I had an appetite and needed to eat constantly so I found a third job at a vegetarian Mediterranean restaurant in Berkeley…working my mind away for the chef in return for what I principally owed her, which was that she hired me when I had no real skill, tons of attitude, which I grew out of, for the most part. In retrospect, I am grateful to that particular chef for giving me the education.

She showed me how to cook bulgur AKA cracked wheat and turn it into a delicious salad with the addition of a ton of fresh Italian parsley and extra virgin olive oil, tomatoes, etc…and how to make couscous salad, and she showed me how to make marinated feta cheese with thyme and lemon zest and fresh orange juice. I made panzanella, which is an incredible bread salad with fresh tomatoes and basil. Chef also roasted and peeled eggplants for baba ghanouj and also made hummus.

Hummus is my favorite food in the world. It’s made with garbanzos, a lot of raw garlic, tahini (which is sesame
seed butter), and fresh lemon juice, Kosher salt, more of the olive oil…tons of explosive flavor and there isn’t anything like it on the planet. I worked with wholesome ingredients for the first time, in an open and clean public restaurant environment and I got into it like for example the kosher salt, sea salt in different colors, grape leaves, fresh basil, fresh Italian parsley, dill, cilantro, chives, fennel, radicchio, fresh marjoram anda oregano, heirloom tomatoes…cucumbers, ricotta salata, Opal basil, saffron, olives of all varieties, cracked green, lemon cured, Greek oil cured, kalamata, picholine, and your standard California black olives and those green ones with the red pimento, you know, for your martini…the flavors just captivated me.

We’d like to think that we achieve flavors at Sonora Grill and at Rickenbacker’s at the Ogden airport that grab your attention and hold it for a while and inspire you to come back for more.

Just returned from doing a little R&D. Or was it R&R? Probably the perfect combination of both. Whatever it is, it’s definitely my favorite part of the restaurant business.

Our first stop in Vegas?

More later.

I got another decent job as an egg cook Sunday mornings at a pub called the Kensington Circus in a town called Kensington that connected to Berkeley by Solano Ave. It’s on the circle next to this boutique bread shop in this little nook that held promise to become an interesting neighborhood. I was driving my 76 Honda 550 around and I went in there and lucked into the job. I don’t know why I wanted it. I just found myself applying for the job and I got it. I didn’t want to be a chef but I couldn’t help it.

The Kensington Circus served mostly as an investment for a family of three punk Brit kids who were extendedly vacationing on BS Visas in California and just needed something to do with themselves. They didn’t know as much about food as they presumed to know but they were sure of one thing…the beer. They had several good draft beers from the British Isles…and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

We served dinner every night in the dining room from a terribly unfortunate menu containing several famous selections that might have been decent, were they not so poorly executed. For instance,
you got your Fish and Chips, which are one of my personal favorites to this day, and you got your Bangers and Mash, which is meat sausages with peas and mashed potatoes and then you got this other dish that’s something called Bubble and Squeak with a Wow Wow Sauce…which is meat with peas fried in a pan with mashed potatoes until thehomogenous panful began to actually bubble and squeak from the pan frying of it. Then you flip it over in the sauté pan in the air; you catch it…then you top it with Worcestershire and you’re good as gold….Evidently, when you’re drinking and you can’t say Worcestershire sauce, you just call it Wow Wow Sauce…

You got, of course, your Cottage Pie…good dish, it’s English food…could have tossed the menu out the window, really, tell the people hey we got mashed potatoes and frozen peas and some meat…who needs something you have to read…when we got beers and pub chips AKA French fries…

Hope there’s enough snow for all of the games.

Too bad they didn’t think to store 650 truckloads full, like Ogden City did.

UTA is showing some love today and offering all services (except for ski buses) for FREE.

Hop on the FrontRunner and come to Ogden tonight to enjoy our Valentine’s Day Special. After dinner, watch the Opening Ceremony of the Winter Olympics at the Amphitheater while you listen to the Soulistics Concert. And yes, there will even fireworks.

To plan a trip click here or call RIDE-UTA (801-743-3882) and a UTA customer service representative will assist you.

The very first ‘nice’ job I got was at the Macy’s Cellar, which wasn’t exactly a full service restaurant although there were fast busboys in white shirts and bowties running around cleaning tables. It was kind of
nice, slightly expensive place to eat where the guests get in line and tell the guy behind the glass, who at that time was me…I think I was maybe 19 years old…and you tell me what you’re having and then you stay in line listening to the piped in shopping music and the cumulative roar of the conversations of diner’s voices. It also served as a kind of employee lunchroom if you had the scratch and the time to get through the line and pay at the register.

The menu consisted of quiche of the day, popovers, cinnamon rolls, Chinese chicken salad, tuna salad, taco salad, chef’s salad, Cobb salad, and all sorts of dated and out of fashion salads in great big glass bowls full of chopped big chunks of iceberg lettuce with lots of ranch dressing or 1000 island dressing and different sandwiches like Monte Cristo and lox and cucumber with butter and this sort of thing and my job was to be the first cook the guests would see and ask,

“What can I get for you today?”

“I want a Chinese chicken salad.”

“Great. Anything else?”

Remembering, big smile, while simultaneously filling the glass bowl with lettuce and fried won tons, still fawning over the customer, and doing it fast like she needed the salad yesterday and I’d turn to the next cook and say, “Chinese, dude” and slide the bowl down to him. He puts on chopped chicken breast and canned Mandarin oranges and chopped green onions and some other bland and canned and fried ingredients of no particular importance. You wonder about what Chinese people thought about such a salad…of course we also served burgers and French dips with au jus…

“I’ll have a hamburger, medium.”

“Great. Would you like cheese on that? Gruyere, Ementhaller, cheddar, white cheddar, pepper jack, American cheese, blue cheese.”

“Do you have provolone?”

“We do have provolone.”

The customer generally couldn’t hear a lot of the kitchen talk because there was so much residual noise between the imitation music and the voices of conversation in line and at the tables behind them. Plus, the kitchen cooks and sandwich makers are all constantly giving and/or receiving all kinds of constant verbal cues and instruction…Gimme that…On your left….I’m behind… Behind…Right over…behind….on your right…Yo… hand me the mayonnaise, Yo…They’re making all kind of sandwiches, turkey on sourdough, and half sandwich/soup and soup and half salad combos with French onion soup and with the melted gruyere on top of the crouton on caramelized onions and salty powdered beef broth, which was actually pretty tasty but not very nutritious…very popular…and patty melts and tuna melts…eggs and bacon in the mornings, and etc…ad infinitum…

For Winterfest.