WHERE I COME FROM: PART 2

Food is art and lying to your dad

Let’s just get right to it. This next part of my career I was sort of in limbo, as I most often was, in my life. I was in grad school because during the recession that’s just what you did, pushed off the real world until hopefully shit figured itself out. I had gone my first year of graduate studies living off my savings and waiting to start another summer season down by the beach. However, as my girlfriend warned me, graduate school and not working at all for 9 months were not astute financial decisions a 23 year old should be making. Like always she was right. So instead of going back to the little restaurant by the sea, I decided to look for yearly employment. I threw my resume, what little there was to be said for one besides college accolades, internships, and half truths, at any opening that looked about right for someone with a degree in American History. There were not many, and after only getting solicitations from insurance companies offering me the chance to “make as much money as I wanted to make”, I was about ready to walk into the surf.

My girlfriend was working at a hotel on an island about 40 minutes from where we were living and the restaurant on the ground floor was re-opening soon and she had chatted to the chef that her boyfriend could wash dishes and had some cooking experience. He gave me a call and I figured why not. This would be the first instance in a long line of instances of this industry somehow always take care of me. I went to meet the chef and his sous chef, we agreed that I would start out back in the dish pit 4 days a week to accommodate my schooling, they offered me 13 bucks to wash dishes and I said yes faster than a bullet train. I didn’t know it then but that summer was going to be infinitely formative for me and was my first steps on a path I would never truly leave.

So first off, I shouldn’t just pass on the Chef’s like they’re not the central part of this story. See, these two chefs would be my first real, Chefs. Looking back all cooks have a list of influential mentors; CJ and Ronny were mine (names changed for reasons, you know who you are)

A quick intro to CJ and Ronny. They were sort of kitchen life partners. Ronny followed CJ kitchen to kitchen and was always his sous chef. Sort of the dream scenario for most chefs, finding that one guy that stays loyal to you. CJ was a professional, long in his years by Ronny and I’s standards, already in his 40’s, we called him Old Man , or the Old Wizard. He had sort of done his partying and restlessness and was looking to actually start making money and grow his career. A corporate hotel gig made sense to him. Ronny on the other hand was, well, Ronny. If Bruce Dickenson had a bastard son it was him. He sang everything he did, smoked black and mild singles like he owned stock, and made it a point to always run specials with beers so we could keep six packs in the walk-in. The fucker could cook though, they both could. The perfect yin and yang, a classically trained cook and the kid who used to change tires down the block.

Not to skip over much but it wasn’t long until I was again, out of the dish pit. CJ worked sauté, Ronny worked grill and a strange little man, we’ll call him, Mitchell, worked the Garde manger. CJ and Ronny knew I could do more than wash dishes and our nearly identical senses of humor had meant they’d taken a liking to me. It also helped that they sort of hated Mitch, and saw me as his eventual replacement. I had been covering his station on his days off as well as by this point, the other stations on off days as well. I remember Ronny helping me come up with a salad special for a Friday night that Mitch was off. It was my first special ever, my first chance to get creative in a kitchen and with food. Prior to this it had been nearly four years of “yes chef” and a strict adherence to the recipes and ways of doing things.

I’ll never forget that special and all of it’s mid - 2000s glory. It was a melon salad, honey dew, cantaloupe and watermelon, balled into spheres, served with goat cheese, herbs and a lime vinaigrette. It even had two parallel lines of paprika and turmeric running the width of the end of the rectangle plate. I look back on it and scoff, laugh even at how horrible it was by today’s standards. But, that was the start. I had learned my moves at the previous joint, how to be a cook, how to be efficient and work the job. This was the first time I saw food as art.

A few months passed and I split my time between dishes and covering stations, until CJ was offered the restaurant manager position, with Ronny being moved up to executive chef. This meant there was time for some shaking up. There was no way Mitchell was going to get promoted to sous chef, but he of course thought he was. Ronny didn’t care that I could only work 4 days a week and offered me the job and gave me 16.75 an hour, the literal most money I had ever seen in my entire adult life. Mitchell was obviously not pleased by this and started slacking more than he already did. After one night of asking to leave early and me obliging so long as his station was stocked in case we got a push, I discovered, when 6 items from his station were rang in that he had not stocked it for me. I ripped the top off the deli cart and tipped the entire unit over onto the floor in anger. I instructed no one to clean it up. Mitchell saw this the next day and put in his two weeks. It was march, and summer was fast approaching.

I expected the summer to be intense at a resort hotel in a vacation town, but I didn’t know it would be a ride on a pirate ship. I spent every day I wasn’t at school in the belly of that old hotel. Smoking anything we could find and drinking twice as much more. I slept in the linen closet a few nights to open the place back up in the morning rather than risk the commute. I told myself I was being responsible and a mountain of cook’s whites are a lot more comfortable than you’d think. I loped my finger off at the knuckle and went back to work the next day there too, the HR generalist wanted me to take 2 months off to heal and had me sign a waiver of services when I said “no fucking way”. We put out weddings and brunches for hundreds, all the while chuckling gleefully at the pissed off locals who didn’t understand our modern menus. We didn’t care about getting good revues or even customers for that matter, we were fucking rogue artists, the world didn’t get what we were trying to do. Or so I am sure we told ourselves. I had gotten really good at hurling plates at waiters too, something I am not proud of today, but we we’re god damn professionals and offenses to the food were not to be tolerated.

There was one time, Ronny and I came in early to do a wedding breakfast, we banged it out and by noon had nothing to do until regular service at 5pm. We were stocked up on prep and since it was just me and him covering 3 stations and only 3 reservations on the books, we decided we needed to “prepare” for our slow night. We were going to be pushing 18 hours so best be lubed up we thought. We told CJ we were going to the Tavern to get lunch and we’d be back by service. The tavern in question was an old Portuguese American club and served “white handle” for 1.50 a pint. White handle being whatever the cheapest beer they could get that week was, name not provided. Ronny and I spent about 20 bucks each and headed back to the hotel.

I do not remember a single thing after we entered the kitchen doors to when CJ told us last table had sat. It was a complete and utter black out, Ronny included. We may have called my girlfriend at the front desk and demanded Choco-tacos but that’s hearsay. We went from 3 tables on the books to over 90 covers with walk-ins that night. Ronny and I thought for sure we were cooked, we had fucked every table and we were bent, no way around it. CJ comes down the stairs at the end and says we fucking killed it, perfect service, everyone was beyond happy. Ronny leaned over to me and said “It’s like lying to your dad” gave me a pat on the back and started wrapping his station.

My time at the Hotel would come to an end when the company sold the property and shut the kitchen down. But I will always remember that in that small little basement kitchen I learned that food could be art, that color is important in plates, that flavors that defy convention can be extremely tasty when bent and not forced to fit together. I learned what I could get away with too and how to be a pirate. I was still in grad school, telling myself the cooking was just for the money. But, I was learning, cultivating skills and refusing to just be passive, I wanted to be the best cook there was if I was “forced” to do it. I miss those times, and those two cowboys, my liver and better sensibilities? Not so much maybe.

Coming soon

Where I Come From Part 3: A craftsmen and a punk