High Season

by Jim Hearn

  Soda didn’t say much after Jesse died. He just got more and more distant and, of all of us, he seemed to feel most responsible for what happened. He and Jesse had had an unspoken bond. He knew Jesse needed us more than he liked to let on. The younger chefs looked up to Jesse, he was the leader of their pack, and while he might have spent most of his time pushing them away, telling them they annoyed him, everyone knew he was nothing without them.

  Soda didn’t speak at the funeral or talk to anyone at the wake. He just hung around with a drink in his hand until he thought it was acceptable to leave.

  Like a lot of chefs, Jesse didn’t rate his family experiences all that highly. And maybe that’s why certain kids are drawn into hospitality in the first place: to create a space that represents the home they wish they’d had.

  The last thing Soda said to me before he got on a bus out of Byron Bay was that he was finished with cooking. He was going to try something else for a while. I never did see him again. I figure he found his way to a new place and found a niche somewhere, like people do. Every now and then I catch myself thinking about him, wondering how life turned out for him after Rae’s.

  It’s not for everyone, the uniform of a chef. Restaurant kitchens are a world apart, cultural spaces with strict hierarchies and military traditions that are driven by passion, creativity and the eternal need that human beings have to eat and drink. Each day is a new challenge, starting again with fresh deliveries of produce, meats, seafood and dry goods. And it never ends: the restocking, cooking, menu planning, baking, sifting and boiling. It’s like living in a constant state of becoming; like soon, everything is going to be organised. Only it never is.

  Choc didn’t stray far from home. He moved to another restaurant in the area. It was a good joint, with honest food, and no doubt he’ll continue to learn and do well. The menu he’s cooking now is Mediterranean rather than the modern Thai we were doing at Rae’s. And Choc will be a better chef for having worked with another cuisine. Of all the kids, Choc was the one who was most stable. He had a mother who took an interest in everything he did. She was concerned for his wellbeing and was capable of predicting when he was about to lose the plot or crash and burn, and she took it upon herself to communicate with me about his limits and thresholds. The difference it makes for a kid to have a parent who is prepared to engage with the world on their behalf can sometimes be the difference between life and death. Not that any apprentice I’ve ever met wants their mum or dad embarrassing them by turning up to work unannounced, but it’s a fragile time, those first few years out of school. The rules change and not everyone makes the transition as well or as easily as they thought they might.

  The thing with Choc is that because he was such a good kid, he could slip under the radar at Rae’s. He had the personality that never went searching for the spotlight and it paid to pull him aside every now and again and insist he answer a few questions about what the fuck was going on. Every time I did that to him he got anxious, worried that he might be in trouble. But he got used to it and I think he even came to appreciate having a chat about various things; about the latest menu item in his section or where he was heading in life, questions about how cooking school was going or if his piece-of-shit car was still running. It suited him to do a large chunk of his apprenticeship at Rae’s, which as a kitchen managed to function around some personalities that rolled with very squeaky wheels. He was able to experiment with a lot of different things and when those things didn’t turn out quite right, no one noticed until he’d fixed them up.

  There wasn’t a great handover between crews. Vinnie understood. He didn’t expect me to go back at all after the funeral and I didn’t really, at least not with any conviction. I sorted through some stuff, picked up my knives, gathered together my books and recipes, and faded away as the new crew started boiling stocks and sauces and complaining about the grease behind the stove.

  Carla stayed on and became expert in all things Rae’s—the link with the past. It was Carla who rang me after I’d left and drew various recipes out of me and asked about different cooking methods that involved pork belly or soft-shell crabs, silken tofu or oxtail. Her value to the new crew lay not only with her knowledge of all the local suppliers and where everything came from, but also with her ability to provide vital information about how Vinnie liked things.

  It’s weird how a crew falls apart, how after all the effort to stave off chaos, everything just swirls about and changes anyway. And just like everywhere else I’ve ever worked, there was no stopping it at Rae’s. But the upside to that realisation is the knowledge that hospitality is not so much some giant grinding industry as a time and a place created by a group of people. Restaurants come and go. None of the restaurants that I started out in twenty-five years ago are still around today. And in that light, it’s not so much the industry of hospitality that has any real permanence, but more the life stories that sustain it. Chefs and wait staff and their creativity, their efforts and capacity to gel as a team, coupled with some architecture—a time and a place—describe what hospitality means. Hospitality is a people’s palace, a space for our various bodies and their various needs. For the crew putting it all together, it’s about hard work and impossible dreams, perfection, pleasure and the best of times.

  Vinnie is still running things at Rae’s. As a location it has lost none of its unique charm. I dropped in not long ago and the place was cruising along, like a palace beside the seaside might, like it has for the last fifteen years. Vinnie was the perfect host and it’s a credit to him that he maintains the energy and enthusiasm to fuel his dream of what the best of hospitality looks like.

  Sitting out in the restaurant again was cathartic. It was a perfect, blue, sunshiny day and the only thing missing was Scotty. Vinnie had sacked him—again. The news didn’t surprise me and probably didn’t surprise Scotty.

  ‘You’re not giving Scotty time off, are you, Vinnie?’ I asked him.

  ‘He’s not coming back,’ Vinnie said sternly.

  ‘You were always too good to that bloke,’ I said half jokingly, shaking my head.

  ‘The food’s a lot better too, since we got rid of you, Jimmy,’ Vinnie said, in front of the new waiter he was training.

  But he couldn’t fool me. I could feel the love.

  And the food that the new crew were doing was good. It wasn’t as good as when we’d been kings. How could it be? We were the greatest. We created a time and place and our very own sense of how the best of times should look and feel and taste.

  Vinnie and I didn’t talk about Jesse. What could we say? That we loved him? That we still thought about him? That we wished he’d talked to us about what was going on? Of course we wished those things. But none of life’s dramas are as important as we think they are when we’re young, when everything’s new for the first time. And you can’t tell a kid who’s keen to find things out for himself not to go where we’ve gone, not to touch the things we touched or feel the things we felt. No one could have stopped me doing anything until I was ready to stop. It’s just that I was lucky and Jesse wasn’t.

  I’m still standing by a six-burner stove. I’ve moved a couple of times to mix things up. Alice won’t let me get too stuck in one place any more. She’s happy enough hooked up with a Teflon cowboy. And you never know . . . next time you’re out to dinner and things are going okay, it just might be me or one of the guys pushing out the plates.

  Acknowledgements

  Sometimes in life there is nothing as important as finding someone who believes in you. My sincere thanks to Sean Barry, Mark Cherry, Tony Lewis and, especially, Alice, Kit and Sonny for believing in all my crazy dreams.

  Many thanks to the Transforming Cultures Research Centre at UTS, in particular, Anne Cranny-Francis, Meredith Jones and Katrina Schlunke, who keep insisting I do nothing but my best work, and for lighting up unseen pathways.

  I also need to thank Baden Offord at Southern Cross University for his generosity of spirit, inspirational teac
hing, and Zen leadership. Many thanks also to Janie Conway-Herron, who, as head of the writing program at SCU, was instrumental in me starting this story.

  My sincere thanks to all the chefs I’ve worked with and met along the way. In particular, Heston Blumenthal, Jerome Clarke, Kylie Day, Cameron Gibb, Marty Gibb, Andrew Gimber, Zac Latinovic, Andy Wheeler, and ‘Jesse’, ‘Choc’ and ‘Soda’. I do also need to thank one waiter, which is not easy for me . . . but life is short, so, thank you Scotty Wilson.

  I especially need to thank Vinne Rae, who, as owner and executive chef of Rae’s on Watego’s, was generous enough to let me tell it how I saw it.

  For their hospitality, goodwill and practical support, many thanks to Antony Alekna, David Bromley, Wendy Broome, Luke Burless, Greg Commerford, Barry Evans, Sue Hines, Marie Hook, Fiona Inglis, Rebecca Kaiser, Ali Lavau, Pippa Masson, Julianne Schultz, Erica Sontheimer, and especially Louise Thurtell, without whom, there would be no book.

  I also need to thank my parents, for many things, but especially for having the grace and goodwill to let me tell things my way.