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……