HEART SHAPED BRAND

I've been surprised to find that I have never written about Luminarias, the restaurant I worked at right after High School, that got me started well underway towards being a chef.
I started working there as a busboy in May of 1975, the day after I graduated High School. I ended up Head Chef a few years later.
Luminarias was a new restaurant in 1975, and had become famous for being hard to find, but once you got there the view of downtown Fort Worth was spectacular from the side of a hill east of town. and the food was new California Continental cuisine, Prime Ribs, Paella and Black Bean Soup. it was quite a change from typical Fort Worth's Chicken Fried Steak and green beans offerings.
They had patios on the hillside facing downtown, and a bar, and huge firepits on the patios, and Fort Worths finest folks would sit down there eating nachos and drinking Margaritas.
The entrance has a gurgling waterfall, and a little river that you passed over on two footbridges. The parking lot and entry were lined with paper bags weighted with sand with candles in them, ergo "Luminarias".
Once inside, you had rustic decor with all sorts of artifacts that hung on the wall, candle lit tables with cloth napkins, and pretty young waitresses in bustiers and extremely short skirts that tossed tableside your Granada Salad with the house Honey Mustard.


Every time the millionaire owner would fly in from California I would tease him that he ought to know better than to build a California restaurant on the side of a Texas hill. And he'd laugh at me. Of course he laughed; I was an 18 year old punk masquerading as Americas Next Master Chef, and he was David Tallichet, Millionaire, collector of of WWII planes, and Very Successful Restaurateur.
He explainded to me the pillars that held the foundation were bored down 80 feet and into the bedrock, and his restaurant would hold firm on that Texas Hill.
"Its not the restaurant you need to worry about" I told him "Its the damn hill"

Then two years later, I came in one morning after it had been raining for days, got my cup of coffee , went over to the window to look at downtown before starting work (which I did every day) and I got to the window at looked down and the patios were covered up in a mudslide and half the hill was gone.
I just had to laugh.

Somewhere, there is a leggy ex-waitress with a branding iron in the shape of a heart I pulled off the wall. If you see her say hello, kiss her once for me."

 

LUMINARIAS AND THAT LONG LONELY STRETCH OF ROAD

If you ever went to Luminarias, the restaurant I worked at for four years right after High School, you might remember that there was a long lonely stretch of road, Ben Street, just before you got to the restaurant. It was about two blocks long, no houses, just rugged terrain and grassland that is common to what they call “The Tandy Hills” along highway 30 between Beach and Oakland.

In 1977, I was a cook at Luminarias. I’d worked there about 2 years. I came in one morning with a billfold full of cash because when I got off I was going to buy a plane ticket to go to Rapid City to see my brother. There was a small dressing room where I changed into my chef uniform, and a locker where I kept my clothes. This particular morning, I took off my clothes, set my billfold in the bottom of my locker, and stepped into a stall to take a piss.

As I was taking a piss, the dishwasher came in. His name wasOC, and he was about half blind, and loved to sing the blues while he washed dishes.
This morning he was singing “Got to find me a part time love, hmmm, lord, I just got to find me a part time love” as he came into the dressing room.
”Good Morning OC” I said from the stall.
“Good morning” he said back. I heard his locker open and close, and out he went.

I finished my piss, came out, finished getting dressed and then…shit…my billfold! It was gone! I looked in the locker, I checked my pockets, and then…SHIT!
OC! That damn OC!
I went running out of the dressing room, past the dish room, and then to the back door where OC is now out on the dock by the dumpster.
“OC, you bastard, gimme my billfold back!”
“What you talkin’ ‘bout?” was OC’s reply.

Well, I checked the dumpster, I looked down the hill, I did everything but search OC. Now-a-days, it might have made sense to call the cops, but back then, it just didn’t seem like it would do much good. I was out a hundred bucks, big money for a guy making 2.75 an hour back then. Shoot, its big enough these days.

Anyway, I made it to South Dakota, and when I got back I made it a point to turn OC’s life into a living hell anyway I could. I came in one morning, and I started messing up pots as quick as I could, taking them to OC and telling him I needed them NOW!

I’m writing it down right now, and I got to tell you I’m not real proud of it,but its my story, right?

It took a while, but poor half blind OC finally reacted. Sometime around lunchtime, he had had enough of me.
He pushed me, and I pushed him back. Then he swung at me, and I dodged the punch. Then he come at me, the way a half blind deranged mad as hell professional wrestler might come at you and I went to kick him.
But poor blind old OC was too fast for me. He grabbed my leg! Now He’s got me by the leg, and he’s running me into the wall backwards! A shelf got knocked over, dishes flying everywhere, and me flat on my back on the floor, my glasses off! Now I’m just as blind as OC, and even more helpless because I’ve never been in a fight in my life, but in a blurry haze I see him reach into a dish tray and pull out a steak knife.
A STEAK KNIFE!

What did I do? I went running breathlessly, straight out into the middle of the dining room, customers looking up from their lunch, and I’m right next to a table where the Chef and General Manager are eating. They looked up at me, and I’m GASPING for breath.
“Whats wrong Steve?”
“OC…OC… he come at me with a knife!” I tell them.

And that is how OC came to be fired on the spot, dragged kicking and screaming from the dish room,vowing to “Kill my white ass”.
And how I came to dread that two block stretch of lonely Ben Street just before you get to the restaurant every morning for a while.


Addendum~ A year later I was promoted to chef. We put an ad in the paper for a dishwasher.
Guess who applied?
Yep, OC came in, looking for a job.
And you know what?
I hired him.
Just another thing to love about the restaurant business.

THE LOVE BIRDS OF LUMINARIAS

We did great business those first 3 years, even though it was hard to find down that lonely stretch of road. but that's not why the business went away. We lost business because it was horribly mismanaged.
Luminarias Restaurant was bastard child away from its mama.
Corporate didn't want to make trips to Fort Worth...there was nothing here...they came to inspect but never quite made it west of the two Dallas stores, Baby Does and 94th Aero Squadron.
At the beginning of the end, one of our bright managers decided that money could be saved by installing a washer and dryer in the employee break room. The Employee break room was only 10' by 10', and also housed the cashier. So, after a busy Friday night there were about 500 napkins and tablecloths that had to be laundered.
It wasn't long before there was a huge pile of soiled linens built up that was never going to go completely away.
It wasn't long from there before we discovered that the plumbing system couldn't take all the extra water. Drains backed up. On a Saturday night we might be running out of clean napkins, and the washer would be going, and the dryer too, and the cashier is sweating their ass off, and 8 waitresses are trying to take a smoke break, and the drains are backing up. It was hell.
One of the drains that would back up was in a glass atrium behind the hostess stand. It had a tropical plant and two love birds in it. 
Prior to the Washer-Dryer, customers at the Hostess stand would coo at the Love Birds in the Atrium, and the Love birds would rub their necks together and coo back.
The Atrium was about the size of a phone booth, and when water began to rise in there it would come up about 3 feet high, and the birds would get nervous, and it would start to laek at the Hostess stand, and run like a river right out into the dining room.
Yeah, the business dropped off pretty quick.

"NO WONDER ALL YOUR SAUCES LOOK LIKE SHIT"

I’ll tell you what I don’t miss about learning to be a chef at Luminarias.
The Corporate Executive Chef would come visit from time to time.
I remember his first visit, when I was just a line lunch cook. He had stood at one end of the line watching me. I was nervous as a cat. Chef John Bonner was a serious fellow, but really cool looking in a Dean Stockwell kind of way.
In fact, Chef John Bonner looked just like Dean Stockwell in “The Dunwich Horror”.

After the rush I grabbed a bucket of soapy water and began to scrub the line, splashing water everywhere in an effort to look like the good worker I was. I looked up to see Chef Bonner surveying my work with a fairly critical eye.
I grinned at him.
He furrowed his brow.
“You know Renfro, you sure make a big mess when you clean up” and he turned around and caught the next flight back to Corporate Headquarters in Los Angeles California.

A few months later, I’d been promoted to First Cook, in charge of sauces, meats, specials, general kitchen stocks and soups.
Chef Bonner came to visit.
He looked at my walk-in, he looked at the Prime Ribs, he tasted my rice. He watched while I diced onions and chopped saffron, and made the chili con queso. Then he got about 10 spoons and went and tasted all my sauces.
He asked how I made my roux. I told him.
He shook his head.
“No wonder all your sauces look like shit.”
OK. Thanks chef, tell me how you really feel!


It wasn’t my Brown sauce, it wasn’t my White sauce, it wasn’t the Bordelaise, the Mornay, the Apple-Brandy or Demi-Glace.
No, it was ALL my sauces looked like shit.

That’s how it goes in the kitchen. Like Janos Kiss would say in his thick Austrian accent after he finished reaming you a new asshole…
”Its OK, guys, lets not be sensitive”

And ten years later, you find yourself telling some young guy, without even blinking:
“Well, no wonder all your sauces look like shit”
God, sometimes I do miss it so.

Here Dean Stockwell calls on The Old Ones in Lovecrafts "The Dunwich Horror"

WHY I LOVE FACEBOOK

About once a week I hear from someone in my past and am able to send them a message like this. This one went to a childhood friends mother; he had died last year and I had not seen him in 35 years.
Dear Mrs. Barnard;
Yes, I found out about Ken last year through Nancy Street just before the Reunion (it was my first to go to after 35 years). I had rather disappeared after High School, working as a Chef. I worked for Luminarias, up on the hill over the Turnpike for almost 4 years. Then I worked for Hyatt hotels for a long time, then Rivercrest and Shady Oaks Country Clubs. I got to be pretty good, carve ice and everything!
Mom and dad both died inside a year back in 87-88, and my grandmother as well. I had married in 1984, my mom loved her a lot, her name is Shila. she and I had two kids, 20 and 21, but we divorced in 1998. We remain very good friends.
I am not a Chef anymore, I write a lot these days, and if you look through my notes (almost 250) and picture albums you may get a pretty good idea of who I am these days.
I guess the best thing I can say about myself these days is that I have 912 days without any drugs or alcohol. They caused me a lot of trouble over the years, and cost me a lot of things I can't get back, but I am blessed to still be here and to have found another way to live.
It is very good to be able to tell this to people that I haven't seen in all these years.
I'm so sorry to hear about Ken. When I pass ya'lls old house on Cheryl I always remember the day Ken and I walked to Whataburger and got the biggest shakes they had.
They were huge, and we swore to have them every day for the rest of our lives!

TURTLE SOUP

At one of the Escoffier dinners I had the honor of cooking for we had Turtle soup for the soup course. An old Swiss chef, chef Charles Finance, came to me after the dinner.
He said " When I was a young chef in the Bahamas I had to cut the head off of a turtle to make the soup. I looked into his eyes while I held the blade. He was crying. Tears were running down his cheeks. So I could never again no more cook the turtle soup"
So I asked him "Did you not eat the soup?"
"Oh yes, I ate the soup. It was delicious"

I was first exposed to Turtle soup when I was 5 years old in Detroit Michigan.  Dad had been transferred to Detroit and for a few months we lived in the Whittier Hotel.  I was fascinated by Turtle soup, and ordered it often. Years later, working at Luminarias in Fort Worth, I found that my chef Billy Ray had been a cook at the Whittier when I was up there. I had been eating his Turtle Soup.

Also known as Bookbinders soup.

Image- Chef Finance, Houston, 1964

FAST EDDIE

When I was working at Fort Worth Hyatt, there was a pastry chef that came over to help us on a big party. I got to talking to her, and she's  telling me about this crazy cook they have in Dallas. 

"Fast Eddie we call him" she said.
"Fast Eddie ?" I asked. "This guy doesn't happen to look like a Mexican Kamikaze fighter pilot on a bad batch of crank, does he?"
"Why yes, he DOES!" she says.
"And he's faster than any human could ever possibly be?"
"YES!"
"Is his last name *****?" I say.
"YES!" she says. "How do you know Fast Eddie?"

Man, Eddie and I worked together at Luminarias in 1975 for about 2 years. Sweating our ass during the Friday and Saturday rush, whistling the "Bridge Over The River Kwai" theme to try to take a little pressure off.
 So I found Eddie in 1988 working at the Dallas Hyatt.
Fast Eddie. That guy was fast, and crazy weird.
And in 1988 he was just as fast, and crazy weirder than ever.
Is that hilarious or what?