We Got a Bad Potato! Part 2 of 2

Now by then I had waited on hundreds of the rich and famous, but this moment was an epiphany. This was Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous incarnate.  I had heard that in the 1970s Marvin threw lavish parties at his home in Palm Springs for the Annenbergs, Henry Kissinger, Gerald Ford and their ilk. Attention fact checkers.  I heard this from a person with first-hand knowledge, who I trust.  In fact I trust this source with my most important worldly possession.  His name is Pete, the mechanic.  Pete, a Mexican-American cross between one of the polite chipmunks from Warner Bros. cartoons and Mickey Rooney (minus the asshole part), owns a successful repair shop in Highland Park.  Pete bought his repair shop in an all cash transaction, with funds acquired from the obscene tips he made in the 1970s as the VIP waiter of Section 1 at Chasens.  Section 1 signified royalty at Chasens.  Think Frank Sinatra and 100% tips (i.e. $1000 tip on a $1000 bill!).  These Palm Springs parties were catered by Chasens, and if there were 500 guests, and the choice for main course was a choice between steak, salmon, or chicken, Chasens prepared 500 of each dish, always one step ahead of the whimsical change of mind, and always factored into the final bill under Miscellaneous.

          Still, this was astonishing. How on earth could Greg, the chauffeur, have an extra potato on hand?

          How? Greg explained it to me. He always brought along two of everything, just in case “we got a bad potato.”

          This wasn’t the last of Mrs. Davis’s whims. A few weeks later I was waiting on Marvin and his symphony of sycophants, Mrs. Davis finally agreed to try our Dover Sole. Just one thing. She wanted that sole grilled, but she wanted no grill marks.

          I wrote down the order without blinking an eye though I knew that a piece of fish that is grilled but has no grill marks is just about as easy and likely as a sunrise without sun. I finally made my way to Marvin who thankfully ordered a simple Cote du Boeuf, rare, and as I was about to make my way to the computer terminal--the same terminal where fellow waiters greeted me with supportive words like, “Better you than me,” or “You must have been evil in a previous life.”--Mrs. D grabbed my arm with her bejeweled bony fingers, and said, “Adam, will the food be coming soon, I’m starving.”

          Never mind that I had just circled the table, and written down insane requests from Sydney Poitier, in the same “They call me Mr. Tibbs!” voice he was famous for.  Poitier wanted poussin—baby chicken—pounded thin.  Yeah, I’ll pull one of those out of my ass right away!  Or one of the Davis girls telling me she’s allergic to salt.  It makes up 0.9% of our blood volume!  If you’re allergic, you’re dead!  Regardless, in this Kafkaesque universe that I call Spago, the customer is always right.  Par for the course, I had to enter “SEE ME” under every item, and the “SEE ME” included a giant post-it note to the chef about those grill marks, poussin and salt allergies.  And as I sheepishly handed it to Cuko, the expediter, and ran from the line, I could feel Chef Lee’s breath.  I knew he was glaring at me through the hockey glass that separated us, furious at this mad request.  “What am I supposed to do,” he bellowed, “levitate the sole?!” 

          But unlike a Kafka bed time story, ours ends happily.  Lee grills the sole on a bed of carrots—they took the grill marks for the team.  Sydney Poitier got his poussin, although his poussin was little more than a slice of free range “adult” chicken pounded thin, and the salt allergy lady received a salt free dish that she promptly returned for being tasteless. 

We Got a Bad Potato! Part 1 of 2

          For years Marvin’s wife had been bringing her own food to Spago—salad, a piece of fish, green beans, and a baked potato. For months we tried to convince her to let us cook her Dover Sole, but she hadn’t yet agreed when, one night, as she was eating her own food in the Spago dining room, she flagged me down.

          Naturally I hurried to her side. I couldn’t imagine what the problem could be since I hadn’t served her a thing from our menu.

          “Adam,” she said, “this potato tastes bad.”

          By then I had learned that the customer is always right, so naturally I said, “Let me remove it, then,” and I removed the delinquent potato from her plate, prepared simply to toss it.

          “Tell Gary about the bad potato,” she said.

          Gary was her security guard, a retired LAPD detective and a bear of a man with a thick walrus moustache. Gary dressed in a slick black suit, an earpiece in his ear, and whenever I saw him, it struck me that he looked right at home riding shotgun in a limo.

          That evening I found him standing at the end of a quiet hallway by the bar.  To the left was the wine room, to the right another beveled glass door with the Flame of Life etched in it, which opened eastward to a beautiful narrow alley.  Shrouded in almost perpetual shade by towering blue gum eucalyptus, with a brick raised garden bed overflowing with exotic, shade loving bromeliads, and the wafting, intoxicating scent of night blooming jasmine, this walkway cleverly disguised an ulterior purpose: the surreptitious transport of VIPS.  For you see, the pathway broke in the other direction, by means of a narrow passage that connected the valet station and the alley.  When informed by the Maître’d, valets ran to the back and assisted “camera shy” celebrities before the paparazzi could run around the building.  Mr. Davis; however, was not in need of this service.  He had his own valets (body guards), Gary and John, and Greg the chauffeur.  So I saunter up to Gary, as he sips a coke. “Gary,” I said, proffering the potato, “Mrs. Davis wanted you to know we got a bad potato.”

          I had no idea what he was supposed to do with that information, but that wasn’t my problem, after all.

          He turned and looked at me. “Really?” His voice had that deep-throated cop sound to it, and I watched as he leaned into his wrist mic and said,

 “Greg, we got a bad potato here!” 

          Greg was the limo driver, and I couldn’t imagine what the limo driver was supposed to do.

          Gary listened a moment and turned back to me and said, “Hang on,” and I stood there, vaguely wondering if they had a plan. A few seconds later Greg came running through the alley and to the back door. He was carrying a new baked potato!

Juan Corona “King of the Chicken F#@%ers”

Another tale from the Poison Ivy.

Juan “The Chicken Fucker” Corona was a barrel chested, hard drinking, fudge packing maniac from Zacatecas.  He didn’t consider himself gay ‘cause he was a “pitcher”.  Catchers were gay.  I always wondered what Ray Fosse felt about this, but I digress.  Gotta love those Zacateño Mexicans.  Anyway Juan told someone--in confidence HA! HA!--that he used to fuck chickens on the rancho back home.  Legend has it his grandmother caught him and screamed, “Juan! I told you to go out to the hen house and PLUCK a chicken!”

Anyway he went out for drinks with a food runner named Juan “Implante” Infante.  Now Juan was a little light in his loafers, but got awful sore if one was to suggest that he was gay, but not as sore as he was after Corona was through with him.  You can’t say Juan didn’t warn him though.  In fact he told him straight up, “If you pass out, I’m gonna fuck you up the butt.”

This was back when free range chicken was all the rage.  FYI Free range is when chickens get to roam around the fields, pecking at corn and grain, and then they are hunted down and slaughtered.  As Wolfgang Puck always said, “Free range, but not out of range.”  My friend Nathan, when over hearing a guest tell how delicious our roast chicken was, would chime in, “All our chickens come pre-Corona-ed for easy stuffing.”  And they thought it was a culinary secret.