The River Room........Part XII

Dhoubi’s exhaust fumes hadn’t left the front parking lot of the hotel before Darin – the town mortician, gadabout, accused felon and our quasi restaurant manager (all of this is another chapter or ten) – showed up with a replacement for Dhoubi. Her name was Carrie Trent, and she was as sweet as Steen’s Cane Syrup – and to those of you unfortunate souls that don’t know about Steen’s Cane Syrup, that is about the highest sweetness compliment that could possibly be paid to a person.

Carrie had worked at restaurants all over Grand County, and had even tried her own little pie/diner/café place. She was in the process of trying to open another take-out only place that would serve to-go breakfast and lunch, but in the interim, would love to help us out by putting in a few hours here and there. Once again, I viewed her appearance at the doorstep of The Riverside as a serendipitous event. At the worst of it, if things went bad, I didn’t see myself fearing for my life if I had to let her go, as was the case with my last chef.

Carrie was a baker extraordinaire – bread was her specialty, and pies were a close second. The first day she was there she whipped up about a dozen loaves of the most airy, hard crust baguettes imaginable this side of Montmartre; she finished the day with a few Apple Jalapeno pies for dessert – flaky crust and sweet apple cinnamon filling with just enough of a hint of a peppery attitude to let you know that this wasn’t your Mama’s apple pie. Like Dhoubi’s ‘first day in the kitchen champagne cream sauce’, I’d never had anything quite like it.

Carrie also helped do some of the food prep for Danny – mostly chopping, slicing and dicing. What Carrie couldn’t do – and what we needed the most – was helping Danny on the front line during the dinner rush. So basically, to sum it up, Carrie would show up early afternoon, make all of the bread for the evening, and leave before the dinner rush when we really needed help; she would then give me a bill for her services for $300 - $400 at the end of every week.

Have I mentioned previously that we gave bread away for free?

So here’s the reality of the situation – here I was, nearly broke, paying someone $350 bucks a week to make something that didn’t make me one red nickel. And it gets worse! As her bread was so awesomely good and free, people ate tons of it, creating the need for Carrie to spend more hours baking for us. Those $350 labor bills were growing to $500-$600 per week. Couple this with the Black Olive Tapenade spread that Danny spent 30 minutes every day making by the gallon, which accompanied this awesome bread – also at no charge.

Have I mentioned previously that I went broke in the restaurant business?

Thankfully, Carrie left of her own accord to open her business, a successful one where she charged people money for the bread she baked.

Carrie’s last day was March 27th, 2009 - Easter Sunday brunch - our last day open before shutting the hotel down to take two weeks vacation back to the Kansas City area. Waiting for us when we got back was a kitchen that we intended to gut, put in a new floor, and re-equip with up-to-code stainless steel prep tables, a new cold table, a new freezer, a new flat top, a new oven with a six-burner cook top and new piping, plumbing and electrical. Danny and I would dismantle and dispose of the old tables and equipment and install the new tile floor, our friend Tony from down the street – Grand County’s only sober, reliable plumber – would do the plumbing and electrical, and Darin supplied all of the new tables and equipment, which he’d purchased at an auction in Denver. (Yes, there is a story to that as well which will be told later.)

Hopefully any of you who are potential restaurateurs have picked up this nugget of wisdom from reading about The River Room – you work your ass off when the restaurant is open, and you work your ass off even more when the restaurant is closed.

For the next six weeks, we flat worked our asses off. First off, dismantling the wooden work surfaces and shelving, next taking apart and hauling off the 1920’s era God-awful piece of crap stove, oven and flat top combination that was about the size and weight of small locomotive, and about as functional as a locomotive in a kitchen as well. Everything else was then moved out of the kitchen and we got on with tearing up three layers of old flooring – scraping up the top layer of 1950’s asbestos-reinforced vinyl tile, pulling up the mostly rotted, moldy ¼ plywood deck to which it was attached, then ripping up sheets of 1930’s asphaltic linoleum that was tacked (and tacks were apparently plentiful, cheap and really easy to hammer back then) to the original 1903 tongue and groove 1x4 wood floor. To this original floor we affixed, with screws, thirty-eight 3x5 sheets of 3/8” backer board – picture thin sheets of plywood that are made out of concrete. All of this was topped off by approximately 3700 hexagonal, industrial-grade ceramic floor tiles that were adhered with quick-curing epoxy onto the backer board. This is possibly the highest-end and highest-priced floor system you could purchase for a commercial kitchen – I received it for free from a friend in the business, overage on a large food storage freezer job in New Mexico; it was cheaper for him to give it to me than ship it back to Pennsylvania. The net result was a floor that will probably still be intact after the wrecking ball and bulldozer have had their way with The Riverside.

The new equipment was then installed, and by the end of May, just in time for our Memorial Day weekend re-opening, we had ourselves an honest-to-God, functional and mostly up-to-code commercial kitchen. Only one thing was missing, and that was kitchen help for Chef Danny. Once again, who stepped up to the plate for us in the personnel department but our good friend Darin.

Darin placed an add on Craig’s List – “Assistant Chef position at historic hotel located in the beautiful Colorado Rockies. $10/hour plus room and board. Prior cooking experience required. Must pass drug test.”

Even with economic times being what they were, Darin got very few hits on the ad (might have been that drug test requirement) – but all he needed was one, and he did get one. A young man from the Great State of Alabama was in his 1974 Cadillac Sedan Deville and headed west to Colorado at the end of his three minute phone interview, (Red Flag) ready and anxious to assist in the newly remodeled, almost up-to-code kitchen at The Riverside for $10 bucks an hour and room and board at Darin’s’ house.

Enter……….Chef Stinky Butt.

(Not his real name – but close.)

To be concluded.......