The River Room...........Part VII

The first three months of operation went fairly smoothly, mostly because I wasn’t there to analize over the details or agonize over the defeats. Julie and I were still working in Kansas City, and my only involvement with The Riverside was through nightly updates from Rachel or the American Express card statements, monthly evidence of the daily ‘going to the store for supplies’ thing. I’m thinking things were especially good for our two chefs – limited work as we were only open for dinner Thursday thru Sunday, which led to copious amounts of downtime for snowboarding, Nintendo playing, guitar plucking (Gabe is a player of professional quality) and lots of late night partying which led to lots of late morning waking up. There didn’t seem to be much time left for hotel fixing and cleaning, which was one of the things that I’d hoped our chefs would do to round out the forty hours per week of pay they were receiving vs. the 20 hours of work they were doing in the kitchen. I didn’t stress too much over it, as I viewed this whole period as a dry run before Julie and I arrived at the beginning of the summer season; again, Julie and I were still getting paychecks which allowed for the funds to fuel this fantasy.

The only discordant note in this scenario involved the personal interaction between the three young participants, which was understandable, considering you’ve thrown three family members into a badly insulated mausoleum located in an isolated mountain town. Picture a low budget version of The Real World – too bad, as this whole ordeal damn sure would have made for some fine reality television. One of the issues involved Rachel ratting out the chefs for playing music loudly enough in the kitchen that it would drown out the lilting strains of the classical music that we featured in the restaurant – more than just a minor pet peeve for me.

As good as is Thomas’s taste in food, his taste in music is bad (singularly unique) – wretched, heinously, God-awful bad. For example, anyone here ever heard of The Mars Volta? Of course you haven’t, because if you had ever listened to this band for more than a few minutes you would’ve already grabbed the nearest 12-gauge and blown your head off; it’s that bad. And then there’s Buckethead; two obvious reasons why he wears a bucket - for drowning out the noise that he’s making so he won’t suffer as the rest of us who have to listen (truth be known, he has really good headphones in that bucket and he’s listening to Brahms), and second, to retain his anonymity, ensuring that people of good sense won’t recognize him and kill him dead on the streets for the damage he’s done to our musical culture. And these were but just a few of the musical gems that were thrust upon the ears of our genteel restaurant customers. I’d say it to myself again…this to shall pass.

Gabe and I didn’t promise each other much in terms of commitments; he wasn’t sure how long he wanted to stay, and I wasn’t sure how long I’d need him once I got to the hotel full time. It worked out well as I was glad to have him there for however long, as he served as referee between the two first cousins, he helped Thomas get the kitchen off to a running start and he gave the place an air of uniqueness – like it needed any more of that – for Gabe truly is a characters definition of ‘a character’.

In what I quickly learned was Gabe-like style, about two months into the arrangement he informed me that an opportunity for a sculpture project (he was a sculptor, amongst his many other talents) was opening up in Washington DC, and he was planning on leaving the hotel in mid-March. After that, he might pursue some travels with his band, or do some cooking for a Mississippi Blue Cruise, or whatever; he was bound by no calendar, reliant upon no clock and responsible only to himself.

The middle of March coincided with our spring break visit to the hotel; we’d be there all week to work our asses off – painting, cleaning, decorating, hauling trash, installing new beds and tossing out the old, and on and on and on. Friends from Kansas City were coming with us to help in the effort, and in a dizzying display of the illogical, they remain friends to this day, possibly out of pity. A few weeks before our trip, Gabe called to ask if he could have a farewell concert at The Riverside, as two of his band mates were coming to pick him up, and he’d promised some of the locals that he would play for them before he left Colorado.

For a fact, our Property, Casualty & Liability insurance strictly prohibited us from having live music, due to either the increased risk of people drinking to excess and getting rowdy when exposed to live music, or to the one in a million chance that Buckethead or The Mars Volta would show up, play live music (?) and the ensuing potentially lethal effects that exposure to their live music would incur upon a tort-hungry public. But I relented, thinking ‘what harm could come from a little concert for some close friends’? Heck, I’d always wanted to hear him play anyway, as Gabe had advertised himself as a bluesier version of The Black Keys – a group that occupied more than a little space on my iPod.

“Sure Gabe, go ahead, that’ll be fun!”

I didn’t give it another thought until I stopped for gas at a station in Winter Park, some 35 miles from The Riverside, on our way into Hot Sulphur for Spring Break. Plastered in the window of the gas station/convenience store were several posters, advertising, no, screaming,

“THE RIVERSIDE HOTEL BLUES FEST”

Featuring

The Gabe Meyer Band

Sunday, March 19th 8:00 PM

$10.00 Cover Charge
All beers 2-for-1 !!!
$5 Jaeger Shots

The Historic Riverside Hotel
Hot Sulphur Springs, CO

“Holy Schitt!”, I thought; not only did our insurance policy prohibit live music, but it also prohibited any type of drink specials, especially the men’s bathroom cleaner’s worst nightmare, the dreaded 2-for-1 beer special. The situation became more dire the nearer we came to Hot Sulphur; for on every store window in every town, Fraser, then Tabernash, and finally Granby, the posters were everywhere, a loud and clear beacon pointing the way to every Grand County drunk in search of an ‘Open on Sunday’ place to pound down beers at half price.

As I’ve mentioned before, excessive consumption of alcohol is a Grand Countians' National Pastime – it was something that came as naturally to them as getting out of bed in the morning, albeit always late and terribly hung-over; they damn sure didn’t need an excuse, or an invitation, and here were both, everywhere you looked. Possibly even the churches in Grand County mentioned it in their weekly announcements on that Sunday at the end of their service – “and in case you haven’t seen the 500 posters scattered about Grand County, there’re ½ price beers and live blues at The Riverside tonight…Now go in peace, Amen.”

While I had to give Gabe an A+ in the art of self promotion, I quickly had to figure out a way to delicately rain on his parade without his losing face with me and those thirsty locals.

To be continued……

The River Room........Part VI

I swear to God, these were the first words out of our first customers mouth; “My Mother is gluten-intolerant. I don’t know what’s on the menu tonight but I hope you’ll be able to accommodate her.”

Thinking gluten was maybe a type of fish, or perhaps a derivative of tofu, I promptly replied “Nope, we’re not serving gluten tonight. We’ve got Prime Rib, Tilapia, an Asian pork dish and a chicken dish!”

“And do none of those contain gluten??” he asked me in a somewhat challenging form, appearing mildly irritated.

This stopped me for a second, before I finally asked him, “So, …just what is gluten?”

He looked at me like I had a turd balanced across the bridge of my nose. And so it would go for me in the restaurant business in Colorado.

----------------------------

During the two hours prior to this seminal exchange, I had survived my first encounter with The Riverside ghost in the shower and guest bathroom, Julie and Rachel had arrived safely back at the hotel from their Colorado Winter Wondercruise, I’d checked in all of our guests (36 people in 13 full size beds and two twin beds) and turned down requests from countless more snowbound travelers. Those that weren’t lucky enough to have snagged up a local hotel room spent the night on cots or blankets in the Kremmeling High School gymnasium.

30 minutes after my crash course in “Dammit, I’m Gluten Intolerant, I’m Mad as Hell and I’m Not Going to Take it Anymore!” I’m in the kitchen and the restaurant is packed. The only place I can be of any use is washing dishes. I’d long since been banished from the salad prep table.

“Hot pan!” yelled Thomas, as he tossed a small sauté pan on the table (not stainless steel) that stood nearest to the three-compartment sink; the pan now fighting for space with the rest of the dirty plates, cutlery, water glasses, sauce pots and pans that I was struggling to wash, rinse, dry and put back into service. The first compartment of the three compartment sink had hot soapy water in which the dirty dishes were washed, the middle sink contained warm water where the dishes were dipped for the purpose of getting rid of any soap residue, and the final compartment contained cold water with bleach; a final attempt at sanitation before setting them on a rack to air dry. That first sink had to be changed out quite a bit, as the residue of dirty plates and sauté pans floated on the hot, soapy surface like so much indigestible flotsam and jetsam.

The bigger factor in my falling behind with the dishes was my morphing from restaurant owner/dishwasher into a passionate observer of the stadium event that is high pressure, commercial food preparation. Never having been in a restaurant kitchen during the heat of battle, I’d never witnessed anything like the requisite speed, deftness of hand and all-but acrobatic symmetry that these two Chefs exhibited. Thomas had 6 pans going at once – all the time, without so much as a hiccup. Sautéing vegetables in one large pan, while the other five had either the pork, fish or chicken sizzling away in a pat or two of melted butter and a dash or three of olive oil. Thomas also had this thing going on where he would twirl in the air and click the metal tongs “clack-clack, clack-clack, clack-clack” together every time after turning the food in the pan or plating the entrée – he was really good at it, and at that early point in our adventure, it hadn’t yet gotten to be annoying. (I’m betting that there is now a common Spanish phrase in the commercial kitchens of Chicago that goes something like “clack those one more time and I’ll shove them up your culo!”)

Gabe was non-stop banging out soup, salads and doing the majority of the plating. He had also taken on the leadership role, as Thomas seemed to be at his best reacting to directions as opposed to giving them. This was amazing for me to watch as it unfolded; all of this was going on with a quiet confidence that would have made you think they’d been doing this together every day for the last 20 years. Possibly they were just stoned.

As the evening concluded – we shut the kitchen down at 8:00 as we were absolutely out of every scrap of food – I stood in awe of what Thomas and Gabe had pulled off. Not only were 68 people (including one gluten intolerant septuagenarian) fed in an organized, timely manner, but they were fed food of exceptional taste and quality. There were lauds and bravos aplenty from all who had dined with us. I’m certain that if there were any food or service glitches they were minor, as most who dined with us realized they could be eating microwave Mac & Cheese in the Kremmeling High School Gym, and compared with that The Riverside had to seem like Le Cirque.

The only hitch to the evening came at the end, when one of our guests – a Russian couple with two small children, she spoke broken English and the others not a word – came to the restaurant at 8:00 with a brown paper lunch sack. I sat them and told them we had very limited offerings – I think all that was left was some pork and some rice. The woman then pulled from the sack two plastic bags, one containing a yet to-be-determined raw meat, the other some chopped raw vegetables – some sort of gourd thing; she asked if we could cook this for her family. I was a little dumbstruck, but what the hell, “why not” I told her. When I brought the bags back to the kitchen and told Thomas and Gabe what was going on, they protested as loudly as if I’d had asked them to cook while straight.

“Tell them No Way! That is totally against the health code” said Gabe, while standing amidst a room full of equipment that’s mere existence within 100 yards of a kitchen violated most every known rule in the Colorado health code. Some of the equipment would make them rethink the rules as to what is and isn’t allowable in junk yards.

A little deflated, I went back to the Serbian Nationals and told them our State law didn’t allow for this sort of thing and they’d have to buy food from us if they intended to eat in this restaurant. I had to explain this slowly, and loudly, so the woman could understand me, and as she explained the situation to her husband in their native tongue, he unleashed at me what I’m certain must have been naughty words in Serbia and were not intended to wish me well. But eat they did, and they paid in cash.

I was abuzz at the success of our first night, both from a culinary and financial position. All were equally excited as we cleaned the kitchen, washed and dried the dishes, reset the dining room and generally decompressed from the rush of the rush. We were to repeat this performance the next two nights, including another 180 mile round trip to Denver the next day to buy more stuff. Thomas and Gabe would continue to wow our guests every weekend for the next three months, bringing high end, inventive cuisine to Grand County that was heretofore generally unavailable. I can’t recall any of Abe’s old customers who visited those first three months saying anything like “I sure miss Jamie’s fried pork chops and Spanish rice” or “Grey Goose! No, I prefer the Popov vodka that Abe used to serve.”

By golly, unlike Abe, we may have gone belly up, but we did it with style!

To be continued……

The River Room...........Part V

The only task ahead of me more daunting than dealing with outdated, out of code kitchen equipment that I couldn’t afford to replace and the Colorado Department of Health and Safety, was the task of dealing with the human beings that would utilize that equipment – the cooks. I had no idea of what that would ultimately entail, as I had not one greasy minute of prior experience working in a restaurant; heretofore, I’d only eaten in them. All of my high-school and college job experience was spent working in a Thom McAn Shoe Store in the Metcalf South Mall, Overland Park, KS. Perhaps I would have been wiser to buy an old shoe store rather than a hotel, bar and restaurant.

Never in the plan did I have any intentions of being the cook, and it wasn’t because I didn’t think I could do it, rather, I wasn’t sure I could deal with the criticism of the paying public. One thing for certain that any person who seriously cooks will take too much to heart is when those that you cook for don’t like, and tell you that they don’t like, what you’ve busted your ass to make for them. Truth being, I found out the first furiously busy night we were open, while watching those cooks operate, that there would have been NO WAY I could have cooked anything beyond sloppy PB&J’s under commercial conditions in a busy restaurant, and my fear of criticism had nothing to do with it. I would have exploded so quickly under the demands mandated by the pace and the pressure to perform, there’s no telling the cacophonous blend of invectives and flying cookware that would have ensued.

The first night our restaurant was open was pure, unintended happenstance. We’d purchased the hotel on December 27th, 2009, and intended to open both the hotel and the restaurant for the first time on December 30th – a one-night dry run before New Years Eve. Abe had quite a few rooms booked for New Years, and we intended to jump in feet first and make our big Grand Opening splash to bring in the New Year. (Abe had actually asked if he could sell us the place on the 27th, yet still run it on New Years Eve and take the revenue from the rooms he’d booked and the meals he would serve. As you’ve now surmised from previous discussions, Abe had no shame.)

On the 28th of December, we drove to Denver to buy food and kitchen supplies, as the aforementioned Mr. Abe pretty much left the cupboard bare with regards to pots, pans and the other utensils necessary to operate a kitchen. The ‘we’ who went to Denver that day included Julie, our two 'chefs' and I. (I think the difference between the title of cook vs. chef has to do with ones’ level of training, education and experience. I don’t believe either of our hash slingers had attained enough of any of the aforementioned attributes to be designated as chefs, but referring to them in that manner gave the restaurant an air of professionalism, in stark contrast to our total lack of same.) Two chefs, you ask? That seems a pretty lavish staffing arrangement for a broken down start-up hotel restaurant in an out of the way locale. The original plan involved only my nephew Thomas, who had been a front line cook at McCormick & Schmicks Restaurant in Kansas City, moving west with us and grabbing hold of The River Room restaurant – we felt it a great opportunity for him, and a blessing for us to have an experienced cook who we knew and trusted. A small article in the local Grand County paper proclaimed our re-opening with the line “…featuring the cuisine of Chef Thomas Paradise.” Chef Number 2, Gabe, my second cousin from Hannibal, MO was a late arrival to the party, having signed on about two weeks before we bought the hotel as much for the adventure as for the paycheck. Gabe is just a bit of a free spirit, and the notion of throwing all to the wind for the opportunity to cook in a haunted hotel in the middle of The Rockies suited him to a “THC”.

Our trip to Denver netted us the makings of our first menu – Seared Asian Pork (Gabe’s recipe), Prime Rib, an Italian take on Chicken Cordon Bleu (my recipe which Gabe dubbed “Chicken Dick”) and Crusted Tilapia with Fried Capers, a dish that Thomas had mastered from Mc&S. It was a total crap shoot regarding how much of what to buy – a crap shoot that I would forever continue, and continue to lose at, ad nauseam throughout my brief stint as a restaurateur. Back we came, loaded down with food and supplies, but lightened by the act of leaving around $1200 at Sam’s, Costco and Applejacks Liquor Emporium. Several days later when I tallied up the $4000 worth of food and room revenue from that $1200 investment at the store, I gleefully thought “Wow! It’s going to be easy making a living doing this!”

So back to that first night.

December 29th dawned like most every other winter day in Hot Sulphur – colder than most mortals can imagine and looking as if it seriously wanted to snow. Julie and Rachel headed to Dillon, CO – about 50 miles southwest of Hot Sulphur on State Highway 9 – to buy yet more supplies for the hotel. (I was to quickly learn that this ‘going to the store for supplies’ thing was pretty much what running The Riverside was all about.) About noon the grey skies turned to a blistering white, as the snow pounded down in astonishing fashion – my first encounter with a Rocky Mountain blizzard. On and on it raged, and I was starting to get seriously worried about Julie and Rachel. They had 4-wheel drive, but the lack of visibility would have made 40-wheel drive irrelevant; not to mention the roads upon which they had to traverse were winding, two-lane, up and down affairs that also featured that little bit of excitement with the occasional severe drop-off into a bottomless chasm, should you decide to take a curve a little wide. It was about 3:00 in the afternoon when the phone started to ring – they’d closed down I-70 at the Eisenhower Tunnel, and at the rate it was snowing, the odds of reopening it any time that evening were slim; one after another, requests for rooms were coming from the soon-to-be snow-bound skiers, unable to make it back to Denver. In less than 30 minutes, all of the 16 guest rooms were filled; it dawned on me that they’d need to eat, and as for The River Room Restaurant at The Riverside Hotel, one day earlier than scheduled, it was now Go Time!

To be continued..........