Have Blade Will Travel: The adventures of a traveling chef

by David Paul Larousse

  This turned out to be the perfect introduction to the underbelly of Baghdad-by-the-Bay, for the young, enthusiastic chef that I was at this time. Hurwitz's father was one of the most respected heart surgeons in San Francisco – yet his son had a penchant for pursuing the dark side of life. Having gotten into trouble in college with credit card fraud, he was caught breaking-and-entering into the home of an opposing plaintiff one midday – and was arrested and subsequently disbarred. Over the next twenty years he tried to get himself reinstated with the California bar, but they refused him at every turn. Hurwitz was a good example of a man whose dark side refused to be eclipsed by whatever altruistic qualities he may have had – and thanks to his father’s reputation and fiscal resources, could get away with living on the dark side.

  Vince Leone was a friendly paisano, but was also as crooked as the bar was long. That he had figured out how to continue to collect a full-time salary as a city worker while running a restaurant during the day was the least of his petty crimes. “Clever guy,” I thought, "but not someone you want to trust your back to."

  And then there was Seamus “Jimmy” Coyle, complete with Irish brogue and an enormous, distended gut. And yes indeed, Seamus Coyle could throw back the Guinness, or the Scotch, or the Tequila shots, or whatever else he was offered. He was the most fun of the three Musketeers, but he was just as crooked as the other two, known for sticky fingers at the till behind the bar. From the start, I had the image of the three of them standing in a circle with their right arms around the shoulders of the next one, all smiles, while their left hands were fleecing the pocket of their partner on the left.

  They hired me as the chef, and I got that kitchen cranked up and running at high speed within two weeks – doing 60 lunches per day. But the problems presented by the dysfunctional owners were insurmountable. Since Hurwitz had hired me as the chef, the other two felt a need to hire at least one kitchen employee in order to keep tabs on what was going on. When I figured this out, I knew my days were numbered – the last thing I needed was two spies to keep an eye on me.

  One of those spies was Robert Warner, a very talented guy who had been the manager of the rock group The Tubes for many years, before becoming burned out in the rock-and-roll entertainment business, and getting out while he still could. Of course he had no experience or training as a cook, but he was likable enough, so I taught him what he needed to know to run a shift.

  The other cook was Peter, half-Texan, half-Mexican, with a rough edge, who turned out to be a felon running from an arrest warrant in Arizona. I never felt comfortable around that guy, and gave him a wide berth at all times. Of course when I found Robert, Peter, Leone, and Hurwitz snorting cocaine at the dish-washing station late one afternoon, I really knew my days were numbered. I was also unsettled enough at that point to take all my reference books home that night, having had an intuitive feeling that something bad was coming, and soon.

  The next morning, when I arrived at the kitchen, there was Guido, an Italian waiter from a neighborhood restaurant standing in my kitchen, dressed in bright red shirt, black slacks and a white apron.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I am the new day chef.”

  “The hell you are,” I replied.

  I found Hurwitz downstairs in his make-shift office, and said, “What the f*** is going on?” He mumbled something about making some changes, to which I replied, “Give me the money you owe me. I am done here.” He wrote out a check, and I left without so much as another word. In truth I was quite crushed, since I had worked hard to get the place off the ground, and had been successful as a result – while the turkeys I was working for were clueless. After I left, Powell’s never once reached the level of business that I had brought it to during the first three months. Four years later, someone smart bought the place, renamed it Little City Antipasto Bar, and had an excellent run of more than a dozen years before they sold it to another entrepreneur.

  Realizing that Hurwitz, Leone and Coyle were a band of clowns and thieves, I got over my heartbreak fast. The next morning I was first in line at Maxine’s office, who promptly sent me to The Clift Hotel, where I accepted a position as Tournant. A Tournant is an important cog in the kitchen chain of command, second only to the Sous-chef, who is second to the Chef (sous means “under”), because he must be skilled enough to prepare any dish on the menu. The title tournant comes from the concept of taking a “tour” of all the stations in the kitchen, standing in for other station cooks on their days off.

  The Clift Hotel was one of San Francisco’s great old hotels, having been commissioned in 1913 by Frederick C. Clift, an attorney from a large family in the Sierra foothills. Built on a lot that Clift’s father had left him, the architect was notable École des Beaux Arts student George Applegarth. The Clift was advertised as the first hotel in San Francisco to be fire-and-earthquake-proof, and was opened in time for the 1915 Pan-Pacific Exposition, which celebrated the re-construction of San Francisco after the disastrous earthquake and fire of 1906. In 1924, three floors were added on, making it the largest hotel in the state at that time.

  A former venture capitalist, Robert Odell, had purchased the hotel from the Clift family in 1940. Odell was known to be a perfectionist with a short temper, and was much feared by his staff. It was reported that employees would sound alarms to warn each other when Odell returned from a night on the town.

  Soon after he took possession of the hotel, Odell learned that the headaches that had been bothering him were caused by an inoperable brain tumor. So devastated was he at this news, that he fatally shot himself in the head in the Spanish Suite – his then permanent residence located on the top floor. It is rumored that the Spanish Suite remains haunted by Odell’s spirit to this day.

  There was another resident at the hotel during my stint there, the elderly and ever-elegant Mrs. Bloom. She came out every afternoon to take a walk around the downtown neighborhood, though other than that she rarely ventured out of the hotel. Her husband-to-be had jilted her on her wedding day, leaving her alone at the hotel – and she thus decided never to leave.

  Overall, I liked working at the Clift, and the core staff was a decent bunch of guys, most of whom had been there for many years. Tommy, the septuagenarian breakfast cook was soon to celebrate his fortieth year there – which meant he started working there about twelve years before I was born. Pleas (pronounced “plez”) was the Sous-chef, a very down-to-earth guy, who seemed prepared to stay there for the rest of his working days. Jimmy MacClane was a line cook in his mid-fifties, who worked the fish station – poissonier – and who was so exhausted from his many years in the kitchen, that he advised me one evening to get out of the business while I was still young (I was twenty-six then). Jimmy gave me sage advice, and though I was young and full of boundless enthusiasm, I soon realized just how tough the sauté station was. I ran that station on Jimmy’s two days off, and one evening counted the number of dishes I prepared and put up during a peak one-hour period. These dishes were all prepared to order and they included all the Fresh Fish of the Day – typically salmon, cod, sea bass and sole – sautéed or poached, plus Crab Cardinale, Chicken Kiev, Chicken Dijonaise, Veal Kidneys Armagnac and Veal Marsala. And that number during that peak hour was 88 – one dish every 1.46 minutes. That the middle station (Entremetier) and the broiler man often stood idle while the Poissonier was bouncing off the walls was a clear indication that the menu was not properly balanced.

  Of course this imbalance should have been addressed by the Executive Chef, a job held by Franz Klampfer, a thirty-year old Austrian with an enormous gut, who always responded to questions from his staff with his head cocked to one side and his eyes squinted – as if he were about to catch each of us confessing some wrong-doing. Obviously, there was little chance that Klampfer was going to make any adjustment to the menu anytime soon.

  Then there were the cocktail waitresses, whose occasional foray into the kitchen was always a treat for us. I got to knowone
of them - Elizabeth Mullen, a dedicated jazz dancer, and Itook her out for dinner one night. We both dressed up for the evening – she in a slinky, black dinner dress and me in a navy blue jacket and charcoal-grey slacks. Afterwards, we drove out to the Palace of the Legion of Honor, an exquisite gem of a museum perched upon a hill in Land’s End, a gorgeous park overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, the Marin Headlands, and the entire San Francisco Bay. The Palace boasts a 40-foot-long, low-sloping set of stone stairs that lead up to an open courtyard designed in the style of an ancient Greek residence – with marble walls and a covered walkway around the inside edge of the courtyard, marked by tall, vertical columns all around. Inside, at the far end, is a large brass door that is the front entrance to the museum.

  It was about 11:30 PM on this particular evening, and I parked my car and strolled up into the courtyard, which was bathed in a brilliant light from a full moon. Elizabeth and I shared a joint, as we enjoyed the spontaneity and beauty of the moment – complete with moonlit shadows, a gentle breeze coming off the Pacific and the scent of the ocean… it was quite magical.

  Suddenly an automobile pulled up at the foot of the outer stairs, and four inebriated teenage boys piled out of the car, laughing and shouting raucously. I gently nudged Elizabeth back into the shadow provided by the overhang over the museum door – at the inner-most end of the courtyard – and we just stood there waiting for the teenagers to wander off somewhere else.

  But instead of wandering off, they all began stumbling up towards the courtyard, at which point I thought to myself, silently, “Of all the places for you to explore at this hour, you boys are going to come up here???” And of course they continued walking straight for us as we stood in the shadows of the overhang above the museum front door.

  Now I had absolutely no interest in getting into any kind of an alcohol-and-testosterone-fueled altercation with a bunch of teenagers who were headed for exactly where I was standing with my lovely dinner date, and I figured the odds of these kids walking up to exactly where we were standing was about a hundred-million-to-one, or thereabouts… and of course they continued walking up into the courtyard and they were headed directly for us.

  Realizing that the one advantage I had going for me was that of surprise, as soon as they were within twenty-feet of where we were standing, still heading right for us, I simply took one large step out into the moonlight and froze right there – starring at them motionless and without expression. They saw me immediately, and froze for a few seconds. One of them blurted out, “Holy shit! Let’s get the hell out of here!,” and those boys sprinted back to their car and sped away as fast as they could, as I breathed a personal sigh of relief. Elizabeth squeezed my arm and said to me, “Hey chef, you sure know how to show a girl a good time.” (Elizabeth Mullen later married a Brazilian fellow shortly thereafter, became pregnant, moved to Brazil, and hopefully lived happily ever after.)

  As for my work at the Clift, I was bored-out-of-my-gourd after six months, so when an opportunity to run my own kitchen came up, I was outa there.

  “I never liked New Yorkers anyway,” harangued Klampfer the Austrian. I really didn’t care what he thought of me, though he made me stay right until the last day of my two week’s notice. In retrospect I should have just taken off; what was he going to do – report me to the culinary police? But I didn’t. I stayed right to the end.

  Maxine received a call from the Berkeley Women’s City Club, who were in need of a chef to prepare a banquet dinner. I met with the directors, worked out the details, and ordered the necessary provisions for the coming feast.

  Originally established in 1927 to promote social, civic, and cultural progress, the building was designed by notable California architect Julia Morgan. Today it is known as The Berkeley City Club, is no longer restricted to women, and is available to the public at large for weddings and other occasions. It was obvious that the kitchen was as old as the building, but it was large and I had no concerns about my ability to produce an exceptional meal for the 75 guests scheduled to attend this luncheon.

  My designated dessert was Mousse au chocolat, and I walked back into a separate pastry area to prepare the mousse while Top Round Beef Roasts sizzled in the ovens. At one point, as I was piping out the mousse into champagne saucers, I looked up a saw that one of the stoves at the far end of the kitchen range was engulfed in flames. I screeched “Jesus Christ!!!”, then ran down to address the crisis. I will never forget the two young food servers who stood there motionless, staring at the blaze. I screamed, “Where’s the gas cut-off!?!?” After pointing to a bolt on the floor, I ordered them to find me a wrench, and while I waited for the wrench, I muffled the fire with the fire extinguisher – just enough to keep the flames down, but not enough to put it out. Once the kids returned with the wrench, I turned the valve 180-degrees, then extinguished the fire completely. I can’t remember a more horrifying moment, having realized that I could have established a reputation that would last for the rest of my days – as the chef who burned down Julia Morgan’s 1927 architectural masterpiece in Berkeley, California.

  The good news was that I was close enough to service at that point, that I could use the residual heat from the ovens and steam table to heat the asparagus and the gravy for the roast beef, and keep the roasts and potatoes warm. My chocolate mousse was all set to go – so I was going to be able to complete the task at hand.

  When the meal was done, I picked up a check that was awaiting me, and I departed from that club as fast as I could sprint off into the afternoon sun.

  My next stop was a visit to Manfred Kruk, the six-foot-four-inch-tall German Executive Chef at the Bank of America building – which had been the tallest skyscraper in San Francisco until the impish architectural team who designed the Trans-America building, erected two blocks away, designed a spire on top of their building that gave them bragging rights for the tallest building in Earthquake City. Architectural egos aside, it seemed to me that the civic leaders of San Francisco were completely nuts to allow skyscrapers in the most earthquake-prone city in North America, and I believe they will someday pay for their avarice.

  The B-of-A building is supposed to be built on some kind of enormous rollers and springs, which render it “earthquake-proof” – and for all those who believe that story, I have a fabulous bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you, and the price is really marked down! Even if the buildings don’t come crashing down in the next tremblement-de-terre – which is as inevitable as night-follows-day – if all the glass windows in downtown San Francisco shatter from the next “big one,” it will leave a 4-foot-deep pile of glass shards down on the street. Don’t think I want to be walking around downtown San Francisco when that happens.

  Manfred interviewed me in his office for twenty minutes, then led me into the central kitchen to a cutting board upon which was a cook’s knife and a Spanish onion. “Dize zuh onion, pleez,” he instructed. I peeled the onion, cut it in half, and proceeded to turn it into a cup of small-diced onion. When I had completed the task, Chef Kruk looked at me, and asked, “Okay, ven can you stahrt.”

  The Great Electric Underground (GEU) was a Monday-to-Friday lunch restaurant located on the ground floor of the Bank of America Building in downtown San Francisco – one of four food service operations owned and operated by ARA, Inc. (today they are Aramark, Inc.). There was a sandwich-and-salad-to-go shop on the ground floor near the GEU, named the PDQ; and on the 52nd floor, the top floor, was The Banker’s Club during the day – a private club for well-funded financiers; which changed into the Carnelian Room at night – a high-end restaurant open to the public.

  ARA was the largest institutional food service operation in the world, second to the U. S. Army, feeding 10-million people per day around the world – in factories, hospitals, schools and sports stadiums. But the Carnelian Room was part of their fine-dining division, known as Davres (pronounced “day-vreez”), named for Davre Davidson, the executive who had started it. At one point the Davres division had two doz
en restaurants in all, located in major American cities, among them Atwater’s in Portland, OR; The 95th at the top of the John Hancock Building in Chicago; Penn’s Wood Catering in Philadelphia; and of course the Carnelian Room and Banker’s Club at the top of the Bank of American building in San Francisco.

  I would depart by bicycle from my garden apartment in the Richmond District (a residential area of San Francisco) at 6:30 AM, and sprint down Bush Street, catching as many of the timed traffic lights as possible. The 4.3-mile trip usually took me about twenty minutes. I parked my bike in the basement parking lot, then went up to the locker room off the main kitchen to change into my chef clothes.

  Kruk had brought me in to add some pizzazz to the daily offerings of the GEU, and that’s what I did. I ran a three-week menu cycle, with a Plat du jour each day. Veal Cannelloni was one of my most popular specials, and a way to utilize the premium Provimi-brand veal scraps that butcher David Wong ground up for me. I prepared Parmesan-flavored crêpes – crêpes being the San Francisco version of Stuffed Manicotti, a dish unique to New York and the northeast. It was a fabulous dish – fresh-ground veal, herbs, garlic, spinach, rolled up in homemade, Parmesan cheese-flavored crêpes, and baked in a Neapolitan (meatless) tomato sauce. The crêpes soaked up the juices from the veal stuffing and the tomato sauce, and I served two cannelloni topped with a slice of melted Monterey Jack cheese. It was a fabulous lunch indeed.

  ― ● ―

  Cannelloni, Great Electric Underground Style

  For the crêpes

  1½ cups (360 mL) flour

  4 large eggs

  pinch of salt

  ¾ cup (180 mL) milk

  ¼ cup (60 mL) grated Parmesan cheese

  3 tablespoons (45 mL) olive oil

  olive oil as needed

  For the sauce

  ¼ cup (60 mL) olive oil

  4 garlic cloves, finely sliced

  ½ cup (120 mL) onions finely diced