The Worst Thing About Restaurants: Restaurant Owners

Okay...I write. It is the greatest gift God gave me when he put me on this planet. Thus, I was accepted and attended the top TWO writing conferences in this country (yes, one had to be accepted. Not just scratch a check and show up regardless of lack of talent). And the one thing I walked away from both of them was this: The worse thing about writing, are writers.

Nothing more annoying than being in a room of self-absorbed, self-congratulatory, overly intellectual writers who's idea of fun is a bottle of over-priced wine and a game naming all the characters in a William Faulkner novel (double points if you can explain the differences between the two Quentins in "The Sound And The Fury").

The second greatest gift God gave me (or maybe the third, depending if you talk to those I slept with) is cooking. And, like my travails in the writing world, I found that the worse things about restaurants are the owners.

I'm not talking about the down and dirty neighborhood places where the owners bust an ass cheek to ensure you have the best meal, and best time, possible (like my main Assyrian man Nino at Morse St. Broasted Chicken, or my favorite Korean woman Ms. Suzie of Happy Noon Time Grill -- both around the corner from my apartment). I'm talking about those owners of high-end, fine dining places who think they should be on the cover of Gourmet magazine every other month.

Granted, most spend the risky money to get started. Get the best people on staff to ensure excellent service and food. Ride the dicks of every reviewer from The Chicago Tribune to The New York Times to The Los Angeles Times. But when the crowds come, the reviews are good, the foodies rave -- something happens to them. They forget what got them to the stratosphere of great restaurants. and start treating their kitchens as an afterthought. Like the maid they always ignore, until they notice a streak left on the living room window.

I was at a friend's kitchen recently. The restaurant where he works is famous, well reviewed, visited by celebrities passing through, and always filled with what I call the young, hip, "white wine and cocaine" crowd. Yet, back in the kitchen, my friend told me of the two ovens that were not working, the steamer table that barely kept food warm, the less-than-organized walk-in. and the less-than-gave-a-shit staff he had to manage (I won't even get into the turkey burgers that were swimming in...something). I tried one of the pre-fried sweet potato fries, and it was soft and limp and flavorless as an old man without Viagra.

Now, I respect the owner. And my first thought was: why would he let this happen? Then my second thought, the answer to my first thought, was: because he doesn't have to care anymore. He's already getting the money, because he already has gotten the rep. The kitchen drones could scrape what's on the bottom of their shoes on a plate, and most customers would think it's great because they HEARD how great his food is -- not the chef's food, the OWNER'S food.

Another owner I knew drove off THREE top chefs from his top Mid-Atlantic place, so he wouldn't have to share the limelight. Then he offered me the head chef job, which I told him I wasn't ready to do -- but I took the job anyway. It lasted two weeks. I quickly discovered that the owner didn't want me to be a chef, but more a robotic line cook with a title. My desire to elevate the food, make changes to the menu, and build a staff of well trained cooks was secondary to his desire to just keep making money doing the same thing that made his name at the beginning (including a pesto-scallop appetizer that was straight out the Loni Anderson/Burt Reynolds late-1970s). Don't rock the boat, no matter how rickety and leaky the boat had become.

It didn't matter that the kitchen appliances needed upgrading, that equipment broke down on a regular basis because he didn't want to spend the money on maintenance (yet, more expensive to fix on the fly), and that some of the line cooks barely changed their underwear, scratched their balls and spit on the floor while making dinner for paying customers. Out front, everything looked perfect. And he brought himself an expensive guitar with the money that rolled in. So why worry about maintaining a quality his years-old reviews proclaimed he already had? Because Karma is a bitch -- and The Washington Post wrote an article about what the hell happened to his restaurant. He had to scramble to make things right again or lose his shirt, and guitar.

Once, I told another owner "People don't come here for the entertainment (because there was none), don't come here for the hot servers (there weren't any), and don't come here to be seen. They come here for the FOOD. So why do you treat your kitchen staff so badly?"

I didn't get a good answer then. And since returning to Chicago (with the exception of Moto and Table 52 and TRU), I still haven't gotten that answer.

(P.S.: I told several people I going to write my next blog about gays in the kitchen. That's still coming soon. thanks!)