Have Blade Will Travel: The adventures of a traveling chef (22 page)

John Lockley told me this story himself, over dinner one evening at the World Trade Club, located in the Ferry Building down at the base of Market Street in downtown San Francisco, and frankly I was stunned at the details.  Of course someone came to his aid, stopped the bleeding without strangling him, and rushed him to the hospital.  There a plastic tube was inserted into the vein, his neck was sewn up, and miraculously, he recovered from the injury.

In retrospect, this story is quite essential in understanding the character – or lack thereof – of San Francisco, and in fact, it would only be two years later, that an incident in San Francisco confirmed that very character of a city that remained steeped in a wild-west, untamed, and faux-civilized persona.

Meanwhile, back at the court of Maxine – the Gastronomic High Priestess would eventually send each chef off on an appointment, and some of these appointments yielded excellent employment, others did not.  She asked me if I wanted to work in Los Angeles, and at the time, I was open to the possibility.  She phoned Ken Hansen, owner of the the-notable restaurant Scandia – and I flew down the next day for an interview.

After spending two hours in the kitchen observing and chatting up the kitchen staff, Hansen and the chef brought me out to the dining room for lunch, where they interviewed me.  I had a feeling the chef was a screamer – a chef capable of verbal hostility if things did not go his way.  Hansen was gracious, and offered me a salary advance if I needed the funds to get settled in the area.  I liked the overall look of things, and accepted their offer, promising to drive down from San Francisco within the week.  I went outside to head back to the airport. 

When I had arrived earlier that morning, the sun was shining, and there was dew on the grass, and the air smelled of the Pacific ocean, and frankly it seemed to be the perfect seaside city.  But at 2:00 PM in the afternoon, as I waited for my ride to the airport, there was a smoky haze in the air, and I waved my hand before my face as if to wave the haze away.  What I was dealing with was the smog that L.A. of the late 20 th-century was famous for – if fame is the right word for an enormous cloud of toxic air that enveloped the city most of the day and night.  And I thought to myself, “I am going to bicycle around in this shit?  It’s everywhere!” 

Los Angeles turned out to be one of the strangest places I have ever been to, and I soon realized that there was little chance I would ever be able to survive life in a city which was shrouded in an enormous cloud made up of toxic hydrocarbons and whatever else was spewed out by the endless sea of automobiles.  And this was in a city that in the early –  20th-century, had one of the finest light-rail transportation systems in the civilized world - later destroyed by General Motors, so they could sell their diesel-powered busses. So I flew home, agonized for two days, then phoned Hansen and apologized for my change of mind.

I went back to Maxine, who sent me to North Beach, where three characters were preparing to open Powell’s, a new restaurant in a former Mexican cantina whose owner had been carted away for selling cocaine.  The trio was made up of Jim Hurwitz, disbarred attorney; Vince Leone, construction worker for the city; and Seamus Coyle, legendary bartender and spinner of tall tales.

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.)