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.

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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……