My Culinary Career

[RAT900]

I realize fine food and dining is a popular topic on this board and I thought I would make a meaningful contribution to the subject by sharing my efforts to master the culinary arts......

I worked in a restaurant back in the early 1970's at night while I was in school....the Robinhood Inn in Upper Montclair....it was a nice looking venue that was set up for both casual diners and formal banquets. The kitchen was staffed with some of the finest examples of society's misfits, misanthropes, drug addicts, drunks and perverts...actually the staff could have easily represented a cross-section of any given urban area prison populace or a US Post Office. Needless to say I fit right in at the time.

Lou the head broiler chef was a huge man over 6 feet tall and 4 foot wide...he had been discharged from the Navy...we didn't know under what circumstances that discharge was conducted but we all had a few guesses.

Now Lou had 3 main passions in life...Jack Daniels, pornography and masturbating in his car in the parking lot..... a talent he had no doubt perfected or mastered while at sea in the Navy. We knew of his third guiding passion in life because he was witnessed by a young waitress coming into work one afternoon, she saw him at it fast and furious in his car and he saw her looking on in horror,,, in response he smiled at her...the waitress said he didn't even miss a stroke...discretion was not Lou's forte and evidently nor was embarrassment. Lou spent all his breaks in his car in the parking lot.

The reason I remember Lou so clearly is that he was at that point in time the most frightening example of sub-humanity I had the displeasure to witness....life has long since served up far more egregious examples for me to recall.... Lou spent hours carving slabs of beef off standing racks of prime rib roast. Throwing the slab in the broiler until done to order and slapping it on a plate for the waiter to take out.

The one thing that outraged Lou was a returned item...if any rib or strip steak came back as undercooked or insufficient in some way Lou, like any highstrung artist would become fully unhinged, well given the amount of Jack Daniels they metered out to him,,, I should say he became "further unhinged"  Lou the meat handling artiste' did not like his critics

I remember him taking a returned prime rib by the end of the bone and sliding it under the elastic waist band of his checkered chef's pants....moaning theatrically as he slid it around before slapping it back on the platter unchanged for re-issue...oddly enough it did not come back a second time...I watched all this transpire nightly from the end of the serving counter at my pot washing station

Then there was our dessert chef...an impeccably manicured gentleman of good manners, perfectly coiffed silver-gray hair, flawless skin and complexion at least in his mid-late 50's. Intelligent, mild and very soft spoken...

he made your flesh crawl when he smiled...I am not talking about someone "giving you the creeps" this guy really radiated some bad bad energy through a very mild packaging...you instinctively would step back...everyone in the kitchen felt the same way about him...everything looked fine on the exterior but there was something inherently, primally "wrong" about him...everyone has secrets but you just knew this guy had secrets with roots in some twisted hell that would probably defy your worst imaginings...I shiver just writing about him...despite his unoffensive overall presentation...he made you feel like you needed to take a shower after dealing with him

But I digress,,,,,,, one weekend when I was working, they were doing a wedding banquet of 250 folks in the main room. It was getting close to time for the soup serving....the trays of cups were stacked high, 8 cups to a tray,,the pitchers were ready to be dipped into the vats to pour out the trays for a stream of waiters that would swoop in pick up a tray and head out to serve them....quite a precision production....

I was sent downstairs to bring up several 30 gallon pots of chicken consommé off the warming stoves...I go down there and look at this array of full pots on the stove....all filled....they all looked to be filled with some kind of chicken-smelling juice and I couldn't figure out which ones were the consommé so I grabbed the ones that were overwhelmingly chicken flavored and brought them up....out they went in trays within minutes....folks were actually complimenting the waiters on how good and thick and rich the consommé was...

The head chef wanders up from the bowels of the basement and goes to the head waiter and says "why isn't the consommé out in the main room yet?"...

head waiter replies..."it went out and they all loved it"....

head chef says "its still on the stove downstairs what the hell did you serve them?"....

they both look at me...

I offer that I grabbed the really dark chicken-looking stuff....

It turns out that it was pure clarified chicken fat/grease that was poured off of the pans used to roast a few hundred chickens every morning...they left it warming on the stoves for the dog food companies to come by and pick up and use in their processes

The head chef turns back to the head waiter and says "so they liked it huh?"

head waiter replies "yup some wanted more".....

they both start roaring with laughter as the head chef peeks out at the crowd through the swinging door port hole...

within 20-30 minutes there are lines forming outside every rest room in the restaurant as 250 peoples' digestive systems reacted to the thorough greasing they received...

castor oil has nothing on chicken grease when it comes to "promoting regularity".....

I became a legend in the kitchen as the guy who made 250 people all want to take a crap at the same time ....lord knows I may have killed a few with clogged arteries as well...

I still consider the event to be one of the defining achievements of my life

[Kopfjager]

So, Did the Chef serve that consommé again? 

[RAT900]

No but he made a point to never send me downstairs to bring up soup vats again 

[Kopfjager]

No but he made a point to never send me downstairs to bring up soup vats again 

[NoisyDante]

 

Excellent tale.  Doesn't make me want to go to a restaurant in the super near future, but I will once the mental image of Lou goes away.

[lethe]

mmmm, now I hunger for chicken grease

[Howie]

Uh oh!  Gotta check, but I have a cousin in law who, I think, managed that place.  Name rings a bell.  I ate there too, I do hope he made things better   Small world.

[RAT900]

Uh oh!  Gotta check, but I have a cousin in law who, I think, managed that place.  Name rings a bell.  I ate there too, I do hope he made things better   Small world.

Well we're talking 37-38 years ago and he could only have made things better...I hope 

[ducpainter]

I've never met a broiler chef that didn't get all pissed off when a steak came back.

For you well done meat eaters....enjoy your deep fried steak.

[The Architect]

Kind of reminds me of this movie.

Waiting Trailer

[zooom]

yes...I was reading about Lou and thought about "Waiting" also...excellent movie...a must see...

I was thinking though...when I opened the thread...there might be some amusing quip that went something like "I blew up a hotdog in the microwave and I gave up after that"....

[RAT900]

yes...I was reading about Lou and thought about "Waiting" also...excellent movie...a must see...

I was thinking though...when I opened the thread...there might be some amusing quip that went something like "I blew up a hotdog in the microwave and I gave up after that"....

no hot dogs but I will offer that one should never microwave a Twinkie...

the filling turns into molten lava...the roof of your mouth will turn into an enormous blister in seconds

a hungry drunk can do some real damage to himself if given the chance

[Pip]

Sugar is an amazing substance when superheated in its various forms.

[cyrus buelton]

Gerard,

You are never a disappointment.



That was one of the funniest reads ever.

[zooom]

no hot dogs but I will offer that one should never microwave a Twinkie...

the filling turns into molten lava...the roof of your mouth will turn into an enormous blister in seconds

a hungry drunk can do some real damage to himself if given the chance

but a deep fried twinkie is pure awesomeness!...especially when paired with a lil drizzle of chocolate sauce and a scoop of vanilla ice cream!