Que Sera, Sera, part 1

Every day was the same. In a bleak and nasty winter there were no highs or lows. Just flatness. When friends would ask me how I was, I always said that I was fine, and I was. Anything new? No. Work, home, work, home. And it was fine. My life had gone off track somewhere. Not to a bad place, but not to where I wanted to be.
I remember when I first started the job, I told people that it was great working alone. I never had to deal with secret Santas or signing birthday cards for people that I really did not give a shit about. The downside was that I never saw anyone. The only people I saw were the dregs of society that ride public transit. Most of the time I was alone in a big drafty warehouse with no natural light. I was baking, but using mass production machines which basically took away the tactile joy that I get from baking.

I realized all of this when I went on vacation with my family in Sicily. Nothing like two weeks of bliss and bonding in my favorite place on earth in contrast to what my existence was.

I had been to Sicily many years before, with my ex-husband. It was where I had discovered that there was a culture that cooked the way I did. I had found my culinary roots, even though my ancestry is not Italian. One year later my husband and I split and I went to cooking school which was the beginning of a new life.

It was time to go back now.

I woke up on a sunny morning in Taormina. Stepping outside on the balcony that overlooked the royal blue Mediterranean Sea, breathing in the air that smelled only like Italy does, and nowhere else in the world. I had my first moment of joy that I could remember in a very long time. I outstretched my arms toward the sun and said,
"Buon giorno, motherfuckers!"
I had ten days stretched in front of me to spend with my grown children, daughter's boyfriend and my cousin. A dream I had for so long was now being enacted.
The trip was magical and nourishment for my soul. Climbing Mount Etna, walking and shopping in the open markets of Catania, Cooking pasta con le sarde at home for the five of us. Laying in my bed at night looking at the moon shining down on the sea, listening to the sounds of my daughter and her boyfriend playing the guitar and singing, and of my cousin bonding with my son over many glasses of wine. Peace and happiness flowed through my being.

Then I came back to New York in mid-March with grey blobs of icy, dog-piss, dirty snow still on the sidewalks. Dorothy, we were not in Sicily anymore. There were some days when the only person that I would have a conversation with was my doorman.
I started to have panic attacks that came from the isolation, lack of sunlight and from boredom.
This life just was not the one that I wanted to be living.
.
So when an opportunity arose, I jumped.


A former colleague of mine, Chef V, had occasionally reached out to me during the three years that I had known him, about opening a business. We had originally met at the vocational culinary school where we were both instructors. Whereas we had shared backgrounds of being restaurateurs who had to shutter our doors prematurely, I had moved on, he had not. He was still hungry to find that perfect spot and to have another shot at it, like the gambler who believes that the next roll of the dice will be the winning one. Over the occasional beer we would meet and I would entertain the thought but never enough to really pursue it and it usually faded away.
As fate would have it though, this time he caught me at the perfect moment.  He did have an actual venue and really was in the process of trying to open it. Was I interested in coming on board and possibly even a partnership? After a meeting in Manhattan with my boss that had a decidedly sour tone about it, it was becoming clear that my misery was affecting the job. I saw the writing on the wall of what the future would hold. I went to meet with the Chef V and see what it was all about.  I was much more open to his offer now.

It seems that Chef V was not only working at his corporate job full time but doing construction and trying to get the place open.  I was taken aback by the way he looked. He was a pale, sort of wimpy type to begin with but now he was emaciated to boot. He had worked himself to the bone, literally and had suffered with a serious UTI. He was getting desperate.
The place was a dump. A former pizzeria on the Upper East Side. There was potential though. I saw total discombobulation at the site. It was not very pretty, with a lot of orangey-brown tones. It was a small place that was taken up by a few ugly standard pizzeria type tables and counters. Part of the operation was in the basement which was accessed through a back door, and a creepy, narrow staircase. If the upstairs was a mess, it was complete order in comparison to the basement. There was used equipment everywhere, tools all over, it was dark and a haven for water bugs.
I asked Chef V if he had a business plan, which is the first step for any enterprise. He shrugged and gestured to the mess around us and said, "this is it".
He explained that his father owned the building, a small walk-up where the pizzeria was and a pharmacy that he also owned. They had complete access to everything, including a vacant apartment in the back that even had a patio. The patio is where we sat (surrounded by tools and a hacksaw) and talked turkey.
Would he match my salary? Yes. I was not afraid of long days and early morning starts.  I could continue teaching my Saturday baking class and take Sundays off.. I would be the Manager/Baker and run the place when he was at work.
I knew that it was risky, and in my gut I knew that they didn't really have their shit together. But I had to steer the vehicle that was my life back on to the road that I wanted to follow. I needed disruption and I wouldn't even have to miss a week's pay.
Alrighty then, I checked my parachute, put on my goggles,said yes and jumped.


The Shitbag Cafe

 I finished my job at the warehouse on Friday and started at the cafe on Monday. The place was in total disarray which I attributed to Chef V and his wife Mrs.Chef V both working full time jobs while trying to get the cafe up and running.
I set to work immediately trying to get the place jump started. I interviewed potential employees and lined up purveyors, I cleaned and tried to organize. Chef V's father liked to hang around and help too. He "helped" to fix the used convection oven that was for my baking. He had taken out the control panel and it hung by some wires. The doors did not close completely and had to be jeri-rigged with a piece of foil.
I worked longer hours than I had been doing, but I liked joking around with Chef V's nutty father and working on the upper east side was a much more pleasant commute than my trip through the Bronx had been. I was pretty happy for a while. It was good to be around people again, and to get my hands back in the dough.
Every time I made some organizational headway though, it seemed as if my work would be undone the next day. There were endless piles of stuff that needed to get put away or God forbid- thrown away. You see, what I learned about Chef V and his family was that they were hoarders.
One day as I was making my way through more tools and cords and junk, I found an old FedEx box with tape around it and holes in it. I shook my head as I tossed it in the trash.
The next day, Chef V asked me, with panic in his voice if I had seen that box. When I told him that I had chucked it, he got pissed because that was what he used for a knife kit.
A knife kit for a vagrant, perhaps.
Any piece of junk that I intended to discard, they would take because they said they could "re-purpose" it. Their drop cloth that they used for painting was the awning from their old restaurant. They had boxes upon boxes filling the back apartment, so that one had to walk through a narrow path to get through. These boxes were filled with years full of restaurant equipment from their old place and stuff picked up at auctions. Apparently there was even more stuff in Chef V's mother's garage in New Jersey.
One day I was to make a run to Restaurant Depot in the Bronx. I had to stop by their apartment to get the keys to their car. The hoarding thing was no joke, because their apartment was the same as the restaurant! Boxes of crap, magazines and stuff that only was useful to them filled the place. Then, when I got into the car, the trunk was full of mechanical stuff! (Where was I to put sacks of flour and cases of vegetables?). The inside of the car was not much better plus it was dirty.
Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a minimalist. I purge constantly and abhor clutter. Both of my own restaurants were sleek and beautiful. This was not me, but it was them and so I forged onward.
I set up a bakeshop for myself in a corner of the basement. It was my happy place. I brought my tools (kept appropriately in a toolbox and a sterilite container, not an old shabby box), arranged my spices, labeled my flour bins. I set up a great, efficient station so that I could make my scones, muffins and cookies.
After my day off, I came back to work only to find a huge, dirty, used air conditioner sitting on my work table.
Basically, this is how it went.
One step forward, two steps back.
They decided to open the doors for business one day, in a willy-nilly  type of way. We sort of had a menu that we kind of had  priced-out. We didn't really have a POS sytem because the one that they had bought second hand did not work. They picked up a little el-cheapo cash register at Staples and kept a calculator underneath it and there was our POS.
Wherever I am, I will take pride in my work and do my best to make the business succeed. I knew pretty early on that I would not invite anyone that I knew to come to this place. It was embarrassing. It was so ugly and so half-assedly put together that I did not need to mar my reputation. I opened up every morning, arriving around 6am. I baked my beautiful scones, muffins and Danish. There was nothing to display them on, we had paper plates and a couple of mis-matched china dishes that looked like they were from an old lady's post-mortem tag sale.
As paranoid as Chef V was about the health department, he would not run that kitchen in a way that was anywhere up to code. There was a walk-in box in the basement but it was inoperable and was basically another closet for even more junk. He had found at some sale, a few soda refrigerators, the type that say "ICE COLD BEVERAGES" or "COCA-COLA delicious, refreshing!". We had them in the basement and used them as reach-in boxes. These machines are meant for SODA and not for eggs, milk, and other temperature sensitive foods. Nevertheless, I kept my mise in place in my soda fridge.
The half-assery continued on. The prices changed every day, so of course the few regular customers that we did have would complain. We had one lovely young lady who worked the counter and other than her it was a revolving cast of characters. In any business, finding good labor is always the hardest part. So, it was me who had to pick up the slack when someone did not show up or was too slow to keep up for those very few and far between rushes that we had. There I was, making egg sandwiches and being a short order cook. Running up and down those creepy stairs to the soda refrigerators when we needed something. We did have one refrigerator near the line. It was a deli case. The kind where all of the deli meats and cheeses are stored, like at the grocery store when you want to buy a half pound of turkey and a pound of roast beef. We kept much of the prepped food in there. Again, this is a machine that is not meant to store so much food and the air does not circulate properly. We overworked the thing to death and it had a habit of the breaker popping off occasionally. Mr. and Mrs. V thought it was a good idea to paint the front of it with chalkboard paint to hide the ingredients and to write the menu on it. The menu that had spelling mistakes and prices that were never the same two days in a row.


Chef V got mean. Working at his job till late afternoon he would come to the cafe and shit on me. He'd call me during the day with all kinds of instructions in a very nasty tone of voice. I did not like it but I dealt with it. I felt kind of sorry for him. I had weekends off and was making part of my salary in cash so it was tolerable. The last straw for me though, was the pizza guy.
It had always been Chef V's intention to make pizza at the cafe. The previous tenants had left a double pizza oven and he wanted to make that a big part of the business. So far egg sandwiches, cappuccino, baked goods, weird salads and burritos were not doing much. Chef V tried working on some dough recipes but nothing that he was happy with. Well, he wasn't happy with anything pretty much at that point. So one weekend when I was off he brought in the pizza guy.
Pizza guy did not believe that women should work in a kitchen. From the beginning he was condescending to me, that is when he even acknowledged my presence. He baked some awful cake to show that he was a better than me, and some hideous burned biscotti. I was sure to tell the customers who were big fans of my stuff that I had most definitely not made them. It was his way of peeing on my tree. He took over my station when I was not there, left flour all over the place and got into my tools. I took to keeping my toolbox locked. He insisted on opening the door which left flies inside, he played loud heavy metal music on his phone speaker, regardless if we already had music playing on Mrs. Chef V's i-pad. He would speak in Spanish to the cook that he was training and say disparaging things about me, not knowing or for that matter, caring that I understood what he was saying.
His arrogance even spilled over to Chef V. He would talk about how shitty a place it was, how they didn't know what they were doing and be rude right to Chef V's face. Chef V would in turn dump on me. I tried to bond with the guy, I stood outside with him one day and let him talk about his favorite subject (himself), but it was to no avail because he was just a hateful man.
Chef V was a total wimp in this guy's presence. He stood there like a spineless schnook and took it, under the misguided notion that pizza guy was going to teach him the secret to making the best pizza in the world. While I would be admonished for accepting a delivery of some $10 item and facing the embarrassment of calling the purveyor back all day to pick it up, pizza guy spent literally a thousand dollars on cases of unnecessary food that we did not need.
The crooked shelves were sagging under the weight of #10 cans of artichokes and the soda refrigerators were overworked holding his vats of meatballs.
After being abused one too many times and being set up by pizza guy who tried to throw me under the bus with some lies, when Chef V got there he immediately started on me, I told him enough was enough. "I work my ass of for you and this place and I will not tolerate his shit any more. All I ask of you is to have my back and you don't."

I went home and left him to be yelled at by our tormentor. Who was the boss?

Even with all of this nonsense going on, it still did not get to me, in my core. Somehow there was a higher power that had me on a course. I've had my own business and had my own heartbreak. I have lost money and had to work to get it back. Over the years I have gained something very valuable, and that is humility. I am talented, I am honest and a very hard worker but I am disposable. I can always be replaced, just like any other employee. I was never fired from a job until I was 50 years old and since then I have made up for lost time by getting fired a few more times. It's always horrible but I know how to survive and I always do.
That trip to Sicily had changed me by reminding me of who I really am. The person who loves to cook and to bake, the teacher in me and the love for my family. Nothing else really mattered and was basically a big game of chess.

The first move had been to get out of the warehouse, which I did. Now, what would be my next move?

Hand sink and pot-washing sinks, with storage area above, all where the customers could see!

The Smell of the Grease Trap, The Roar of the Crowd

At the height of his career, my father was the CEO of a very successful advertising agency in New York City. Rising through the ranks via the mailroom, he was a true self-made man. He had a corner office on an upper floor of a Madison Avenue skyscraper with panoramic views of Central Park. The office was decorated in tasteful antiques alongside the memorabilia of famous ad campaigns that he had been involved with over the years. My father wore suits that were custom made by an Italian tailor, had his lunch brought to him on a silver tray by a butler on staff and a chauffeur to drive him to home.

My father loved what he did and never lost the passion for it. Sadly, his partnership with French investors in the business soured and one day he was locked out of his office in the sky and told that his services were no longer required. A humiliating and painful event to go through but with the help of shark attorneys he received an excellent settlement and at least in terms of finances, he was in very good standing.

For years after that he did some consulting work and sat on the board of other corporations. He always stayed current and kept up with his network of business associates. And though these were all stimulating it was never the same as being where he was. He did not miss the driver or the Cobb salad under the silver dome.  He missed the daily action and the people that he had built relationships with over the years. 

I have been blessed by having a father who has always taken great interest in everything I ever did. He always knew exactly where my brothers and I have been in our careers. He loves to give advice. Sometimes he can be a little heavy handed with it, and I don’t always agree with him but he always has my best interest at heart and I trust him implicitly.

When my partnership in my first business, a bakery/cafe went down the tubes, my father was my greatest supporter. He was one of our investors and had started questioning some of my partner’s ethics. When the whole thing came to a head and I took action to leave, my father was the ear that was there for me. Having been betrayed by partners himself, he knew what I was going through. His faith in me helped me through a horrible chapter in my life.

I still had the burning desire to have my own business. My father and I would have lunch at the diner and talk about it. He had liked that little taste he’d had with my prior business and was very gung-ho to help me get a new one going. We pored over ideas and started to write a business plan. Once he got his money out of the other place, he would reinvest it with me. I took out a home equity loan on my house and the seeds of my cafe began then.

I really didn’t want another partner. This was going to be my baby. I named the place after myself. I chose my colors that I love, my food, my atmosphere, my me-ness was everywhere. Aside from the money though, my father was that person I could always trust so we talked numerous times every day as this concept took shape. As it got close to opening, my father started saying that he “had too much skin in this thing to not be involved in the operation”. He loved to tell people that I was his boss. His new title that he proudly displayed on his card was “Business Manager”

My pops had been bitten by the bug.

The cafe itself was beautiful, the kitchen was fantastic. The office was the armpit of the place though. It was a room probably a third of the size of my father’s walk-in closet at home. Fluorescent lighting, a built in desk with two cheap office chairs from Staples and a file cabinet. Shelves above, computer on the desk and tangles of wires everywhere. When my father and Ann, our bookkeeper would be working in there it was comical if one of us had to get in our out, squeezing behind the chairs. It was a far cry from the corner office in the sky.

But he loved it. Loved it. He would pull up in his Audi convertible and walk in with his slight shuffle that he had developed with age. Gone were the Armani suits, replaced by a red fleece vest and his keys on a string around his neck along with his Stop ‘n Shop card. He was in love with the fact that he could make his own decaf espresso on our shiny machine. Grinding the beans, brewing and emptying out the handle, banging it on the knock box. No longer was he a civilian on the sidelines. He was part of the restaurant crew.

Then he would walk through and greet everyone. He had something to say to each person there. Always interested in what they were doing. Always looking for a taste of whatever they were working on. If it was lunch time he had his usual, so whether it was me or another cook on the line, he had his scoop of the curried chicken salad on romaine with Caesar dressing. If it was earlier in the day he would go next door to the bagel store, another family owned business. They always insisted on giving his bagel to him for free, while he would stay and shoot the shit about baseball with the guys.

In time though, he started to make me nuts. Forty five year old women really cannot spend that much time with their fathers. Sometimes when he was making that decaf espresso (slowly) it would be in the middle of a lunch rush. Servers would have to work around him, it was tight back there and he was really in the way. He would want to talk to them too, also not a good idea at the moment. If I was in the kitchen, I would shoo him away as I was inundated with tickets. That curried chicken salad would have to wait a bit. “Look, I cannot talk right now, ok?” became my response when he had some idea that he felt was of the utmost importance that just could not wait.

He loved to go through the dining room and talk to customers. Most of them thought he was wonderful and were very charmed by him. I however, would watch and see him standing in between our very closely spaced tables engaged in conversation with the diners. They would be looking up at him, talking while their food was getting cold. I invented the “five minute rule”. I had a little window in the kitchen and if I saw him hanging out a little too long, I would stick out my hand with my fingers spread, “five minute! five minute!”, like a mean old Cantonese housewife. He’d see the symbol and would reluctantly move on. From what I gathered, much of the conversation was about me. What a great cook I am, how I used to work for Martha Stewart, was on tv...Ughh. I felt like an embarrassed, whiny tween again. “Pop!”

Part of what tried my patience with him was how he seemed to treat this little cafe like a Fortune 500 company. We needed to place an ad to promote our catering. He sent me a draft that was about a quarter page in the newspaper, loaded with copy plus a large shot of me. It was a Sunday and I was on the line for brunch that day. I was overwhelmed by the ad. What we needed was a small box that would give a little information, logo and contact. He had “ Ten reasons why Margot should cater your next event”. I was mortified, and in between flipping omelets I was arguing with him on the phone. Finally, when service was over and we closed for the day, he and I got into a real screaming match on the phone. He threatened to quit if I did not need his services. I felt terrible. Partner drama, once again.

Within the next day, cooler heads prevailed but it left some bruises on us.

He didn’t play around when it came to communicating with employees. He could be brutally honest, whereas I was a little more diplomatic. Our prima donna pastry chef had been increasingly vocal with her little nitpicky complaints. I had gotten to the point that whenever I would pass by her station I would pick up my pace, cringing when if I heard her screechy voice call out my name.

It was two days before our sold out Easter brunch when she got into it with my father. She was relentless, following him up the stairs to the office bitching all the way. Finally he turned around to face her and called her a “fucking bully”.  She walked out moments later. Delicate geniuses do not like having swear words directed at them.

Though it was a challenge to get through that brunch, with the help of another chef buddy of mine, we pulled it off. When she came crawling back the next day, I told her to pack the rest of her stuff.

My father and I seem to do best when we face a common enemy. When the pastry chef filed for unemployment benefits, we challenged her and won. A small victory that was as sweet as her delicious cinnamon rolls.

Another time he was talking to our head waitress, about something that was minor and a matter of opinion like a preference for french fries. He said in a joking way, “well that’s just low-class!” I know that he thought he was evoking  Elvis Presley or Johnny Cash lyrics. This particular gal however, lived in a women’s shelter with her two small children and was a little sensitive to words such as those. Again, I had to talk someone off the ledge and back into the building.

With all the daily trials and tribulations though, we shared something that we had created. There were those nights when the candles were lit and the room sparkled, filled with happy customers dining on delicious food. The sounds of conversation, glasses clinking and Brazilian jazz in the background were heard. The wait staff would be on their game, smiling while they gently popped corks out of wine bottles or steamed milk at the espresso machine. I had designed that room to have flattering light for women and sound that was background and never overpowering. In the kitchen, we had our rhythm with enough tickets to keep us moving but not so many to overwhelm. The plates looked beautiful, with the colors that I had envisioned, framed by the white china- garnishes just so.

And my father would beam, if he was on good behavior he would observe the five minute rule. When he saw me humming away at cooking he would keep conversation to a minimum. We’d smile and share our pride. Later in the evening, when all was quiet and the only people left were myself and the dishwasher who was mopping the floor, I would call him to give him the day’s total. Those were good times.

When the economy crashed and our clients and customers all started to cut back on spending it hit us hard. Our landlord would not play ball with us and our rent went up while our profits went down. My father would dump money in to help cover payroll, and I had not seen a paycheck in some time. We knew we could not go on like this.

My father’s lack of diplomacy showed again when in a meeting with the landlord he called him a “prick”. Though I used gentler tactics, frankly the guy was being one.

What came to pass is how close my father and I became again in the face of adversity. With a bittersweet mixture of regret and relief, we started making plans to close the business. I made arrangements with a liquidator to sell all of the equipment. Though we would barely make any money, we made up for it in satisfaction. After we quietly closed our doors, the employees and I had a party where we ate all of the remaining food, drank some wine, smoked cigars and said our goodbyes. The next day I had everything disconnected, big trucks showed up and removed it all. It was our Pearl Harbor on the landlord, before he had a chance to lock us out. It was a Sunday, our lawyer came by on his motorcycle to give support. The look on the landlord’s face was worth the loss to see that he wouldn’t be able to get his greedy hands on our stuff. He eventually did get it back (he was building his own restaurant next door) but it cost him. 

The last day we were ever at the cafe, my pop and I were still going through stuff. He was shuffling along, bringing every single bottle of wine downstairs from storage. I was taking care of small wares. We were loading our cars and tying up loose ends. Suddenly the landlord’s lackey showed up and threatened us. It was time for us to get out of Dodge. I will always have that picture in my mind of my father, bagel in hand shuffling along as we made our escape.

“C’mon, Pop, we gotta get out of here!”, I urgently exclaimed.

An hour later we were sitting on the stoop of my home. According to our lawyer we were now officially locked out. My biggest regret was that I did not get the espresso machine out in time. Other than that, the landlord got butkus.

Our escape had brought us closer together. Within time, my father and I went back to our normal relationship. Looking back now we both see mistakes we made that perhaps would have changed the outcome of the business. While it cost us both financially and in our personal lives, it had been a gift that we had given each other. His support of me in the worst of times along with the funding, had let me live out a dream. It was time for me to move in a new direction in my career. Since then I have moved to New York City where I have become a culinary instructor and love what I do. Pop came home to my mother waiting with open arms and their dog with a wagging tail. My gift to him was making him feel important, vital, excited to be somewhere everyday again. The opportunity to be charming to customers and to swear at our enemies made him come alive for the first time since his Madison Avenue days. While it may not have been as elegant, it was excitement for a man who just loved the chance to be back in the game.