Banquets settled down, so I started to search for a way to serve better food. Takashi would come to work every day at 1:00 PM and the first thing he would do was go pick up his food from the storeroom. He was the shit. He ordered stuff that I had never heard of like Turbot, Brill, Loup De Mar, and my new favorite fish John Dory (aka St. Pierre). I would show up in the storeroom everyday at one just to see what he ordered. I would also spend my nights off in Takashi’s kitchen. I would just stand there and ask him not only what he was doing, but also why he was doing it. It was a fun little game to him, because he would never tell me. He would just make me guess until I got it right. His answers were short and simple: If I was right, he would say, “That‟s correct.” If I was wrong, he would say, “No.”

He would cook anything he felt like for his guests. Whenever I was there, he would pass me a small plate to try, as he went along with his evening. I remember the first time I tried John Dory.

“What kind of fish is this?”

“John Dory. In America they call it John Dory because it has to be caught on a hook and line in the English Channel. It really fights when you catch it so they named it after John Dory, a great bare-fisted prize fighter in the 1920s.” Then he continued, “Although, in France they call it St. Pierre because when Jesus was approached by tax collectors he told the first apostle Peter to go to the river and grab a fish and when he did he would find a gold coin in its mouth to pay their taxes with.”

Takashi showed me the two black spots that were still on this fish today from where peter had touched it, one on both sides of the body just below the gills. What a cool story! Takashi not only knew how to cook, he knew everything about food. He was serving the fish with bordelaise sauce, which, to me, was completely out of context. Bordelaise was veal stock with a Bordeaux reduction, garnished with poached bone marrow. I had never seen something like this served with fish.

“If you are going to be good, then you will have to read the Escoffier cookbook.” I had read the Escoffier cookbook from cover to cover each and every year of my apprenticeship. Roget made us, but I knew better than to argue with a great chef. Roget taught me that years ago.

“OK,” I just replied, like it was some kind of new idea that I had never thought of. I had a couple of Escoffier books but they were all in Utah. So the very next day I went to the mall and bought another copy. Sure enough there was not only St. Pierre bordelaise but also Dover Sole bordelaise and ten other kinds of fish bordelaise. I could not understand how I missed all of this when I had read the book three times during my apprenticeship. So, I read it again and this time paid a hell of all lot more attention.

I was going through the process of elimination one night with Takashi and could not figure out what he was using for a liaison, to thicken a sauce. Normally, we would use roux (flour and clarified butter cooked at low heat for over an hour). If not roux, then cornstarch mixed with what we called “a slurry.” It’s nothing really more than cornstarch and water, or white wine. He then told me to read page 51 of the Escoffier book. On that page it was talking about how much better it is to use cornstarch just like flour in roux, cooked with clarified butter. It said that flour was only 72% starch and the other constituents would mask your palate from the true flavor, not to mention you would have to scum it for three days to get rid of the impurities. I was blown away with this page because Escoffier himself, the chef of kings and the king of chefs, wrote, “I hope the day is near when chefs realize that cornstarch, felcula, or arrowroot is far more pure than flour when making roux”.  I am sorry to burst your bubble buddy, but it’s been almost two hundred years, since you wrote page 51 in your book, and although you spelled it out for all of us, I think Takashi is the only one who really understood. Still, to this day, no matter where I go or where I work, everyone still uses flour for roux.

Takashi not only knew the Escoffier book, but he knew it the way a preacher knows knows the bible: by the page number. I was so impressed.

The next time I was in his kitchen he handed me a cup of soup, it had a puff pastry dome on top of it.

“What is this?”

“Billi Bi En Croute.”

This soup rocked! When you tore in to the pastry, the most wonderful aroma filled the air. It was distinctively mussels and saffron. I had to know how to make soup like this. It not only looked really cool with the flakily pastry dome, but it tasted so rich and wonderful. I was so excited that I started our little game.

“Did you have mussel stock?”

“That’s correct.” Nice, I got the first one right.

“Do you have cream?”

“That’s correct.” Two for two.

“Do you have saffron?”

“That’s correct.” That was a given.

“Do you have roux?”

“No.” Bummer.

“Do you have cornstarch?”

“No.”

“Do you have cornstarch roux, like on page 51?”

“No.” What the hell! How did he thicken this soup? Then I thought of it. He used a liaison in the true sense of the word. In old time France they would incorporate a combination of just the right amount of egg yolks and cream to a sauce at the last minute. I never liked to use liaisons because if the soup you were thickening ever got above 160 degrees, it would curdle. I knew I had it now.

“Did you use one of those old time liaisons of egg yolks and cream at the last minute to thicken the soup?”

“No.” You bastard, why won’t you just tell me? He kept cooking like I wasn’t even there. I decided to start from scratch; I was not leaving the kitchen until I knew how to make this soup.

“Did you have a soup pot?”

“That’s correct.”

“Did you heat the soup pot by turning on the burner?”

“That’s correct.”

“Did you place whole butter in the pot?”

“That’s correct.”

“Did you sauté mirpoix vegetables in that butter?”

“That’s correct.”

“Did you add a bay leaf, salt and pepper, and maybe even saffron to those mirpoix vegetables?”

“That’s correct.”

“Did you add mussels?”

“That’s correct”

“Did you add water?”

“No” Now, we were getting somewhere. If he didn’t use water to make his stock then what did he use?

“Did you add Fume (fish stock)?”

“No.”

“Did you add clam juice?”

“No.”

“Did you add lobster stock?”

“No.” What in the hell did you use for the base of your stock? It was beyond me. I had used every option I could think of so I said to myself, we’re going to move on.

“Did you add cream?”

“That’s correct.” I took another bite of the soup and could not for the life of me think of anything else that I could taste in this soup.

“Are there any other ingredients in this soup that I have failed to ask you about?”

“No” OK, I had it all, but I still could not figure out what he used for a base to his stock or what he thickened it with.

“Did you use a shit load of cream?”

“That’s correct.” Nice! I figured it out. He had substituted cream for water when making his mussel stock, and if he reduced it long enough he would not have to thicken it at all. This was ingenious. I had one more question.

“Did you add a shitload of cream and then reduce it until it was the proper consistency?”

“That’s correct.” Takashi reached his hand through the window of the line, shook my hand, and bowed the way that oriental dudes do. Game over.

Stacey and I were dining in all of the restaurants at least twice a week. You can learn a lot about food just by going out. One time at Le Entrecote, the Anatole’s premier French restaurant, I didn’t want to butcher the pronunciation of a bottle of wine so I pointed to the one I wanted on the wine list. The wine steward brought us a bottle of Chateau Yquem, a two hundred dollar bottle of wine. I thought that this wine was awfully damn good for only being thirty-five bucks. We had to pay for alcohol, so when I got my check I learned never to point again.

I went to the Veranda kitchen one night on my day off to see what kind of food Dean cooked. I was not very welcome in his kitchen. I asked if I could watch and they looked at me as if to say, Why? He was planning a party. He had taking a piece of Halibut and breading it in macadamia nuts (I thought it looked way too big and way too heavy). He served it with Pommes Daluphinoie, layered potatoes with cream. He also had some carved some carrot flowers and then carved some snow peas to look like leafs. He was using a garnish you would use on cold compote salad for Sunday brunch buffet on his dinner plate and trying to call it a vegetable. Talk about finger fucked food! Julia Child once said that some new chefs handle their food way too much. She had to have been thinking of Dean’s food when she said this.

I already knew what kind of potatoes they were. I had made them a million times, but I was trying to strike up some conversation so I asked anyway.

“What kind of potatoes are these?”

“Pommes Soufflé.” I knew that Pommes Soufflé were potatoes that you had to fry in three different temperatures of oil to make them puff up like a fried potato pillow. These were two inches thick. They were cut into squares and had been baked in a 200-hotel pan. They were not Pommes Soufflé. He and his sous chef were snickering, thinking that I was some clueless kid. It pissed me off, so I was out of there, but just before I left I shook his hand and thanked him for his time.

“You guys should stop by the banquet kitchen sometime, and I’ll show you a couple of different ways to garnish that plate that are a lot cooler then what you’re doing.” He looked at me like, Who in the fuck do you think you are? I looked at him back like, I’m Chef Todd Hall, that’s who.

Van and Morris walked up to me one day with some big news.

“Todd, were opening a new resort in Tuscan, called Loews Ventana Canyon Resort.” Van started to say, but I interrupted him.

“I don’t want to move to the desert.”

“Settle down. No one’s inviting you.” He continued. “Randy, is the new executive chef of that property, so we need someone to cover Le Entrecote.” I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Me, the chef of one of the finest French restaurants in Texas, no wait, in the nation? What a dream!

“I would love to take over Le Entrecote.”

“I told you he would want it.” Morris said as he looked at Van.

To Van, a great chef is measured by how many people you have under your direction and how much revenue your outlet produces. To me, a great chef is measured by how good their food is. Le Entrecote had far better food than banquets. Hell, they only had to feed 120 people a night. Plus, no one really cared if it made any money. Le Entrecote was to the Anatole what a cool garnish is to a great plate of food. It’s not the featured item, but it certainly does help to dress it up. Van was surprised I wanted to do it, but he told me I could if that’s what I wanted.

I was lucky that Randy was still around to train me. I loved this restaurant. They had duck liver, beluga caviar served in little ice carvings, and four pound lobsters boiled to order. Within just a matter of days I was buying anything I felt like from anywhere in the world. I started to emulate Takashi. I would run Turbot, Brill, and John Dory for my nightly specials.

I went to a French restaurant in Dallas, called Old Warsaw. I always thought that name sounded polish, not French, but it was a great place with a great chef named John. He had worked with Roget at the Chant éclair in Monte Carlo, so he was always really nice to me and let me hangout in his kitchen on my days off.

Chef John had jars and jars of black and white truffles that he had preserved. He would by them during truffle season in January and then bottle them just like my grandma would bottle jam. I immediately decided to buy a shitload of truffles and do the same thing.

Between what I was picking up at Old Warsaw, what I had learned from Roget, Jimmy, and Chuck, what I had learned in banquets, and what I had learned using the process of elimination from Takashi, I was coming up with two or three different specials a night that the servers had never seen before. They loved me because I would charge more for the specials than the regular menu items, so they would get more tips. I was only the acting chef of Le Entrecote, but Morris told assured me that if I just show them what you can do, they would give me the position inside of three months. Morris never lied to me before and I wanted this bad.

I always made sure to go pick up my food from the storeroom at exactly one o’clock, so I could see what Takashi was ordering. Not to mention, I could show off what I had bought. He was very impressed with my preserved truffles and asked me if he could have a couple of bottles. I remember thinking, Wow! Takashi is asking me for something. What an honor. He would always tell me how much better the food was that he received at Buckingham palace. I would just smile and nod, but I was thinking, No shit man, it’s Buckingham Palace. This is a hotel, in Texas no less.

We would get a lot of famous people in Le Entrecote. One night, Larry Hagman was in there all drunk and acting like a dumb ass, trying to impress both of the hookers that were sitting with him at the table like it wasn’t enough to be the star of the most popular show on television. Bo, the matri’d, was so smooth whenever Larry came in with his wife.

“Mr. Hagman, it is so nice to see you again! It has been a very long time. What has kept you away from us?” What a joke! This guy was just in here last week with some very seedy ladies. Larry just ate that shit up, and would always pass Bo a c-note.

Anyway, on this particular night he was all drunk and loud and demanding to see the chef. I had gone to his table before, always with a positive response, but this time he was talking so loud it was embarrassing.

“Chef, I ordered the crepes and I can tell that this crab is frozen. Why aren’t you using fresh crab?” You have no idea how bad I wanted to say, Look you dumb ass, there is no such thing as fresh crab. They freeze it right after it’s cooked in Alaska. Nobody gets fresh crab, not even J R Hewing, unless you’re standing in Alaska right when they boil it, but I held back.

“I am so sorry, Mr. Hagman. We ran out of the fresh crab tonight, so I was forced to use frozen. Most people don’t notice, but I should of told you prior to being served.”

“I knew it!” He then quieted down, and graciously thanked me. When he shook my hand there was a hundred dollar bill in it. I walked back to the kitchen thinking Hell, I’ll lie to a couple of hookers for a hundred buck, any day of the week.

A couple of weeks later, Vans secretary had called me and told me that Van wanted to see me in his office. I had just hit my three month mark and was anxiously awaiting the appointment of my new position, the executive chef of Le Entrecote. I thought, This is it! He is going to give it to me. Instead, he told me that he went to battle for me, but the general manager of the hotel would not concede to having a 22 year old being the chef of their premiere French restaurant. Van told me that the GM agreed that I was doing a great job, but that it was a high profile position with lots of events outside the hotel…and lots of press. He told me they hired some guy that was working with Wolfgang Puck and that he would be here in a couple of weeks. He added that I was more than welcome to go back to banquets, that is, if I didn’t feel like playing second fiddle.

A couple of days later Stacey got in a car accident on the LBJ freeway. It scared the shit out of her, so she told me that she hated Texas.

“You are never home, and you always spend your days off at other restaurants. For the past year that we’ve lived here, Chelse and I haven’t spent any time with you!” She gave me an ultimatum. “I am going back to Utah next week, you can stay or you can go. It’s up to you.” I wasn’t going to let her take my baby girl away from me, so I immediately conceded.

“I’ll go with you.”

When I gave notice, Morris and Van tried to talk me out of it.

“What in the hell do you want to go back to Utah for? There’s no good food there.”

I asked Morris for a letter of reference. On my last day, he thanked me and gave me the letter. As I was walking out of the Anatole for the last time, Morris yelled to me.

“Aren’t you going to read it?” I opened the envelope and read the letter. I started to boil.

Chef Todd Hall was a Sous Chef of The Loews Anatole Hotel. Although he was required to work many hours, he never worked one without bitching about it. He burnt twice as much food than he ever served, and we invited him to the grand ball, he was a crybaby.

Morris S.
Banquet Area Director

I was so pissed, I screamed.

“You fucker! I worked my ass off and never said a word!”

He then handed me a great letter inviting me back to their Mecca of chefs anytime I wanted. Van and Morris just had to yuck it up, one more time. They were a couple of wise guys, but I had learned to love them both. I knew that I was going to miss them, and the Anatole.