C & C Part 6

Linda was in her mid-40s and single, and she had that year-round beachy tan. She wore her hair in a messy bun when she was working, but her look was totally different, all tube tops, crop jackets, strappy heels, and white jeans, when she clocked out and hopped into her white Fiero convertible. Her parents owned one of the oldest Italian restaurants in town, but she came to work with us after some kind of fallout with her dad. Her 23-year-old son still worked for the family restaurant, and it was clear that he was being groomed to take over the business when her folks retired.

Linda was 3rd generation Italian with a southern Virginia accent, and her specialties were Pizzaiola Sauce and Brunswick Stew. She was also very bossy, and being closer in age to the owners than the rest of the younger staff, it wasn't long before she started telling us what to do. At least that's what it felt like to me. By this time, I had worked my way up from sandwich maker all the way to cook, and I had a reputation for being quiet and competent; I always got along with everybody in the kitchen. 

One Sunday morning, though, Linda and I were on the opening shift. Our first job was to put out the case, filling bowls and platters with salads and entrees. On Sundays there was usually party leftovers in the walk-in, too, and we either put those out as specials, or created something new with those ingredients. That morning, Linda wanted to start cooking, so she set up her station and proceeded to micromanage me as I finished the case. 

I had my own list of cooking to do, and I didn't consider ordering me around as helping put out the case. "Let me know when you need to use the bathroom," I finally told her after she gave me one direction too many, "then I can wipe your butt for you, too."

C & C Part 5

Lisa was the baker at the company, but anywhere else? She would have been called the pastry chef. A round-faced girl from New Jersey of about my age, Lisa had graduated from the CIA and was easily the best cook in the kitchen. She turned out chocolate chocolate cakes, sour cream apples pies, carrot cakes, and chocolate mousse pies by the half dozen, not to mention cookie dough, and an assortment of pick-up desserts for all the catering jobs, and she made it look easy.

Lisa lived with a friend named Amber, whose husband, Ron, was a sailor on active duty and often gone for months at a time. Amber and Ron had a three year old daughter, Savannah, who Lisa loved like her own. Times were rough when Ron was in town; Lisa didn't like the way he treated his family and, living under the same roof, it was a struggle for her. Ron was always trying to set Lisa up with guys he knew, probably to get her out of his house, although financially the arrangement worked for him (and emotionally it seemed to work for his wife and daughter).

That was how Lisa met Ernie, and things were going really well for a couple of weeks until he had to go to jail to serve the prison sentence he had received before Ron introduced them. Lisa stayed faithful to Ernie, though, talking to him on the phone when they could, and visiting him on her days off. As summer approached that year she grew increasingly concerned. Ernie wasn't happy; Ernie was worried for his safety; Ernie was distant. She did what she could to help, and she planned a surprise visit with a cake and all sorts of goodies for Ernie's birthday on July 14. 

That morning the phone rang in the kitchen and whoever answered it called Lisa over. I can still remember the look on her face as she twirled the cord around her finger, listening. "I don't know anything," she said and then hung up. "That was the police," she announced to the kitchen. "Ernie escaped."

Well, it was Bastille Day.

C & C Part 4

Technically, Seward was Robert's big brother, but in reality Seward was at least 4 inches shorter, much slighter, and a lot less independent than Robert. Today, we would likely identify an intellectual disability if we were to diagnose Seward, but back then everyone just recognized that he was "special"; a guy who would live with his mother as long as he could.

Seward was as silly as Robert was serious, and he always had a huge, crooked-tooth smile on his face. He was also one of the friendliest folks you could ever meet, greeting everyone with a "How you doin today?" His nickname at the shop was Ma-shur, a wacky, southern corruption of the the French word, "Monsieur". I do not know how he came by this moniker, but the owner called him that, and so did a lot of the other staff. 

Personally, I called him Seward, and he was the most cooperative coworker he could be, happily scrubbing any pot or bowl or hotel pan right away, the minute you needed it. It was also his job to mop the floors, and one evening at the end of shift I was carrying a load of knives and cutting boards and tubs over to the pot sink, when I slid precariously across the freshly cleaned floor. Regaining my balance, my eyes met his, and we both laughed.

"Whoa!" I said, "I almost fell!"

"You did, didn't you?" he answered. "You shore did!" 

It was a line I heard him say a hundred times in a hundred different situations.

Another time he overheard a conversation I was having with another cook as we passed the dishwasher and he thought I was saying something to him. "What you mean?" he asked.

"I'm not talking to you, Seward," I told him.

He looked hurt. "Why? What I do?"

C & C Part 3

The company started in a storefront in 1981 with a skeleton crew and a pasta machine special-ordered from Italy. Fast casual was not a thing back then when it was either TV dinners, takeout, or cook it yourself from scratch, and with fresh pasta, sauces, salads, and desserts that you could take home to make a quick meal, the place filled a need that people didn't know they had.

When they opened, the owners did most of the cooking, and they hired a couple people to handle the counter and someone to do the dishes and clean up. Robert was a native of the area; he grew up in a big family in Norfolk. He was a hard worker, quiet and smart, and it wasn't long before he was the guy who operated that pasta machine. He mixed durum semolina, eggs, and water in the Hobart, added tomato or spinach powder if need be, and then pushed fist-fulls of the grainy mixture through the twin rollers until it became satin sheets of fresh pasta. He cut linguine or angel hair, pressed ravioli, and could take the machine apart, clean it, and reassemble it in no time.

By the time I was hired five years later, the business had expanded to new location and added catering to their  services, but Robert was still there. Dressed in a white snap-shirt and uniform pants, he was in charge of the pasta and supervising the back of the house cleaning crew, which consisted of his brothers, Seward and Richard, and a friend of theirs, Steven. 

His sister, Recia, was a prep cook. Her station was away from all of the other cooks, a tiny stainless steel table by the pot racks and across from the dish sink where her brother Seward worked. As far as I could tell, she never cooked anything; her job was to prep vegetables, peel shrimp, and pick the shells from all the fresh crabmeat. 

At the end of their shift, Recia might help her brothers finish their lists, so they could all pile into the same car and drive home.

C & C Part 2

Gertrude worked the 6 AM-2 shift, Tuesday through Saturday. A woman of about 60, she was competent and gruff, and kept to herself unless you were doing something wrong. Then she would lumber over and let you know about it in a stern, German accent.   

Her specialty was salad, in particular the signature chicken and almond salad, but she also produced sesame chicken, seafood, Mediterranean, and pasta chinoise salads, thirty pounds at a time. Her station was next to the industrial can opener and in front of the convection oven, just down from the 10 burner range, and a very short walk to the pot sink. By the time I arrived at 9 or 10, she had it stocked with gallons of mayonnaise, mustard, soy sauce, and jarred garlic. 

In addition to chopping celery and poaching chicken breasts in 20 gallon stick pots, Gertrude spent her shift mixing huge vats of tri-colored linguine with tomato sauce, ricotta, and eggs, shaping the mixture into giant fritattas, baking them off and then topping them with more sauce, provolone, and peppers and mushrooms. 

Other days she would hoist 3 or 4 sheet pans of chicken breasts liberally sprinkled with jarred garlic and soy sauce into the convection, poach 10 pounds of small shrimp, cook off a bin of fresh angel hair pasta, julienne carrots and snow peas, crank open number 10 cans of water chestnuts, and pit 300 Calamata olives, in between smoking Kools out back on her breaks. She punched out and threw her apron in the laundry on the way out the door at 2, then drove home in her enormous 1970-something Cadillac de Ville.

She was there the day I started, and she was there the day I left. I wonder where she is today.

C & C Part 1

My first cooking job was as a sandwich maker at a cafe-catering outfit down the street from where I was living at the time. They were that type of place with a large cold case where you could order all sorts of salads and a few entrees (and of course, sandwiches) either to go or to eat in at the little dining area across from the counter.

There were a lot of kooky characters working there, me and my sister included, although we like to think of ourselves as among the sanest employees. The first week I was there a guy named Juan trained me, and the second week he disappeared. One day he was showing me how to mix up the cranberry-mayonaise that was the key condiment on the turkey sandwich and scolding me for mincing garlic instead of using the garlic press, and the next, he was gone.

The owners of the business had the police on the case after he missed a couple days of work, and no one could talk of anything else: they told and retold what he had said when they last spoke to him, who he hung out with, what his frame of mind was. A few days after his disappearance he showed up to work like nothing ever happened. It turned out he was on a cocaine-fueled bender with an ex-boyfriend, a sailor who had recently returned to our port from a six-month deployment at sea. 

He was fired, of course.

Dog Fish

Lucy froze when she caught a glimpse of something in the Tidal Basin this morning. "I saw that, too!" Heidi told her as we resumed our walk.

"What was it?" I asked.

"A really big fish!" Heidi answered.

"Remember that time..." I started.

"With Isabel?" Heidi finished.

"Of course!" I said, and we both laughed.

Back when we were new dog owners, and our first dog was only a puppy, we used to take her down to Jones' Point on the Potomac River in Old Town Alexandria. There was a little sandy shore there, and the spot was used as an informal dog beach. Isabel was new to swimming, and we tossed a tennis ball in the water to motivate her to paddle out and get it. But she was new to fetching, too, so often our tennis balls floated away or had to be collected by other, more water-competent dogs. 

Those dogs' owners were generally very nice and encouraging, though. "She's still young!" one woman assured us, even as her own dog literally swam circles around Isabel, retrieving the tennis balls that she would not. 

The three of us stood on the bank watching our dogs, hers swimming out and back, ours standing chest-deep about 10 feet from the shore. Just then, Isabel ducked her whole head under the water and came up with an enormous fish flopping from either side of her mouth. 

There was a moment of stunned silence, and then we started waving at her. "Drop it! Drop it!" 

She opened her mouth and the fish splashed into the river and swam away.

"Wow," said the other woman. "My dog doesn't do that!"