudly displayed the flag of Mexico which I had printed off of the internet. And I thought, from my travels in the southwestern states, that no display of Latin heritage is complete without the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe (a specific rendering of the Holy Virgin Mother). Apparently this was not remotely amusing to...well...anyone. Pity.

Three weeks later, long after a formal apology was made and accepted, I was called in to my boss’s office and fired for “creating a hostile work environment”. I was never asked to tell my side of the story. I was never approached by anyone from Human Resources. I was not given the opportunity to face my accuser—in fact I was not allowed to know who my accuser was.

Nearly a year of my life washed away as if it never happened. A job I wished I’d never taken turned into a job that I can’t even list on my resume, lest I have to try to explain this to the next person who won’t hire me because I’m a liability. Twenty-five years in this business...

Reminds me of the poor guy that builds bridges his whole life, yet no one will call him a bridge builder.

But suck just one...

Well, you get the point.

Before long I found myself in another position that paid better and was the most fun job I’d had in years and years. My first day I hired a female server, and a week later our chef hired her live-in boyfriend. She had confided in me that he was abusive and had quite a few personal problems that affected their relationship. We talked a good bit and became friends. She made it known that she had interest in becoming more than friends. I was flattered. I entertained the idea somewhat, but nothing ever happened between us. We had some brief but racy text message exchanges on two occasions but nothing else. She initiated both of those.

All of a sudden one day I was asked by my boss about some comments that I had allegedly made to her. I couldn’t deny them, but I also couldn’t conceal that they were solicited by her. She had called me a couple days before and said that the boyfriend had beaten her badly, and she wouldn’t return to work as long as he was there. He had caused other problems at work so we gladly let him go. Then she shows up with no signs whatsoever of being abused, and accuses me of sexual harassment.

The boss took my side. After he spoke with her and told her of my response she recanted her accusations in writing, admitted that she initiated the dialog between us, and said that she enjoyed working with me and had no intention of carrying this matter any further.

Two weeks later she made another statement that I had done several things that made her feel violated. Not one of those things had I done. Not one! She told my boss that she wouldn’t return to work as long as I was there. He again took my side and advised her that I would not be removed and that all measures would be taken to ensure that she and I were never alone together. The next day that she was scheduled she contacted me to say that she would not be back.

A week later I was fired for sexual harassment. I was not notified of what the reason was or who my accuser was. I was not given an opportunity to defend myself. I was told to turn in my keys and leave the premises immediately.

Two or three weeks later my best friend, who was very successful in his position of over 4 years in a large company, was terminated for sexual harassment. He was not asked to give his side of the story. He was not offered an opportunity to defend himself. He had made a harmless comment to a female coworker a few days before—a comment like thousands that were laughed off regularly in the kitchens of every restaurant I’ve ever worked in.

I got a new job pretty quickly and within a month a tenured (though unreliable and anti-productive) minority employee quit and threatened to sue me for creating a hostile work environment. That’s called harassment. I haven’t heard anything else about that one yet.

Do my friend and I see that we were immature, unthinking, and inappropriate in any of this? Hell yes! But listen, this guy has a wife (who understands his personality and supports him, thank God), and a mortgage. He had a career position for a span of time that can’t be ignored on his resume. He will have to spend the rest of his life explaining this little faux pas to every potential employer that reviews his otherwise unflawed background. To pay his bills he has had to take a job that is unchallenging and pays less than half what he had become accustomed to. And my case is not different.

Is this justice? Have the right people and the right causes been championed?

One legal definition of harassment requires that the harasser be told that his or her conduct is bothersome and asked to stop. At such point which the conduct continues it becomes harassment. With the figures listed at the beginning of this article it is easy to see why corporate America has altered the definition to eliminate any chance for liability.

I guess I just miss the good ol’ days—the days when people looked each other in the eye and settled their differences amongst themselves like adults. If someone is intentionally and repeatedly made to feel uncomfortable or threatened by some asshole with no ethics whatsoever, then that person should take action. Does that person deserve the opportunity to ruin someone’s life because of their inability to communicate their needs and boundaries? Do they deserve a financial reward? Should there be a question on a job application that asks, “Have you ever in confidence filed an exaggerated complaint against a coworker that resulted in their termination, and then hid behind your rights as a minority while you sit on your butt and suck the time clock dry”?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. I’m just asking on behalf of the 54% that are the victims of unsubstantiated claims. These folks will spend the rest of their lives looking for the forgiving employer that will give them the chance to feed their families.

Their accusers will continue punching in at the same old clock year after year, filling a quota, stirring the pot, and wishing they'd have gotten that settlement.

St. Valentine's Day Meltdown

Every chef has a story about one particular day that stands out in his or her career as being the most catastrophic day they ever experienced. I suspect in fact that everyone recalls such an event in their life—that one time that absolutely everything went wrong and everyone knew it.

Well, I’ve had many of those days and unfortunately I can’t remember one of them. Maybe it’s not so unfortunate. But I do remember the biggest train wreck of a job I had, and a series of events and circumstances that led up to the day that might be referred to as the Valentine’s Day Meltdown.

This wasn’t the worst job I had, oh no. I’ll tell you about that one later. This one was actually so chaotic and so well misorchestrated that it was actually a bright spot in my career. [Notice I just created a new word back there. ] One of those opportunities that hurts like a bad tooth, but you keep showing up to see what’s going to happen next.

I was out of work—a common thread in my story. I had a friend and colleague who was French and had worked for a couple of the hottest names in American gastronomy. He had just closed what once one of Charlotte’s best restaurants until he lost interest, and was consulting for a would be restaurateur north of the city aside a beautiful lake marina.

The owner who we shall call Mortie has his professional roots firmly planted in marketing. He owned a seemingly successful marketing firm and the land that it stood on. His areas of expertise were NASCAR and the competition sailing industry. I don’t know exactly where all of Mortie’s money came from, but it was unmistakably plentiful. Why people with money always want to open restaurants with it I’ll never understand. I think one would do better investing in Band-Aid stock and slitting one’s own wrists regularly. Speaking of marketing.

So Frenchie had suckered this guy into paying him an exorbitant salary and he hired me to take over when he got bored or the well ran dry—whichever came first. Turns out they both happened about the same time. I’ll call him Butch, because it doesn’t sound French, and I don’t like the French.

Butch called me up one afternoon knowing I needed to work and told me that this guy, Mortie, owned a building in which a restaurant had recently closed. He wanted to bring some life and some traffic to the marina and he wanted a restaurant, but he didn’t want a series of failing businesses screwing up his vision. So despite his lack of knowledge about the food biz he decided to open it up himself. Bad Fucking Idea #1.

He hired a crack team of consultants, and they hired a guy to be the Chef and Manager of the place. Bad Idea #3. Now this cozy little place had once seated about 80 people on a good day and had a tiny little kitchen that could probably keep up fine with the 30 or 40 meals they actually put out from day to day. Mortie, under the expert guidance of Larry and Curly, expanded the seating to about 250 and was projecting sales of $3 million his first year, which was actually Bad Idea #2. A place doing that kind of business serving 14 meals a week (lunch and dinner everyday) needs a Chef, perhaps two Sous Chefs, a General Manager, and likely two Assistant Managers and a Bar Manager.

That guy didn’t last and no one else wanted the job. What they failed to do when they tripled the dining room is to enlarge and upgrade the kitchen. It was still ill-equipped to service fifty or so. They did gut it, painted it, and outfitted it with all new equipment. I could have made a really nice hot dog stand with all the stuff they bought. Pity. They had decided to split up the managerial responsibilities between Chef and Manager, and no chef they talked to called them back after seeing the kitchen plans. They were four weeks from opening and without a Chef.

That’s when my broke, desperate ass showed up thinking I was the damned cavalry or something. That was the final bad idea. Everything that happened next was merely the inevitable continuum of shit that happens when ‘shit happens’.

They sat me down in front of a set of blueprints and asked, “What do you think?”

I studied the well-thought-out layout of equipment, walk-in coolers, storage, prep space, and aisle space. I looked for practicality, efficiency, thoroughness, and “flow”.

“Well”, I said, “I’m not sure this is going to work.”

“You’re not the first person that has told us that and we need to get going here. We open in four weeks. Why won’t it work?”

“For one thing, where do you plan to put a trash can in the kitchen?”

“What? A trash can?”

“Well, yeah...you’re going to produce trash aren’t you? Where are you going to put it? Every inch is accounted for here and I don’t see a trash can or a place to put one.”

“Ummm”, they muttered quietly.

“Are you going to have carpet in the dining room?”

“Yes”

“Where are you going to store the vacuum cleaner? I don’t see a closet. Where are you going to store linen? Where is the staff going to hang their coats in the wintertime? State law requires that liquor and wine be stored in a securely locked location. Where is that going to be? I don’t see a liquor room here.” The list went on and on.

“My god”, they exclaimed, “We don’t know what to say. You’re absolutely right. What will it take to get you on-board today?”

I gave them a minimum figure and a list of things that needed to change in the infrastructure before I even considered the challenge. We sat down with the owner and within 20 minutes the contractor was tearing down walls at my request. I was on-board.

When all the smoke cleared about three weeks later we had a kitchen about twice the size of an average walk-in closet. In it was one 10-burner gas stove with two attached ovens and a 12-inch wide griddle—standard equipment, one deep fryer, two sandwich station countertop coolers, a 24-inch char grill with the spacious capacity to simultaneously grill off about 4 hamburgers and a banana , two six-foot prep tables, and a 4-well steam table. We managed to fit in a slim-line trashcan at one end of the hot line.

At this point I had made enemies with all of the consultants and about two-thirds of the owner. They were the guys that had made this mess that they were underpaying me to straighten out, and I couldn’t resist letting them know it. I had made pretty good friends with the boss’ secretary, but that’s another story!

The menu was coming along. Butch had written a menu with the help of the guy that I replaced but I wanted my food on it. After all, I was gonna be the one doing it. He was going to be out of the picture in a few weeks and I didn’t want to be left with someone else’s legacy. Chef ego thing mainly. Mortie wanted everything that he had ever enjoyed in a restaurant on his menu. One of my favorite comedians, Steven Wright, once said, “You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?” Exactly!

The restaurant manager was Mortie’s next door neighbor, and he had managed a Steak & Egg Kitchen about 12 years previous. His name was Sammy and he was a hopeless but amiable drunk. He connected quickly with my disdain for Butch, and allied with me often in battles of gastronomic theoretics against the Parisian rapscallion. Unfortunately Sammy knew about as much about restaurants of this type as I do about quantum physics—which ain’t much.

My staff was comprised of local folks from up around the lake. The lake is much deeper than the vicinity’s labor pool. I picked up a Sous Chef from a reputable place a couple towns over. He knew food and we clicked pretty well. The rest of them were very nice people and I was lucky to have them, but the lot of them combined knew fuck-all about good food. The one smart move I made was hiring one Mexican dishwasher that spoke good English. If you’ve got one of those you can get through most anything in this business because he’ll have an endless supply of kitchen help. Some of them will work hard, some won’t. Just gotta be careful not to get their Social Security cards wet.

We had a meeting to decide when we should open. Mortie had pretty much committed himself to Valentine’s Day, which was on a Friday that year. The consultants all agreed, mainly because that’s what they were being paid for.

If you’re in the restaurant business, which Mortie wasn’t, you know that there are 3 days that stand out above all others as the busiest days of the year. No one I know looks forward to Mothers’ Day, New Year’s Eve, and Valentine’s Day. Of all of the 365 days available to open a new place, Friday and Saturday be damned, February 14th is not a winning number. He wouldn’t hear anything else. He wouldn’t let me run a limited menu. He wouldn’t hold off a few weeks on lunch and Sunday brunch. Full menu—full on. Valentine’s Day!

“Don’t worry,” Mortie says. “It will be a soft opening. We won’t advertise. Just a little word-of-mouth, family and friends.”

The next weekend there was a half-page ad in the newspaper with a full length picture of me and Butch in chefs’ whites. “Join us for Valentine’s Day”. Priceless.

About ten days out the place started filling up with staff, food, beer & wine, and problems. No one had thought of a separate cooler for beer. My walk-in cooler was 2/3 full of beer and 1/3 food and I hadn’t gotten in half of what I needed yet. The nightmares I warned them of were coming true faster than anyone could count them. My primary food vendor was getting rich off of the smallwares that I kept adding on every day. There was nowhere to prep the food, nothing to store it in, nowhere to put it once it got prepped, nowhere for the necessary staff to stand to do the work, and not nearly enough hours in the day. We started buying precut steaks, fish, and vegetables because we didn’t have time or space to cut them ourselves. It seemed like the kitchen was getting smaller and my staff was getting stupider every day.

Butch told me that he’d rather he’d broken his own arm than to have brought me into this deal. I just smiled—kind of like the guy in the movies that’s about to have his lights put out by a thug twice his size, and he knows that there’s nothing he can do. The only thing going for me was that I had three gorgeous waitresses hitting on me and everyone loved the samples that were slowly starting to materialize. The excitement was building as if something really amazing were about to happen, but I knew better.

The last piece of equipment got put into place at the eleventh hour. The last food delivery came. The last storage container we had got filled up with something. At 11:00 am on Friday February 14th, 2003 the doors of the Lake Café opened wide. The next 36 hours were about the most intense moments of my life.

For lunch we served a hundred people. I remember Butch trying the soup just before the curtain went up and saying, “The kid can cook after all.” The consultants were no where to be found. It was pretty ugly. Jesus, how hard can it be to cook a hundred burgers & fries, chicken wrap sandwiches and Caesar salads in 3 hours? Are you kidding me? Would you want to show up on an unfamiliar battlefield with the enemy 40 yards out, your rifle isn’t loaded, and you’ve never worked with the guys on either side of you? That was lunch.

I had worked for the last week and a half without a day off. I had ordered roses from the produce company to hand out to all of the ladies. I took a break between shifts to ride 30 minutes into town and deliver a dozen roses to my girlfriend’s doorstep. I stuffed them in a milk carton that I found in her trashcan and cut in half. I stopped by my favorite cigar store and picked up a half box of Cuban Partagas’, and headed back for the evening onslaught.

I don’t have the words for what happened next. 50’s comedian Dave Gardner portrayed it best in a story about a motorcycle crash where there were, “teeth, hair, and eyeballs all over the highway.” To be honest I blacked out. I remember people waiting an hour-and-a-half for their dinner. Why they waited I’ll never know, but they did and they loved it. I remember Mortie wondering what was taking so long, and why he and his charming devil wife had not gotten special preference. There were tickets hanging everywhere and pans of food lying on the floor under the coolers. I don’t think we ran out of anything, but it all had to be re-prepped for Saturday. We served 200 people the hard way.

Apparently the bar and the waitstaff had worse problems than we did. Saturday morning saw new beer coolers being brought in—the bar redesigned “on-the-fly”. Kegs were booted out to make room for another service area. My stable of foxy waitresses had all gone home with someone else, and my girlfriend hated me for getting her produce company roses. Mortie was pissed. I was disheartened and wounded in every sense imaginable, and my staff had that look that you see on a dog when you raise your hand and he thinks you’re going to smack him. One of my dishwashers didn’t even show up for Day 2.

A couple weeks before there had been a massive snow storm. Just outside on the highway on-ramp that led away from our place there had been an accident. A car had lost control and hit the guard rail. A paramedic was kneeling beside the open car to help the driver to safety when a truck swerved too close and took off his legs. I was starting to feel like he was the lucky one compared to me.

Saturday night was a little better than Friday. The numbers were the same but it went much smoother. Mortie had insisted on having stone crab claws on the menu. I had gotten a ton of them, but he had two or three and found them too hard to extract from their shells and a bit flavorless. I had my dish staff lined up for three hours ripping and plucking the meat from the shells with cocktail forks and paring knives. What a disaster. We turned it all in to Florida Stone Crab Spring Rolls. Not bad but not popular.

We finished up late, having depleted our supplies once again, and readied ourselves to show up the next morning for brunch. Sunday brunch has got to be the thing I enjoy least in the world of food. I would rather have my eyes gnawed out by goldfish than cook Sunday brunch.

Due to a sudden ice storm we served something like 18 people. Two of them were Mortie and his devil wife. He came back to the kitchen to complain about how fatty the bacon was. I was serving the most expensive and best applewood smoked bacon I’ve ever had. It comes from a small family-owned smokehouse in Wisconsin, and costs more than twice what any other bacon costs. I had heard about as many of Mortie’s criticisms as I cared for and I let him know it was time to stop that crap. Actually what I said was that I would be happy to cut the fat out of the bacon, but I would have to triple the price of it to compensate for the loss in volume. He called me a “smartass”, and that was the last conversation we ever had.

Monday morning I was not nearly interested in driving across town on frozen roads. The restaurant would be closed anyway, so I took the day off. Much needed! Tuesday morning I was met at the door by Sammy. I’d seen that look in a man’s face many times before and since. I knew it like the back of my hand. I was about to be set free from a bondage of which I knew no equal. Hallelujah! Sammy himself proclaimed me “the lucky one”.

Over the next couple of months I kept in touch with the Lake Café vicariously through my vendors. As soon as I left they hired 3 people to replace me. They promptly began construction on all of the projects that I had recommended. One day I stopped by during lunch. Less than three months into operation they were replacing the carpet throughout the dining room during the lunch rush! The original floor covering, though elegant, was designed for residential use and was worn out within a few weeks.

A month or so later the consultants were let go, and a couple months after that Butch was let go and got screwed out of some of the money they owed him. As far as I know the place is still doing well. I ride by in the summertime and see the patio full of people. I guess they found a way to make it work. Good for them!

The Perfect Salmon

A couple of weeks ago I was asked by a coworker to contact an old family friend and past client to arrange a menu for a high-end dinner.

Really I’m not sure how to refer to this coworker. I was recruited into this position by a professional and somewhat personal acquaintance because the lady who has managed this company, heart and soul, for the last 6+ years has left something to be desired by senior management.

She is the sweetest woman a person could hope to meet, and I suspect that without her this company would’ve fizzled out long ago. However, like most people, she does have some characteristics that if dwelled upon could drive one to violent tragedy—not unlike the mythological Sirens that caused sea captains to crash their ships onto the rocky shores. I personally have a hard time not dwelling.

Nonetheless, I was hired to take her place. She hasn’t left, but I digress.

The aforementioned client, a wealthy widower of nearly 90 years, was hosting a dinner party to celebrate the end of an annual internship that he sponsors for Christian young people at a certain university. These are really nice kids that have taken summer internships with various “help” organizations, ours being one of them. He apparently puts on this soirée each year, but usually at a local club or restaurant which was not available this year—enter our Sirenesque friend.

After a brief and deliberate conversation on the phone (in which he did most of the talking) I scribed the following menu.

Warm Crab Salad with Marinated English Cucumbers, Tomato/Basil Macedoine, and Horseradish Vinaigrette

Baby Field Lettuces with Roasted Beets, Walnuts, Green Apple, and Oven-Dried Grapes in a Goats’ Cheese Vinaigrette

Braised Beef Short Rib in Merlot Demi-Glace with Butter Poached Lobster, Pappardelle, Stanly County Butter Beans, and Roasted Pepper/Almond Romesco

Poached Spartanburg County Peach with Watermelon Soup and Blackberry/Cabernet Sorbet

Why I didn’t see this coming I don’t know.

A couple of days later Lady and I (Desolation Row) stopped in to meet our client at his retirement community hacienda and review the menu with him. As we entered the house I was abruptly made aware that I would be in charge of nothing. “She’s the boss. I don’t know you and I don’t even know your company’s name, but I trust her.”

These people just come into my life. I’m like some kind of magnet for assholes.

So here’s how it went...

Asshole: “What’s wrong with Shrimp Cocktail?”

Me: “Nothing sir, be glad to.”

AH: “I think the salad sounds fine. Let’s do that”

ME: “Great!”

AH: “These people are going to be eating off of TV trays and I don’t think we need anything that has to be cut with a knife. How about a nice piece of salmon?”

ME: “I don’t typically suggest fish for groups sir, unless you are positive that everyone likes fish.”

AH: “Good point. But there is nothing like a nice piece of salmon when it is prepared properly.”

ME: “Let’s define properly, because to me properly cooked salmon is served rare—a cool to barely lukewarm center.”

AH: “Oh no, no, no. It has to be cooked. Listen, just last week I was at one of the finest restaurants in New York City with a very sophisticated woman who knew how food should be...”

ME: Thought [OK, at least you’re kind of admitting you don’t]

AH: “...and she sent her salmon back because it wasn’t cooked enough.”

ME: [She showed them I guess. Did it ever occur to you and Miss Fancy Pants that ya’ll know fuck all about fish?] Smile

ME: “Salmon it is sir. Grilled. Well-done with mashed potatoes and asparagus.”

AH: “Gotta get that little asparagus, not the big ones.”

ME: “Of course sir.” [Only the best for you and yours.]

AH: “Now let’s talk about dessert. I like this peach thing, but what’s wrong with just a plain half of a peach with some sweetened whipped cream. I can’t see putting all of this other stuff in there to dilute the flavor of the peach.”

ME: “I suspect you’re right. Happy to do it for you sir.” [Now why did I never think of that?]

I thought of “Alice’s Restaurant”.  You know the song... “the judge walked in
sat down with a seeing eye dog, and he sat down, we sat down...Obie came to
the realization that it was a typical case of American blind justice, and
there wasn't nothing he could do about it, and the judge wasn't going to
look at the twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy pictures with the
circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what
each one was to be used as evidence against us.”

It was a humbling hour of my life, but I got through it and I was reminded that the customer is always right. Well, actually the customer is quite often wrong, but he is the one paying the bill and when it was all over I got a hundred bucks a person for this little shindig! His menu turned out to be a lot easier to pull off than mine was anyway.

The old guy ate about two bites of each course. Still couldn’t stop talking.

You Can't Make Chicken Salad From Chicken Shit

This blog is supposed to be about food, or at least my relationships with food and people who like food, or don’t like food. Right now it’s about people who I don’t like and people who don’t like my food. That’s pretty much where my head is right now and I’m fed up with the bastards.

Now I don’t pretend to be perfect (that’s a lie too), but some people are just damned hard to please.

Some days the best way I can describe the relationship I have with my career is summed up by an old live Frank Zappa recording. In an impromptu backstage snippet drummer Terry Bozzio exclaims, “I can’t take it anymore...my hands ache...I feel like I’ve been pounding nails, I feel like I’ve been hitting my goddamned hands with a hammer”

I manage a small catering company. It’s a new job for me. I very much like what we do conceptually, and I believe in our mission. We help people, we employ people, we feed people, and we teach people to feed themselves and others.

We’ve have an account with a coffee counter in the lobby a busy uptown building. Three days a week we fill their display case with sandwiches and salads. One of my first days on the job I had the opportunity to make the delivery of lunch items to the espresso “kiosk” and meet its manager. The owner is a hands-off type and only exists by telephone.

Ms. Manager, who I will call Suzie Creamcheese, is a frumpy little woman in her late forties, seemingly of Native American descent. She is quick to let anyone know who’ll listen that she’s been in the food business for 35 years, though nowadays she whiles her days away on a tiny stool, telling war stories to her underaged coworker and stepping out for a smoke whenever she can. Her assistant is a culinary student at the revered Johnson & Wales University, which pretty much makes him about the most knowledgable culinarian in town.

I have nothing against JWU. I certainly have nothing against formal culinary education—I have one myself. But since arguably the nation’s largest culinary educator opened a flagship campus in Charlotte, our fair city is overrun with overeducated, under experienced, smart-assed, knife wielding, snot-nosed kids that will do good enough work for half the price of some of the seasoned and talented chefs in town that need jobs. Our culinary scene has gotten much larger, but not much better. And now I’ve got this kid, who I shall refer to simply as Paul, to brighten my day with his perfunctory wisdom thrice weekly!

So I ask these folks how things have been going for them. I want to get a feel for what our clients think of our services. Suzie, who seems nice enough at first meeting, says that we have been experiencing a great deal of inconsistency. I assured her that we’d get a handle on it. Not to worry. To myself I’m thinking that this woman is going to be blown away by what we’re going to turn these utilitarian products in to.

The next day I brought in a digital camera and a notepad to methodically document each and every item as a gastronomical delight that could easily be reproduced. I made pictures, wrote specifications, and mounted them all in a nice, neat booklet for our staff and students to use. The next day I returned to the shop with a big box of refined goodies looking forward to the ooh’s and ah’s.

What I got was pronounced skepticism and more complaints of inconsistency. Rather than show pleasure at the improvements, Suzie assured me that these items would never look like this again, and that they were very different than what they were used to. Paul just looked on with a silent expression confused between “finally” and “you guys suck”.

The next delivery a couple days later saw complaints that the salads were not what Suzie thought they should look like. She didn’t like the non-traditional arrangements. Lettuce was cut too small. Sandwiches had tomatoes when they never had before.

Our next delivery I got complaints that the lettuce we used on salads was brown. We use a mixture of fresh cut Romaine and Green Leaf lettuces with a base of pre-chopped Iceberg. The precut stuff is usually pretty good, but if it is a bit old it can look great in the bag but turn reddish brown on the edges within a few hours of oxygen hitting it. Oops.

The next delivery brought dismay over wet lettuce. It seems that the romaine we used in the Caesar salads was not properly dried prior to packaging. We have this tiny little POS (piece of shit) salad spinner that would maybe be good for temporary storage of your sister’s hamster, but not worth spit for drying cut and washed lettuce. We’ll do better next time.

The next time I barely got in the door when Suzie handed me the remaining halves of two chicken salad sandwiches that supposedly had been returned by two different customers on the same day. I suspect that Suzie and Paul had attempted to eat them for lunch and thought we could do better. Our signature chicken salad, it turns out, has been a concoction derived from Robot Coupe chopped chicken breast, mayonnaise, dried tarragon, and toasted pecans. Yum! A generous portion of this delightful poultry paste is then heaped up between two pieces of whole wheat bread with a half-a-piece of lettuce adorning one side. I had added two slices of tomatoes which pissed her right off.

We happened to have a couple different kinds of whole wheat bread lying around and I apparently chose poorly—she complained about the bread. She complained about the chicken salad. Said it was mushy and flavorless. My response was, “I know it is. That’s why I changed it to a nice hand-chopped chicken salad with fresh vegetables and herbs, but you didn’t like that one either so we went back to the original recipe [you stupid whore].” I didn’t say the “stupid whore” part. I took the chicken salad sammies off of the bill for that day.

The next delivery—oh my God—as soon as I got in the door I heard, “Paul found a hair in his Caesar salad.” To which I responded while stifling a belly laugh, “I’m sure he did”. “I don’t know what could have happened. We all wear hats in the kitchen. I don’t know what else we can do.”
“Would you like to see the hair?” she asked.

“Nope, that won’t be necessary. I’ve seen hair before.” I wished them both a good afternoon and started for the door.

Just outside it occurred to me to go back and view the offending strand. Paul had placed it ever so carefully into a two ounce plastic soufflé cup and put a lid on it to await my inspection. No telling how long he'd waited for this moment.

I pulled out the hair, a strand about two inches long and decidedly reddish-brown in hue. “Paul, what color would you say this hair is? I think it’s light brown. Would you agree?”

“Yes, I would say that it is brown,” remarked the impetuous little shit.

“Well, this presents a problem,” I added. “Our staff is black. They don’t have straight brown hair.”

“So, are you saying that this is my hair?” asked Paul, his face swollen and red as if he was about to attack.

“No Paul, I don’t know whose hair it is. I just know that it didn’t come from us. Ya’ll have a nice afternoon now.”

Thank God we won this one!

Two more deliveries in a row were perfect. Not a word said.

This whole thing reminded me of a summer I spent as the Executive Chef of a private golf club in the North Carolina Mountains. About half or better of our membership were retired Jews from Florida that came up for 3 months out of the year to beat the South Florida heat, play golf everyday for less than half-price, and taunt the townspeople with their stereotypical “chosen people” rig amoral. Their behavior was really more akin to inciting riots.

Among other relentless issues with these people I fielded questions and complaints about our menus daily. I could write an entire blog about these people, and may one day. I was particularly perplexed about frequent complaints that I got about our scallop dishes.

We got beautiful silver-dollar sized dry-pack scallops, and we changed the preparation almost daily. When you have a captive audience you have to change things up frequently. Now we’re hundreds of miles west and thousands of feet above the nearest scallop bearing seas, and the product we brought in was exemplary—the point being they weren’t cheap. However, I was committed to a 40% food cost across the board, so our mark-up was fair and consistent.
Every night someone complained that the scallops were underdone, overdone, too cheap, too expensive, don’t like the sauce, the sauce is great but not enough of it, ad infinitum. For awhile we couldn’t even give them away so I prepared to run out and drop them from the menu. That’s the day they started selling and we ran out. Complaints galore. Then it occurred to me that Jews aren’t even supposed to eat scallops. Oye Vay.

After a run-in with a particularly difficult club member, the whole scallop fiasco prompted me to scribe the following addition to our weekly newsletter. It was never actually published, but it did make its way around the company email with magnificent reception. It became a club mantra for the rest of that summer.

From the Chef,

Hi Folks. Just a quick word about scallops. Here’s what we’ve heard from you about scallops here at the club.
“Why are you out of scallops?”
“I came here just for the scallops and you’re out of them. Now what am I supposed to do?”
“The scallops are underdone!”
“Why do the scallops cost so much?”
“The scallops are overcooked.”
“I had scallops last night at Stonewall’s and they were outstanding. You don’t know how to cook scallops.”
Guess what. NO MORE FUCKING SCALLOPS.
Apparently Stonewall’s does a fair job with scallops. Go get your goddamned scallops at Stonewall’s.

So, this past week the owner of the uptown kiosk called to tell us that she has sold her business and that the new owners make their own sandwiches and salads. So guess what!

NO MORE FUCKING KIOSK!