Chapter 1....

It seems to me, that after one discovers about 11 seconds of fame, the next step is to write a cookbook. I won’t even give the “how to make frozen dinners on a budget” type of book the respect of detailing why that crap should not be allowed even to wipe up human excrement, however there are other cookbooks out there that are written by the uber famous and sometimes amazingly fabulous real chefs. The folks that write these beautifully photographed memoirs are wonderful, yet, they give you no sense of what goes on behind the scenes, nor does the reader ever get an idea why our reputation for being neurotic, workaholic, heavy drinking, egomaniacs is well founded and true. For some reason, the food TV world has decided to only have you believe that chefs are either multi millionaire celebrities, annoying overly produced southern women with whom we are supposed to feel somehow connected to, or a limitless bevy of talent free show-folk that have never dripped sweat in a real kitchen.

That being stated, thank you for reading this blog and I hope that these pages can offer you some understanding, some insight to the industry, some workable knowledge, perhaps a smile or two and a mostly a bit of empathy. To get to the envied chef position that I now enjoy… I started just like everyone else…at the beginning!!

I have no fond memories of epicurean delights as a young person. We didn’t travel, and although my mother was quite formal in her approach to dining at home, the nightly candlelight dinners could not mask the fact that she was the worst cook on the planet. Good ‘ol mom could de-flavor a jalapeno pepper. Her “go to” standards of badly braised brisket and some sort of chicken were not anything that any child would desire to keep in the memory banks. As an adult chef, I have always been a bit jealous when other chefs reminisce about how certain smells bring them back to mom’s kitchen, or their motivation for entering the food world was to continue the passion that the family had for eating.

But in actuality, I learned to cook out of a deep burning love for the transformation of product from raw beginnings to flavorful and beautiful endings. I have always been fascinated that we can take nothing and make it something!  I also began cooking out of hunger, and I was a fat kid that liked to eat oh yeah… and I heard chefs got laid a lot.

I’m a working chef. I’ve been a guy that is locally well known, hell…even relatively respected for my culinary prowess.  I’m a self-made guy, self taught, self-motivated, self-marketed and oft time self-loathing. I’ve been “that” guy with the bright loud chef jackets and vivid clogs…’Hollywood’ kissing women and warmly bumping fists at the tables while receiving accolades from the press and clients. At the same time I’ve been the guy working behind the scenes 15 to 18 hours a day, trying to explain in loud broken Spanish how to cook my dishes, showing cocky worthless culinary students how to plate a dish and how to re organize a walk-in refrigerator for the fiftieth time. 

I’m the guy explaining to arrogant myopic owners, partners and managers why food costs are 32% and the restaurant is packed…even though the costs previous to me were 25% with a completely empty restaurant. I’ve been the guy that has to cook every dish on every station the night when the line cooks are to fucked up to show up to work.  I’m the chef that you came in to see, however, I cant come out to your table because I have to help wash dishes due to the dishwasher getting a better minimum wage job and bailing on me. I’m the guy that in the middle of service, has to kiss the old smelly under-educated board of health guys’ ass as he does everything in his power to give me something below an ‘A’ rating.  

• Refrigerated food temperatures at 43 degrees not 41 degrees? Dead
• A line cooks’ knife bag on the table? Dead
• Cooked bacon at room temp? Double Dead
• A dishwasher eating his meal at his station? Triple Dead…

And of course in the middle of it all, I get to keep my staff motivated, happy and productive as my calloused feet are the size of small countries, and my knees are planning a revolution from the sheer stress of my weight on them for 16 hours a day.

Perhaps after reading these pages you will no longer be in an amazed stupor when my fellow chefs and I, want to see you painfully hurt when you demand your dressing on the side, when you change our dishes completely or when you whine about your meal taking 20 minutes to get to the table!

In the course of these rants…I’ll show you some of my more popular recipes for your culinary adventure so you can create edible memories. I also promise that the stories are 100% true and are taken exactly from the events and situations that occurred.

Let’s have some fun!!!