Have Blade Will Travel: The adventures of a traveling chef

by David Paul Larousse

  Early the next week, I marinating the pork, pickled the vegetables, and began preparing the Crispy Fried Duck, an involved process that began with poaching the ducks, then pressing them into a sheet pan twenty-four hours in advance of frying. I ran around like a maniac, trying to squeeze everything in between my normal duties, and looking forward to the glorious Chinese-style buffet that was to result.

  On Sunday morning, I arrived early to start assembling the mise-en-place. As the other members of the kitchen staff began wandering in, I grew uncomfortably aware that they were definitely not aboard. As the realization of my predicament sank in, I picked up the pace, working furiously to get everything done on my own. I had to scrap some of the lesser items, just to get the primary entrées out on time. The rest of the crew just sort of hung around, nonchalantly going about their business.

  It didn’t take long to identify my error in judgment. I had forgotten that East Bay Lodge was not so much a restaurant as a food factory, designed to produce enormous volumes of New England-style food and sell it to as many people as possible during the four-month summer season that accounted for most of the year’s revenue. The core of the kitchen staff were locals who lived the rest of the year mostly on what they earned working like maniacs during the short tourist season. Merely providing the summer clientele with its usual feed was hard enough, without complicating the job with a weekly change of menu. From the kitchen staff’s point of view, the only sensible approach was KISS – Keep it simple stupid.

  From the management’s point of view, the primary purpose of the Sunday buffet was to use up the leftovers from the previous week. Some extra dishes were added, of course, such as the cold items Mal and I put together, but the hot foods consisted of odd creations like Beef à la Deutch – last week’s roast prime rib diced into chunks, simmered in reconstituted brown-gravy-powder, garnished with chunks of green bell pepper and onion. The fresh fish fillets that hadn’t been used were lined up in hotel pans, topped with paprika, butter, sliced lemon, then broiled. Other dishes were improvised out of shrimp, scallops, pork chops, or whatever else was around that would lend itself to a hot buffet item. All that should have been obvious. Any low-priced “all you can eat buffet” is a way of unloading foods that might not pass muster during regular production service.

  So I took no offense at the way my co-workers had abandoned me, but wrote it off as another course in the school of hard knocks – Industrial Kitchen Realities 301 – Remember the Bottom Line. I was pleased to have convinced the ownership and chef to let me try something new, although I now suspected they had known perfectly well what the outcome would be. They had probably enjoyed the spectacle of watching me bounce off the walls, running back and forth between the cooking line and the reach-in refrigerators, frantically hustling to meet my deadline, while they stood back with arms folded – literally. Their laughter indicated that once again, the status quo was the way to go. To this day, I do not dine at buffets.

  With the passing weeks, I slipped into a routine. My hours in the kitchen stabilized around sixty per week. The rest of my time was pleasantly spent playing guitar, exploring long stretches of beach, cycling around the Cape, and unwinding after work with my co-workers. New friendships were formed, with varying degrees of intensity, function, and form. I pursued a waitress, a long, tall redhead by the name of Virginia Elizabeth Clark, but she pined after an ex-boyfriend, whose lack of genuine romantic interest in her only fueled her desire. My persistence paid off briefly, one night, when she yielded to my overtures and we spent a glorious night wrapped in each other’s arms. The next day, however, she went back to hankering after he ex, while I spent the rest of the summer wondering if she would ever wake up. I wrote her a poem straight from my heart, very Dylanesque as I recall – hand-rendered calligraphically, and gave it to her one night at work. She read it to Gail, another waitress and compatriot, and they both wept effusively. I was rather flattered, but still, it did not win me her affections.

  Gail was gorgeous as well – brown-skinned, bright-eyed, sultry, and possessing a powerful peaceful presence. Richard, the zany pantry man, and Malcolm, along with Gail and I, struck up a sort of Four Musketeers fellowship, based in part on our shared perception of Manager Ricci and owners Bob and Leah Keston. All four of us saw them as incurably self-serving, usually at the expense of the dignity and sensitivities of the staff.

  After work, the Musketeers often made a quick dash to The Fox Hole, a nearby pub owned and operated by a Vietnam War veteran. There we would unwind over draft beer and Sombreros (Kahlua + vodka), and discuss the behavior of the restaurant management. Smitty, the teenage-mutant-dishwasher and his team of youthful plongeurs (dishwashers) often joined us. They were a lively and energetic bunch, a couple of years younger than us, a sort of lost generation. I sensed in them a great starvation for basic love and affection – two qualities not easy to come by in New England culture.

  Smitty was the undisputed leader among his peers, and despite his frequently stoned-out condition, he demonstrated considerable people skills. As the summer wore on, we were surprised to discover that he was also quite the entrepreneur. On busy nights at the restaurant, the chef or sous-chef would send him to the freezer – located outside and to the rear of the kitchen – for everything from back-up provisions to frozen items that required overnight thawing. On his run back from the freezer, Smitty would periodically and covertly stash a couple of frozen prime ribs of beef under the wooden staircase that led back up into the kitchen. Later, in the early morning hours, he would return and move the ribs to the trunk of his car, then wholesale them in the morning to the owner of another local restaurant. (As the solo dishwasher, he was the last man to leave the restaurant, often at 2:30 AM.) We were enormously amused to learn of this activity, and considering how the management treated us, Smitty's thievery seemed like a perfectly suitable form of rough justice – a bit of retribution for the Pork Parmagiano and Non-dairy-Whipped-Topping Chocolate Mousse. We also cautioned him as to the legal consequences if he were to be found out. But, well-liked as he was by everyone, including the chef and owners, he was the least likely staff member to be suspected of pilfering, as well as the most likely to be let off with a warning even if he did get caught. As for me, it was yet another valuable lesson – this time about the perils of operating a restaurant.

  There were still more lessons to come. One afternoon, I was dispatched to retrieve some frozen puff pastry sheets from the freezer. Since I only expected to be there a few seconds, I went out into the freezer without bothering to don the communal freezer jacket. But the freezer was in its usual mess, and I still had not found the pastry when Richard-the-zany-pantry-man came in to get something for his department. I had left the door ajar when I entered, so he just walked right in, then slammed it behind him when he left. I quickly walked to the door and pushed the inside handle, a simple rod designed to lift the heavy latch on the outside. The handle clanked around uselessly and I suddenly realized it had stopped functioning, probably worn out from years of use. My heart sank, and my blood pressure shot out of orbit. “Christ,” I thought, “another goddamned mishap in the industrial environment!”

  I banged on the door with a fist, and bellowed, hoping someone would hear me. Fat chance. The door was six-inches-thick. I wondered how long it would be before someone came out to the freezer, how long it would take me to freeze to death, and which would come first. I had walked in wearing only a cook’s jacket with a tee shirt underneath, and was well-drenched in perspiration from the hot kitchen. Within minutes that perspiration had turned cold and there were tiny ice crystals on my mustache. I ran to the other end of the freezer where a fan blew frozen air around the hundred-foot square space, located the plug and pulled it, figuring that this might give me a few more minutes of survival. Funny, I thought; I had experienced two opposite mishaps only months apart – first the inferno-like heat of an exploding oven, and now the deadly cold within a locked freezer. I knew that if I made it out of here in a
conscious state, I would have a few words with Richard.

  I wore no watch, and could not judge the time. How long had I been in there? Two minutes? Five? Fifteen? What should I do? Bellowing and banging would be wasted energy. Someone is sure to miss me, yes? Hey, where’s Larousse? No, they’re all too busy. The service hour is just around the corner. Everyone will be running around getting last minute things done. Christ. This is no way to die – in a deep freeze behind a restaurant/ food factory on Cape Cod in the middle of the summer?! I starting jumping up and down and singing anything that came to mind – top forty, fifties rock and roll, Italian opera. La donni e mobile…. Come on, come on! Somebody come out here! Hurry up! I’m freezing!

  Praise the Gods. Billy Byrd opened the door. “Hey man, what are you doing? Making the pastry?” I bolted out of the freezer, stomped through the kitchen, around the corner, past the dishwasher, and into the pantry section. Richard was filling salad bowls with lettuce for the evening’s service. I tramped right up to him, steam wafting from my frozen clothes. “Hey man! You locked me in the freezer! I could have froze to death!” He looked at me, too astonished to answer. I stepped closer and starred him in the eyes. “Couldn’t you open the door from the inside?” he protested, in baffled innocence. I stepped even closer, looking for any excuse to grab him and do some damage. “If I could have opened the door, I would have. Right!?” “Right,” he nodded, but still clearly unwilling to accept responsibility for what had nearly happened to me. “Look man, don’t close the !&%#§?! freezer door when there’s someone inside. Got it?!” “Sure David, right.”

  I backed off and returned to the main kitchen. Byrd was laughing at me. “What’s so funny man?,” I demanded.

  “You get locked in the freezer?”

  “Yeah I got locked in the freezer. What’s so funny about that?” “Come. I’ll show you.” We walked outside to the frigid monstrosity that had clamped its jaws on me. Billy opened the door, invited me inside, then slammed the door shut. “Now,” he explained, “if you ever get stuck in here, you run up to the door, and kick the bottom left corner as hard as you can, like this.” He demonstrated with a forceful blow to the lower left-hand corner of the door, and it popped open. “That’s why I couldn’t help laughing, seeing you so upset. Now you’ll never get stuck again in this kind of a situation. Remember, there’s always a solution to every predicament.”

  I thanked Billy, but felt no need to apologize to Richard. After all, his error had cost me considerable fright and a potentially tragic outcome. But the incident was over and done with. Richard continued to unwind with Gail, Malcolm and me in the early morning hours at the Fox Hole, and there were no hard feelings between us.

  Soon, September arrived. The evening air now carried a chill, hinting at the Autumn soon to come. Autumn in New England is like an anguished call from a sad-eyed girl, the one who loved you once, before the circumstances that sent you off on another chapter in the journey of life. She had stood at the door of her cottage, tears streaming down her face, silently watching until you were out of sight. Every Autumn, she would call to you again, in that sorrowful voice of hers, praying you would hear her call and return to her arms.

  Autumn always brought this melancholy notion to my heart. But it brought exhilaration too. Under gray, turbulent skies, the windy afternoons whipped up great gusts of yellow, orange, and red-tinted leaves, that magnificent New England Fall foliage with its clear message that winter was on her way. Where was that soft-skinned, hazel-eyed, ruby-lipped lover who would need my warmth and affection on icy winter nights?

  The peaceful ambiance of the harvest season was soon disrupted by a typical display of Bob Keston's profound ignorance and insensitivity. A skunk was discovered wandering the area behind the kitchen, probably in search of something to eat. Manager Ricci reported it to Keston, who appeared minutes later bearing a loaded shotgun. Before my disbelieving eyes, he and Ricci marched right to the rear of the kitchen, located the skunk, and BAM!, goodbye skunk. I cursed myself for not intervening on the creature’s behalf, but it had all happened in an instant. Besides, who knows what might have happened if I had tried to stop them? Who are these people, and where do they come from!? Find a living thing, and kill it, for no good reason. Is this typical of behavior among restaurateurs? I was disgusted, and privately cursed both Keston and Ricci for their deranged behavior. If there were any truth to the laws of physics, if for every action there is an equal reaction, then somehow, someday, in some way, these jerks would get their due.

  With the tourist season ending, the restaurant’s production numbers dwindled fast and layoffs loomed. As the last hired, I would be the first fired. But I kind of liked the area, and Malcolm, Gail, Richard and I talked about renting a house together for the winter. It was an appealing prospect – the Four Musketeers pooling financial resources and hunkering down in some fine old house with four bedrooms, a big fireplace, and all the quaint charms of find old houses on Cape Cod.

  I had made friends with Jimmy Tuttle, the crackerjack busboy who had started working at East Bay Lodge during his high school years and had returned every summer for nearly ten years. His younger sister Kathy bussed there as well, along with another local, Stephanie Sawyer, who was quite the young effervescent foxette. With the coming of autumn, Kathy and Stephanie resumed high school, while Jimmy prepared to head down to Palm Beach for the winter season.

  Jimmy was a real good soul. He recognized the failings of the restaurant ownership, but went about his work in a professional manner and kept a low profile. Being so proficient at his work, he was an asset to the operation and they welcomed him back every Spring.

  Shortly before he was due to head south, I asked if he thought I might fill in for him while he was gone. He liked the idea and seemed flattered when I asked him to teach me. He had no doubt I could handle the job, since there was virtually no tourist trade between October and May, just local clientele. During quiet moments before and after service, I would meet him at one of the peripheral dining room stations, where he would show me the ropes while I took notes. Within a week I felt ready to make a move.

  One afternoon I approached Ricci making his pre-dinner service rounds through the kitchen and asked for a moment of time.

  “Larousse. What’s up?,” he replied, in his usual compassionate, caring, and fully attentive style.

  “Can we go somewhere quiet? I have a proposition for you.”

  “What’s wrong with right here?”

  We were standing next to the dishwashing station, not the most auspicious place to present a proposal. But since his body language made clear that he had little interest in anything I had to say, I made my pitch.

  “I understand Jimmy Tuttle will be leaving soon for Florida soon.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I’d like to apply for his job.”

  As I spoke, he gazed down at the rubber mats on the floor. He then looked up at me: “We don’t usually take kitchen staff and move them to the dining room.”

  “Well, I’m not your ordinary kitchen staff member, as I’m sure you know.”

  “Um,… right.”

  “Kitchen production is winding down pretty fast now, but I’d like to stay on. Jimmy has been gracious enough to explain the basic set-up of his stations, and since I do have training in dining room service, I’m sure you will find me thoroughly competent.”

  “I’ll have to think about it.”

  He left me without a clue as to what the result of his thinking would be, but if I had to wager on the outcome, I’d have bet I would be job hunting before the month was out. A few days later, however, Ricci informed me that my proposal had been accepted. I had no trouble imagining the scene. Ricci asked Keston, Keston muttered, “Sure, give him shot. It will save us the trouble of looking for a replacement for Jimmy.”

  I would need black slacks, white shirt, black bow tie and a custom-tailored patchwork vest with three gold buttons, which could be ordered from Stephanie Sawyer�
�s mom – Stephanie was a bus girl during the summer season – who sidelined as a seamstress when not working as a waitress at the restaurant. I was thrilled. The vest alone would set me back twenty-five dollars, but I saw it was an excellent investment. I now had some employment security, as well as a chance to work the front-of-the-house and learn another aspect of the business.

  About a week later, dressed in my custom-made outfit, I entered the dining room at 4:00 P.M. and began setting up my stations. As part of the training plan, Jimmy stayed on an extra week to supervise. At about 5:00 P.M., I lined up in the kitchen with the rest of the dining room staff for our own early dinner. All the cooks – formerly my co-workers – were teasing me good-naturedly about my new position. I enjoyed the taunts. I still felt connected to them.

  The night went smoothly enough. I trailed Jimmy, following all of his orders and directives promptly and competently. It was obvious that the transition would be easy. I liked the dining room and felt comfortable there. I enjoyed getting to know some of the customers I had been cooking for all summer. The waitresses and I got along as well. They welcomed a fresh male presence to add spark to the front-of-the-house intrigues. Once Jimmy left for Florida I was on my own, but had learned to handle the job routinely by the end of the month.

  Meanwhile, Malcolm, Richard, Gail and I had moved into an old house very much like the one we had imagined, working fireplace and all. I had saved enough money to buy a 1967 blue Ford Comet station wagon with a “three-on-the-tree” – a manual transmission on the steering column. It was a wonderful old heap, and I drove it with great pride the eight miles each way from our home in Hyannis and the restaurant in Osterville.

  One problem that faced me, with winter coming on, was the fact that I did not have much money left. After buying the Falcon, paying my share of rent on the house, I had pretty much gone through my meager savings. The employee meal at the Lodge just before the dinner hour, became the most important sustenance of my day – but breakfast became a challenge.