I came from an industry – manufacturing – that required all job applicants to pass a drug screening before being hired, and then be subject to random drug testing, (although we never did a random test without susceptible cause, as the omnipresent specter of a whiz-quiz combined with the need for a steady paycheck were generally enough to keep them from the ganja), or mandatory testing in the event of an injury or accident. One of my favorite pre-employment drug test stories (we all have them, don’t we?) involved a young man who called late on a Friday evening just as I was locking up for the weekend, wanting to know if we’d gotten the results from his drug screening, and had he passed the test. I asked him “what do you think?” and he answered, “I’m not sure, that’s why I’m calling to find out."
While I’m generally an advocate of respecting people’s privacy and personal liberties, all it took were a few incidences of valves being inadvertently left open causing nasty, very hard to clean up black stuff to spew out on the floor, forklifts crashing into the bright fluorescent yellow roof support poles located smack-dab in the middle of the fork lift aisle, or the wrong pump pumping the wrong stuff out of the wrong tank into the wrong mixer before I decided to shelve my “what you do on your time is your business” philosophy and start drug testing. Amazing how quickly the expensive, hard to clean and potentially dangerous drug-induced brain-farts virtually disappeared.
I’m not in heavy manufacturing any longer – no big mixing tanks, no pumps, no 150-hp motors or 4” ball valves making 2000-gallon batches of noxious goo. I’m now in light manufacturing – pots, pans, little Kitchen-Aide mixers and a consumer-grade food processor, manufacturing stocks, soups, salads, entrees and crème brule. No need for drug testing here.
Wait just a minute! How ironic that an industry where overstressed people are running around cramped quarters on slippery floors at a breakneck pace with BIG SHARP KNIVES IN THEIR HANDS doesn’t require their employees to be drug and alcohol free. Why is this?? How can this be?? Simple – if you drug tested cooks before you hired them, and then actually expected them to stay sober during business hours, you’d have a pretty limited labor pool to draw from, especially in Grand County, CO. (Having said that, we are blessed at The Riverside to not only have a drug-free, sober-during-business-hours chef, but one that out-cooks all of the other four-star hash hawkers on the mountain.) Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case with our previous chef, and it was he who opened my eyes to the proclivity of chefs to indulge in, no, to mostly outright abuse drugs and alcohol. When I told our food supplier that I thought our chef was pretty much stoned all of the time, he said “welcome to the restaurant business.” This explained a lot. Let’s be honest; you probably can’t come up with something like Sautéed Soy-infused Lichens served over a bed of Squid-Ink Pappardelle without a little creative help.
Often times the creative aspect can be skewed a bit when one asks the ganja gods for too much help. For example, our straight chef prepared a beautiful apple custard tart for dessert – light flaky crust, apples artfully arranged on a bed of silken vanilla custard. It was a sight to behold, almost too beautiful to slice and serve. Enter Chef Hookah who, of his own accord and without consulting straight chef, decided the tart needed that little extra something to really make the dish special. That something was beet juice. We had just gotten some beets from our local vegetable purveyor, and Bong Boy felt that the logical thing to do with fresh beets was to dice them, put them in a pot with a little water, and slowly cook them down into a brilliant red, syrupy reduction. This fire engine red reduction was then Jackson Pollock-ed onto a white desert plate, upon which the soft yellow tart would rest – indeed, a feast for the eyes, but not for the palate. The beet juice tasted like – and I mean this literally – dirt. Dirt is not a good taste, and it certainly doesn’t enhance the flavor of apple custard tart. The only dish the flavor of dirt might work well with would be an earthworm flan, which I thought of but didn’t suggest to our Weeded Wonder, for fear that it would end up as one of the evening specials.
We sold all of the tart that evening, and to a diner, they described the taste of the beet reduction as ‘interesting’. Know that when someone uses the term ‘interesting’ to describe something in a restaurant, that’s never, ever meant as an acknowledgement of successful taste bud manipulation.
While many may argue this point, I’ll assert that being stoned to the gills can generally have a negative affect on motor skills, cognitive ability and overall job performance – unless maybe you’re Jerry Garcia. Or you were Jerry Garcia. I should get less of an argument on this point when you consider that the individual has thrown down 10 of my Budweisers along with 6-8 shots of Johnny Walker Red or Hornitos Reposada Tequila during the evening rush, on top of his usual afternoon of reefer madness. Do the terms “thick tongued”, “pie-eyed” or “cow-faced” conjure up any notion of a person you’d want active on your payroll? I ask, would you willingly pay work-comp insurance premiums for this individual while he was hacking up a chicken with a razor sharp Santoku, eyes lolling to the back of his head, drool pooling at the corners of his mouth? I think not – not even would Jerry Garcia write that check.
So Chef Doobie-Doer has moved on, and fortunately, he’s taken his passion for Maui Wowie, tequila shots and Budweiser into someone else’s restaurant. As long as I’m in this business, I know that I’ll have to employ and deal with those whose skills and creativities are fueled by a ‘higher’ calling, and just be thankful that we don’t use forklifts in our kitchen.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Riverside Garlic Salad
This is our signature salad, developed from a recipe handed down to me and my siblings from my father, Alfred J. Paradise. Dad loved to cook, and he passed that passion for good food and entertaining on to all of his children. I also place partial blame on both of my parents for helping to get me into this mess, as they both new how to cook and entertain, and ended up instilling this ‘flaw’ in all of their children. It was rare that a week went by without some sort of get together in the Paradise house involving food and drink with either our large extended family or agglomerations of friends, neighbors or business associates. I grew up around food and fun, and have tried to turn those wonderful childhood memories and experiences into a respectable career here at The Riverside.
Dad was an empirical cook, and rarely did he consult a cookbook or magazine for a recipe. He flew by the seat of his pants, often recreating food from only the gustatory memories of dishes he’d had in restaurants. He took great delight in 'jacking' with people who’d ask for recipes of his original creations. “Oh, there’s no recipe” he’d say, “It’s just a few tablespoons of this or a cup or two of that.” Or he would go to the other extreme, saying things like “boil the potatoes for 17 minutes, then immediately douse them in 52-degree water for six minutes, making sure the water maintains the 52-degree temperature.” He would delight inwardly as his unsuspecting dupes would diligently write down his culinary canard, always to come back at some later point and complain that although they followed the instructions to the letter, they were unable to recreate his recipe.
This is no canard; this recipe should make enough dressing for four large servings of garlic salad. You’ll need a large round-bottom wooden salad bowl, ( http://www.bowlmill.com/cgi-bin/bowlmill/1015U1.html?id=okCdE7oK ) the rougher the texture of the wood, the better, and a hefty wooden spoon.
6 cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon coarse kosher salt
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1/2 lemon
½ cup of olive oil
½ cup ice cubes
Press the garlic, or mince extremely fine, and place in the bottom of the salad bowl with the kosher salt and Dijon mustard. With the back of the spoon, make a smooth paste – grind that salt into the garlic. Add the juice of ½ lemon to the paste, and slowly add the olive oil, stirring to a smooth consistency. Add the ice cubes, and stir well, until the ice has started to melt. You don’t have to totally melt the ice at this point – you can pour the mixture into a cup, and use within the hour. The ice does three things – it emulsifies the mixture to help prevent it from separating, helps cut the potency, and obviously cools the dressing. This salad should be served very cold, with cold crisp lettuce, mozzarella and croutons - no store bought croutons; here is our standard Riverside crouton recipe.
5 slices Farm to Market Sourdough Bread http://www.farmtomarketbread.com/
¼ cup olive oil
3 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons garlic salt
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
In a large sauté pan, heat the olive oil and butter to near smoking. Add the garlic salt and cayenne pepper, and then add the bread, (which you’ve cut into ½” cubes). Keep tossing the croutons until they’re coated with the oil/butter/salt mixture and toasted to a crunch.
Toss the lettuce with the croutons and the shredded mozzarella (use whatever type of lettuce you like - we use a mixture of romaine, fresh spinach when available, and mixed spring greens. This salad is also excellent with good old hand-shredded iceberg lettuce - that's all we had growing up as poor white children in Johnson County, KS).
Add the dressing a little at a time, and keep tossing until all of the mixture is coated. SERVE COLD on chilled plates, and top with fresh cracked pepper.
Dad was an empirical cook, and rarely did he consult a cookbook or magazine for a recipe. He flew by the seat of his pants, often recreating food from only the gustatory memories of dishes he’d had in restaurants. He took great delight in 'jacking' with people who’d ask for recipes of his original creations. “Oh, there’s no recipe” he’d say, “It’s just a few tablespoons of this or a cup or two of that.” Or he would go to the other extreme, saying things like “boil the potatoes for 17 minutes, then immediately douse them in 52-degree water for six minutes, making sure the water maintains the 52-degree temperature.” He would delight inwardly as his unsuspecting dupes would diligently write down his culinary canard, always to come back at some later point and complain that although they followed the instructions to the letter, they were unable to recreate his recipe.
This is no canard; this recipe should make enough dressing for four large servings of garlic salad. You’ll need a large round-bottom wooden salad bowl, ( http://www.bowlmill.com/cgi-bin/bowlmill/1015U1.html?id=okCdE7oK ) the rougher the texture of the wood, the better, and a hefty wooden spoon.
6 cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon coarse kosher salt
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1/2 lemon
½ cup of olive oil
½ cup ice cubes
Press the garlic, or mince extremely fine, and place in the bottom of the salad bowl with the kosher salt and Dijon mustard. With the back of the spoon, make a smooth paste – grind that salt into the garlic. Add the juice of ½ lemon to the paste, and slowly add the olive oil, stirring to a smooth consistency. Add the ice cubes, and stir well, until the ice has started to melt. You don’t have to totally melt the ice at this point – you can pour the mixture into a cup, and use within the hour. The ice does three things – it emulsifies the mixture to help prevent it from separating, helps cut the potency, and obviously cools the dressing. This salad should be served very cold, with cold crisp lettuce, mozzarella and croutons - no store bought croutons; here is our standard Riverside crouton recipe.
5 slices Farm to Market Sourdough Bread http://www.farmtomarketbread.com/
¼ cup olive oil
3 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons garlic salt
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
In a large sauté pan, heat the olive oil and butter to near smoking. Add the garlic salt and cayenne pepper, and then add the bread, (which you’ve cut into ½” cubes). Keep tossing the croutons until they’re coated with the oil/butter/salt mixture and toasted to a crunch.
Toss the lettuce with the croutons and the shredded mozzarella (use whatever type of lettuce you like - we use a mixture of romaine, fresh spinach when available, and mixed spring greens. This salad is also excellent with good old hand-shredded iceberg lettuce - that's all we had growing up as poor white children in Johnson County, KS).
Add the dressing a little at a time, and keep tossing until all of the mixture is coated. SERVE COLD on chilled plates, and top with fresh cracked pepper.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Bastards in our Restaurant
Oh my, did I just say that!!??
I suppose I did, and I’m not ashamed to say that I have good reason for spewing that epithet, which tonight, comes from the bottom of my soul. I’ve learned a lot these past 18 months of living life Riverside, but first and foremost, I’ve learned that owning, running, working in and paying for a restaurant is not for the faint of heart. I’ve already got my eye on a second career – no, not life coach – restaurant consultant. I can make millions, and save my collective consulters billions. I’ll charge a flat rate of $1000 per hour; granted, that’s a pretty heady fee, but all it’ll take is one hour, and one thousand of your dollars, to personally save you millions by giving you 100+ solid gold reasons why, as a novice in the industry, (as was I) you’d be a screaming idiot to invest your time, money, blood, sweat and tears in a restaurant.
Before I go off half-cocked, I have to say that the opportunity exists for the experienced restaurateur to make a fine living, and if your skin is thick enough, you can also get some major job satisfaction out of seeing most of your customers swoon with desire as they sup your soup and swill your sauvignon, while you ignore the petty complaints from the bastards who have no clue of what’s involved in serving a well-presented, hot plate of good food in a timely manner. I also have to admit that it can be a bit of an ego booster when the dining experience is a positive one in that people tend to treat you like a rock star – maybe a second rate rock star, but a rock star nonetheless - as they all but applaud as you walk by their table . Thanks to our talented chef and dedicated staff, I can say that the urge to applaud our efforts is, in fact, way more often the case than not. I can even break it down further and say that 90% of our diners go out of their way to say things like “best meal I’ve ever had”, “can’t believe there’s a restaurant like this in such an out of the way place”, “ better than any meal I’ve had in Denver”, etc. Of the remaining 10%, 8% are simply satisfied, not willing to gush forth with professions of gustatory euphoria, but neither were they unhappy with their dining experience. It is that final 2% that has earned the distinction of being politely referred to as “bastards”.
I’m not saying for a second that we don’t occasionally screw things up. Orders get mixed up, wait times can be excessive on busy weekend nights, some dishes just don’t click with some people – we’re only human, which automatically makes us less than perfect. When these slip-ups happen, we go out of our way to make it as right as we can. I’ve never charged anyone for food that they felt wasn’t up to par. I’ve ‘comp-ed’ many a dessert or appetizer when the food wasn’t delivered in a timely fashion – timely being defined by the customer, not by us. And pretty much in all of these aforementioned incidents of dining room malfeasance, the customers couldn’t be nicer and more understanding. They seem to get the “we’re dealing with human beings here” thing.
Now I’ll go off half-cocked. I can literally count on one hand the incidents that we’ve had with diners who fall into the “bastards” category. These are people that are either so demanding, so small, so particular, or probably so generally unhappy with life and with themselves that nothing they encounter in this world satisfies them. We didn’t get them their meal fast enough, their water often enough, their bread hot enough or their food tasty enough – no matter that all of the aforementioned were delivered in the same fashion to the 50 other extremely satisfied diners that same evening. My guess is that these 2% bastards get pissed of at the grocery store, the gas station, the post office, the drivers license bureau (wait a minute….I’ve gotten pissed off at the drivers license bureau), and every other place or situation where they have to rely on or interact with human beings who are required to give them service.
So we’ve established the fact that there are those amongst us for whom no level of service is acceptable; they simply can’t be satisfied. I should accept this and move on down the road when I encounter one of these bastards. But unfortunately, my innate desire to please is scorched to the core when I’m unable to make everyone happy. I’ve never been moved to write a diatribe such as this based upon the 98% of the people that I do satisfy – it’s the 2% that I don’t (can’t) that eats at my craw and moves me to blogemote (a new verb!).
Maybe I should rethink the restaurant consultant thing. Instead, I say to you prospective restaurateurs, you can make a good living in the restaurant business, and you can also derive an immense amount of personal satisfaction from your job if you simply dedicate yourself to pleasing your customers and attending to their well being.
Just don’t let the bastards grind you down!
I suppose I did, and I’m not ashamed to say that I have good reason for spewing that epithet, which tonight, comes from the bottom of my soul. I’ve learned a lot these past 18 months of living life Riverside, but first and foremost, I’ve learned that owning, running, working in and paying for a restaurant is not for the faint of heart. I’ve already got my eye on a second career – no, not life coach – restaurant consultant. I can make millions, and save my collective consulters billions. I’ll charge a flat rate of $1000 per hour; granted, that’s a pretty heady fee, but all it’ll take is one hour, and one thousand of your dollars, to personally save you millions by giving you 100+ solid gold reasons why, as a novice in the industry, (as was I) you’d be a screaming idiot to invest your time, money, blood, sweat and tears in a restaurant.
Before I go off half-cocked, I have to say that the opportunity exists for the experienced restaurateur to make a fine living, and if your skin is thick enough, you can also get some major job satisfaction out of seeing most of your customers swoon with desire as they sup your soup and swill your sauvignon, while you ignore the petty complaints from the bastards who have no clue of what’s involved in serving a well-presented, hot plate of good food in a timely manner. I also have to admit that it can be a bit of an ego booster when the dining experience is a positive one in that people tend to treat you like a rock star – maybe a second rate rock star, but a rock star nonetheless - as they all but applaud as you walk by their table . Thanks to our talented chef and dedicated staff, I can say that the urge to applaud our efforts is, in fact, way more often the case than not. I can even break it down further and say that 90% of our diners go out of their way to say things like “best meal I’ve ever had”, “can’t believe there’s a restaurant like this in such an out of the way place”, “ better than any meal I’ve had in Denver”, etc. Of the remaining 10%, 8% are simply satisfied, not willing to gush forth with professions of gustatory euphoria, but neither were they unhappy with their dining experience. It is that final 2% that has earned the distinction of being politely referred to as “bastards”.
I’m not saying for a second that we don’t occasionally screw things up. Orders get mixed up, wait times can be excessive on busy weekend nights, some dishes just don’t click with some people – we’re only human, which automatically makes us less than perfect. When these slip-ups happen, we go out of our way to make it as right as we can. I’ve never charged anyone for food that they felt wasn’t up to par. I’ve ‘comp-ed’ many a dessert or appetizer when the food wasn’t delivered in a timely fashion – timely being defined by the customer, not by us. And pretty much in all of these aforementioned incidents of dining room malfeasance, the customers couldn’t be nicer and more understanding. They seem to get the “we’re dealing with human beings here” thing.
Now I’ll go off half-cocked. I can literally count on one hand the incidents that we’ve had with diners who fall into the “bastards” category. These are people that are either so demanding, so small, so particular, or probably so generally unhappy with life and with themselves that nothing they encounter in this world satisfies them. We didn’t get them their meal fast enough, their water often enough, their bread hot enough or their food tasty enough – no matter that all of the aforementioned were delivered in the same fashion to the 50 other extremely satisfied diners that same evening. My guess is that these 2% bastards get pissed of at the grocery store, the gas station, the post office, the drivers license bureau (wait a minute….I’ve gotten pissed off at the drivers license bureau), and every other place or situation where they have to rely on or interact with human beings who are required to give them service.
So we’ve established the fact that there are those amongst us for whom no level of service is acceptable; they simply can’t be satisfied. I should accept this and move on down the road when I encounter one of these bastards. But unfortunately, my innate desire to please is scorched to the core when I’m unable to make everyone happy. I’ve never been moved to write a diatribe such as this based upon the 98% of the people that I do satisfy – it’s the 2% that I don’t (can’t) that eats at my craw and moves me to blogemote (a new verb!).
Maybe I should rethink the restaurant consultant thing. Instead, I say to you prospective restaurateurs, you can make a good living in the restaurant business, and you can also derive an immense amount of personal satisfaction from your job if you simply dedicate yourself to pleasing your customers and attending to their well being.
Just don’t let the bastards grind you down!
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