The Great Flood of 1927……The Dustbowl of the 1930’s...The Tsunami of 2003….Hurricane Katrina - natural disasters of Biblical proportion; events that define disaster.
Colorado was also witness to a natural disaster so profound, so horrific, that the elders will only mention it in hushed tones; contemporaries tremble and turn ashen at the memory.
The Great Colorado Pot Shortage of the fall of 2008
No one knows for certain who or what sinister series of events conspired to cause the shortage. Was it the prolonged Mexican winter of 2007? Possibly it was the recent locust infestation on Maui, while others suspected the Jamaican Drug Embargo. More than likely it was none of the aforementioned; rather, the shortage happened to coincide with the recent State election which legalized medicinal marijuana in Colorado, causing most of the 4.8 million unhealthy Coloradans to flee to their doctor for some much needed relief. Just like that, overnight, the demand for weed far exceeded the supply. There wasn’t a joint left to be had in the State.
Dhoubi took the pot shortage hard….. very, very hard.
His carefree, fun-loving demeanor took a nasty turn for the worse; he became quiet, sullen and quick to temper. His alcohol consumption, already epic, went off the charts. During the dinner shift, whenever I was out of the bar in the dining room, he would go into the bar, grab a bottle by the throat and swig gulps from the Hornitos Reposada Tequila or Johnny Walker Red - his brands of choice. On a positive note, he was very picky about the booze he’d chug, preferring not to drink if we were out of his favorites. This knowledge caused me to begin hiding the Hornitos and the Johnny Walker in my bedroom closet; made for a bit of a trek when someone ordered a top-shelf margarita, but so be it, as hidden away in the bedroom, I’d at least have top-shelf booze to serve.
He began all but accosting people – anyone and everyone, including our guests – as to whether or not they had any pot he could buy. At the slightest rumor of there being pot, he’d hop in his truck in pursuit; there was a midnight run to Aspen, next a three-day trek to Durango. I swear he would have climbed the nearest 14-er in a raging blizzard at the hint of a possibility of scoring a roach.
To say this lack of weed had a negative affect on his job performance is a few kilos short of an understatement. His kitchen deportment was horrific, to the point of everyone threatening to walk out if he didn’t get some control. His food preparation became so sloppy that I’m certain it cost us our third Michelin star. I strongly considered firing him, but with the holidays coming up – sold out weekends, group Christmas parties – I had no other choice but to put up with his God-awful behavior.
In mid-December, Christmas came early; not only for Dhoubi, but for all of the ailing Coloradans – weed had suddenly reappeared. Like a Times Square New Years Eve, the smoky streets of Boulder were filled with revelers, (although they were like way more laid back than those New York Times Square revelers) a healthy, hazy fog hanging over the pie-eyed throngs.
I was glad for this change in fortunes as I felt it would get Dhoubi back on an even keel - but such was not the case. The constant combination of a freshly stoned-again Dhoubi and a liquid diet of pricy tequila made for a brand of intoxication heretofore unknown to the consuming public. Even some of Grand County’s finest drunks were aghast at Dhoubi’s perpetual, high level state of self-medication, “Sheesh, but that guy can shure put away the saush…what a booze hound…hic….shimply shamelesh.”
His menu choices, while already a little on the eclectic side for Grand County, became so over the top that Thomas Keller would have been perplexed. “Yes Dhoubi”, I’d say when looking over the evenings specials, “perhaps if I was smashed on my ass and hadn’t one solitary functioning brain cell would I then be tempted to order the Ox Tongue Stew with Candied Jicama and Hot Buttered Groat Clusters. Honestly, where do you come up with this stuff?” He would then try to tell me, through a tongue that was as thick as a 4’x4’ and eyes that were glazed like a fat man’s dream donut, that the reintroduction of pot into his life had awakened his senses and expanded his mind and his culinary imagination to unimaginable levels of creativity. I certainly couldn’t argue with the ‘unimaginable levels’ part.
The last night Dhoubi worked at The River Room was Saturday, February 14th, 2009 – Valentine’s Day. The hotel was booked solid, and the restaurant was essentially sold out with reservations. Dhoubi had a special menu full of Italian-themed obscurities that were guaranteed to furrow the brow of every Grand Countian who would dine with us that evening. Try some of these on for size:
Cappezoli Mucca con Limoni e Salssicia
Brasato di rana pescatrice con i Piedi Maiali e Broccoli
Zuppa di Lumache, Noci e fagioli Lima
Mmmmm. Makes you hungry, doesn’t it? It was one thing trying to read it; having to pronounce it and explain it to our patrons that evening was next to impossible.
A sample of one of my many exchanges with the paying public that evening: “The Zuppa di lumache, noci e fagioli Lima is a soup of snails, walnuts and lima beans. I know it sounds a little unusual, but our chef told all on the staff that it is sublime.”
"Have you tried it?" the patron asked.
"Uh, no, not in hell. But I hear it's really good if you like snails!"
“Think I’ll pass on that. What is the Brasato, ....how do you say the rest of it?”
“The Brasato di rana pescatrice con i piedi maiali e broccoli, is a delightful little dish of braised monkfish, known as 'poor man's lobster', with pigs feet and broccolli. Again, an unusual combination, but I’m told by the chef that it’s quite tasty!”
“Whoa! Could maybe I get like an Italian hamburger or something?”
And on it went.
At the end of Dante’s Valentine’s Day Inferno at The River Room, and in true post-pot shortage fashion, Dhoubi was absolutely, positively 100% trashed to the max at the end of the evening. He literally couldn’t speak; I’d ask him a simple question such as “Hey Dhoubi, can you get up off of the floor and help Danny and Anthony clean the kitchen?”, and he’d look in my general direction, make a pained effort to open his mouth and form words, and say something like “plawd mullied gippo roaberdy.”
I simply couldn’t take any more of it, and however difficult for all of the parties involved, I knew what had to be done. Danny had the Sunday night dinner shift, and we were closed the following two days, so I had to agonize over the inevitable until Wednesday morning when Dhoubi arrived at the hotel. He seemed moderately sober, as I was able to understand a ‘morning’ as he flew by my office. I was quick to track him down and give him the news that I no longer required his services. Simply put, he did not take the news well. I recall that “F-you” was possibly the nicest thing he said to me as he exited our hotel for the final time. The honeymoon and the wedding had come to a disastrous end – Thank God.
The mantle of ‘head chef at The River Room’ was finally passed on to its rightful heir, Chef Danny. He’d worked for a year now under two capable trainers, and he’d soaked up all of their good habits like a sponge, and fortunately hadn’t seemed to pick up any of their bad habits. But he was going to need some help in the kitchen, especially on busy weekend nights……enter Chef Carrie, a hippie chick from Minnesota who came to Colorado in the 70’s, looking for snow, slopes and….have I mentioned the Colorado weed thing?
To be continued…….
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
The River Room........Part X
“Richard, I hope you remember me. Joe Amato gave me your phone number. My wife and I are out here on vacation, and I wanted to stop by and see your place. We’re in Grand Lake right now planning on heading your way.”
His name was Dhoubi Nhutjob, and he was a strapping, 6’2” Iranian whirling dervish (figuratively, not literally) full of cooking energy and enthusiasm. He was planning on moving his wife, dog and cat to Colorado at the end of the summer, and when I told him that Thomas was leaving in August, he said “no need for you to even look…I’m your new chef!” We knew him from when he’d worked as a waiter at Il Pene, our favorite restaurant, Italian or otherwise, in Kansas City. I didn’t know he could cook, but he promised me that he could, they just wouldn’t let him in the kitchen at Il Pene. (Red Flag!)
“I’ve worked in the kitchen at ABC Cafe and for the past six months I’ve been working the pasta station at Il Cuoco Lapidato” – both top end places in Kansas City – “this will be incredible. We’ll make this into the best restaurant in the mountains.”
I couldn’t help but love his attitude, and had enjoyed him as our waiter – always full of energy and passionate about the food he was serving. So I figured, ‘what did I have to lose?’
And so it happened; mid-August, Dhoubi showed up with Brody, his border collie mix, a suitcase and a beat-up Toyota truck pulling a really sketchy trailer full of hardwood – oak, hickory … the good stuff from the Midwest. He claimed that he’d been stopped and hassled a little by the Kansas Highway Patrol because of the lack of tags on this trailer thing he was pulling; it was basically on old 1950’s pickup truck bed that had some wheels cobbled onto it and a cheap camper top affixed to it – it looked like something 10-year old boys would have assembled, bored, with nothing better to do on a summer afternoon. Couple this vision with a wild haired Iranian driving this unlicensed contraption through the flatlands of western Kansas, and there’s a question why he was pulled over? Knowing him, he was probably driving this prairie schooner at 90 mph plus.
Dhoubi, welcome to The Riverside, you’ve had a long drive today…perhaps a shot of Johnny Walker Red will make things right for you. Ok, sure, maybe two or three shots…well, ok, here’s a tenth shot. 'Hmmm', I thought, 'he’ll fit in well in Grand County.'
Dhoubi’s first day of work was a lunch shift. We had a menu with about six items – KC BarBQ brisket, a hamburger that we made from daily fresh ground rib-eye steak (cheap butcher cuts from the end of the roasts), a chicken sandwich, a soup of the day and a few lunch salads.
“No problem with any of this” he said as I showed him this and that about what we served, “I’m also gonna have a pasta special today. Some of the veggies in the walk-in are about out of time. I’ll make a vegetarian dish, say maybe Fettuccine with red peppers, celery, maybe some snap peas and finish it with a champagne cream sauce – very light, but fantastic flavor.’
“Uh, gee, that sounds great.” I was stunned, almost speechless - here he was, excited about lunch; Thomas and Danny had lost their zest for the lunch shifts half-way through their first day.
We sold every order of the pasta special – it was out of this world; there were literally moans and groans of ecstasy from the patrons as they ate. I honestly hadn’t eaten anything that good in forever – and that’s no slight to the current Riverside crew, as they put out terrific food; but this sauce was in another league. Honest to God, we had lunch patrons come back that evening and request the same dish for dinner; it was that good.
During his first dinner shift of that same evening, the plan was for Thomas to show him the Riverside ropes; in fact, Thomas agreed to stay with us for two weeks for the sole purpose of training Dhoubi. I think it only three days later that Thomas packed up and headed for his next gig in Charlotte, NC – Dhoubi clearly didn’t need any training. He took over that kitchen without any hesitation; his presence during the heat of the rush was a commanding one - saucing here, searing there, and barking orders all the while.
The only person in this mix who was less than thrilled was Danny, as he’d had aspirations of taking over the head job, but he quietly stepped back; he didn’t need to have it spelled out for him that Dhoubi intended to take a back seat to no one. And that ‘no one’ included me.
Things seemed to be going well, especially with regards to the originality and quality of the food. Every day Dhoubi made fresh pasta for a nightly pasta special – fettuccine, tagliatelle, raviolis; and the sauces were beyond better than any you could imagine. He made his own fresh mozzarella cheese from curds. His lasagna was unlike any you’d ever had – it was the kick-ass béchamel sauce that he layered into the mix. The oak and hickory he’d brought from Kansas City went towards making ‘dirty steak’, a rib-eye thrown directly on the glowing coals which seared a smoky flavor into the steak; it was then finished inside on the flat top, sliced on the bias, drizzled with reduced Balsamic vinegar and served with an arugula salad tossed with a hint of truffle oil. It was killer! His soups were to die for, and his desserts….magnifico!
There was a period early in Dhoubi’s tenure that I would have put us up against any restaurant in Denver, and most from Denver who ate at The River Room agreed that there wasn’t a better restaurant in the Mile High Stoned City.
So you might ask “why then, seven short moths later, was Dhoubi storming out of the hotel, amidst his hail of insults, threats and F-bombs, after being fired?”
It started in late-September on a beautiful fall Monday– the sky a blue that could only be imagined, the Aspens at the peak of their golden majesty. The kitchen was closed and the hotel unoccupied, and one of our neighbors who ran the bar at Dead Pines Golf Club gifted me and Dhoubi a round of golf. As Dhoubi got in the car with me to head to the golf course, he was accompanied by a King-sized reek of marijuana – it was as if he had a smoldering bong stashed in each of his pockets.
I didn’t think much about it other than I hadn’t realized that he was a stoner. He never acted stoned, he never looked stoned – his manic behavior was the polar opposite of stoned – and he’d never even mentioned anything about pot or drugs. It just kind of surprised me because there had been zero behavioral traits exhibited that would cause me to connect those dots.
This might be the end of the ‘no big surprise, he’s a stoner’ story, as I’ve mentioned earlier, smoking weed in Colorado is as prevalent as those big, pointy mountains that they’ve got there; it’s essentially legal. All you need is an ailment – from tennis elbow to toenail fungus – and a prescription from a Pot Doctor and you’re good to blow. Couple that with the proclivity of those in the restaurant industry to abuse drugs and alcohol, and you’ve got yourself a genuine reason for an Iranian kid who’s about as outdoorsy as Truman Capote to pack up and move to the mountains of Colorado.
But we were soon to find out, the problem with Dhoubi wasn’t when he was stoned - it was when he wasn’t.
To be continued….yet again……
His name was Dhoubi Nhutjob, and he was a strapping, 6’2” Iranian whirling dervish (figuratively, not literally) full of cooking energy and enthusiasm. He was planning on moving his wife, dog and cat to Colorado at the end of the summer, and when I told him that Thomas was leaving in August, he said “no need for you to even look…I’m your new chef!” We knew him from when he’d worked as a waiter at Il Pene, our favorite restaurant, Italian or otherwise, in Kansas City. I didn’t know he could cook, but he promised me that he could, they just wouldn’t let him in the kitchen at Il Pene. (Red Flag!)
“I’ve worked in the kitchen at ABC Cafe and for the past six months I’ve been working the pasta station at Il Cuoco Lapidato” – both top end places in Kansas City – “this will be incredible. We’ll make this into the best restaurant in the mountains.”
I couldn’t help but love his attitude, and had enjoyed him as our waiter – always full of energy and passionate about the food he was serving. So I figured, ‘what did I have to lose?’
And so it happened; mid-August, Dhoubi showed up with Brody, his border collie mix, a suitcase and a beat-up Toyota truck pulling a really sketchy trailer full of hardwood – oak, hickory … the good stuff from the Midwest. He claimed that he’d been stopped and hassled a little by the Kansas Highway Patrol because of the lack of tags on this trailer thing he was pulling; it was basically on old 1950’s pickup truck bed that had some wheels cobbled onto it and a cheap camper top affixed to it – it looked like something 10-year old boys would have assembled, bored, with nothing better to do on a summer afternoon. Couple this vision with a wild haired Iranian driving this unlicensed contraption through the flatlands of western Kansas, and there’s a question why he was pulled over? Knowing him, he was probably driving this prairie schooner at 90 mph plus.
Dhoubi, welcome to The Riverside, you’ve had a long drive today…perhaps a shot of Johnny Walker Red will make things right for you. Ok, sure, maybe two or three shots…well, ok, here’s a tenth shot. 'Hmmm', I thought, 'he’ll fit in well in Grand County.'
Dhoubi’s first day of work was a lunch shift. We had a menu with about six items – KC BarBQ brisket, a hamburger that we made from daily fresh ground rib-eye steak (cheap butcher cuts from the end of the roasts), a chicken sandwich, a soup of the day and a few lunch salads.
“No problem with any of this” he said as I showed him this and that about what we served, “I’m also gonna have a pasta special today. Some of the veggies in the walk-in are about out of time. I’ll make a vegetarian dish, say maybe Fettuccine with red peppers, celery, maybe some snap peas and finish it with a champagne cream sauce – very light, but fantastic flavor.’
“Uh, gee, that sounds great.” I was stunned, almost speechless - here he was, excited about lunch; Thomas and Danny had lost their zest for the lunch shifts half-way through their first day.
We sold every order of the pasta special – it was out of this world; there were literally moans and groans of ecstasy from the patrons as they ate. I honestly hadn’t eaten anything that good in forever – and that’s no slight to the current Riverside crew, as they put out terrific food; but this sauce was in another league. Honest to God, we had lunch patrons come back that evening and request the same dish for dinner; it was that good.
During his first dinner shift of that same evening, the plan was for Thomas to show him the Riverside ropes; in fact, Thomas agreed to stay with us for two weeks for the sole purpose of training Dhoubi. I think it only three days later that Thomas packed up and headed for his next gig in Charlotte, NC – Dhoubi clearly didn’t need any training. He took over that kitchen without any hesitation; his presence during the heat of the rush was a commanding one - saucing here, searing there, and barking orders all the while.
The only person in this mix who was less than thrilled was Danny, as he’d had aspirations of taking over the head job, but he quietly stepped back; he didn’t need to have it spelled out for him that Dhoubi intended to take a back seat to no one. And that ‘no one’ included me.
Things seemed to be going well, especially with regards to the originality and quality of the food. Every day Dhoubi made fresh pasta for a nightly pasta special – fettuccine, tagliatelle, raviolis; and the sauces were beyond better than any you could imagine. He made his own fresh mozzarella cheese from curds. His lasagna was unlike any you’d ever had – it was the kick-ass béchamel sauce that he layered into the mix. The oak and hickory he’d brought from Kansas City went towards making ‘dirty steak’, a rib-eye thrown directly on the glowing coals which seared a smoky flavor into the steak; it was then finished inside on the flat top, sliced on the bias, drizzled with reduced Balsamic vinegar and served with an arugula salad tossed with a hint of truffle oil. It was killer! His soups were to die for, and his desserts….magnifico!
There was a period early in Dhoubi’s tenure that I would have put us up against any restaurant in Denver, and most from Denver who ate at The River Room agreed that there wasn’t a better restaurant in the Mile High Stoned City.
So you might ask “why then, seven short moths later, was Dhoubi storming out of the hotel, amidst his hail of insults, threats and F-bombs, after being fired?”
It started in late-September on a beautiful fall Monday– the sky a blue that could only be imagined, the Aspens at the peak of their golden majesty. The kitchen was closed and the hotel unoccupied, and one of our neighbors who ran the bar at Dead Pines Golf Club gifted me and Dhoubi a round of golf. As Dhoubi got in the car with me to head to the golf course, he was accompanied by a King-sized reek of marijuana – it was as if he had a smoldering bong stashed in each of his pockets.
I didn’t think much about it other than I hadn’t realized that he was a stoner. He never acted stoned, he never looked stoned – his manic behavior was the polar opposite of stoned – and he’d never even mentioned anything about pot or drugs. It just kind of surprised me because there had been zero behavioral traits exhibited that would cause me to connect those dots.
This might be the end of the ‘no big surprise, he’s a stoner’ story, as I’ve mentioned earlier, smoking weed in Colorado is as prevalent as those big, pointy mountains that they’ve got there; it’s essentially legal. All you need is an ailment – from tennis elbow to toenail fungus – and a prescription from a Pot Doctor and you’re good to blow. Couple that with the proclivity of those in the restaurant industry to abuse drugs and alcohol, and you’ve got yourself a genuine reason for an Iranian kid who’s about as outdoorsy as Truman Capote to pack up and move to the mountains of Colorado.
But we were soon to find out, the problem with Dhoubi wasn’t when he was stoned - it was when he wasn’t.
To be continued….yet again……
Monday, May 9, 2011
The River Room........Part IX
The morning after what most would consider an epic display of debauchery, but in Hot Sulphur...another Sunday night at the local watering hole, the damage was assessed and fortunately, there was no significant physical damage, only psychological damage at the reality of what lay ahead of us in this Colorado ‘adventure’. On the upside, there was a big fish bowl full of dirty, crumpled up bills. Nice, but had the sum been ten-fold, I would have made the same post-game day decision to follow Abe’s advice – not in hell would we have a functioning bar in Hot Sulphur Springs open to the local trade.
We said our goodbyes to Gabe, and shut the hotel and restaurant down for two months while we installed the new dishwasher and began the first few steps of rebuilding the kitchen. Thomas and Rachel took some time off and came back to KC, and the plan was for them to both go back in mid-April; Thomas would start working on the kitchen, Rachel painting rooms, cleaning and getting the hotel ready for the summer season and our eventual arrival. We had also hired a jack-leg contractor to redo our living quarters before our arrival, and someone needed to be there to oversee the remodel – in reality, to report daily that NO remodeling was going on as it should have been.
With Gabe gone, and me having seen what a busy night at The River Room entails, I knew we’d need some additional kitchen help for the summer – especially when you threw a lunch shift into the equation. A mention of my need for additional help was made in passing to my brother in KC, who thought that a good friend of his had a son that worked in a restaurant in high school and was looking to move to Colorado – he’d mention the Riverside to his friend.
One phone call and two weeks later, Chef Danny shows up at The Riverside with a suitcase full of bad clothes, a guitar, and a few boxes of books and LP’s. As bad luck would have it, some of those LP’s, and his iPod full of music, followed Thomas’s bent – including The Mars Volta. It was at this point that I decided to hide my guns for the ultimate safety of all who could be exposed.
Danny’s prior cooking experience included summers working at a country club bar & grill, and a stint a Garozzos, a Kansas City Italian eatery famous for Chicken Spedini, a dish which we stole and made our house specialty. I had no idea as to what he could do in a kitchen, as his first month was spent redoing ours – damn, but the kid was handy, and a hard worker.
The place re-opened on Memorial Day weekend, 2008. Julie and I were in KC, watching from the sidelines. We had most of the rooms booked from a wedding party, and the place was hopping – bar and restaurant both. Thomas took Danny under his wing, and quickly into the deal, we had two of the best chefs in the mountains, putting out heretofore unheard of fare in Grand County.
A beautiful white linen dining room, thanks to Julie and the iPod playlist, complemented by food and presentation that were off the charts – by my standards, and I had some damn high restaurant standards – and The River Room had become a fine dining destination.
Don’t get me wrong. We had our share of assholes.
“How is everything this evening?” I asked a table of four, two couples in their early 60’s - the obvious alpha male looked like a cross between a rutting bulldog and Oliver North.
The bulldog replied, in a bit of a bulldog way “OK”.
“Just OK?” I asked.
“Yeah, just OK.”, the chip on his shoulder growing like a bag of microwave popcorn.
Chipper and cheerfully from me, “What can we do to make it better than ‘OK’?”
He held up a small piece of the grilled bread that we served, FOR F-ING FREE, - grilled bread that Thomas sliced on the bias, painted with butter, olive oil and garlic, then grilled with burn marks to a crunchy, crispy “Oh my God this is awesome can I have some more?!” – and said, “How about serving soft dinner rolls?, NOT BURNED BREAD!!!”
His wife cowered, and looked at me apologetically; no question she’d suffered through scenes like this for the sad past 40 years of her life. It is important to note, that the foursome had choked down three FREE orders of this burned claptrap, but no matter.
This was my first lesson in ‘opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one, but acknowledging that, this guy was the consummate major asshole for all time!” I think that’s how that saying goes.
Summer went on…good food, decent business and the establishment of the building blocks of a place that could actually become a dining destination in Grand County. Groups started calling about Christmas parties, fall weddings and group events. But in spite of the successes, there was some unrest with one of the major cogs in this seemingly well-oiled machine - Chef Thomas was ready to blow this pop stand for brighter pastures and bigger cities.
His discontent may have coincided with our arrival in mid-June; we put demands on all of the employees that weren’t existent while we watched from afar in KC; demands like getting out of bed before 2:00 PM and actually working. But more importantly, he was getting pounded by his former employer, McCormicks & Schmicks, with opportunities in Chicago, Charlotte and everywhere other than Hot Sulphur Springs - for way more than we could pay. No question, the dude could cook.
It wasn’t but a few weeks into our full time late-June arrival that Thomas told us he was planning on leaving at the end of the summer. The fun was done. We’d need to find a replacement; although Danny was picking things up well, there was no way he could singularly manage the kitchen going into the fall, especially with all of the specialty business we’d booked.
There is a quote from a classic 1970’s movie “Once Upon a Time in America”…great cast, great director, and this bit of simply, wonderfully expressed profundity from Burt Young…“Life…(dramatic pause) ..is stranger than shit!”
Now for a fact, life is stranger than shit, because not one day after Thomas gave us the devastating news that he was checking out of The Riverside, I got a call from an old KC contact from our favorite KC restaurant, “hey, how’s it going? I want to move to Colorado, and I’m wondering if you’ve got any openings in your kitchen?”
Life.....is stranger than shit.
To be continued…………..
We said our goodbyes to Gabe, and shut the hotel and restaurant down for two months while we installed the new dishwasher and began the first few steps of rebuilding the kitchen. Thomas and Rachel took some time off and came back to KC, and the plan was for them to both go back in mid-April; Thomas would start working on the kitchen, Rachel painting rooms, cleaning and getting the hotel ready for the summer season and our eventual arrival. We had also hired a jack-leg contractor to redo our living quarters before our arrival, and someone needed to be there to oversee the remodel – in reality, to report daily that NO remodeling was going on as it should have been.
With Gabe gone, and me having seen what a busy night at The River Room entails, I knew we’d need some additional kitchen help for the summer – especially when you threw a lunch shift into the equation. A mention of my need for additional help was made in passing to my brother in KC, who thought that a good friend of his had a son that worked in a restaurant in high school and was looking to move to Colorado – he’d mention the Riverside to his friend.
One phone call and two weeks later, Chef Danny shows up at The Riverside with a suitcase full of bad clothes, a guitar, and a few boxes of books and LP’s. As bad luck would have it, some of those LP’s, and his iPod full of music, followed Thomas’s bent – including The Mars Volta. It was at this point that I decided to hide my guns for the ultimate safety of all who could be exposed.
Danny’s prior cooking experience included summers working at a country club bar & grill, and a stint a Garozzos, a Kansas City Italian eatery famous for Chicken Spedini, a dish which we stole and made our house specialty. I had no idea as to what he could do in a kitchen, as his first month was spent redoing ours – damn, but the kid was handy, and a hard worker.
The place re-opened on Memorial Day weekend, 2008. Julie and I were in KC, watching from the sidelines. We had most of the rooms booked from a wedding party, and the place was hopping – bar and restaurant both. Thomas took Danny under his wing, and quickly into the deal, we had two of the best chefs in the mountains, putting out heretofore unheard of fare in Grand County.
A beautiful white linen dining room, thanks to Julie and the iPod playlist, complemented by food and presentation that were off the charts – by my standards, and I had some damn high restaurant standards – and The River Room had become a fine dining destination.
Don’t get me wrong. We had our share of assholes.
“How is everything this evening?” I asked a table of four, two couples in their early 60’s - the obvious alpha male looked like a cross between a rutting bulldog and Oliver North.
The bulldog replied, in a bit of a bulldog way “OK”.
“Just OK?” I asked.
“Yeah, just OK.”, the chip on his shoulder growing like a bag of microwave popcorn.
Chipper and cheerfully from me, “What can we do to make it better than ‘OK’?”
He held up a small piece of the grilled bread that we served, FOR F-ING FREE, - grilled bread that Thomas sliced on the bias, painted with butter, olive oil and garlic, then grilled with burn marks to a crunchy, crispy “Oh my God this is awesome can I have some more?!” – and said, “How about serving soft dinner rolls?, NOT BURNED BREAD!!!”
His wife cowered, and looked at me apologetically; no question she’d suffered through scenes like this for the sad past 40 years of her life. It is important to note, that the foursome had choked down three FREE orders of this burned claptrap, but no matter.
This was my first lesson in ‘opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one, but acknowledging that, this guy was the consummate major asshole for all time!” I think that’s how that saying goes.
Summer went on…good food, decent business and the establishment of the building blocks of a place that could actually become a dining destination in Grand County. Groups started calling about Christmas parties, fall weddings and group events. But in spite of the successes, there was some unrest with one of the major cogs in this seemingly well-oiled machine - Chef Thomas was ready to blow this pop stand for brighter pastures and bigger cities.
His discontent may have coincided with our arrival in mid-June; we put demands on all of the employees that weren’t existent while we watched from afar in KC; demands like getting out of bed before 2:00 PM and actually working. But more importantly, he was getting pounded by his former employer, McCormicks & Schmicks, with opportunities in Chicago, Charlotte and everywhere other than Hot Sulphur Springs - for way more than we could pay. No question, the dude could cook.
It wasn’t but a few weeks into our full time late-June arrival that Thomas told us he was planning on leaving at the end of the summer. The fun was done. We’d need to find a replacement; although Danny was picking things up well, there was no way he could singularly manage the kitchen going into the fall, especially with all of the specialty business we’d booked.
There is a quote from a classic 1970’s movie “Once Upon a Time in America”…great cast, great director, and this bit of simply, wonderfully expressed profundity from Burt Young…“Life…(dramatic pause) ..is stranger than shit!”
Now for a fact, life is stranger than shit, because not one day after Thomas gave us the devastating news that he was checking out of The Riverside, I got a call from an old KC contact from our favorite KC restaurant, “hey, how’s it going? I want to move to Colorado, and I’m wondering if you’ve got any openings in your kitchen?”
Life.....is stranger than shit.
To be continued…………..
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
The River Room........Part VIII
Early in my discussions with Abe regarding our purchase and subsequent operation of The Riverside, he took the time during one of our inspection visits to sit me down by the fire and give me some unsolicited advice; the do's and don’ts of running The Riverside, if you will – the benefit of his 20 years of experience. I should have paid better attention.
“Ricardo” Abe began, then paused, as if he were waiting for me to scribe these edicts for eventual inclusion on stone tablets “you do not, under any circumstances, want to open your bar to the locals – only to the hotel and dinner guests.”
“Abe, are you serious? You’ve got this beautiful bar and you want me to keep it closed up? I’m going to be looking for every bit of revenue I can get from this place. I’ve even got a decent amount of bar revenue factored into my projections.”
Answering me in his high pitched sing-songy falsetto, and for added dramatic effect halting for ½ second intervals between each word, “you do not want to open your bar to the locals! Trust me on this. That’s all that I’m saying. Take it or leave it!”
I didn’t trust him, and I didn’t take it - I left it; bad decision #46 in what would total 792 bad decisions that I would make during the next two years.
Late afternoon, December 28th, fresh from our buying spree in Denver, in barges one of the locals – and when I say barges, I mean barges. Bigger than life and louder than a Buckethead/The Mars Volta double-bill, Patty (not her real name, but pretty close) exploded into the lobby and yelled “I hear you bought Abe out. Are you guys gonna open the bar to locals? I sure hope so, ‘cause I could sure use a rum & Coke about now!” She forgot to say another rum & Coke, as it was obvious that this wouldn’t be her first of the day... or hour, for that matter.
Patty was not the owner of a Size 4 dress; in fact, I doubt very much that Patty had ever worn a dress of any size. She was a cowgirl to the max, rough and tough, with coarse, thick dark hair and massive pigtails that resembled those gym ropes that you used to straddle and inch up towards the top of the gym upon, all the while praying that you wouldn’t fall to your death.
“My name’s Patty, and I’ve been coming here for years. You got a room up there named after me. Could I get that rum & Coke?”
"Whoa", I thought. If Abe had only mentioned this local, I would have possibly taken heed of his advice; in fact he said ‘locals’, in that there may be more like this that will descend upon us in their quest for rum & Coke. Oh my, what have we gotten ourselves into?
Patty was served a rum & Coke, and Gabe, who quickly stepped in as both bartender and bouncer, charged her $5 for a shot of Old Jamaica rum and a hefty pour of Coca-Cola. Patty rummaged through her jean pockets until she came up with the cash, and said “If you guys wanna get the local trade, you gotta charge less than five bucks a drink for house booze. Just a friendly piece of advice, since you’re new around here….”
Unlike my educational session with Abe, I took stern notice of the advice I’d just been given by Patty; the price of a rum & Coke just went up to seven bucks.
---------------------
Thomas was kind enough to prep me regarding the impending blues/booze fest that I’d fallen prey to the old Hannibal double-shuffle into allowing to let happen.
“Uh..., Uncle Richard, I’m a little worried about this concert we’re having here Sunday night…”
“Why’s that, Thomas? Because there are 500 posters plastered all over Grand County advertising free music and cheap booze on a Sunday, when all of the other bars in Grand County are closed?”
“Oh, so you saw the posters? Yea, I thought it was a little excessive; could be a good time though….”
‘Nice…’, I thought, picturing buses pulling up in front of the hotel, the doors springing open, Patty and hundreds of her ilk barging out, then reeling into The Riverside; next, wadded up dollar bills being fished from dirty dungarees, eventually flying through the air, as the din from the calls for 2-for-1 PBR’s and rum & Cokes were drowning out Gabe’s high-voltage, bluesy, Marshall-amped up bye-bye to Grand County. The only upside to this scenario was that the whole sight and sound of it might possibly, once and for all, vanquish the hotel of the pranksterous spirits that wreaked havoc upon our person and our plumbing, providing we made it through the evening alive and didn’t end up joining them in permanent, immortal residence.
So I girded my loins, and stocked up on cases of cheap beer and cheaper hooch. Gabe and his band buddies set up stage in the Green Room, moving this and that to form an impromptu stadium, in the smallest sense of the word. Gabe prayed for a crowd; I prayed that my insurance agent and all of her office staff, relatives and neighbors were vacationing on Mars, or possibly a more distant locale.
God kind of answered my prayers…… with a blizzard.
At about 4:30 in the PM, an all-out, Grand County hum-dinging Son-of-a-bitchin’ blizzard unleashed from the Heavenly skies; not even for cheap beer and free music would a Grand County drunk venture out in this weather. Oh, don’t get me wrong; they’d break a sweat, they’d prowl around their house and suppose, they’d think that maybe it might be worth the risk – but at the end of the discussion, they’d lose out to a wiser spouse, a pleading child or the sober voice in their head that would say “are you out of your mind? It’s a freaking blizzard out there!! Plus, it’s not like we don’t have a jug of Popov in the cupboard.”
When I said God ‘kind of’ answered my prayers, I meant that the blizzard neutered all of the Grand County drunks that would have to drive to the Riverside Blues Fest. Unfortunately, there were those in Hot Sulphur that could get there by walking, blizzard or not; and for a fact, there’s no worse kind of drunk than a Grand County drunk who doesn’t have to worry about driving.
At 7:30, in walked Patty, in walked Jane, Isaac, Brad, Jim, and fifteen to twenty more of the Hot Sulphur locals; they’d braved the weather, and they were in the mood for some live music and Sunday night bar booze; after all, the Barking Dog wasn’t serving.
“What’ll you have?” I asked in cheerful bartender fashion to the first young man who sidled up to the bar.
“Gimme a rum and Coke; heavy on the rum and a little Coke for color!” (I’d soon learn that this was the Grand County bar mantra…heavy on the booze, light on the non-booze whatever else.)
“Done deal”, I said, “that’ll be six bucks.”
About four minutes went by, and the same young man came back and said “Gimme another rum and Coke, and go lighter on the Coke, heavier on the rum this time.”
“Here you go! That’ll be seven bucks.”
Pockets were searched and wrinkled bills were proffered. “Much better; pour me another one of those cause I’ll be back in a minute.”
This pattern would continue for the next few hours.
Gabe and his group got things going at 8:00, and he was fast ripping it up – great music, good time. But the locals were only perfunctorily interested in the music as a means of having access to a walking distance ‘Open on Sunday’ bar in a damn blizzard; Gabe was rocking his little heart out, but for all that the locals cared, he could have been playing a solo kazoo in the Green Room, so long as the rum & Cokes were flowing in the bar.
At 10:00 PM, as proprietor and owner of The Riverside Hotel, Bar & Restaurant, I’d decided that I’d had about enough. Our rum & Coke dude was all but having sex with one of the local maidens on one of our rickety bar tables. Some of the others in the bar were throwing darts – not at a dart board, but at each other. The Rook pieces on our Chess table had found their way into one of the patrons nostrils, and a Pawn in each of his ears. His attempt at bad bar humor was going unnoticed, as most of the patrons were cheering on the carnal performance of Captain Morgan and his table wench.
One of the locals that I’d previously seen at the post office – she was a sweet, grandmotherly looking lady that more than surprised me by her attendance – asked me to total up her tab, and would I take a personal check?
“Not a problem” I said. “That’ll be $32.00.”
“Thirty two dollarsh” she slurred, “How many beersh d’I have?”
“16 beers” I replied, “2-for-1 is 8 times four bucks apiece equals $32 dollars, assuming you don’t want to add a tip.”
“16 beersh!! Thash crazy! I coulda shworn I only had 14…hic”
It’s 10:07, and I loudly announce, “Last call Folks! The music’s winding down, and the bar is closing!”
At this pronouncement, Captain Morgan disengages himself from his local Hot Sulphur hottie of the night and staggers up to the bar, steadies himself, violently slams his fist on the bar –as much for ballast as exclamation - and says,
“BULLSHIT! Last call in Colorado is 2 AM. It’s only 10 OClock!” I was truly surprised he could tell time at this point. He had a look of wildness in his eyes that I’d never seen and wasn’t quite sure how to deal with; but I’d really had enough and decided I’d have to grow a pair. I looked him squarely back in the eye with a little wildness of my own and calmly said “Last call in this Colorado bar is 10 PM, and that’s right now. So what’ll it be?”
Shrinking back a little, he said “Gimme six Rum & Cokes; heavy on the rum, a little Coke for color.”
As I began lining up those six rum & Cokes, under duress and fear that the man may kill me in the event that I didn’t serve him, Abe Rodriguez seemed to me, at that moment, the wisest man in all the world.
To be Continued……….
“Ricardo” Abe began, then paused, as if he were waiting for me to scribe these edicts for eventual inclusion on stone tablets “you do not, under any circumstances, want to open your bar to the locals – only to the hotel and dinner guests.”
“Abe, are you serious? You’ve got this beautiful bar and you want me to keep it closed up? I’m going to be looking for every bit of revenue I can get from this place. I’ve even got a decent amount of bar revenue factored into my projections.”
Answering me in his high pitched sing-songy falsetto, and for added dramatic effect halting for ½ second intervals between each word, “you do not want to open your bar to the locals! Trust me on this. That’s all that I’m saying. Take it or leave it!”
I didn’t trust him, and I didn’t take it - I left it; bad decision #46 in what would total 792 bad decisions that I would make during the next two years.
Late afternoon, December 28th, fresh from our buying spree in Denver, in barges one of the locals – and when I say barges, I mean barges. Bigger than life and louder than a Buckethead/The Mars Volta double-bill, Patty (not her real name, but pretty close) exploded into the lobby and yelled “I hear you bought Abe out. Are you guys gonna open the bar to locals? I sure hope so, ‘cause I could sure use a rum & Coke about now!” She forgot to say another rum & Coke, as it was obvious that this wouldn’t be her first of the day... or hour, for that matter.
Patty was not the owner of a Size 4 dress; in fact, I doubt very much that Patty had ever worn a dress of any size. She was a cowgirl to the max, rough and tough, with coarse, thick dark hair and massive pigtails that resembled those gym ropes that you used to straddle and inch up towards the top of the gym upon, all the while praying that you wouldn’t fall to your death.
“My name’s Patty, and I’ve been coming here for years. You got a room up there named after me. Could I get that rum & Coke?”
"Whoa", I thought. If Abe had only mentioned this local, I would have possibly taken heed of his advice; in fact he said ‘locals’, in that there may be more like this that will descend upon us in their quest for rum & Coke. Oh my, what have we gotten ourselves into?
Patty was served a rum & Coke, and Gabe, who quickly stepped in as both bartender and bouncer, charged her $5 for a shot of Old Jamaica rum and a hefty pour of Coca-Cola. Patty rummaged through her jean pockets until she came up with the cash, and said “If you guys wanna get the local trade, you gotta charge less than five bucks a drink for house booze. Just a friendly piece of advice, since you’re new around here….”
Unlike my educational session with Abe, I took stern notice of the advice I’d just been given by Patty; the price of a rum & Coke just went up to seven bucks.
---------------------
Thomas was kind enough to prep me regarding the impending blues/booze fest that I’d fallen prey to the old Hannibal double-shuffle into allowing to let happen.
“Uh..., Uncle Richard, I’m a little worried about this concert we’re having here Sunday night…”
“Why’s that, Thomas? Because there are 500 posters plastered all over Grand County advertising free music and cheap booze on a Sunday, when all of the other bars in Grand County are closed?”
“Oh, so you saw the posters? Yea, I thought it was a little excessive; could be a good time though….”
‘Nice…’, I thought, picturing buses pulling up in front of the hotel, the doors springing open, Patty and hundreds of her ilk barging out, then reeling into The Riverside; next, wadded up dollar bills being fished from dirty dungarees, eventually flying through the air, as the din from the calls for 2-for-1 PBR’s and rum & Cokes were drowning out Gabe’s high-voltage, bluesy, Marshall-amped up bye-bye to Grand County. The only upside to this scenario was that the whole sight and sound of it might possibly, once and for all, vanquish the hotel of the pranksterous spirits that wreaked havoc upon our person and our plumbing, providing we made it through the evening alive and didn’t end up joining them in permanent, immortal residence.
So I girded my loins, and stocked up on cases of cheap beer and cheaper hooch. Gabe and his band buddies set up stage in the Green Room, moving this and that to form an impromptu stadium, in the smallest sense of the word. Gabe prayed for a crowd; I prayed that my insurance agent and all of her office staff, relatives and neighbors were vacationing on Mars, or possibly a more distant locale.
God kind of answered my prayers…… with a blizzard.
At about 4:30 in the PM, an all-out, Grand County hum-dinging Son-of-a-bitchin’ blizzard unleashed from the Heavenly skies; not even for cheap beer and free music would a Grand County drunk venture out in this weather. Oh, don’t get me wrong; they’d break a sweat, they’d prowl around their house and suppose, they’d think that maybe it might be worth the risk – but at the end of the discussion, they’d lose out to a wiser spouse, a pleading child or the sober voice in their head that would say “are you out of your mind? It’s a freaking blizzard out there!! Plus, it’s not like we don’t have a jug of Popov in the cupboard.”
When I said God ‘kind of’ answered my prayers, I meant that the blizzard neutered all of the Grand County drunks that would have to drive to the Riverside Blues Fest. Unfortunately, there were those in Hot Sulphur that could get there by walking, blizzard or not; and for a fact, there’s no worse kind of drunk than a Grand County drunk who doesn’t have to worry about driving.
At 7:30, in walked Patty, in walked Jane, Isaac, Brad, Jim, and fifteen to twenty more of the Hot Sulphur locals; they’d braved the weather, and they were in the mood for some live music and Sunday night bar booze; after all, the Barking Dog wasn’t serving.
“What’ll you have?” I asked in cheerful bartender fashion to the first young man who sidled up to the bar.
“Gimme a rum and Coke; heavy on the rum and a little Coke for color!” (I’d soon learn that this was the Grand County bar mantra…heavy on the booze, light on the non-booze whatever else.)
“Done deal”, I said, “that’ll be six bucks.”
About four minutes went by, and the same young man came back and said “Gimme another rum and Coke, and go lighter on the Coke, heavier on the rum this time.”
“Here you go! That’ll be seven bucks.”
Pockets were searched and wrinkled bills were proffered. “Much better; pour me another one of those cause I’ll be back in a minute.”
This pattern would continue for the next few hours.
Gabe and his group got things going at 8:00, and he was fast ripping it up – great music, good time. But the locals were only perfunctorily interested in the music as a means of having access to a walking distance ‘Open on Sunday’ bar in a damn blizzard; Gabe was rocking his little heart out, but for all that the locals cared, he could have been playing a solo kazoo in the Green Room, so long as the rum & Cokes were flowing in the bar.
At 10:00 PM, as proprietor and owner of The Riverside Hotel, Bar & Restaurant, I’d decided that I’d had about enough. Our rum & Coke dude was all but having sex with one of the local maidens on one of our rickety bar tables. Some of the others in the bar were throwing darts – not at a dart board, but at each other. The Rook pieces on our Chess table had found their way into one of the patrons nostrils, and a Pawn in each of his ears. His attempt at bad bar humor was going unnoticed, as most of the patrons were cheering on the carnal performance of Captain Morgan and his table wench.
One of the locals that I’d previously seen at the post office – she was a sweet, grandmotherly looking lady that more than surprised me by her attendance – asked me to total up her tab, and would I take a personal check?
“Not a problem” I said. “That’ll be $32.00.”
“Thirty two dollarsh” she slurred, “How many beersh d’I have?”
“16 beers” I replied, “2-for-1 is 8 times four bucks apiece equals $32 dollars, assuming you don’t want to add a tip.”
“16 beersh!! Thash crazy! I coulda shworn I only had 14…hic”
It’s 10:07, and I loudly announce, “Last call Folks! The music’s winding down, and the bar is closing!”
At this pronouncement, Captain Morgan disengages himself from his local Hot Sulphur hottie of the night and staggers up to the bar, steadies himself, violently slams his fist on the bar –as much for ballast as exclamation - and says,
“BULLSHIT! Last call in Colorado is 2 AM. It’s only 10 OClock!” I was truly surprised he could tell time at this point. He had a look of wildness in his eyes that I’d never seen and wasn’t quite sure how to deal with; but I’d really had enough and decided I’d have to grow a pair. I looked him squarely back in the eye with a little wildness of my own and calmly said “Last call in this Colorado bar is 10 PM, and that’s right now. So what’ll it be?”
Shrinking back a little, he said “Gimme six Rum & Cokes; heavy on the rum, a little Coke for color.”
As I began lining up those six rum & Cokes, under duress and fear that the man may kill me in the event that I didn’t serve him, Abe Rodriguez seemed to me, at that moment, the wisest man in all the world.
To be Continued……….
Monday, April 25, 2011
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 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……
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
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……
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……
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
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..........
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