One of the first things I saw when I walked into the kitchen at Schiek’s Café was a cook with a whole raw salmon on his head. Actually, it wasn’t a whole salmon; it had been gutted, and the cook had placed his head into the slit in the belly and was duck-walking behind the high pick-up counter in the front of the kitchen. There before me was a huge, dead fish swimming along in midair, with the cook concealed behind the stainless-steel counter. The other cooks, the dishwashers, and the waitrons were all laughing uncontrollably. (We actually called the servers “waitrons” there. Referencing the ethnicity of some of its nighttime patrons, the garbage dumpster in the alley was known [unforgivably] as the Cherokee Buffet. It was that kind of place.)
The busier the restaurant, the greater the need for stress relief, and Schiek’s was busy. That relief took many forms. A couple of the staff were stand-up comedians when they weren’t slinging hash. There were also painters, actors, a dancer or two (with or without brass pole), some students, and the usual complement of drinkers, dopers, and deviants. But on the job they were professional restaurant staff of the highest order, who accomplished prodigies of valor, serving a demanding public and having fun in the process.
My favorite was Wayne, the maintenance guy. He was a beer-bellied man in his thirties who had worked in the place for over ten years. The old building had seen so many different repairs and remodelings over the years, by about five ownership groups, that Wayne was the only person on earth who knew where every valve, switch, and hiding place was located. Each successive owner of the building came to realize that they could not operate without Wayne, the Living Blueprint. So for the most part Wayne played the gnome, sitting in the labyrinthine basement of the building among the ducts and pipes and boilers, smoking dope and waiting for the call when the next piece of critical equipment should fail. Part of Wayne’s sinecure was his assignment to be first on duty every morning to clean up the disco area from the previous evening’s revelries. Most mornings he was able to find enough misplaced street drugs and paraphernalia to make his lonely daylong vigil more tolerable.
As in most restaurants, the rest of the crew was something of a movable feast. Turnover was brisk as other establishments or professions or the witness protection program siphoned off Schiek’s employees. Eighteen months after I arrived as sous-chef, the executive chef that I reported to was lured away by a better job in a better place. The easiest thing for the management to do was to offer me the job, minimizing disruption and saving considerable salary outlay. In 1982, I accepted the executive chef position. My starting salary was $19,000 per annum, no fringe benefits.
What the owner of Schiek’s got for his $19,000 is open to dispute. Certainly, he got a lot of time on the job—seventy to eighty hours a week—plus competent supervision of lunch, dinner, parties, and catering. And effective purchasing. Pretty good security. Even loyalty. But the bottom line is that, in my own terms, I wasn’t much of a chef, title and princely salary aside.
First of all, there was the food. As a major player in a reviving downtown restaurant scene, Schiek’s was supposed to be a culinary destination. My predecessor had been, and still is, a genius with food. He was a natural cook with excellent instincts for flavor and a knack for innovative dishes and presentations. Though I had had decent on-the-job training and far more experience, most of my work had been in middle-class cookery, and for a chef, I actually found cooking rather boring. My solution for covering my own deficiencies was to hire the finest cooks I could attract, buy them the finest ingredients, and take the credit for their work. I managed this charade for two and a half years, successfully most of the time.
My other major defect was in not adopting the stereotypical persona of the Chef. The idea that the head chef in any kitchen should be a back-of-the-house autocrat was a deeply held tradition. Ranting and killing with looks, hiring and firing at will, and maintaining a kind of steam table sovereignty were all the prerogatives of the chef, and I had worked for several who had played this role like a Barrymore. Though this petty dictatorship certainly had its appeal, I deemed it too much work for a fairly limited reward. The one thing that working for chefs like these had taught me was that I never wanted to be like them, and though I could strike the pose on occasion, I always felt naked and not a little ridiculous. Therefore, since I had already hired better cooks than I could ever hope to be, I tried whenever possible to run a collaborative, somewhat democratic operation, at least among the cooking staff. This seemed like my own Noble Experiment. Instead, this peculiar regime regularly turned chaotic as various participants jockeyed for position, shirked real effort, or pursued their own twisted visions of how a kitchen should operate in an authority void. As things turned out, I spent more time managing the process of managing the kitchen than I did managing the kitchen. Another charade.
There was only one area where I had to assert absolute authority—the dish room.
The china plate placed before the customer, with its accompanying silverware and glassware, is undoubtedly more valuable than the foodstuffs riding upon it. The chemicals used in washing and sanitizing that plate are often more costly, ounce for ounce, than any soup or sauce the cooks can concoct. The machine that performs the washing process is always the single most complicated and expensive appliance in a restaurant kitchen. Naturally then, the persons operating this vast dishwashing system are the least motivated and the most poorly trained and pitifully compensated members of the restaurant staff. How could it be otherwise?
Proportionality is seldom a strong suit in restaurant management. The idea that a $250,000 machine, with crucial connections to water, drains, electrical, steam, and ventilation systems, should be placed in the hands of minimum-wage, semiliterate, frequently stoned employees is breathtakingly perverse. Further, expecting those employees to flawlessly handle thousands of dollars’ worth of expensive smallwares and table settings and a bewildering variety of beverage glasses several times each shift—under extreme time, temperature, and temperament conditions—is the triumph of hope over experience. Nevertheless, such is the situation in most professional kitchens.
This discontinuity plays itself out in a number of ways. On the positive side, the dishwasher with a modicum of reliability and competence is treasured like a rare pearl and protected, pampered, and provisioned in a manner that exceeds the expectations of that lowly status. But even the astute ones are seldom promoted until they can be effectively replaced. Replacing a good one is always difficult, sometimes impossible. This lag often leads to the dishwasher’s discouragement and subsequent departure, leaving only some soiled aprons and drug paraphernalia behind. Cleaning out a terminated dishwasher’s locker can be a macabre adventure.
And recruitment of dishwashers can be a dicey process. Perhaps the greatest possible mistake is to put a help-wanted ad in an urban newspaper and require qualified applicants to show up at such-and-such a time, at such-and-such a place. I actually did this once at Schiek’s. The resultant gathering resembled the barroom scene in Star Wars, as desperadoes from every fringe of the galaxy stumbled in, not only at the allotted time but hours and even days before and after. Dozens of the old and grizzled lined up with the young and frazzled, and clearly the plasma center across town had a slow day. All got an application form, but some, it seems, were just after a free ballpoint and departed, leaving the form untouched. Others had to request a second or third copy as they forgot which name they happened to be going by that week. Still others merely stared at the paper with no comprehension of what the printed black marks on the page could possibly represent. Though I interviewed some thirty-five applicants one day, none of them could remotely be considered for actual employment. And I was desperate.
This marathon was occasioned by the imminent departure of the Hobart Brothers from Schiek’s for their annual migration to the Soil. The Hobarts weren’t named Hobart, but they did operate a dish machine with a nameplate with the ubiquitous brand name “Hobart” emblazoned upon it. These two were sixties leftover hippie-hillbillies who moved to the country in the summertime to raise and smoke organic produce. Though they promised to return in the fall, the odds were slim that they would actually remember to do so. If they did return, they brought much of the Soil back with them in their hair and beards and in the secret places of their bodies. Occasionally, on their return, another such child of god would accompany them, lured by low wages and the opportunity to wear sandals even in the dead of winter. Though the Hobarts were absent for at least three months of the year, they were still more reliable than their replacements.
John was one such replacement. When interviewed, he seemed alert and intelligent—always a bad sign. Still I hired him, and he worked hard, was cooperative and uncomplaining, and seemed ecstatic to be a dishwasher. The cooks would see him working at this station across the kitchen, talking and laughing, scurrying with plates or pans when they were requested and generally behaving in a highly suspicious manner.
One day as I walked toward him at the scrape table, I noticed he was talking away, with nobody else around him.
“John, who the hell are you talking to?”
“Oh hi, Chef. I guess it’s kinda obvious who I’m talking to.”
“Really? Well, fill me in here. Who are you talking to?”
“The dish machine.”
“And why are you talking to the machine? Are you lonely or …something?”
“Not any more.”
“Oh.”
“Besides, she started talking to me, and it wouldn’t be very polite if I didn’t hold up my end of the conversation, would it?”
“It’s a ’she’?”
“Well, yeah. Anybody can see that.”
“Sure … right … Ah, what do you guys talk about?”
“Oh all kinds of things. How busy it is. How her rinse temperature is running. How my day is going. All kinds of things. She encourages me, tells me to do a good job.”
“Hmm. Well, you two are doing a great job, John. Carry on.”
Naturally, I didn’t dare repeat the details of this conversation to anyone. I reasoned that a roaring case of schizophrenia hardly disqualified John from his chosen vocation, but knowledge of his condition might make the rest of the crew slightly nervous. Besides, any discussion of John’s situation might be overheard by the dish machine and repeated to John during one of their tête-à-têtes. One more eccentricity would hardly be noticed.
Every relationship has its rough patches. A couple of weeks later, John came to my office and, with a heavy heart, announced that he was putting in his resignation. I was shocked; he and Miss Hobart had seemed so happy together. John explained that the dish machine was no longer confining her communication with John to his work shift. John said that she was now talking to him day and night, wherever he happened to be. What’s more, she had turned hostile, trying to boss him around and demanding more and more of his time. He felt his only recourse was to quit his job, leave town, and break all his ties with the dish machine. His mind was made up.
I tried to reason with John. If she was talking to him outside of work, what was to prevent her from doing the same thing, albeit long distance, after he left town? Had he given her an ultimatum, demanding that she behave herself or he would cut off her chemical rinse agent and force the shame of streaky glassware upon her? Was there no hope of reconciliation? Was there something I could say to her to get her to back off?
Who was really crazy here? Good dishwashers are hard to find.
John’s successor was an older, mostly toothless gentleman by the name of Meyer. He wore a greasy baseball cap and wraparound sunglasses at all times because, he explained, his retinas had been damaged during some service in some war, which was about as specific as Meyer got about anything. He proved to be a competent worker for a time, in spite of his occasional rants about how nobody among the other members of the crew would ever truly understand the extraordinary Meyer.
One extremely busy night, the dish machine suddenly stopped, and Meyer was nowhere to be seen. Searching furiously for him, I found him lying behind the dish machine, either dead or just temporarily comatose. I was about to shout his name when I noticed that, for the first time in memory, Meyer was not wearing his foul cap. Furthermore, the cap was lying beside his prostrate old body, and the cap itself was neatly lined with aluminum foil.
I shook him, and he immediately lunged for the cap and jammed it back on his head. I asked what was going on. “Thank God ya found me when ya did, Chef,” he replied. “They done it again! I was just wipin’ some sweat when I took this here hat off. If this hat is off, then BANG! the Gimps put a ray on my ass that puts me right to sleep. Shit, I think you musta saved my life!” But I couldn’t save his job for long, and within a week or two, the Gimps apparently triumphed and Meyer stopped showing up for work. But then Fidel Castro came to my rescue.
One of the bearded dictator’s most charming habits was his periodic emptying of all the prisons and insane asylums in Cuba and sending of their former inmates to the United States. In the spirit of Reagan-era anti-Communism, we accepted all these hapless cubanos yearning to breathe free, gave them a new homeland, and gradually incarcerated them one by one as they reverted to form. Local social service agencies assisted in this process, and one of them, the local Catholic Charities, made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.
That agency’s allotment of Cuban men needed employment, and I, as ever, needed dishwashers. The social worker and I quickly struck a deal, and the next day Jorge and Victor were delivered to the back door of the restaurant. Jorge was a stocky brown little guy, apparently middle-aged, with an appealing, jocular manner and the ability to work hard. He had gotten on Fidel’s bad side because of his propensity to put on women’s clothing and sashay around, cooing in a Spanish dialect that was amazingly both falsetto and a bit guttural. There was no guarantee which gender Jorge would affect on any given day, and the cooks were soon wagering beers over it regularly. Sometimes Jorge showed up in men’s clothing but painted up with rouge and mascara. Those days each cook bought his own drinks.
Jorge’s compatriot was a taller, younger black man named Victor. We weren’t told why Victor had spent time in a Havana jail, but he had obviously spent plenty of it. His eyes were menacing yellow slits that accommodated inky pupils with which Victor constantly scanned his surroundings, on the lookout for trouble. His hair resembled an explosion in a mattress factory, and on his cheeks and arms he carried old, cruel scars that told of recklessness and resilience. He worked hard but showed a temper now and then that served to ward off casual acquaintance. Victor’s knowledge of English was on the sketchy side, unlike Jorge, who unaccountably knew a lot of nautical and sexual jargon. People joked with Jorge, but nobody joked with Victor.
One morning I got a call from the police station. It seemed that one of my employees had been arrested the previous evening, and the cops were looking to be rid of him if only they could find someone to make bail and take custody of him. His name was Victor. The policeman on the phone assured me that Victor had done no violence or committed any felonies that day, so could I please, please come and get him because he was raving in some Spanish dialect that not even the Mexican custodians down at the jailhouse could comprehend and demanding that his “Jhef” be summoned to deliver him from this ignominy.
In exchange for giving the bailiff fifty bucks, I received a form detailing the charges being leveled against Victor. Victor had been arrested for driving a twenty-year-old station wagon the wrong way down a one-way street … downtown … with no license plates … and no windshield … and no passenger side door … while making out with his girlfriend … playing salsa music at full volume from an enormous boombox … steering with his bare feet … and having no driver’s license, identification, insurance, or the brains that God gave turtles. They set a court date and made me promise to remind him to show up. I told the bailiff I would, but he and I both knew it would never happen. Victor and I returned to the restaurant.
Victor resumed his position, with its daily ups and downs, and managed to keep things together for a few weeks. On a busy Saturday night he vanished, leaving the dish machine running and scads of dirty plates stacking up. The primary difference between chefs and cooks is that cooks don’t wash dishes. Spewing profanity, I took over the dishwasher position for a couple of hours until unaccountably Victor returned. It was obvious that he was just passing through.
“Victor! Where the hell have you been?”
“Jhef, I gotta go!”
“Whaddya mean you gotta go?”
“Jhef, I go home to … to get something, and I find Jorge and my girl! They fuckee mucho! I pull out my knife and stab Jorge one … two … three times in the belly!”
“Jhef, I gotta go!”
“Victor, you gotta go.”
Though it was not the only time that I had lost two dishwashers in a single night, it was probably the most singular. I finished washing dishes, mopped the area, and went home, knowing I’d have to call Catholic Charities on Monday morning to check on the availability of Cubans. I wanted to call the police, but I had no idea where the alleged stabbing had taken place or in which direction Victor had made his getaway.
When I arrived at work on Monday, a message from Catholic Charities was waiting for me. Jorge would be out of work for a week, and in his place they were sending a couple of brand new Cubans. I shouldn’t expect Victor any time soon (fine!). Sorry for the inconvenience. And Jorge did return a few days later, very sore and not as cheerful. He told us that the police had done a perfunctory investigation of the incident, but since Jorge wasn’t pressing charges and since they were both just Cubans, the cops had just let it drop. Also, Jhef, could Victor get his job back?
No.
On the night of December 23, 1984, I bought a final beer for all the cooks at Schiek’s, wished them a Merry Christmas, and left the building at my usual 11:00 PM quitting time. I was beat. I had worked double shifts every day, including Sundays, since Thanksgiving to handle the glut of holiday business. All had gone well, and I felt tired but satisfied. Now I had a full three days off for the holiday, and it seemed as if I had just been paroled.
When I left the restaurant, snow was drifting down in giant flakes, and the whole world was a Currier & Ives print. Zooming home on the slushy streets, I walked into the house and demanded that my wife put on her coat and boots and join me with a bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey. The three of us went over to Minnehaha Falls, a few blocks from our house in South Minneapolis. The falls are in a park at the heart of the city where the sizable Minnehaha Creek takes a sixty-foot plunge before emptying into the nearby Mississippi. In the belly of winter, the falling water forms a giant ice grotto, and people come to ooh and ahh at the spectacle at all hours. The snow was still slowly falling in flakes the size of commemorative stamps as we toasted my parole with a shot of Jameson, wished each other Merry Christmas with a second, and then trudged home warm and happy.
Naturally, a pregnancy ensued.
More than anything, the sudden expansion of our family hastened the end of my career as the chef of a stand-alone restaurant. Clearly, I was about to have responsibilities that transcended those of kitchen boss, especially one tied up with a massive time commitment, irregular schedule, and puny salary. Besides, my wife had a career she had no wish to abandon in favor of permanent childcare, especially when her spouse, having worked extensively with mousses and pâtés, was far better suited for dealing with the contents of diapers. She agreed to handle the breast-feeding herself, but I would have to seek a more regular job.
That job came through a blind newspaper ad seeking a chef for catering duties, a task I generally enjoyed. As it turned out, the employer was a food service company, Marriott, which held the contract for feeding the patients and staff of Mt. Sinai Hospital in South Minneapolis. Mt. Sinai had been built by Jewish doctors in the early (post-Holocaust) 1950s when the other local hospitals refused to let them practice in their institutions. Now, in the 1980s, faced with competing with other megahospitals in town, Mt. Sinai was seeking to set itself up as a boutique sort of operation with luxury amenities, including superior victuals. They came up with the unique idea that employing a chef might be a good way to improve the food. I was the first chef to head a hospital kitchen in the Midwest, and a kosher kitchen at that.
When Mt. Sinai finally foundered, Marriott sent me to head the kitchen at another, much larger hospital. Once again, regular hours, higher pay and benefits, and the ability to mostly write my own job description kept me in place for another five years. I found that it’s generally best to be the first one in your job classification. Nobody but you really knows what you’re supposed to be doing. Moreover, with a more regular schedule I could attend T-ball games and birthday parties and offer my son much needed instruction in bat swinging, bike riding, and the intricacies of manly toilet usage. I had a good thing going.
Thus, it was with some trepidation that I took David’s suggestion and applied for the brand-new campus executive chef position at the University of Minnesota in 1993. After more than a century of running its own creaky food service operation, the university had decided to try one more spasm of reorganization before giving up on the idea of feeding itself altogether. The university’s food service was in disarray, morale was low, and the food product well and truly sucked. Nevertheless, I thought it might be an interesting—and lucrative—opportunity, and after a lengthy interview process, I was hired to oversee all twelve kitchens and eighteen service outlets on the campus. They apparently didn’t regard a 2.56 GPA as a barrier to my employment. I went in and remodeled restaurants, rewrote menus, and uptrained as many cooks as I could. But the university’s food service was hemorrhaging money faster than we could sell pizza. It was fun while it lasted, but eventually the administration decided to cut its losses and contract the whole mess out. This time I went to work for the Aramark corporation, briefly. It was my final chef’s job.
Employment by food contractors brought me into a setting that looked much the same but differed substantially from my experience working in restaurants. All the stainless-steel equipment, tiled floors, and humming ventilation fans failed to camouflage the fact that the nature of the work was changing rapidly. The most noticeable difference was the personalities inhabiting institutional kitchens. These were, for the most part, long-term professional employees in relatively strong unions. Many had attended vocational schools for culinary training and lived in stable family situations. There was nothing spectacular about the food they produced, but the customers were satisfied with the tried and true, so the cooks were quieter, steadier, and more conventional. They were a stark contrast to the colorful pirate crews to which I had grown accustomed.
In institutional food service we operated on the middle track of what was evolving into the three-tier model of dining seen almost everywhere today. On the very bottom are ubiquitous fast-food outlets, holding a greasy hegemony over a clientele that values speed, predictability, and low prices over relaxation, challenge, and quality. The second tier, by far the largest, is that filled with ethnic restaurants and, in an odd juxtaposition, the remaining purveyors of traditional middle-class cookery. In this bracket we have also witnessed the amalgamation of immigrant cuisines and the plain fare that has been the mainstream of dining for three centuries in America (think Chili’s and P. F. Chang’s). Salsas have supplanted catsup to some extent, and the dining public shells out a bit more money than at the quickservice counter.
The top tier of restaurant dining today is definitely once more in the hands of chefs, whether on their own as proprietors or in chef-driven corporate venues. Over the past thirty years various burgeoning influences have created a revolution in restaurant culture that echoes events in Paris two centuries ago. The dining experience has become increasingly free of the strictures that have existed here since Prohibition as chefs have sought to transcend the boundaries that separated traditional haute cuisine (thank you, Julia Child) from the multifarious ethnic cuisines that followed migration into this country. Another striking addition to the mix has been the drive to recapture the purity of ingredients and to source them from local producers (thank you, Alice Waters), all in the creation of menu dishes for a savvy clientele (thank you, Food Network). The go-getting chefs brought up in this world have for the most part received their training in the thriving culinary school segment and then gone on to seek work with other acknowledged masters before striking out on their own. This was pretty fast company, and I wanted no part of it.
My so-called career had always been a series of happy coincidences and fortuitous accidents. My training, while solid in the day-to-day performance of duty, was nowhere touched by the visionary or passionate mind-set that a real chef needs for success today. Though I surely appreciate the relentless drive for perfection that characterizes the best of chefs, I never felt the need to sacrifice all it would take to achieve that end. Rather, I was satisfied with knowing I may have helped some others on this journey. And if I have not helped them all, at least I have been witness to their efforts. My feet still hurt just as badly, but now I can rest them in a dining room chair on the other side of the swinging kitchen door. But when I dine out, I find myself peering into the kitchen, never without envying those folks in their white jackets. They are younger, browner, and more gender-balanced, and they have taken the place of those of us who have gone before—and those of us who are just gone.
This conversation occurred after a couple more career changes for David. Because his little fly-by-night produce company was so profitable, it attracted the attention of one of the large local fruit and vegetable wholesalers. That company bought out David for a substantial sum and made him a partner and vice president as part of the bargain. Though this position was lucrative, it was also numbingly boring for David. He couldn’t very well steal from himself, and the new employer proved to be relentlessly honest. Though he tried to go straight for a year or so, things just didn’t work out, and he quit. During the interim he had also gotten married and divorced, leading to a loss of a Minneapolis home, his Bayfield property, and lots of money. In an effort to lower his visibility for a while, he took a job driving for a messenger service, which brought him to the vulnerable back doors of many businesses. Before he could capitalize on any new opportunities, however, David was involved in a serious traffic accident, injuring his back, legs, and neck.
Phone rings
DB: It’s me, Berst. Hi.
SL: Hi! I’ve been trying to call you. How are you feeling?
DB: Better, but still shitty. You?
SL: Fine. Last time we talked you were still having fainting spells.
DB: Yeah, that hasn’t changed. If I stand up for too long, I faint, and if I sit for a while, I get nauseated and throw up. It’s a great fucking life.
The usual ice in the usual glass.
SL: I can hear that you’re taking your medication as we speak.
DB: [Laughs.] Yeah, there’s a nice “pharmacy” right near my apartment. They deliver too. One-quart minimum.
SL: So what are you actually doing these days?
DB: Well, I’m helping out a buddy of mine doing work in his catering kitchen. Before that I was feeling sorry for myself, but I realized what a trap that was, so I got over it. Do you know that I haven’t done anything illegal or even dishonest for over a year! It’s a disgrace.
SL: Don’t tell me you found Jesus.
DB: Not at all, although when I was in the hospital, I did get a visit from the Buddhist chaplain. I guess I must have filled out the admission papers wrong [laughs, coughs]. No, I haven’t been converted. I’m not even unhappy, even when I hurt bad.
SL: How often is that?
DB: All the time. Look, the way I see it, I can’t complain. I’ve owned and ran three different companies, and I’ve lost more money than most people will ever make. I’ve pulled off so much shit, and I’ve never been prosecuted … or shot. Hell, it’s been FUN! I’ve had a good run.
The only thing that really bothers me is that you’re about the only one who knows most of the story, and believe me, I haven’t told you everything. It would make a pretty good novel, but I doubt if anybody would believe it. Maybe you should write it some day.
SL: Maybe I will. I’ll sit down with you sometime over some beers and just let the tape recorder run. Of course, we’ll have to wait on publishing it until the statute of limitations runs out.
DB: Oh, it’s running out. It’s running out every day. Gotta go. Bye.
Click, slowly followed by another click on my end.
In November 2004, I got another phone call. This one was from David’s employer, whom I knew vaguely from occasional David-related social events. He called to tell me that, when David had not shown up for work that morning or answered any of several phone calls, he had gone over to his apartment. He expected to find him drunk. Instead, he found him dead. The autopsy stated that David had gone into a diabetic coma after hitting his head on the porcelain in his bathroom. He was forty-seven.
Shortly after I took the reins at Schiek’s, I had a particularly distinguished customer in the dining room. It was a busy Saturday night, and my contribution to the menu on Saturdays was a pot of soup du jour. Making soup in restaurants means cleaning out the cooler for ingredients, and this night the pickings were sparse. I finally spotted a derelict roast leg of lamb, a few vegetables, and some cream—the makings for scotch broth. This was a concoction that Chef Logan had taught me years before. All the ingredients go into a food processor and get ground up together. Thence to the stove top for a touch of heat and a little seasoning, followed by some cream to finish the dish. All told, about fifteen minutes prep time—my kind of cooking. I made the scotch broth not knowing that Chef Logan himself would be our guest that evening.
When the waiter told me that one of his customers wanted to say hello, I walked into the dining room and found John Logan already on his fourth beer. Since he always ordered two at a time, I knew he really hadn’t been there all that long. We talked briefly, and he let me know that he was moving to Seattle soon for a new job. I could talk to him for only a moment as the evening’s customers were pouring in, and he understood completely. We promised that we would get together before he left town, both knowing that it was unlikely to happen. It didn’t. It was the last time I ever saw Chef Logan. He died in 1996 at the age of fifty-nine.
Back in the kitchen, Logan’s waiter told me that he had ordered two more beers and a bowl of scotch broth. I dished the soup up myself and sent it out. Awhile later, the waiter came back in and told me that Logan seemed to have liked his soup. How could he tell? At his first spoonful he had smiled and exclaimed, “The Son of a B-B-Bitch learned what I taught him!”
Blah-blah-blah. We’re certainly not getting back to Michael very regularly, are we? Always a bridesmaid, I guess. Anyway, Schiek’s was mostly a cool experience for me. The chef only fired me twice. That’s right, twice. But that was in two and a half years, and since he had fired me everyplace else at least once, he really wasn’t up to speed with me at Schiek’s. The worst time was when I asked the bartender if I could use the phone at the 90’s. So I called in the afternoon and told the chef I was (cough, cough) really sick that night and wouldn’t be in that night. He says “OK,” and the next thing I know he’s walking into the bar and practically dragging me off the barstool and making me come to work. Such a bully! Didn’t even let me finish my cocktail.
Anyway, the chef finds out his wife is pregnant, and all of a sudden, working eighty hours a week doesn’t seem like such a good idea to him. I could have told him that! Everybody knew he was looking for a different job, even before the baby was born. Oh, that was funny. On the day his wife called from home because she was going into labor, the chef comes running out of the office, putting his coat on, and shouting, “The water broke! The water broke!” Wayne the maintenance guy was standing in the kitchen at the time, stoned out of his mind. He yells, “Oh shit!” and grabs his pipe wrench and runs down to the basement looking for a flood.
The chef goes to work for a big food service company running the kitchen at Mt. Sinai Hospital. You know, regular hours and a dental plan, or some shit. It takes him a couple of months, but then, as usual, he hires me to work for him making kosher Jell-O and low-sodium egg salad. But this place was about to go belly up. Too small and too ghetto. So the company decides to transfer the chef over to United Hospital in St. Paul in September of 1987, and before he leaves, he says to me, “Michael, you know the drill. Give me a month or two to get organized, and then I’ll bring you over to work for me.”
But this time it didn’t work out. I got caught stealing a miserable three-pound brick of cream cheese. Cream cheese! I don’t even like the shit! I felt like I had gone crazy or something. The food service director at the hospital had no choice but to fire me. Since the new hospital where the chef was now was run by the same outfit, he couldn’t hire me there. Why did I steal it? Oh, for the same reason I couldn’t have moved on to a new job anyway, or anyplace else for that matter. I got that happy news the next week at the clinic.
Michael’s dementia at the time of the cream cheese incident was the first manifestation of his full-blown AIDS. He grew very weak very quickly, but bouts of aggressive chemotherapy would perk him up for short periods. He was particularly eager to get some strength back for Halloween that year, and he determined that he would throw a party—one last party—for this most important of gay holidays. Since his hair had fallen out because of his treatments, he had decided to host the party in drag, although he probably would have anyway even if his health had been solid. He borrowed a cocktail dress that fit him perfectly because of his weight loss and put a frowzy blond wig on his bald head. He invited hundreds of people.
Only a couple dozen of us showed up. Hardly any of Michael’s gay friends were there. They had been to too many living wakes by 1991, as the virus ravaged their community. He had no family who were on speaking terms with him. The only people who came to Michael’s party were his friends from restaurants. Chefs, cooks, servers, and dishwashers gathered at Michael’s place. Some were too saddened to remain there long and left early. Others got really drunk and stayed late. Michael drank soft drinks all night but was still the life of the party. Everyone worked really hard at trying to have fun, fun for Michael. When it was getting late, I found myself sitting alone with Michael as he quietly smoked a cigarette. Naturally, I tried to make cheerfully lame conversation, and I think that he appreciated the effort, but he was getting very tired and needed some more medicine. As he went to get his pills, he turned to me and said, “You know, I’ve probably had AIDS for years and never knew it. And I’ll never know how many others I’ve killed.”
We spoke on the phone a couple times a week after that, and in December he asked me to bring him some Christmas cookies because his appetite had been poor, and he thought some sweets would do him good. The next day, December 11, I was putting a cookie tray together when I got a call from the hospice. Michael had died overnight. He just fell asleep and never woke up. He was forty-four.