gritty musings...Bright Shiny Pennies

I don't know if I walk a normal path.  Although I realize that everyone, not just chefs, must circumnavigate a life with more bends than a cavatappi noodle.  The road at this point seems to be strewn with obstacles to joy.  Impediments to the "ultimate success. This last joint, a happy, bubbling, cauldron of gastronomic joy, died far too soon and scarred my heart.. To say I have been bedside at the demise of really good restaurants, would be to deny my laying in the the bed next to the cadaver of culinary dreams.  I have seen more than a few, die that festering slow death  assigned to greasy, roach infested , dimly lit shacks. BUT THEY WERE NOT!  Some died for lack of interest, bad location or economic climes.  Some died from lack of start up capital, the number one killer of restaurant dreams.  Still others died from ownership and or mismanagement.  I suppose it really doesn't matter why they die. In the end, t...

The word is used without regulation.  It is tossed about like "nice" or "delicious".  The term chef.  I have met 23 year old men who call themselves chef.  Line cooks, great line cooks cringe when their uncle introduces them at family functions as "a chef".  It took me years of being in charge of my kitchens to be comfortable with being addressed as  "chef".  The chefs that I had met, on my path were not all great, or talented.  They were not all team leaders, insightful or creative.  But their were a few that set the parameters that I aspire to today. And to me they defined, "chef".   I write this as I bury yet another dream.  Hours of hard work and compromise down the drain in the flush of an owners pen.  Don't get me wrong owning a restaurant is in very rare cases satisfying or rewarding. It is in most cases all about your check book and nothing about the ego or idea that brought them to the table and ultimately, me. ...

came home from another half of the clock days at the restaurant...sparked up and came up with this...  the last time I was in Amsterdam, I did what all Americans do...at least the ones I know...I smoked pot in a coffee house..it was all at once exhilarating and forbidden...My whole life I, smoked stealthily, hidden away...towels under doors...secret hiding places for my stash in my car...eye drops at the ready.  The freedom of the "sensi bar" or the bulldog was so fuckin cool.  I had a friend who got a ticket for smoking on the street, on the grand platz...because it freaked him out to sit with a bunch of stoned strangers in an establishment designed for getting stoned... I can only assume that the pot was really good... and the paranoia grabbed him by the throat.  I bring this up because on the eve of our country finally looking seriously a decriminalization or in some cases of legalization, it will a bright and stony day ahead.  I saw that po...

Its true.  In this age of social media, absolutely anyone can critique your shop, your hotel,  your car dealership  and of course in my case my restaurant.  In one way its fantastic, instantaneous  response to what you offer.  A server is slow, you hear about...drinks weak you get it.  the kitchen screws up you know.  Fantastic right.  Even if you'd rather not know, go to sleep with the blessed ignorance of a job well done, you get to hear it...all of it.  But you know the other side is, the uniformed or mis- informed.  The guy that says all your dressing come from a bottle when they are all made in house, by you.  The lady who says your number 1 sauce on your best selling appetizer is bitter...when you sold 20 of them that night to rave reviews.  I had couple who once said I went too heavy on the mint sauce on my lamb chops...the lamb came with a zinfandel reduction that had absolutely... no mint....

lets take a moment from my normal diatribe...a brief respite from my deep dyed ramblings about all things stupid or conservative...or in other words, republican...cause it has happened, and I knew it would happen, eventually.  like leaves turning their autumnal colors...like the air conditioning getting slightly warmer on my 12 year old truck or my sweet dog walking next to me rather than dragging my arm out of its socket when we go for a walk...it came on slowly, menacingly, until it finally, revealed itself in the mirror.  I am old.  I am older than I remember my dads last birthday party.  I am old enough to tell those stories that made us groan when our dads did it.  with the gray hair in my beard came with stories...the kids that work for me, all in their twenties...listen intently, I'm sure, about the days before caller id...when we answered the phone to see who was calling.  actually fighting with your sister so you could talk to the gi...

lets leave them nameless...lets just stick pictures of  them on the wall... tape em up there.. replete with sharpie mustaches and beards..all the idiots..craning to be heard...standing deliberately in front of cameras and microphones... their you tube legacy...the rep that actually said that the wind is finite..if we put up all dem fancy windy like collectors..we could use up the wind..leaving us well...windless..holy shit...i knew this elected official went to college..probably a frat boy,but i digress...the point is whoa...another one..leading a group of octogenerian veterans to the world war II memorial...a place that honors their generations service in a confligration that claimed most of their best and brightest...he voted to shutdown the government...his employer..and yet he did not know that the momnument, all national monuments would be closed..and then in moment of his own personal zeitgeist...with cameras rolling..lambasted another fed...

So this week has been interesting...lets see navy yard shooting...house republicans pledging to shut down the government unless they can de-fund Obama care...Pakistan is releasing a top Taliban official into the cess- pool that is Afghanistan...I mean what else can we do wrong...or could we as a species do anything right... in a nation where gun violence is only topped by emerging African nations committing genocide...there is a large portion of the populace...voters ..that will fight to have a gun ..in their house..in their car...under their pillows or even in their kids teachers desk drawers...because if only bad guys have guns then we are lost as a country...where were all those gun owners when this guy was walking around killing people... or the asshole in the elementary school..the high school...the college campus...runnin in the opposite fucking direction...the only people running toward the sociopath were our police...the only americans that should possess a weapon...