The Elms, You Never Forget Your First

This quaint New England inn was my first stop before I went to work for Martha...

 My first job after externship was at The Elms Restaurant and Tavern. I'd toiled away my summer in the basement of Mario Batali's Po Restaurant with his Mexicans and when my time was done he said to me, (because I needed to work in Connecticut)  "you have to work for Brendan Walsh." Chef Walsh was a superstar before they called them "celebrity chefs". In his early twenties he was rocking NYC at Arizona 206 and Gotham Bar and Grill. When our paths crossed he had recently taken over the restaurant component at the stodgy old Elms Inn. He put that place on the map, so much that even Chef Mario had heard about it. He called Chef Walsh on my behalf to get me an interview with him.

After leaving Po and saying my goodbyes, it was time to start my new career back in Connecticut and to be a working single mom near my kids and to find our new normal.
I remember that I could not find the pair of khaki shorts that I wanted to wear on that warm August day, so I had to grab another pair that was just a tad shorter than I would have liked to wear on an interview. I wore a button down short sleeved shirt and fisherman's sandals to go with it. I raced up to Ridgefield to meet with the chef.
The Elms was an old New England Inn, with an adjoining restaurant. Chef Walsh had divided it into two separate parts, the Tavern which was cozy and casual with a large stone fireplace serving rustic food, and the Main Dining Room which had a more elegant and pricey menu. Chef Walsh lived right behind the place with his wife and four kids. She was his high school sweetheart and all of the PR for the restaurant focused on how they had met long ago in Ridgefield and now were back with so much talent to shake up the stodgy old inn. She was pregnant with their fifth baby when I met them.

I will always be grateful that Chef Mario called Chef Walsh on my behalf. Especially since I was starting out my career at 36 years old, I had no time to waste. I decided that I would only work for the best. Mario Batali was my first move, going to the Elms was my next one and Chef Mario facilitated that for me.
I must mention the fact that Brendan had no idea who Mario was when he called him. This was a little before Mario became a household word, and Brendan did not watch the Food Network so he had not heard of "Molto Mario". It was interesting to hear on both ends about that conversation between male chef egos, but again...I'm grateful.
So I got to the Elms and went up a wooden staircase in the back of the restaurant. After spending the last three months in a basement in Greenwich Village, in a tiny kitchen and a stairway in between where one couldn't stand fully without whacking their head and a windowless basement/prep area/locker room/storage area, this was quite a difference.
There was a smoker with a side of salmon inside it on the landing of the stairway. The aroma was enticing. I opened the screen door to a large spread out kitchen. It had windows!
It was kind of old-fashioned in some ways and needed a little updating but it was pleasant and and had lots of light. There was a full dishwashing area on one side, a hot line that included a wood-fired grill. This was where the main pass and expediting area was. To the right of that was the pastry/pantry area. There was a good size work table in the center,surrounding that was a couple of reach-in refrigerators, a 20 qt. Hobart mixer and the line for the garde manger. When I first got there there, the unit was so old that instead of lowboy refrigerator units, it was stainless steel shelving with a trough above. This trough had to be filled with ice before every service to keep the mise en place properly chilled. A step up from the whole kitchen area was a tiny makeshift office and double doors that led to the Tavern.
When I  arrived I was told by a server that Chef had to leave because a cook had sliced his finger pretty badly and he had to take him to the emergency room. Hopefully he'd be back soon.
So I waited, kind of awkwardly for a good half hour or so, till Chef came in wearing a white t-shirt and checkered pants with a guarded smile on his face and greeted me with a handshake.
Right away he told me that he had no idea who this "Mario-guy" was and that that Mario seemed kind of annoyed and shocked with him when he drew a blank. But because he had spoken so highly of me, he did want to meet me.
Chef Walsh was one of those chefs who was a snob about The Culinary Institute of America. It was where he had trained and most of his cooks had trained. I was from Peter Kump's New York Cooking School. It was a boutique little school in a brownstone on the Upper East Side. If the CIA was Harvard, Peter Kump's was Sarah Lawrence.
Even though I was not from the CIA, Chef Walsh liked me. I think what got him was that I said that I was a single mom and because I wasn't a kid I was focused on working and learning. I would hit the ground running, didn't smoke or need breaks. I wanted to work for the best and that he wouldn't be sorry. He offered me $11 an hour, made a shift from 9am-2pm Mondays through Fridays. It was perfect.
The only cloud was that he said in a very straightforward manner that his sous chef, Ryan was very tough, particularly on women. The last female pantry cook couldn't take it any more and had quit. Pretty much every female in the kitchen had quit and he'd made a few of them cry. Thing was, he needed Ryan. "He's my boy", he said. "If I don't have him here, I can never take a day off and see my family, so he's not going anywhere".
I'd worked as the only woman in a basement with the Mexicans all summer and had charmed the hell out of them. Prior to that, I'd had a very tough marriage that had recently ended and I'd survived. Nothing was going to stop me now. Some 24 year old guy who might yell at me was nothing. I could deal. We shook hands and I was to do a trail the next week, more to observe than anything else.
When Chef gave me the tour, he walked me through the kitchen where I met some of the guys. It was a Sunday and they were actually closed for that week so it was pretty relaxed. I later heard when I got to know them all, that after walking through with my tanned legs and my slightly too short shorts, once I'd left they all told Chef that he should hire me.

I went in on a Saturday night. I was in uniform but basically was there to observe. There were three guys working the hot line which included saute, fry and grill. There was a guy working in the pantry area. He made salads and plated desserts. JB was the pastry chef, his shift started in the wee hours of the morning till about noon. There was "the Dude" who worked the afternoon/evening shift who was just supposed to plate them. The cuisine was traditional New England with some modern updates. The desserts were outstanding and they were very involved as far as how they were served and what they were garnished with. The Dude smoked a lot of weed and talked kind of slowly. In fact he moved pretty slowly all of the time. JB was from Brooklyn, moved super quickly and sounded kind of like Bugs Bunny when he talked. Before he would leave for the day, he would show the Dude the dessert specials. For example, the Indian pudding was in a ramekin that had to be flashed in the convection oven then topped with a scoop of corn ice cream and topped with  candied corn kernels and a sprig of mint. JB would talk at the Dude, peppered with "are you listening???" and the Dude would say, "yeah man, I heard you, caramel ice cream...".
"No! Corn ice cream. Take notes, you dumbass! Write this down!"
And so forth...
On this night I witnessed something that I never forgot and for years I have described to students. It was the true definition of being able to call yourself a chef. The restaurant got very busy. The waitstaff was flying through, wearing their black and whites carrying their large trays and setting them on the stand. Chef was expediting the food as it came through the pass from the hot line. One after the other, coordinating, checking the temps on the meat, "this is medium, it's supposed to be rare! Take this off!" Every order had to be just right before it went out. When it seemed that the line cooks were just not keeping up, Chef called the GM to come over to expedite as he stepped in. He bounced from grill to saute and got those orders out. After a few minutes, there was a call for a couple of salads. The Dude had disappeared (most likely to the walk-in downstairs which was a popular place to light up a bowl). So chef stepped in to make salads. They were all perfect. The greens were mounded high with the colorful components and just the right amount of dressing. When dessert tickets came up, Chef plated them. Of course, he had the Indian pudding with the corn ice cream and the candied corn kernels, and the mint sprig. He didn't miss a step.

The lesson is that the Chef must be able to step into every position if needed. He (or she) has to know how to work all stations and to do it better than the person hired to do that job. You are a hired hand and therefore dispensable. Whether it is dishwashing or arranging a salad on a plate, Chef can do it easily. It was like watching a jazz combo and the chef is the guy who can sit in on each instrument and blow everyone away.

My days at the Elms began like this- I would take my kids to the bus stop. Once they climbed aboard, I would race in my little Saturn through the back roads from Stamford to Ridgefield. Once I parked in the large rear parking lot I would run up those wooden steps to the kitchen. I was usually in uniform already, so I'd punch in and start setting up my station. I shared the area with JB, who would be doing the last few items for the dessert menu. I liked that time of day because it was basically him, myself and Chef Walsh for a while until the other cooks and Ryan the screaming-sous chef would come in. JB and Chef Walsh had actually been roommates at the CIA so they had a good twenty years of history. Their relationship was kind of a hate/love competitive one.
The first thing that I had to do to set up the station was get ice. Being that the inn was probably over a hundred years old, the layout was not easy to work with. There was a skinny spiral stairway right next to the fryolator. This led to the basement storage area. Part of it's New England charm was that the ceilings were pretty low. I am only 5'4'' and even I had to crouch a little. For the taller guys this was very challenging. However, I had gotten used to this from the hundred year old basement in Greenwich Village. There were rows of shelving with all of the dry goods. If you kept going there were was a chest freezer, a double reach-in freezer and and ice machine. Just past that you stepped outside and into the walk-in. It was a pretty long haul.
So every day I had to fill up two huge buckets of ice and carry them through that maze and up the spiral stairway. Next to the fryolator, remember? This of course meant that the steps were always greasy and slippery. I had visions of myself as the broom in the Mickey Mouse movie, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" as I carried my sloshing, heavy buckets of ice through the treacherous course. Once I made it upstairs I dumped the ice into the trough at my station.
After about a month or two of my Sorcerer's Apprentice routine, Chef bought a lowboy unit. It had two sets of double doors and the place on top where all of the mise en place was to go. These guys were so excited when this thing arrived. I don't think that Chef had bought a new piece of equipment for some time. They reminded me of another movie, this time is was "2001, A Space Odyssey" and they were the monkeys screaming and beating on the television monitor. They pulled the plastic wrap off of it and turned it around. They turned the switch on and beat on their chests when the condenser started up. I shook my head and thought to myself, silly men... The good news was no more schlepping the ice anymore. That was fine by me.

The sous chef Ryan was just as rough as Chef had warned me about. He berated everyone there and not just me. He yelled at every little mistake and if you dropped something on the floor, God forbid, he would shout, "THERE'S YOUR RAISE!" My worst tangle with him was when I had to poach some fish for my station and the water temp was too high and it was boiling. His tirade at me summed up with him demanding that I write a paper on the theory of poaching and to hand it in to him the next day.
I steamed in my car on the way home. Fuck you! I thought to myself. Fuck you! When I got home I searched through textbooks to find the theory of poaching. I was determined to find one thing that would prove him not to be 100% correct. "THE LIQUID HAS TO SIMMER, NOT BOIL!" He had said. The best that I could do was to find a source that said that the water should be brought to a boil first, because once the fish went in the temp would be reduced to a simmer. Humph! Take that!
The next day he had pretty much forgotten about our scene and I brought it up to tell him, just so I could mention that part about the boiling liquid. It was a cheap victory but I needed it for my own psyche.
When Thanksgiving came along, it would be the first one that I would ever spend working. Typical of the business, but a new blessing in disguise for me. I am not a big fan of holidays, only made harder when your young children are not with you, which mine were not that year. What better way to spend it than working your ass off and making a little extra dough?
There were three seatings and we were booked solid. It was a prixe fixe menu with limited items. We had everyone on duty including the Dude and me sharing the station. He and I did the salads, plate after plate and assembling the desserts. I loved the feeling of being part of the band. That was what it was like and as a team we all made beautiful music. We jammed all day long and into the night. After the last customer left, the staff sat together and shared a wonderful family meal with good wine in the Tavern. The Walsh's cared about us and it showed.
A few months before, Martha Stewart came to do a shoot for Living Magazine at the Elms. Though it was September and still warm out, everyone was dressed in their sweaters and woolen scarves to simulate a New England traditional Thanksgiving at The Elms. We were closed for business that day as we only prepped on Mondays. There was photo equipment all over and bright lights in the dining room. There were charming carved pumpkins and candles lit, wreaths hanging on the doors. I quietly let it slip that I had actually known Martha. She had catered my wedding for my now defunct marriage. The guys were impressed. I felt shy about it though. I never did get to see her that day but little did I know that our paths would cross again soon.

Toward the end of my time there, we had an intern from the CIA. His name was, and I am not making this up- Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown annoyed me for numerous reasons. One was that he worked my station in the evening. This meant that after spending my whole morning prepping- washing all the greens in freezing cold water and spinning them dry, making all the salad dressings by hand, dicing and slicing all of the various garnishes, when I came in the next day it was gone. Maybe a spoonful of my carefully confetti'd red, yellow and orange bell peppers in the #9 pan. Half full (or empty) greasy squeeze bottles of vinaigrettes. The extra greens would be gone. I was robbed!
This is an age-old battle between night and day shifts. All of these years later I cannot say how many times I have heard bitching from the night guys about the day guys and vice versa. I have walked in their shoes though and it sucked. Not only was he messy and lazy, but Charlie Brown was a dick too. He wormed his way into being buddy-buddy with the guys in a way that I never would be able to. Working a lunch shift is just not the same as working a dinner shift. The dinner shift is the show, it's where the action is. The food is more complex, the pressure is more intense. The end of the night usually culminates with a beer or two and camaraderie that does not happen after lunch. So Charlie Brown got his ass in tight with them and the one that bugged me the most was his brown-nosing of Chef Walsh. Instead of doing his prep work he was always sucking up to him. He would offer to do other projects like transfer recipes on to the computer. It was 1997 and dinosaurs like Chef Walsh and myself were not so handy with technology yet. Charlie Brown was only twenty or so, it was second nature to him. I volunteered to standardize recipes. I worked at writing everything down so that there would always be continuity of flavors. The more Charlie Brown insinuated himself into Chef's good graces, the more I tried too.
It occurred to me though that I just wasn't going to win this one. I was a female and I would only be able to get so close before it would seem inappropriate. While Charlie Brown was just a dumb, spoiled extern from the CIA- he was a guy and he could get all up in Chef's inner circle and ultimately surpass me no matter how hard I worked. I had to let it go. I heard that eventually Charlie Brown did make it to sous chef number two.
One snowy day I came into work and Chef was in my pantry area, making a cake. This was weird, so I asked him where JB was. Chef made up a story about JB having to go take care of some problem with his son. It was not long before it got out that JB was gone and it nothing to do with his kid. His giant box of tools and his beloved ice cream machine had left with him. As I had mentioned before, these two had a very complicated relationship. Both immensely talented but Chef Walsh had been the more famous of the two. JB had always resented him. Chef Walsh had a happy marriage with his high school sweetheart, while JB had stumbled through a couple of marriages already. The Elms was very successful and had a lot of coverage in the press. JB had previously had a bakery in Brooklyn but his partner who was also his cousin had stolen from him. Now here he was working for Chef Walsh and the resentment was palpable at times. He once said that Chef had "the palate of a dog". Well it must be a pretty sophisticated dog because Chef's food was great.
I will always wonder what the truth was behind their final split that winter. JB never came back to the Elms. When Chef stepped in as pastry chef, it was great working side by side with him and getting to know him better. Though I could never get quite in like Charlie-fucking-Brown, we shared stories about our youthful adventures. I'll always have a soft spot and great respect for him.
A few weeks later, JB surfaced. He called me on the phone. He was working for Martha Stewart at her brand new television studio in Westport. He was the Commissary Chef there and they were looking for more good people. He wanted me to come work with him over there.
It would be more money and more room to grow. With my limited schedule I would not be able to go much further than pantry cook at the Elms. Ryan was one thing but I'd die before I had to say, "Yes, Chef" to Charlie Brown.
I agonized over the decision. I loved the Elms and I loved Chef Walsh. But it was time to move on. JB was also a talent that I could learn from. I went to visit the incredibly impressive studio, interviewed with the head of facilities and did a trail in the test kitchen. It was intimidating but attractive at the same time. When I was formally offered the job I said yes. I agonized for days about giving my notice. JB would call me every day to see if I had quit yet. He started nagging me and finally I did it.
Chef Walsh was a gentleman to the end. He offered to help me if I ever needed it and wished me luck. Once again, I had made my way through an all male kitchen and gotten the respect of every one of them. Even Ryan bent over, wrapped his long arms around me and gave me a big hug, and he had never made me cry.

The next week was the beginning of a whole other world. Working with women, working with tv production and working with Martha.

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.