Continued from Part 7.

Upon starting at The Grand Central Cafe, I was given an actual cotton chef’s coat. That made me feel a little better. The job itself however, was a far cry from my upbringing at Sweet Tomatoes, my first real kitchen. The entire concept of Grand Central revolved around a giant conveyer belt pizza oven. There were circular screens of various sizes. The dough was shaped by hand, sometimes thrown, sometimes not, placed on the proper size screen, and then perforated with a little roller tool. Then the sauce, toppings, cheese. This went in raw at one end and then cooked from the other. A far cry from my time at a wood fired pizza oven back in Burlington. It felt like cheating.

Every cooked item went through the conveyer oven. Baked rigatoni to go? No problem. Par cooked pasta, a layer of sauce, some cheese in a metal to go pan. In one end, and chug, chug, chug, it came out the other side perfectly golden brown. The conveyer oven could be adjusted in many ways; slower, hotter, etc. Chef had it fine tuned to his exact specifications.

Five days a week it was just me and Chef Darren. I arrived at eight in the morning, changed, made myself a coffee and the two of us would get to work doing prep for the lunch service, mostly knife and slicer work but also some par boiling of different pasta shapes and dough making, intense cheese grating sessions. Everything at the restaurant was made from scratch. Chef Darren was the complete antithesis of my old crazy boss, Chef Kevin, in every way. For one, he was mellow. No intensity whatsoever. Services were calm despite the rapid business. We made no stocks. There was no braising. After work, he made sure I was punched out, then poured us a few beers.

We mostly chatted about his time in Vegas. My suspicions were on the money. He was an old metalhead, obsessed with the band, Dokken. A big partier back in the day who got old and was forced to chill. He and his wife had decided to quit the rock groupie lifestyle. He had been a banquet and buffet chef for casinos in Vegas for decades and spoke often of the insanely large amounts of sauces and prep he would deal with on a daily basis. Thousand of chicken breasts, gallons of dressings, and so on and so forth. he told these stories as we worked.

“I remember once having to make bolognese with 500 pounds of meat,” he told me once while making a small batch of the famous sauce. ” We had these industrial sized closed steam pots for the buffet. You could cook a person inside them. They sat on the floor and were fueled by gas jets. For sauces, you emptied them by way of a valve on the bottom, like a big water jug. “

About two days in I met the owner, Kurt. A big Cuban dude. Young. The first time he walked in he had a row of four perfect fresh fingernail scratches down the left side of his face.

“What happened there?” Darren said.

“My dog,” Kurt said, bleary eyed.

We shook hands and eyeballed one another. He looked like he wanted to eat me for breakfast.

The main waitress’ name was Carmella. A marvelous ass. She wore low rise jeans with rhinestones and, common to that era, a fashion choice called a “whale tail,” where the sides of her g-string underwear rode up on her hips because the jeans were so low. She had a lip, belly button, tongue, and eyebrow piercing, wore sparkly purple make up, and chewed gum. Everyday, dozens of times, she would bend over to grab to go boxes right in front of where I worked. Her shirt would come up and the whale tail would flash as well as another common occurrance for those times, a tattoo on her lower back often called a “tramp stamp.” Hers, a purple and green butterfly with demon wings.

Grand Central owned two faces. During the day a mild lunch spot for the capital city’s lawmakers. At night the tables were pushed aside and the place turned into a nightclub. In the main dining room, toward the back, sat a service bar with beer taps and lines of booze bottles.

Back at home, while my roommates spent time on their homework, I sat at my drawing board. The weekends were reserved for partying.

Tigger, Sweetie, and I often started Friday nights early over at Hester’s apartment. He lived alone and was into older women. The rumor was that he often somehow seduced his professors. He dressed in white tank top undershirts, “wifebeaters,” with short sleeve button up shirts totally unbuttoned. Kept his ponytail pulled back. Polyester slacks. Leather sandals. The whole seventies style look brought together by a pencil thin mustache.

We always went over and Hester would have something weird awaiting us. All we ever drank was beer but over at Hester’s place the night would begin with gin. Most often a stirred martini or a gin and tonic. He had a record player and velvet paintings on the wall. A mellow environment like a lounge parlor.

“Gentlemen,” he would say as he opened the door with a grin, the weed smoke pouring out. A laid back dude who seemed to recline whether he stood or sat. He smoked unfiltered Lucky Strikes, which he produced from a silver cigarette case. We would drink his gin and take bong hits while listening to old music none of us had ever hear of.

“These guys never quite made it,” Hester would say, lighting a stick of incense. He also played a lot of Zappa, who I had heard of but never listened to. It always felt like a strange dream visiting there where I would be completely sober going in and then the various doses of smoke and gin would permeate my mind. I would waver a bit standing up from his old stinky couch. When it was time, we would go into the humid Florida night. Four long haired skinny white boys, young with the world ahead of us, laughing at stupid jokes, ready to spend money on large volumes of cheap beer.