The year was 1984, and fourteen countries had just boycotted the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. There was a new girl on the music seen that called herself Madonna, and everyone was playing “Like a Virgin.” It seemed as good a time as any to get the hell out of Utah.

My sister Cindy was so excited about the possibility of Stacey, Chelse, and I coming down to Dallas that she had taken my resume to this super hotel with three thousand rooms and fourteen restaurants, called The Loews Anatole. I had three or four telephone interviews with this guy named Morris, the area director of banquets at the Anatole. Morris offered me thirty five thousand dollars a year to be a sous chef in charge of banquets. I accepted. After all, it was ten thousand more than Max was paying me.

When I showed up at the Anatole my jaw dropped. I had never seen anything like this in my life. This place was a freakin’ city! I had no idea what I had just gotten myself into. I met Morris in the lobby, he immediately looked upset.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-two”

“Oh, fuck! You’re barely old enough to drink and I have already hired you.” That really pissed me off. Yeah, my age wasn’t on my resume, but I was hired for my experience, not my age.

“Look you made me move my whole family down here, you at least owe me the opportunity to try.” He just nodded his head.

“You’re right, this is my mistake, not yours.”

“Morris, don’t be so quick to call it a mistake.”

He took me into the banquet kitchen. I had never seen a kitchen like this in my life. It was a great big empty room. Way in the back, you could see row after row of cooking equipment, but most of all it was just a great big empty room. My voice echoed when I spoke.

“Where is everybody?”

“We don’t have any functions for another two weeks.”

There were black electrical cords hanging from the ceiling about every four feet. There were hundreds of them. We walked into a holding walk-in on one side of the room that had to have been at least a hundred yards long.

“How many cooks am I responsible for?”

“Forty-six, and you’re younger then all of them.”

“It doesn’t really matter, Morris. I have been younger than everybody my whole career. I am quite used to it by now.”

He lightened up and took me to human resources. He had me fill out my paper work and get my ID, and then he took me to security and had my keys issued to me.

“Don’t come back for two more weeks,” he said as he handed them to me.

“Morris, I need money. I need to work.” He just laughed.

“Oh you’re going to have plenty of chances to work! Todd, today is your first day. You’re a salaried manager, and you will be paid for the next two weeks just as though you were working.”

He then explained that all twenty-two chefs from the different restaurants and outlets were having a barbeque next Saturday afternoon. He would be calling me with the address, because it was mandatory that I attended. He also said I should bring my wife. Little did I know that in just a few weeks that great big empty room would so crammed full of hot boxes and speed racks that you could hardly walk across it.

When I got to the barbeque, I realized that they had a couple of famous chefs working there. Dean was the chef of the Veranda, an exclusive private club at the Anatole. Takashi used to be the chef of Buckingham Palace for fourteen years. His restaurant was called Mistral. It was my favorite of the bunch. Takashi didn’t have any menus. Dinner started at six thirty and you got whatever he felt like giving you. It was great. I have always wanted a restaurant like that. They also had Anne Lindsay Greer. She had designed the restaurant on top of the tower called The Nana Grill. Anne had just written a book titled Cuisine of the American Southwest. Nana Grill was the first restaurant that I had ever heard of that was serving southwestern cuisine. I was certainly in good company.

When I finally started working, it was a bitch. We would do anywhere from a thousand to ten thousand meals a day. We ran five-man crews with a supervisor on each one. We would schedule five or six of these crews a day. On top of that, I also had a floor supervisor. Not to mention, I missed Roget.

It was not uncommon to have to make 100 or 150 gallons of alfredo sauce or demi-glace. I would always grab a couple of guys off the crews and have them fetch things for me, like a pallet of cream, so I could make these sauces myself. I think that sauce is as important as the featured item on any plate of food.

I was intimidated with a crew of this size at first, but I approached it just like someone would approach rock climbing. I used the cardinal rules: Never look down, only up. Make sure that every move is a wise one, before you make it. Finally, always be sure that you are on good footing.

I started looking at five-man crews as a single man. I would pretend that instead of feeding three thousand people, we were only feeding three hundred. A party of three hundred is cake. If I were feeding three hundred people, I would have one guy sear off the filets, one guy clean, blanch and shock the vegetables, one guy prepare the potatoes, and another guy do the sauce and garnish. So, now that I was feeding three thousand, I would pretend that one guy equaled one crew. It worked beautifully.

Another aspect that was different was that I could not tie myself down with the actual preparation of food. Instead, I would go from crew to crew answering questions and stopping them from doing their tasks incorrectly. Nothing is worse than a really fast crew. They can fuck things up at twice the speed as a normal crew.

If someone over-cooked the baby carrots in this operation, it wasn’t like any other operation I had worked before. First, if someone over-cooked the baby carrots, chances were good that they over cooked 300 pounds of them. Second, back then you could not buy baby carrots already peeled, so we had to peel them ourselves. Three hundred pounds of baby carrots equaled three five-man crews peeling for over two hours. That was over thirty man-hours spent just for carrot peeling. So, the labor cost us far more than the cost of the over-cooked carrots themselves. Three, if you think you can just run down to the storeroom and requisition 300 pounds of baby carrots, you have another thing coming. Plus, the chances of getting them peeled in time for dinner are little to none, even if the storeroom did have them, and I promise you, they didn’t.

I was only stupid enough to let someone overcook the baby carrots once. It never happened again with carrots or anything else for that matter, because I made a new rule. Before anyone in the kitchen was allowed to cook or even reheat any prepped food they had to scream across the kitchen.

“Chef, going in!”

“Check!” I would scream back, before I made a mental note to go check on that food item in a few minutes.

This worked. It made for a lot of screaming in the kitchen, but it worked.

It wasn’t long before Morris walked by and heard all of the screaming.

“What in the hell is all of this about?”

“We’re done burning shit, Morris.” He laughed. “No, for real, we are really done burning shit; I just can’t handle prepping shit twice anymore.” He was still laughing.

“Todd, as far as I have heard you guys have yet to miss your queue, on any meal. I came down here to tell you that it’s been two months now and you’re doing a great job. I actually feel bad for giving you such a hard time in the lobby the day we met.”

“Thank you.” He started for the door, but right when he was passing through it he turned and screamed.

“Todd, by the way, the reason we fired your predecessor is because they were burning shit all of the time.”

The Anatole went from hard to really hard as soon as the 1984 Republican convention checked in. President Reagan and Vice President Bush were staying at the Anatole; in fact, everybody that was anybody was staying there. The last time any president had stepped foot in Dallas he was shot in the head, so the secret service detail was a force to be reckoned with. We were doing over thirty thousand meals a day. I was working 5:00 AM to 11:00 PM, and I did this 21 days straight without a day off, but this wasn’t the worst part. The total bitch was that the secret service would not let us park our cars anywhere near the building. Our lot was now over a mile away. I made that walk only once. That very day, I split from work for an hour and went and bought a skateboard.

The following morning, someone put 72 sheet trays of panned bacon in two rotary reel ovens and then walked away to take a piss. I walked into the kitchen and the first thing I saw was smoke bellowing out of both ovens. It takes a long time to unload ovens like that, so by the time we were done, the bacon was really burnt. Suits were never in the kitchen in the morning, but that morning the breakfast was for the President of the United States. Sure enough, Morris walked in with the executive chef of the Anatole, Van. The executive chef had so many outlets to worry about that I rarely saw him in the banquet kitchen. This time, they walked right up to four 60 gallon trash cans top full of burnt bacon.

“Who doesn’t know how to cook bacon?” Van instantly asked. I looked over at the sea of tall white hats. All forty of them were trying to pan bacon as fast as they could. I answered loud enough for all of them to hear.

“Apparently, not a damn one of those men knows how to cook bacon, sir.” Van was a military man. He liked answers like that.

It takes a couple of different people to burn that much bacon, and I wasn’t even sure who they were yet. So, I did as I always did and placed the responsibility on all of us together. After all, we were a team.

Then, Morris whispered softly at my side, “Hey Todd, I thought we were done burning shit.” I didn’t even answer that.

“Todd, we’re not down here to check up on the President’s Breakfast party. We’re certain that you have that fully under control,” Van stated sarcastically. They both started yuckin’ it up. They were both a couple of Laurel and Hardies.

Van continued. “Todd, we are down here because you’re the only one that can settle a small wager between Morris and myself. Can we step into your office?”

“Sure.”

As soon we walked in my office they both busted up laughing. Morris reached into his pocket, pulled out twenty bucks and handed it to Van. I had no idea what was going on.

“Todd at 4:30 this morning I was taking that mile long walk from my car to the hotel. Now, I just moved here from Las Vegas, and it was still dark so I was worried about being mugged on my way in.” All I could think was, It’s funny he should mention that because I felt the same way yesterday. That’s why I went a bought a skateboard. “Then, I heard a faint sound creeping up behind me. It was ker-plunk, ker-plunk, ker-plunk, and it was getting faster and louder as it approached. I was way too scared to turn around and look, when, ‘Whoosh!’ someone brushed up against me going fast as hell. He was far gone before I could even breathe again, but I was certain that it was our new banquet chef. So, when I arrived I told Morris here, ‘Your new banquet chef rides a skateboard to work. Are you sure he’s old enough to drive?’ Morris assured me that you drove because he had seen your car. So I bet him twenty dollars that you still rode your skateboard to work, and there you have it.” He finished as he pointed to the upside down skateboard on my desk, displaying the union jack on the bottom.

I was going to hide it, but they were burning bacon, so I just threw it down on my desk and ran into the kitchen. They thought that that was simply the funniest thing they had ever seen, and told everyone in the hotel that the new banquet chef still rode a skateboard. I didn’t care, though. In fact, I started to ride it in the halls, to the storeroom, and when I would go check on my food. That is, I rode it until a secret service agent confiscated it.

The secret service was starting to become a real pain in the ass. You could not enter the kitchen unless your Hotel ID was displayed properly on your chest. Every hour they would issue me a whole bunch of little round colored stickers. I was told to personally go to each and every employee on my crew and place the color of the hour on his or her nametag. By the time I was finally done with all forty of them, it was time for the next color. On top of that, there were five or six agents standing next to every single pot of food we were cooking, ensuring that no one was adding poison. Then, if it was a buffet that meal period, every single pan of food that was intended to go into a chafing dish had to be sniffed by a dog.

These dogs were amazing! They would stick their nose right next to a big ass, beautifully roasted, Prime Rib and never even touch it. I would look into the eyes of those dogs and I could just tell that they just wanted to say, Fuck this! and run off with the meat, but they never did. They would also place the dogs on hydraulic lifts, and raise them to the ceiling of the ballroom before a function so they could sniff the chandeliers.

Despite all of the grief, God had a way of balancing things out. One morning, as I was skating through the parking lot, and a twenty-dollar bill blew in front of me. I stopped and picked it up, then hopped right back on my board and continued to skate. Then, another twenty-dollar bill blew in front of me. I thought, Shit, I am going to start walking. I passed row after row of the black suburban SUVs that belonged to the secret service, and was pleasantly surprised when I spotted a stack of bills on the ground next to a driver’s side door. Six hundred and eighty dollars had fallen out of some agent’s pocket when he got out of the truck last night. I felt like it was proper payment for the pain in the ass that these guys were. So, I bought an expensive camera for Stacey’s birthday. We ended up pawning it several years later one night when we just had to get some more coke.

In a matter of five days, I had fed every single US President since Andrew Johnson (with the exception of Jimmy Carter). One morning I was even told by Morris to go to the top floor in the atrium and prepare omelets in a private suite. Gerald Ford was there with Howard Baker and Bob Dole; it was pretty cool. Tricky Dickey Nixon even showed up for dinner, but no one really talked to him that much. George Herbert Walker Bush was the headliner at every function that Reagan didn’t attend, and he brought his very own Boy George with him to each one.

On one of the days, Nancy Reagan asked Morris if we could do a pop-up luncheon for herself and twelve hundred of her closest friends…the day after tomorrow. This was the first time that I gotten to write my own menu. I decided to serve chilled zucchini soup for the first course. For the main course, I chose a chilled marinated grilled vegetable platter with a baby artichoke in the center of the plate filled with watercress aioli. I don’t know what in the hell I was thinking when I chose chilled zucchini soup. They loved it and it tasted great, but it still sounds like a stupid soup and I have never done it since. I chose three chilled courses for two reasons. First, it was the one rare occasion that I knew I could get away with it. I was feeding a bunch of fancy lady’s who never eat when they’re together anyway. Second, we had a lot going on that day, and I couldn’t allow this pop-up function to do anything to slow us down. I didn’t care who it was for. By choosing cold food we could pre-plate everything a couple of hours before the meal and it would still be good when we served it, and it was. In fact, Nancy Regan ended up personally thanking me for a great event. That was a real class act.

We poured the chilled soup into chilled cups and piped a rosette of nutmeg cream on top just as they were sitting down. I didn’t want to do it ahead of time because I knew it would get a scab on it. We were half way done pouring the soup when Morris looked at how much I had left and started to get a hard on for more soup. He was second-guessing me. Immediately, he told five guys to start cutting zucchini. I superseded his decision, and told them to stop and get back to pouring and garnishing the soup.

“Look Morris, I have enough soup. I made it, and measured it myself. Just settle down, we’ll have enough. Besides, by the time they’re done cooking more it won’t be chilled enough to serve for a couple of hours, and the function will be over by then.” He didn’t say a word. He just glared at me while the five cooks he had barked out orders too were just staring at him wondering what to do.

“Fine, just keep pouring soup.” We had a gallon, maybe two, left when we were all done pouring. Morris settled down, walked over to me and whispered in my ear, “If you ever cut it that close again, I will personally kick your ass.” I just smiled at him. I was a cocky little fucker.

Morris and I both walked into the ballroom and watched as the waiters served the soup. The entrée was already plated and done in the back. A waiter walked by us with eighteen cups of soup on a single tray.

“If you drop that, you better just keep on walking and never come back, because both of us will be fired.” I was finally able to get Morris to laugh again.

“He’s not kidding!” Morris added.

A reporter from The Dallas Morning News attended the luncheon, and the next morning there was a photograph of my chilled vegetable platter accompanying a stellar article about how great the food was. They made it sound like I had invented soup. When I came to work everybody was congratulating me and I didn’t even know why yet. I was very proud; this was the second great piece of press I had received in my career. Van started calling me his new golden boy, and told me that I was welcome to dine at any of the restaurants whenever I felt like it; all I had to do is type up a paper describing my experience. The fact that they valued my opinion was far better than the free meals.

Right after the President and the Republican convention checked out, the American Culinary Convention checked in.

The first year of my apprenticeship, we hosted the American Culinary Federation Convention at the Hotel Utah in 1976. I remember the whole convention had Roget wound so tight that he was a living dickhead the whole time they were there. I had worked on most of the functions. One in particular always stands out. I was working a caviar blini station making small little buckwheat pancakes that were made to order in the ballroom, which people would place caviar on top of. There was a candelabra on the buffet and I was just cruising along making blini’s. I looked up and Shane was across the room carving tenderloin dancing up and down pointing to his chef’s hat. I looked at him like Knock it off! If Roget catches us fucking off on this function he will kill us. Roget was in the room talking to other chefs. Shane wouldn’t quit dancing and pointing. So finally I just quit looking at him. Then a waiter just about knocked me on my ass as he threw my hat down and started stomping on it. When I was making blini’s I had bent over the candelabra and started my paper chef’s hat on fire. I had no idea it was happening, but I guess my hat had been burning for quite some time before they knocked it off judging by the amount of time that Shane was dancing.

The day the American Culinary Convention checked in, Van came to me and got me to go to a meeting with the Chairman’s committee. This was cool. I got to participate as they went over all of the functions that we were going to host in the next few days.

“Is there anything that you think we should do differently?” Van asked me during the meeting. I noticed that they had a barbeque cook-out with New York steaks on the second to last night and a grilled filet on the menu for the grand ball on the last night.

“Even in Texas, that’s a lot of red meat,” I said, gesturing to the last two days of the conference. Then, one of the other chefs (the one that had probably written this menu) replied.

“Then what would you suggest we have?”

“Roast Rack of Veal.”

“Why not keep it simple and just have a grilled veal chop?”

“Because every single thing the night before was grilled, we’re big on barbeque, but let’s change it up a little.” Everyone agreed.

“How much more will rack of veal cost?” some of the other chef’s piped in.

“We made so much money on the Republican Convention, we will do it for the same price as the filet.” Van explained. Then, I asked another question.

“Instead of just having a smoked salmon platter for the first course, could we have a sea scallop and smoked salmon terrine?”

“If it’s the same price, then sure,” the Chairman said, “but why do you want to switch it?”

“Most people don’t know what a terrine is. This group not only knows what it is, but they will appreciate a good one when they see it.” Chuck had taught me how to make bitchin’ terrines.

“Fine.” Van stated.

“Will Roget Cortello or Max Mercier be attending?” I asked the chef who was in charge of attendance.

“No, they didn’t sign up this year.” Several chefs in the room knew who they were, so they started inquiring.

“Why are you asking?” Van stepped in before I could answer.

“Todd apprenticed under Roget.” Everybody started to feel a lot better about the upcoming events. We had left the meeting and were walking down the hall, when Van turned to me.

“Well Todd, how does it feel to be on the chairman’s committee for the American Culinary Federation’s National Convention?”

“I didn’t know that I was.” I replied, smiling.

All of the functions went off without a hitch. It was the second to last night when I was in the kitchen by myself with only a couple of CIA externs, helping me make the terrines for the grand ball. We only had twenty terrines, so I had to cook them in three batches. When I was done cooking the first batch, I tasted it. It was good, but just a little flat. I thought that the smoked salmon would incorporate plenty of salt so I had played it mellow with the salt. I adjusted the rest of the batch with more salt, more white pepper, and a little more lemon juice.

I had taken the smoked salmon and laid out a thin layer on cellophane in a one foot by two foot rectangle. Then, I took some scallop mousse and spatula-ed it on, creating another thin layer on top of the salmon. Then, I rolled it into a tube and froze it. Then, I placed scallop mousse in the terrine and squished the tube into it until I thought it was dead center. When the terrine was finished cooking, chilled, then sliced, it was shaped like a piece of white bread with this killer red pinwheel in the center of it. I served it with crème frachie and two chive sprigs. It was very simple, but very cool.

We had just finished cooking all of the terrines when Morris and Van walked into the kitchen to check up on me. They both started to pick at my terrines. However, what happened next made me to appreciate what an awesome chef Van really was. He took bites from a couple of different terrines.

“They’re different!” he barked out.

“What?”

“They’re different. This one tastes different than this one. Why?”

“I had to adjust my seasoning a third of the way through.”

“The second one was better than the first one, but it doesn’t matter. They both need to taste the same.”

“OK, we’ll make them again.”

“No, they’re fine. No one will notice. You just need to figure it out before you do it again.” Morris explained. “Oh, and you won’t be dishing up the grand ball.”

Are you nuts? I thought to myself.

“You have to bring a suit with you to work tomorrow, and tell your wife to show up here at 6:30. You both will be attending the ball.”

“Morris, no way.”

“Todd the terrines are done, the salad is pre-plated, and your crew is good. All they have to do is roast some veal and plate up. They can do that without you, and if they can’t then you’re a shitty chef.” Since he put it that way, I agreed.

Stacey and I were seated at Van and Morris’s table with their wives. The terrine was great. After I ate it I asked to be excused. I said that I needed to use the restroom, but I bolted for the kitchen. I just couldn’t stand it. All I could do was sit there thinking of the seven hundred ways that they could screw up this meal.

When I walked into the kitchen in my suit and tie, all of the cooks immediately started whistling and giving me catcalls. I just flipped them all off collectively, ran to my office, grabbed a thermometer, and started probing all of the veal racks to make sure they were cooked right. All of them were exactly 135 degrees resting. I knew they would be perfect and instantly felt a lot better. Then, someone grabbed my arm…hard. It was Morris. He escorted me out of the kitchen and back to my table without ever letting go. All of the cooks got a real big kick out of that.

I had a few glasses of wine and I was just sitting there thinking, What an awesome pastry chef we have, when I heard Van’s voice come across the PA system. I hadn’t even noticed that he had left the table, but now he was up on stage.

“We have had a lot of important guest here at the Anatole in the past few weeks, but I want you to know that none of them were more important than you chefs.” This was a total bullshit line. Trust me; the President of the United States of America was a hell of a lot more important than this group of chefs. “I want to introduce the members of the Chairman’s Committee for this year’s convention.”

I looked up on the stage and there were all of those old-timer chefs, standing to the right. I immediately looked at Morris like, What the fuck! Why was I left out? He knew exactly what I was saying without me uttering a word, but he just shrugged his shoulders and gave me some fake ass sad face. Van not only introduced these guys, but he placed a gold medal around each and every one of their necks. I was so pissed I could have spit. I was starring at Van on stage thinking, You are such a fucker, when he surprised me.

“Now I would like to introduce the chef that was responsible for all of your meals this week, Chef Todd Hall!” The whole room filled with applause, and Morris started laughing his ass off. They had planned it this way! They knew exactly how I would react. Just when I thought that I was supposed to stand up and walk up there to get my medal, I looked to Morris for direction. Once again he just shrugged his shoulders. What a prick! I had no idea what to do, but Stacey kept pushing me to go up there.

“Looking down at Todd’s table I see that I have a problem that I will have to address with him in the morning. He’s drinking a glass of wine and I know for a fact that he doesn’t turn twenty-one for another couple of months.” The entire ballroom started laughing and clapping. Morris finally stood up and told me to walk up there. As I was approaching the stage, I heard Van add, “Not only that, but this guy rides a skateboard to work.” Everybody started laughing again, and Van reiterated, “No, I am not kidding. He really does ride a skateboard to work!”

I walked up on stage and I got all choked up. Van placed the medal around my neck and gave me a big hug. That was it. I started balling. I didn’t even say thank you. I just waved and ran for the restroom.

I don’t know if it was the wine, the hours I had been working, or the fact that life was just that good but it took quite a few minutes until I was able to regain composer and return to the ballroom. I wish that Roget and Max could have been there. Luckily, there were a few chefs from Utah present, so they both got wind that I was kicking some ass in Texas.