Cassique Clubhouse and course
back there every day for five days in a row. The chef said“ What are you doing back here? I have read your resume, and you have no experience”, and I said,“ but surely there must be something?” Essentially, I was begging for a job. Finally, he said“ Don’ t come back here anymore at this time, because you’ re here every day during lunch service, and you’ re disrupting everything. Come back tomorrow at three o’ clock and meet us in the bar. I will introduce you to the owner,” he chuckled.“ I will let him talk to you.”
Carmine was notorious for being a bit of a tyrant. He sat me down in the bar and told me,“ Look, you have no experience”, and in not so many words that I was annoying them so much that he decided to give me a shot at doing some prep work. At the end of the interview he threatened me, saying“ If you mess one thing up or if they ever give you the chance to put something on the plate, and it goes out to one of my customers, and there is something wrong, you’ ll be fired on the spot. That will be it, and there will be no warning.” That’ s where I started, and I ended up staying at Il Terrazzo for a year and a half.
I was in Seattle to get my residency so that I could afford tuition for school, so about four months into it Christopher Horsfield took me aside and said,“ In order to maintain my Master Chef certification abroad, I need to have an apprentice under me. I have not done it in over a year, but I will do this for you if you keep it under wraps as I have not offered this to the other guys, and they have a lot more experience. I will do this for you, and I advise you to do the apprenticeship before you go to Culinary School.”
After that, I hopscotched around the Seattle restaurant scene getting as much experience as possible. After four years, I got hired as the head chef for a pizza and pasta bistro that we opened in an affluent neighborhood. We did very well; my partner had equity in it, and I was working towards the same. About a year later, he ended up separating from the silent partners and somehow it all got dumped into my lap. I was 25 and nowhere near ready, and I became overwhelmed. Even some of my mentors told me I was not ready for that job, but I said I was going to do it anyway. It had a huge learning curve and was very strenuous, but a great experience.
I decided to get out of the city, and for my next adventure, I got a job with a family who owned a large resort in Montana in Glacier National Park. I was hired as the Food and Beverage Director. On a trip to the Georgia area recruiting college students to work at the resort in the summer, I felt something familiar about the Southeast having lived there as a child.
I went back to the Montana resort for a summer, and it was crazy. We worked 90 – 100 hours a week for three and half months, and it was brutal. In the first two weeks, I lost my executive chef, my Sous Chef, and then my pastry chef. Suddenly, I wasn’ t a Food and Beverage Director anymore. I was Johnny everything. It was exhausting, but I learned a lot. During that time I met a girl from Columbia, South Carolina. I decided to visit her and ended up staying. I had only brought a few things with me, but I needed a sabbatical just to recharge.
40 Destination Golf. TRAVEL