Carnivale

Part 1 , Chicago 2004

In 2005 I was working at an Italian restaurant named Gioco in the south loop of Chicago. It was a very busy restaurant and I was one of two sous chefs working there. It was so busy at times I felt like the front-of-house managers hated us and just wanted to see how weeded they could get us. I know that’s not true they were actually very nice guys, but there were nights it felt like they were just pulling people in off the street and offering them dinner, it seemed relentless at times. It was fun though, and I met a lot of really cool people, but in all honesty, it wasn’t what I wanted to be doing. I felt like I had cooked Italian food before, and even though I love Italian food that didn’t necessarily mean I wanted to spend the rest of my career focused on it. I had always dreamt of cooking Latin American food of some kind.

When I worked at Patria in New York, I was exposed to so many new things, new flavors, new ingredients, new techniques, it was revelatory. I knew I wanted to build on that, expand that somehow. I was very familiar with Puerto Rican food ( being Puerto Rican) but had learned a lot about other cuisines as well. The kitchen at Patria was made up of so many cooks from so many different countries. There were cooks from Mexico, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, and Cuba. We talked to each other all the time about food, our families, we collaborated on specials, we made staff meals together, and I learned so much from them in the process. I bought every cookbook even remotely related to Latin America and had a notebook filled with ideas for new dishes and ideas when I left there.

When I came back to Chicago it didn’t seem like there were many people cooking that style of food. At that time French bistro food was the rage, and there seemed to be a bistro-like place opening on every corner. I found a job as a sous chef at a fine dining restaurant now long gone, but it was doomed from the start, and I became unemployed but figured I could relax for a few weeks before I started looking for work again. I had never collected unemployment before and was looking forward to relaxing for a few weeks. But, I called an old chef friend from Spiaggia asking him if he needed cooks, I had worked with a few good ones and they asked me to help find them a job, which I said I would. But of course, when my friend found out I was unemployed he offered me a sous chef position and I took it, although truth be told I wasn’t super excited about it. He said it would be temporary, he knew I didn’t really want to cook Italian food anymore. That temporary gig lasted two years.

The funny thing is that after I started working there I sort of fell in love with Italian food all over again. I had forgotten how good fresh-made pasta tastes or a really well-done caesar salad. The chef there told me that if you make the caesar dressing correctly you should need a breath mint after because of the garlic, something I still believe. Working there reinforced a belief I’ve always had, simple things executed on a high level are very delicious and will make people very happy. I’ve never been the most creative chef in the world, I focused more on trying to make simple things taste better, either with good technique or better ingredients, usually both. The cooks at Gioco were very good, picked up on things quickly, and worked really hard when all hell was breaking loose in the dining room. Working there could be stressful because of how busy we were, but there was a great staff there, and that made it enjoyable.

I was fairly content with staying at Gioco, even though most of my friends I had cooked with were now executive chefs, or had opened their own restaurants. I had been a sous chef there for about a year and had about 4 years of prior sous chef experience plus about 8 years as a line cook. That might seem like a ridiculous amount of time to remain a line cook but the business was very different back then, there were far fewer restaurants and most places expected you to have at least 5 years or more of experience before becoming a sous chef. There were places I worked where they had the same sous chef for 5 years or more, something very common then. I also wasn’t in a hurry to have the title of chef, I liked cooking and being on the line, and when you become a chef that usually comes to an end. It’s ironic that you spend so much time learning to be a better cook and when you finally reach a level of some expertise you don’t actually cook anymore.

But I had come to the conclusion that the dream I had of cooking Latin American food was probably not going to happen. I was getting older, and I needed to start making more money and doing more grown-up things. I was in my late 30s and still living like a college kid. It was wearing on me. I saw the writing on the wall, Italian and French food were here to stay, and I might as well go with it, I could probably make more money if I took a job at an Italian restaurant, I had a lot of experience with it, and it’s much more marketable. I sometimes would think about this on the train ride home at night, I would try to convince myself that no one cared about Latin American food unless it was Mexican, and certainly no one was going to just hand me money to open a restaurant. If I really wanted to get anywhere I would have to let go of all that. Even opening my own restaurant, a dream I had since starting cooking school, was probably just not in the cards. After having a lot more experience in the business I knew that even opening a very modest restaurant required a lot more money than I would ever be able to put together from family and friends.

All that went out the window when I met Jerry Kleiner. Jerry is definitely one of a kind. He’s one of those people that once you meet them, there is no way you will forget them, no way. Jerry was a force of nature and had a habit of sweeping people along for the ride. That’s where I come in. Jerry was having lunch at Gioco one day, I had only met him once before and it was just the briefest of conversations. He waved me over to tell me what he wanted, he usually liked to eat healthy, like some fish with spinach and lemon. As he was talking to me, he sort of looked at me a bit odd, and said to me “Who the fuck are you? Where did you come from?” Now Jerry wasn’t being disrespectful, he just genuinely didn’t remember who I was and he always wanted to know all about the chefs that worked for him, he loved talking about food and loved talking about restaurants even more. Plus Jerry has his own unique way of communicating, which I understood right away, in fact, I laughed. I told him where I had worked before, he seemed to be really interested in the fact that I worked in New York, he asked me a lot of questions about Patria. We talked for a while but it started to get a little busy so I went back to keep an eye on the cooks. I got busy and forgot about him, trying to keep the lunch rush from spiraling out of control. Towards the end of lunch, he walked over to me and asked me if I was working the next day. I said I was and he told me that he would pick me up around 2 pm and that I’d be gone for a couple of hours. He promptly turned around and left. I had no idea what that was all about and when I asked the other sous chef what was going on he told me Jerry just likes to get to know the chefs that work for him, that’s all. I was worried I would say or do something stupid, it made me uncomfortable being around restaurant owners.

The next day he was true to his word and picked me up at 2 pm and when I got in his car he looked at me and asked me a question “What’s your favorite thing to eat? In the world? Anything? What do you like?”

I answered truthfully “ Cheeseburgers.”

“Oh yea, where do you go for a good cheeseburger?”

“ I think RJ Grunts is pretty good”

Jerry looked at me like I had insulted him, then laughed.

”Well, we’re going to Indiana so I can show you a real hamburger”

Huh? Indiana? How long was I going to be trapped with this guy? Why were we going to Indiana? Couldn’t he just tell me where he goes? Of course not, not Jerry, he had to show me. So we drove to Hammond Indiana to a place called Schoops, and he insisted I order a cheeseburger and whatever else I wanted. I was hungry so I ordered fries and a shake too. He didn’t order anything, he just sat across the table from me and watched me eat. He kept asking me how I liked the burger and if I thought it was the best I had ever had. I told him it was very good, but he was making me a bit nervous, just sitting and watching me, then telling me to hurry up because we had more places to hit before he dropped me off. He asked me a lot of questions, where I grew up, what I liked to eat, who had I worked for, all kinds of questions. When I told him I was from Bridgeport he asked me if I like Ricobenes, which I told him I did but that the breaded steak sandwich wasn’t as good as it used to be, he agreed.

Next, he took me to a place on the south side of Chicago called Mini Hut, he said they had the best fried chicken he ever had. I had never heard of it but figured I might as well go with it, I didn’t have much of a choice. When we got there I saw that it was a small almost hidden place, the people that worked there smiled when Jerry and I walked in, it’s hard to forget Jerry, and I guess he took a lot of people there. I had their chicken wings and they were really good, one thing I like was that they fried everything to order, it takes a long time but it’s so much better. After scarfing down the chicken and more fries ( he insisted), we headed to Moon’s sandwich shop on Western and Madison. He ordered a corned beef sandwich and sat there while I tried it, I was beyond full but I didn’t want to offend him so I ate half, it was really good although it made me ill. Jerry insisted it was the best corned beef sandwich in the city and I really wasn’t in the mood to argue, but I did bring up Manny’s and he suggested we go there and try one so we can compare and I told him there was no fucking way, I felt like I was going to hurl.

Jerry drove back to Gioco and parked in front of the restaurant. He had been asking me questions all day, and to be honest I really just wanted to get the hell out of the car and go home. But he asked me what my plans were. This sort of took me off guard, and I asked him what he meant by “plans”. He asked me what kind of food I wanted to cook and If I liked working at Gioco. I told him Gioco was great, the staff there were really cool people, I enjoyed working with them. He nodded but pressed me. I debated whether, to be honest with him or not, I didn’t really trust restaurant owners, and I was a little suspicious about what we had been doing all day. But one thing was for sure he was passionate about food, about restaurants, about business, he could talk forever about places he’d been to or food he liked. Something told me to just let it all out. So I told him. I told him at one time I wanted to cook Latin American food. I wanted to show people it was just as good as Italian or French, it could be as refined, creative, or nuanced as European cuisine and I wanted to show people that. But I had given up on the idea, maybe Chicago wasn’t interested in it, or the timing wasn’t there yet. I told him that it probably wasn’t going to happen for me so I had moved on. I remember him smiling at me, looking at me, and not saying anything for a long time. It was very awkward. But eventually, he looked me in the eye.

“I’m opening a Latin American restaurant, a big one, would that be something you’d be interested in doing? There might be a place for you there if you want. What do you think?”

I didn’t know what to say. I was kind of in shock. I had literally talked myself out of my dream. I had given up on it. I had made the decision to move on and forget about pipe dreams and yet, here was someone offering me a chance to do exactly what I wanted. I knew, even before I said anything it was going to be a monumental task, and there would be a lot of drama involved, and there would be many things that we would argue about, I knew that or at least sensed it. But in the end, there was only one answer.

“Of course, of course, I’m interested”

He shook my hand and told me he was going to stop by tomorrow and we could talk some more. I got out of his car asking myself what I had just gotten myself into, wondering if this had disaster written all over it. But on the other hand, you have to take chances right? Sometimes you have to just jump and hope for the best. As Jerry started to pull away he lowered the passenger window and motioned for me to come over.

“Hey, kid I’m thinking of calling it Carnivale, what do you think? It’ll be a fucking carnival for sure kid, this place is going to be fucking massive, it’s going to blow your mind. Think about it.”

Carnivale sounded like a horrible name.