The Mecca of Chefs

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.

The Anatole

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.

Kicked Out of the Nest

The last year of my apprenticeship was totally different than the first two and a half years. Suddenly, everything had changed. Hodgi started to deal coke more and more at work. He got John, the director of food and beverage, hooked so bad that he was outside the hotel in his BMW waiting for Hodgi to get off every single night. John had a master’s degree from Cornell in hotel management. What a waste. He got fired and a couple of years later he decapitated himself in a single car accident flying down a canyon going to get just a little more from Hodgi. Hodgi was fired shortly after, and within a couple of years he was pulled out of a lake with a bullet in his head.

The Line Brigade

When I got back to the hotel Roget had already put the word out to everybody to not say a single word to me in regard to the food show. He could be kind like that sometimes. I guess he had figured that I had been embarrassed enough for one day. It didn’t last long.

A couple of days later Dorothy Hamill was in the Hotel for Ice Capades. You would have thought she was Mick Jagger by the way Roget was going off. She ordered a Seafood Louie salad. You don’t see it very often now, but in the seventies that salad was on every menu.  Roget had told me to make a perfect Louie. Tom quickly jumped on my station to try to hog some glory. Roget had gone to his office to get this book that he had famous people sign whenever he fed them. When he got back to her table with the book, we had already served the salad. Right after she signed it, she took a bite and quickly spit it out. We had served Dorothy Hamill rotten crab! Roget calmly walked back to the line.

Fishmonger

I had survived another conference, and Dawn and I were getting ready for a great summer. Life was so much better without having to fight with anyone (i.e. my mother). No one screamed at any one else, and everyone was kind and considerate. What a concept! Dawn and I finally started to see how other people lived. On top of that, I had really begun to move up at the Hotel. Three apprentices had quit, so I now had the third highest ranking seniority (of all the apprentices). Plus, it was fun teaching people twice my age how to cook.

One day, Roget got in a couple of hundred fresh whole king salmon. I loved to clean salmon. I was fast and good at it. When I first started my apprenticeship I butchered the shit out of them, so Roget made me clean every salmon in the whole hotel until I got good at it. That was over a year ago, but I had still cleaned a couple of salmon every day since. I was a very proud eighteen-year-old fishmonger. I had broken my arm riding my skateboard, so when I walked by and offered to help Roget clean all of the salmon, he declined. 

The Smokey Hollow Gang

I had looked at high school differently than most of my friends. I would never cut class unless it was my day off from work and there was fresh powder to ski on. During my junior year of high school the counselors and teachers started to become very cool. There had been a newspaper article, “Four Apprentice Chefs Honored,” of which I was one of them. I had four semesters of college credits under my belt with good grades, and I was already on Vo-Ed, a program where you left early everyday to pursue your career.

Mr. Homer was the vice principle of Bountiful High School. My first year he was a total dick, but after he found out about my apprenticeship he became very cool. He allowed me to have my first period as a study period in the library to get caught up with my logbook and homework. He couldn’t imagine why I hung out with all of the burnouts when I seemed to have so much going for me. He did not understand that they had been my friends for years, and that they were the bread and butter of my business.

First place. First bust. First syringe of coke.

I started selling quarter ounces at school and work for thirty bucks. Mike had dropped out, and was working with his dad putting glass in buildings. It only took me a month of selling quarters to get together enough money to rent a three bedroom house for Dawn, Mike, and me. We must have looked at a hundred houses before we found someone who would rent to two seventeen-year-olds in Bountiful, Utah. Dawn and I went to school every day, and I had a great business selling pot. It paid all of the bills plus bought food and clothes. This was great because it meant I could spend my paychecks from work on my new girlfriend Stacey.

It was getting too cold to ride my bike to work so I rode the bus. One time I left my backpack on the bus, and it had thirteen quarter-ounces in one of those fake oilcans designed for stashing shit. I called my mom from work and asked her to go to the bus station and pick up my backpack for me. She went there with my Grandma and when she tried to pick up my pack there were cops there trying to arrest her. I guess they figured out the oil can.

My Exit Strategy

I had spent my spring break and my seventeenth birthday constantly working.  I hadn’t been home in a week.  I decided to go home since I had school the next morning.  I remember thinking on the way there that all I wanted for my birthday was more than three hours of sleep. 

When I got home, there were some birthday cards on the kitchen table and a film container filled with pot from my oldest sister, Kris.  I noticed that there were also some suitcases in the living room.  I wondered who was there. 

Sharon #48

My mom was never home then.  All of my older brothers and sisters had moved out, and my little sister had gone to live with her dad.  So, I pretty much spent all of my time at school and work.  My mother had been taking Black Beauties every morning and sleeping pills every night for years.  I can remember both bottles being on her night stand throughout most of my life.  I didn’t understand it then, but I now know (from my own experience) that you can’t make your body go up every morning and down every night with artificial stimulus without it taking its toll on those around you.

My mother loved to fight.  She was married five times to five different men, and she fought like cats and dogs with all of them.  When all of the men had left her, she started fighting with my older brother and sisters.  It wasn’t long until they all moved out, leaving only my little sister and me.  My little sister said that she couldn’t take it anymore, so she went to live with her biological father.  This, of course, left me alone with Mom. 

An Introduction to Trampled Underfoot

On March 19, 2006, my father embarked on writing his memoirs for lent.  The Trampled Underfoot blog is a compilation of short stories from this book, detailing his life as a critically acclaimed chef, destructive addict, and fiery manic.  I plan to post a new story every Saturday.

I will begin with an excerpt from his last page:

I started writing this book because I tried to give up cigarettes for lent.  That went right out the window.  Ten hours later, I decided to give up my life for you.  Please learn something from it. Today is the last day of Lent. Tomorrow is Easter Sunday, and I have finally risen. I feel much higher than I ever did on drugs…Chef Todd Hall

I hope you enjoy this work as much as I have. 

Thank you in advance for reading!

Sincerely yours,

Chelse