An email reply to Cam--an old friend and restaurant pro in Denver--musings about the restaurant trade and the formative experience it had on shaping my lifestyle for more than a decade.
The atmosphere (Anthony) Bourdain painted [in his book "Kitchen Confidential"] reminded me of my first job. I was fifteen and my friend got me a job as dishwasher at the “Big Tomato” (not as kitschy as it sounds). Crowned "best pizza" in Portland nearly every year it was in business. All the ingredients were fresh; from the dough to the marinara, we made everything from scratch. Of course, we did up canoli, calzone, and all manner of pasta dishes. At sixteen, I became the youngest cook ever to sling a pie there. My favorite was our feta, portobello, prosciutto, and roasted red pepper over a pesto base, topped with slivered white truffle.
Ollie, "the boss," owner and manager was a round, bowling-ball-bald, ruddy –faced guy who said he smoked four packs of cigarettes a day. He always looked as though he was about to have a coronary. He was a nice guy, but he tried to stick his fingers in too many pies. When he vanished to open a bistro in Bend, Oregon (of all places), we were pilotless, the most senior member of the staff being the head waiter, a Persian named Humian (though for some reason he wanted us to call him "Paul") whose every sentence ended with the word "pussy"; needless to say, we all loved the guy.
I have mixed feelings about my experience there; it was at "the Tomato" that the seasoned staff introduced me to smoking, booze, and drugs but on the other hand, I was introduced to smoking, booze, and drugs. When I first took the job, I was sheepish and clean; a year in, I was a belligerent, alcoholic pothead, smoking bowls in the alley between loading the ovens and turning pizzas.
Erick Blocker, my hero at the time, was all of nineteen. He was an alternate WHL Hockey (same level as the Colorado Eagles) player on weekends for the Portland Winterhawks and my partner in crime nights and weekdays. Officially, I resided at my Dad’s condo just a stone’s throw away from the second of three high schools I was enrolled in but did not attend except to collect a rabble of pals to come over and get wasted in my Dad’s tiny, gated, Japanese-style courtyard, but I pretty much lived at Erick’s across town. My Dad awoke around 4:30 to make his fifty-odd mile commute to work…he barely noticed I was gone.
Erick and I would roll blunts, drink beer, play hockey on his Sega, and torture his roommate relentlessly for his taste for Zima (a "chick" beverage socially comparable to Schnapps in drinker’s circles).
Anyway, getting back to the restaurant, Ollie liked to micromanage; unfortunately, nobody told him that you can’t be in two places at the same time or entrust your business to a cadre of adolescent degenerates led by a Shiite with a trunk full of porn. Rudderless and without a captain, us kids went native.
The kitchen became a tribute to health code violations and yours truly "cleaned" the restrooms (maybe) once a week. We ate and drank up all the profits. I brought home a pizza at the end of every shift and, unbeknownst to my father who drove me home most nights, in addition to the pitchers consumed on the premises, snuck tap beer for the ride back in a coffee thermos.
I hated getting up at five a.m. on Saturdays to bicycle my ass five miles to make dough and batches of marinara for the next week. I had the place to myself, however, and used the PA system as my own private boom box and was typically drunk, high, or both in time for the lunch crew’s arrival at ten.
In the end, predictably, the joint tanked and we all went our separate ways.
There are, of course, many more characters I wish I had time to recall for you here but doubt that if you’ve read this far you’re looking forward to more musings about my past, so I’ll rap this impromptu history up.
I’ve got a good sense of what life might have been like had I gone on to work my way up the food chain. Fortunately (at least for me as I know I’ve got the kind of personality who’d burn out or give up eventually), I got employment at some horrible chain restaurants where conditions would serve to sour my view of working with food for the rest of my life.
It’s not one big party, it is hard work. I respect you and your craft. I’m glad you’re enjoying your work and I hope you go wherever the food takes you.
Probably the most important lesson I took away from my time at the Big Tomato is, be nice to the help. I can’t begin to relate some the shit we did to some of the non-regular’s food.
Hope to hear from you again soon!
Better days,
Pablo
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