Michael Symon's Live to Cook_ Recipes and Techniques to Rock Your Kitchen - Michael Symon [56]
The dishwasher during my days at Players had been a teenager named Frank Rogers, who’d since then begun to cook. I called him, too, and he and I would cook together for the next seventeen years. The opening manager of Piccolo Mondo, where I’d had my first (and only) success, was a guy named Tim Bando. Tim came in as a server, and quickly realizing he loved restaurants but not people, began to join me in the kitchen; Tim is a chef at a restaurant in the Hamptons now but we still cook together when we can. Others would come aboard who are still with me today, are family, but that was the initial core Caxton team. Lizzie in front and me and two buddies in a kitchen so small there was no room to walk; we just stood in one place and cooked hard all night long. It was a tiny place, forty seats, and as it was in the center of the city and within walking distance of two stadiums and one indoor arena, we jammed all year.
Because the owners weren’t restaurant people, I was free to cook whatever I wanted. This was my first experience creating an entire menu. Until then, it had been Mark’s food at Player’s or Italian food dictated by Carl at Piccolo Mondo. (And let’s not forget about the Dover sole at Giovanni’s!) Now I could do the food that I was passionate about. I loved big flavors, ginger and coriander, garlic and onions, chili peppers and sharp acidic ingredients like pickled ramps and turnips. But I also knew my audience. My city liked big chops and creamy pastas.
Because I did all the purchasing, I developed relationships with local farmers and began sourcing some of the great products being grown in and around Ohio. A guy named Patrick McCafferty showed up one day with some of the most beautiful watercress I’d ever seen. A young guy who’d farmed in California but who’d returned to his hometown to farm here, Patrick would soon be growing all kinds of lettuce and herbs and even raising lamb for me. Shortly after this, I met Doug Raubenolt, of Tea Hills Farm, in Loudonville, who to this day raises the tastiest chicken in Ohio, and Tom and Wendy Wiandt from Killbuck Valley Mushrooms.
As a small restaurant, we ran on a razor-thin margin so I really had to watch my costs. And because of the closet-size kitchen—one oven, four burners, and a small grill—I had to be efficient. My rule quickly became “If I can’t finish a dish in two pans, preferably one, I won’t do it.”
I wanted to serve roasted duck breast, and my customers loved it, but it was so expensive that I’d have had to charge twenty-two dollars for an entrée, which in 1996 I knew was more than my customers would pay. So I came up with a second dish: I pulled the tenderloin off the duck breast, pounded it flat, and served it as a starter course of duck carpaccio for seven dollars. That way I could make money and still keep my prices low. Moreover, no one in Cleveland had heard of duck carpaccio, so the Caxton began to develop some cachet. When the local paper put me on the cover of its Sunday magazine, everyone in the city started paying attention to our little forty-seat restaurant.
So what I learned at the Caxton, above all, was the importance of economy, ingenuity, and creativity, never forgetting Mark Shary’s soulful cooking and Carl’s energy and drive and business smarts.
Looking back on it now, I realize just how lucky I was to have found these two mentors right out of school. School doesn’t teach you passion; school teaches you technique. Once I had the technique, I could move on to the next step. Mark Shary taught me how to cook with passion, how to put your soul into food. Carl Quagliata taught me what it meant to be a restaurateur, how the front of the house and back of the house were connected and how the customer was always