Hey kids. Been busy and working on several projects simultaneously. Today ( just moments ago) I had a customer state “the chef, you, didn’t notate the menu properly. There are no tables to suggest gluten free dishes.” Hey fuck you! Just because you are a shit head with a sense of self entitlement and baring a genetic defect doesn’t mean I should should put a gold star next to everything you might not die eating. And as a side point, if I notated my menu for every disease of the month club sign up, vegitard idiot, vegan moron, fucking, “I don’t like pork” ass hole who flops down in my dining room I would do nothing else. It’s your defect and or (more likely) choice to not eat something. you do the research. I am and will not be you research depart and facilitate your “I’m special” idiocy. You want to be sure what’s in your food? Cook it and eat it at home. Assuming you are allowed near open flames. If not, join the raw food movement and again stay the fuck away from anyplace I work, dine and for that matter… Breathe. I am sick of you taking up my air and polluting it with your worthless noise. At least the occupy idiots living in a tent in the park have the decency to scribble their moronic gripes on cardboard signs. If (and that’s a big if) I want to read said sign and can decipher the moron code spelling errors then I can. Or I can ignore them and close my eyes. You loud mouth fuckwads that come into the public realm need to flap your gums about how everybody should bow down and worship at the temple of dumb and I for one am done listening. I’m done. Shut up or don’t. I no longer acknowledge you the second you start saying something stupid. Got it? Good!
Later gators
Flying has so become glorified bus transport. People just stopped trying and nobody expects anything better. This zone boarding shit is annoying and once they have herded you onto your flying can the service gets worse. This isn’t news to anyone. But, I do want to talk about my flight crew on this particular hop. First there is the woman whom I am guessing would be Nannette. Who the hell is named Nannette? Was she born in 1903? Anyway, she is the obvious lust baby of a turkey and Carol Burnet’s hair… In 1974. I want to be present for the conversation that precedes her getting this oh so not flattering patch of tightly curled ugly. “Yeah I want to look like a standard poodle left it’s ass on my head.” And where would you need to go in order to find a “stylist” willing to provide such a nasty disservice? Arkansas? Hell?
Then we have the horribly named Princelle. I have nothing more to say about this. Well, I do actually, but to her parents. What the fuck? Ok, I‘m good. Now there’s the other one who I think is named Stephanie. She’s average enough save for the rip in the back of her pants that is only accentuated by the sheer size of fore mentioned posterior. Ok, I come from a long line of chunk but little Guinea women. I am no stranger to the big ass. That being said - “Where did you get that thing? Was one of your parents a Studabaker? Why doesn’t spell check have a suggestion for Studabaker and how the fuck do you spell it? I will have to ask Jay Lenno. Is it Lenno or Leno?
Now for the pilot’s pre flight announcement. First this twangy twit sounds like somebody who may have hosted Hee Haw and also has an alliterative name. So mumble mouth drawls his way through the usual weather and wind conditions in… Wait for it… Hotlanta. Fuck you. Really? Hotlanta?! He then proceeds to tell us our “rattle time to (yes he says it again) Hotlanta will be one hour twenty minutes.” Again, a big what the fuck dude? Rattle time? Please don’t use terminology that suggests this finely tuned piece of flying 31,000 feet above the ground machinery is in any way rattling. Anybody remember the movie playing in Airplane? Yes the one with all the planes crashing. It’s kind of like that. He then introduces the co pilot and a lesbian tennis player pops her tightly quaffed Billy Jean King head from the cock pit (I still giggle when using said term) and waives. I’m starting to think this is a time machine and not an airplane and when we do finally land in Hotlanta everybody will be wearing bell bottoms and grooving to the sweet dulcet tones of Peter Frampton and carrying around a pair of roller skates. I feel like they are going to start handing out the duck callers any time now. What happened to decorum and a modicum of professionalism? Did it go the way of the dodo and the book with actual pages?
I just noticed the chick across from me is doing a jigsaw puzzle on her laptop. I must get me one of those. Later kids.
Saturday March 9th. I sit naked on my leather couch amidst clothes strewn about the floor that will soon be inhabiting my red rolling suitcase. Everything has been packed away and the car will not be entered till the morning of March 20th when I make yet another trek across the country back to the homeland, LA. A bottle of Tinto empties into one of my two wine glasses and I ruminate on the past 7 months and the next three weeks. I am here alone save for Ivo and my mostly non memorable memories of Chicago.
Oh Chicago you are such a disappointment. Lackluster and master of mediocrity sums it up. Tomorrow a car will arrive and take me to New York to film a new show and my new position in LA starts in two weeks. I will, nonetheless, be returning to Chicago to continue my journey with Chant. I am hoping for the best and dreaming about showing the people of this little burgh how to eat and tip. It is an exciting time and it ends here as it started. Thinking this is up to me to make great or fuck uo and blow off.
So, stay tuned for the rest of this little chapter and hopefully more pages of frolic and enlightenment in the land of LA. 
I built a pyramid of junk and rust beneath my feat. I climbed high and reached for the face of deities. I mocked the soil below and laughed at the follies of mortals as I wept over trivialities. My heart swelled and my laterals grew wings of paper that fluttered in the wind of my speech. Only to burst in conflagration bound to the ground I so tempted to reel me in. The rust crusted shit fell frail and my foundation of lies collapsed. Oh to build my pyramids again. Fuck it, lest dreams fail us mortals and give hope to the dreaming dead. Oh fuck it again.
Well since it’s never going to snow in Chicago I am in a rotten mood all the time. Snow is the one thing I knew would be great here. And, in true universal fuck you mode, it just gets warmer every day. But the comings and goings of some fascinating clientele is making for some good networking and eventually the customer base we need to make this change work. Making change work is a group activity. It’s not like you just wake up one day and say “I’m going to build a real restaurant instead of serving poisonous shit.” and the public comes running. Quite the opposite. Whenever you make a change in some thing the general public has accepted you know they will be running. Just out the door rather than in. This flux is expected but the extent of hatred and derisive speech you will garner is never a constant. The past months have been a bumpy road of dealing with snarky staff and dirt bag customers that love to write to you and tell you how awful you are and how you have personally destroyed their favorite thing in the world. This words on a plastic screen world allows people who can poke out a semblance of a sentence think they are fucking Hemingway. Spouting their worthless opinion and low brow expectation of life on whomever might have the misfortune to act as the reluctant reader. Low expectations are the cancer that is eroding society. People expect and love mediocre shit. The idea that change is bad and the knowledge that the first step in said change is admitting something is wrong is just too much for most to swallow.
Now yesterday requires mentioning. There was a flood of new faces in the restaurant and not your general batch of reprobate. Families and professionals and single 20-30 types looking for and finding the kind of fare not available in this geographic nightmare of a neighborhood. Nobody told me South Chicago was a wasteland of culture bearing an island of weirdness owned by the University of Chicago. But, these people who want and need change made their opinions heard. One after the other people SPOKE face to face with me and presented me with a very refreshing validation that there is hope. Anyway, this isn’t the most fascinating rant in this series of venom fueled pontificating, but it is warranted. When the good peers out of the curtains of evil idiots one must notice and acknowledge the difference between those who type (liberal definition applies) and those who speak. The bond of actual conversation and the exchange of ideas is valid and needs saving. It is, in fact or just my opinion, why great food is so important. It is the opportunity to sit and agree or disagree or just bitch. But it is the time and place to develop ideas and share witht the people around who will form your tomorrow.
Go team yay!
Hi kids. Been busy dealing with the idiocy of the holidays and trying not to gun down anybody in a fucking Santa suit. When did it become ok to believe in and propagate lies? Seriously, I just don’t get it. People always talk about how much they love their kids and yet have no problem wrapping a hundred lies into a box, adorning it with a bow and plopping it under a tree. And yet this is the main rehearsed (and doled out since it places blame on somebody other than themselves) reason people claim to participate in the holiday nonsense. “It’s for the kids. They love it.” Yeah? I bet they would love mountains of cocaine and hookers too! Who wouldn’t? Anyway, when anything is run from the bottom up you can expect poor results. Which brings me to my actual topic.
The customer is always right. Are they? I don’t think so. Say you are going to have surgery. Are you going to instruct your surgeon on how they can best suit your needs? No! Maybe you saunter into your mechanic and start spouting off about how your Grandmother’s third cousin twice removed invented the wheel and the automobile and therefore you should consult me before performing any of your mechanic duties? No! Fuck no! So then why is it that any self entitled twit with half an opinion can plop down in a restaurant and start telling the server how to instruct the kitchen to do their job? Chefs have their position for a reason. And not just because it’s one of the only professions that is still ok with bad cocaine habits, drinking heavily and fucking random staff members in the broom closet. No, we are chefs (most of us at least) because we trained and learned and worked our way up through the kitchens and classrooms of reputable establishments and learning institutions. Chefs write menus for a reason. The things they put together make sense and fit into a budget and the storage space and the skill level of the guys on the line. When you sit down and immediately start the dismantlement months of planning and preparation it is to your detriment. Nobody goes to the museum and starts asking for all the art to be moved to suit their whims and predilections. So why do it to a restaurant? It’s the reason vegitards and vegans (or any other food hating terrorists) should be shunned by the general public. The tolerance of said self entitlement “I’m special” behavior sets the example that restaurants are now all there for you to write your own menu. Let me say to my fellow chef types and restauranteurs. Let’s stop letting the kids run the show from the bottom up. If you want to write a menu than get the training and get hired in a restaurant. Other than that. Sit down and enjoy what is offered. You might find you are much happier.
Or not
Now deeply submerged in my now not so new venture in Chicago I look at the pieces that are ever changing in this puzzle of chefdom and life. Having gone through this many times it never becomes old hat and is one of the few things that cannot be formulated and put on a spread sheet. The people are always the variable in this equation. The effect your new cooks, servers, ownership and customers can and will have on your success and the time it will take to get to that goal of being a sustained machine of a restaurant.
In that I would be re missed to not point out the culture that makes up the ever changing pieces. Be it the available product that forms the pallet or the history of shit that comes between bread that gets passed of as cuisine forming the pallets of the people with whom you work and serve. The mounting stress that one day breaks like a wave of reality that some people aren’t getting it because of the things they grew up eating and believing are food. Like how can anybody eat a well done steak? This will never make sense to me. I would sooner starve in the desert than eat some grey plank of carbonized shit. I know there are things out there that I will never understand or like. Say petrified fatty shark in Iceland. It is, to this day, one of the most unswallowable things to pass my lips. But, I have this desire to grow and understand everything that comes by. I guess this may not be the case with everybody. The ability to stay tethered to your neighborhood, flaccid ideals and antiquated belief system are enough for some. So, work around it I will.
Then there is the personal equation. I am miles (thousands of them) from those for whom I care. My friends and family and even my dog are removed from my sphere of existence. This has never been that big of a weight since I was never thiking I would be someplace long enough to worry about it. Also, I met really interesting people everywhere I have been. The giant aquavit swilling Finnish viking in Finland, the panther ring wearing Honk Kong money launderer and for sure criminal in Shanghai, The cocaine snorting gigantic hit man from parts unknown in Prague, The globe trotting Chinese art collecting mad genius attorney in Philly… And now four months into my stint in Chicago I have one friend and a lot of alone time. The pizza is an abomination seemingly cooked up in the back hallway of an abortion clinic. The hot dogs come with relish that seems to have antifreeze as a main ingredient. The idea of culture is fat guys running into each other on a football field. Music is jazz or 80’s industrial throwbacks. It is strange and a reminder that the most foreign place may be in your own country. Now I don’t really fit in most places. But I really don’t fit in here. People look at me as if I am parking my space ship on their lawn and fucking the family pet. Every sentence is met with a look of confusion and the paused face of someone trying to find euphemisms for “are you insane.” Growing up in California you hear about the Midwestern types and figure it’s just a stereo type that will be disproved with further analysis. Well, I plan to further dig into this place and find the jewels that have been hidden for all this time. I will find a good pizza and have a conversation about something other than a boring sporting event. I will meet somebody as fascinating as the rest of the lunatic wonderland I have collected everywhere else.
I’m putting this puzzle together one way or another.
I kind of have to right?
A few of my my photos have been published in the winter issue of Adirondack Review:
Hey kids. The voice of reason from the depths below here. I know y’all are probably sick of me writing about the definitions of words and the lost art of speaking with eloquence and well, fuck you if you don’t like it. Read another blog about needle point or poodle breeding techniques of the Algonquins. I, my friends and spectators, will write about what I see fit. And again it is the meaning of words that so perfectly describe the meaning of life. I actually believe if anyone wants to know the secrets of the universe they should be handed a dictionary. “It’s all in there son.” Que the spaghetti Western soundtrack and the shots of distant desert sunsets and read the fucking thing. Use what you learn. Wow, I digress.
The definition of inspiration is this: The process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, esp. to do something creative: “flashes of inspiration”.
I am going to add my own two cents on the matter as I feel I have said liberties since, as established earlier, this is my blog. I think there is an emotional component to inspiration also. I suppose this component is implied in the fore mentioned definition, but I want to further clarify. Yes, you must be mentally stimulated. This impetus can come from anywhere. That being said, it is the spark of mental wanderings that cause you to arrive upon the emotional flame of actually creating something. I really don’t think anything worth creating stems from purely intellectual beginnings. I just don’t.
I also believe that inspiration can come in the form of much needed and welcomed support to continue on the path of creativity and passion. I am close to getting to the point here so keep your pants on. I myself am not wearing any pants. But, that’s another blog altogether.
Early in my culinary career whilst attending school I met someone who would become and who still is a very good friend. Honest, supportive, funny and mildly insane. You choose your friends your way and I will choose mine this way. We attended school together and single handedly destroyed most of the furniture in quite a few bars in San Francisco. After parting ways we kept an ongoing dialogue and still do. Here in lies the inspiration. While slaving away in a union hotel that will remain nameless. Have I mentioned how labor unions are the downfall of the international economy? Discuss. I really reached an point of frustration and futility that caused me to question my career choice. In one of our usual conversations I began to bitch and whine like a little girl about how fucking miserable I was and how this just wasn’t worth it. The response from Jim Wimborough, chef of his own rather tasty joint in Berkeley now, was this. “When did you become a pussy? You get paid to play with food and hang out with crazy Mexicans.” From that point in my career on I have yet to utter a word that would even suggest discontent with my career choice. Yes, this is a tough business and an even tougher life said the guy with no pants sitting on a couch in a mostly empty loft alone in Chicago. But it is, by my estimation one of the most honorable and satisfying things one can do with their lives.
With this belief I have been and done more than the average bear. I meet other chefs, restaurant owners, high school kids looking for a career in something they saw on tv… So, as I see it, I have the duty to inspire those who fall into my sphere as I have been inspired by others. I don’t fully know the extend of my influence and inspiration on others but I do know this.
Driving to work the other day (and this is what got me onto this rant) I receive a facebook message from a restaurant and bar owner and used to be neighbor of my nightmare restaurant in Philly. Heather DeRussy, Owner of the Institute bar in Philadelphia dropped a few kind words on me about food philosophy and giving her the “inspiration” to do what was right and make her piece of the world something of which she and her family could be proud. Now I am not the type to kiss and tell, but this was a surprise to me and felt really good. Given the fact that she met me in the midst of running a restaurant that would end up costing me a large chunk of change due to it’s untimely demise and the propensity for Philly types to gossip more than a bunch of Jewish Grandmothers, I was pleasantly surprised.
Anyway, to pull all of this together I will just say this. If given the choice, I think we would all do a few things in life differently. Yep, no argument there. But even in the failures there is the possibility of giving something intangible and invaluable to somebody else. the creative and strong and probably bat shit nuts people in the world that keep company with the birds of a feather somehow find a way to uplift and stimulate each other to do what is right, beautiful and human.
I am so happy to be part of that circle of people who just get it done while creating the world’s only truly necessary art form. It ain’t always pretty but it sure as fuck feels good sometimes.
Autumn is upon us my children. Oh such a fanciful feast of blueberry foam sky and golden cranberry leaves performing their inadvertent ballet. The crisp chill in the air that hints at winters impending flurries. We can all sit quietly and pen our redemption songs or stand in the wind and rage wildly like the disenchanted. First let us stop and repose and take a moment to rest before we hold what is dear to our breast. This season of change that reassures the world will go on without us and that the things created today will linger in our absence. Every word chosen and dropped from bristling lips are a legacy to the future and the small talk of the passer by.
This is my favorite season and the time to channel all feelings of despair into fulfillment of dreams yet realized. To take a moment to hope for romantic notions and found affections and wax nostalgic on the wreckage of the past. So as an interested spectator I take stock of the yesterday and gird myself for the tomorrow. The necessity of change and the smell of dirt in the air tempering my melange of experience. Lest I not become like the blowing leaves. splendorous in color and driven
by the outside forces of winds that blow.
