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…………..