Credit Where Credit is Due

With California Chef out sick (still, the poor boy!), I've re-donned the mantle of chief cook (& bottle washer) at the Hot Flash Café. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and everything in between have all been up to me.

And I have to say, though I am a much more accomplished cook than I was even a year ago, I'm still a reluctant jill-of-all-trades. I don't WANT to be my cook. The stuff I can do is not where I want this restaurant to be. That's why I hired a chef. California Chef has taught me a lot, and I'm more than willing to learn (the day I think I know everything there is to know is the day I turn up my toes and breathe my last…) Unfortunately, I've not been able to take too much advantage of the opportunity to attach myself to his elbow and absorb all he can teach me. Rather, I've tried to turn the kitchen over to him, take off the apron and do the things an owner needs to do.

I have tried to prod California Chef to work on new menu items. With limited success, I might add. He's been on board since August, and we still basically have in place the same breakfast, lunch and dinner menus we've always had. Though this is disappointing, because we are not really reaching for that "next level" he was hired to take us to, we have not been wasting his time. We've been busy making changes to the preparation of our existing menu, doing a lot more making from scratch. We have made our "same old" food sing a whole new tune.

Even though we aren't where I had wanted us to be, menu-wise, I've been singing California Chef's praises to anyone who will listen. It's been partly advertising campaign, partly giving credit where credit is due. The kid is bright and talented, and I'm happy to have him on board. But up 'til these past few weeks, I hadn't realized how much I'd actually come to depend on him. And how much of a creative back-seat I had taken to him. I had basically forgotten how much of our existing menu was fruit of my own heart.

So when a guest came up to the counter the other night and asked whether our menu had been assembled by our new chef, I sheepishly said, "Well, we've been trying to come up with a new menu ever since last summer, but we keep getting sidetracked…" And the man said, "Oh. Well, whatever you do, don't get rid of that Italiano sandwich (the first of my personal concoctions to make it to the regular menu.) That one's a real winner."

Imagine that.

Maybe I really do have some talent after all.

I smiled all the way down to my toes.