Waiter to the Rich and Shameless: Confessions of a Five-Star Beverly Hills Server (29 page)

A
young mother and her small daughter were floating in bathing rings and a couple
of hikers who looked like they’d arrived from the north, which would be
Vernazza, had the pier to themselves.  I knew Vernazza was about a 10-mile hike
up and down steep paths – no wonder they were stripping down to cool off in the
sea.  A couple of kids in their early teens arrived and were soon running
around and playing tag in the water.  A thin, white-haired man who seemed to be
talking to everybody was swimming and jumped off the pier a few times.  I asked
him in my less than perfect Italian, “Is it safe here?” as I pointed to a spot
in the water.  

He
responded, “Si, va bene,” then dove in to show me where.  I dove in after him
and when I came up for air he was swimming nearby. 

“Grazie,”
I called out. 

He
asked, “Tedeschi?”
(Are you German?)
 

“No,
Americani, ma non parlo l’Italiano bene.  Parli l’Inglese?” 
(No, I’m
American and I don’t speak English well. Do you speak English?)

“Yeze,”
he replied in his thick accent. 

His
name, I discovered, was Renaldo and we ended up spending the late afternoon
fumbling along in my bad Italian and his worse English and striking up a friendly
camaraderie.

Renaldo
told me that he comes from Corniglia (by the way, the “g” is silent as in
“lasagna”) and is the only one left in his family who still lives there.  He later
took me on a tour of his garden, which was just up the hill from the shore.
There were several different gardens, not all belonging to him, he explained.
He picked some lemons off his tree to give to my wife for her cold and also
grabbed a bunch of “timo” as he called it (thyme). 

“Is
very good put for da fish, with pomodori,” he explained.

“Tomato?”
I ask.

“Yeze.” 
He also managed to explain that during the summer months, Corniglia has a
population of about 3,000 and that’s because of tourism, but in the winter there’s
actually less than 1,000 permanent occupants. When I got back to the apartment,
Juliana was worried and a tad angry.  What could I possibly have been doing on
my own for almost five hours?  Had old Pauli returned and gone philandering
with some cute young Italian signora? She laughed (and was relieved, I think) when
I explained how Renaldo and I had been talking in our terrible versions of each
other’s languages for almost three hours.  It was incredibly easy to lose track
of the time since the summer days there can last well into the evening. I
showed her the lemons from his garden:  proof of my alibi.

I
made Juliana some fresh-squeezed lemonade for her throat and she rallied enough
for some great makeup sex.  And lest you think that lecherous Pauli forced
himself on his poor sick wife, I can assure you that she was living la bella vita
(the good life).

We
then freshened up and walked down through the piazza to see Augostino and Livio
for our standing eight o’clock dinner appointment.  It was to be our last
night, so we had to bid farewell to all of our local friends:  Livio, Augostino,
Mari, Manuela, Riccardo and Renaldo.  We left the next morning with heavy
hearts and an everlasting impression of this beautiful seaside town and its
welcoming, earthy residents.  Though we have traveled a lot, nothing ever came
close to the feeling of belonging that I experienced in this little town. And
to think it had begun so roughly, feeling lost, worrying about our reservation,
and fear of being killed by my angry bride’s hit man. All that melted away in
the beautiful Italian hillside town and left only beautiful memories.

We
boarded the train and left to spend a week in Nice where we had rented an
apartment overlooking the sea and the Promenade des Anglais. During our stay
there, we visited the beautiful 2000-year-old village of Èze which had been carved
into a rocky mountainside.  We took a day trip to Monaco where I had some
delicious steak tartare, and Juliana was thrilled to see such a legendary
place.  We also visited Cannes where I enjoyed a new food combination for me
called “Moulles Frites,” a traditional dish of local mussels in a white wine
broth served with French fries in the same dish.

We
immediately noticed a huge difference once we had crossed the Italian border
into France:  trains ran on time, conductors were sharply dressed and checked
your ticket frequently, traffic and pedestrians moved in much more organized
patterns.  It was obvious that we had entered into a far more
socially-organized society, one in which rules were enforced and in return a
certain pride of service existed. But I still prefer the Italian way of
anything-goes mentality; you just feel like no one really cares and no one is
watching you for mistakes.  My wife found that a little disturbing at times. 
Italy is definitely a little closer to a rogue state than France and you have
to wonder how it could have been ruled by such a strict fascist dictator as Mussolini.

We
continued our honeymoon/culinary journey by taking a scenic train ride from
Nice through Marseille and up to Paris. There were no more reservations
questions, errors, or confusion; all went quite well. The French countryside
was picturesque and every town we passed through was truly a painted canvas of
earthy colors alive with everyday country life. After becoming used to the vast
sprawling open spaces of the U.S., everything on the European continent seems
condensed, almost miniaturized. Roads are narrow, vehicles are small, and
landscapes invariably evoke historical significance. The variety of cuisines
and food preparation methods was endlessly fascinating and enjoyable.

Soon
after arriving at the infamous Gar De Lyon train station, we caught a taxi to
Paris’s district of Le Maraise where we rented a tiny but comfortable condo on
Rue du Bourg Tibourg.  We stayed there for another week, exploring all of Paris
by foot. My favorite visit was that of an accidental Sunday service in the
cathedral of Notre Dame where the choir was singing and the cardinals were
waving incense burners. But our visit to Versailles at the royal castle built
by Luis XIV in 1682 was unforgettable.  We learned a great deal about the lives
of the privileged rulers, how they kept psychological sway over their subjects,
and how it all fell apart leading up to the French Revolution.  Even the
paintings of the palace in its heyday depicted it as alone on a hill, which
wasn’t accurate but set it apart from the mere mortals scrounging about below.

Just
as the French and Italian ways of life are very different yet both offer
tremendous gifts, so go their unique cuisines.  At its best, French food is
earthy and satisfying; at its worst it can be pretentious and insubstantial,
relying on fancy presentation instead of inspired combinations.  Some of our
favorite meals, in addition to the Moulles Frites in Cannes, were a
peasant-style coq au vin (chicken in red wine sauce) with a thick, dark brown
sauce and big chunks of mushrooms, and an earthy ratatouille of fresh regional
vegetables.  While Juliana would have none of the escargot or patés that I
loved, she reveled in the picturesque candy and dessert shops that made her
wish she had grown up in France.  The ubiquitous
croque monsieur
or
croque
madame
, grilled ham and cheese, or grilled ham, egg and cheese sandwiches,
respectively, became two of our favorites.  Ultimately, we decided that we
preferred the lighter, more brightly-flavored coastal Italian foods which made
us revel in just being alive.

Once
you visit Paris and see all the cultural and historical treasures so mindfully
restored and maintained along with the royal grounds and Palace of Versailles, you
will finally come to understand why the French are such snobs. Even the
brilliant and artful design of Paris itself left us humbled.  France’s national
pride is legendary and well-founded.  We were both impressed and inspired by
the French way of life.  Well, Juliana more than I.

After
our visit to Paris, we stopped in London for a two-night visit then flew back
to our beloved Los Angeles. Once we arrived, we brought our bags into our
apartment, then walked to our favorite little restaurant for a bite to eat.  We
sat outside and took in the deep blue sky, the fresh ocean air, and a bottle of
crisp California Viognier.  Though we had just experienced a dream vacation,
being home was just great. I felt really refreshed and ready to start the rest
of my life with Juliana in the role of my sweet, loving wife.

It
was time to make some important decisions about the direction our lives would
take.

Juliana
and I settled easily into our married life.  She worked days, I worked nights
and luckily we usually got to enjoy our weekends together.  It was the rest of
life that kept getting in the way of my “major chord.”  As De Niro put it in
New
York, New York
while he was trying to seduce Liza Minnelli in a cab to
Brooklyn, a major chord is when you have the woman you want, the music you
want, and enough money to live comfortably.  My music was still missing.

Hard
to believe, but my ten-year anniversary at the Cricket Room was only six months
away. Thinking about it made me reflect on what I had accomplished in that
time.  I had made great money, enjoyed serving amazing celebrities and other
luminaries, and reveled in witnessing – especially in the beginning – some
culinary feats of accomplishment. But it was beginning to lose its luster.  No,
wait. It
had
lost its luster. The sheen had been rubbed off over those
ten years, revealing fool's gold. The truly golden days in Italy with my
beautiful bride had shown me the value of what's real. And returning to the
Cricket Room reminded me of what’s not.

Sometimes
you start focusing on the strings rather than the marionettes, and suddenly the
entire illusion is lost for you.  That had been happening for me a lot in
recent days.   There was an alarm bell clanging in my head that screamed, “Wake
up, dumbass. Wake up!” It was getting harder and harder for me to fathom why I
kept coming back to work day after day.  Money, sure, and you can't minimize
the importance of that for survival. But there has to be more, right?

At
first, it had been easy to be seduced by the reflected brilliance of our
guests.  After all, I may have been serving fine food like waiters in any other
exclusive restaurant, but I’d been serving it to the most admired and worshiped
people on the planet. Surely there was great value in that, right? And I’d been
doing it up close and personal, where most “regular” people would never be. 
Lately, however, that was no longer enough. I was starting to realize that
maybe it never was. 

Was
there something wrong with me? Or was there something wrong with humans in
general, because no matter how good we have it, we always want something else? 
Was my feeling of discontent just a case of “the grass is always greener” or
was I just being ungrateful? Did I think I had some greater calling? Was I
willing to give up my fantastic pay to take a chance on something else? I had
way more questions than answers, and the only thing I was sure of was that I
was not happy. I was sputtering, burning out like a flaming comet in its death
throes. But my discontent didn’t come from lack of appreciation for the
customers, or the rigorous schedule that never let me off on holidays. Not even
from the idiots they kept hiring because they were cheap. It was the glaring
discrepancy between my reverence for the history and lore of the Cricket Room,
and the reality of the way corporate management was running it.  That gap in
values was a serious pain in my psyche and I felt edgy and irritable all the
time. I had even become snappish with Juliana, which she didn’t deserve. I
often felt like a pit bull on a short chain, ready to bite even the hand that
fed me.

One
day out of desperation, I called out to God for an answer – and by the way,
just for the record, I have never followed any particular religion.  I believe
very deeply in the Lord almighty and I can feel Him (wherever He is and
whatever form He takes) trying to reach out to me all the time; I just don’t
know how to interpret His messages. 

I
could never understand being associated with any one way of worship ‘cause to
me they all start to look crazy, controlling, or restricted with ridiculous
rules you have to follow.  The “do this on this day or you will burn in the
fires of hell” is bullshit to me. But I can still feel this burning kind of
warm mushy energy in my core and usually it gets stronger when I’m surrounded
by the beauty and serenity of nature.  Like when I was standing on the stepped
terraces of Italy, looking out over the frothy sea. That's pure heaven and you
can really feel the spirituality of the universe washing over you in an earthy,
natural place like that.

But
at this time in my career, it was me reaching out to God and asking Him, “Show
me what I’m supposed to be doing, and give me some guidance, Lord!” 

Well,
as you can probably guess, there was no burning bush or lightning bolt from
heaven and I went to work on that night of unrequited prayer basically feeling
the same way I had been feeling: burnt out and mentally exhausted.  My ankles
had been hurting like mad and that pain was sending another message to my
nervous system, demanding that I figure out an alternative way of earning a
living. Something I could feel proud of, enjoy, and not feel this constant
sense of pressure and dissatisfaction. 

Just
as I was feeling kind of defeated, I overheard a guest in the dining room
talking about Russell Brand and how he was meditating and all these stars were
doing it; he mentioned Ellen DeGeneres, Russell Simmons, Sheryl Crow, Laura
Dern, Clint Eastwood, Scorsese.  The man went on and on about it, describing
how the David Lynch Foundation had a gala planned at the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art in December to raise money for veterans with post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) and for kids in tough, inner-city neighborhoods having
trouble staying focused at school. I found it hard to believe that the guy who
wrote and directed
Wild at Heart
and
Blue Velvet
was now trying
to save the world.  I had no idea what meditation could possibly do for
celebrities, veterans, children or anyone, but somehow it perked up my ears.
Could this be a message for me? Was I supposed to overhear this conversation? 
I made a mental note to look into it.

Wow,
it was difficult to imagine frenetic Russell Brand meditating.  I couldn’t even
envision that guy sitting down for dinner without getting up and dancing on the
table. 
How the hell do you get Russell Brand to sit still and meditate? 
Now you’ve really got me interested.
 

The
night went on and I forgot all about that conversation as I found myself
watching Kirk Douglas walk in past the piano player who was pounding out “Let
it Be.”  Kirk sort of slowed down and started conducting the music as though he
knew what he was doing and his timing was actually great. He is one of the few
remaining silver-haired elder statesmen of Hollywood. When he walks in the
room, it's like, "Daddy's home!" Everyone sits up a little
straighter.

Kirk
took a table in the dining room away from all the noise and joined the great
Arthur Cohn who has won several Academy Awards for producing best foreign
language films.  Kirk, who became a bit hard to understand after his stroke,
had really recovered quite remarkably and was in exceptionally high spirits
that evening.  Mr. Cohn always orders fresh pineapple juice and Kirk joined him
in that.  Mr. Cohn also talked Douglas into ordering what he was having, and
it’s always the same thing. 

He
said, “I’ll have my usual steamed whitefish, and bring that for Mr. Douglas too,
please.”  We always served him the same dish, steamed white sea bass with
mashed potatoes.  I guess after coming there for twenty years he still hadn’t
figured out that we never carried whitefish, which usually comes from Lake
Superior, and always served him local sea bass. Oh well, it’s certainly not the
food, it’s the company and the ambiance that matters at the Cricket Room. We
probably could have served him Gorton’s frozen grocery store fish and he would
not have complained. Especially if we garnished it nicely and charged forty
bucks for it.

Hollywood
business mogul Kirk Kerkorian was sitting at table one in the bar area with one
of his indistinguishable blonde assembly-line sweethearts.  They all had
conveyor belt lines on their asses, I'm sure. Lately he had stepped it up with
Joan Dangerfield, Rodney’s widow, but that night he was back with an old
standby whose name I don’t know.  Kirk was a kind and extremely humble
old-timer.  The valet parking guys had told me that he drove an older model
Jeep, very unpretentious, and often in need of a wash job.  He can’t hear much
out of his left ear, though, so he always sits at a half moon booth with his
right ear to his date.  Mr. Kerkorian always drinks the same thing:  a mini
bottle of Evian and a neat Cutty Sark with a side of rocks.  He likes to mix
his own drink and he’ll nurse that thing all night.  We always try to sell his
date on an few glasses of premium wine or champagne with the goal of getting
that check average up there because Kirk will always round off at the nearest
hundred since that’s all he carries, and usually tips fifty percent.  Of
course, we have always loved him for that and many other reasons, such as the
fact that he never tries to show off.  Kerkorian likes his Caesar salad chopped
up in smaller bits and always shares it with his date, and a petit filet cooked
medium served with mashed potato and nothing else on the plate. Tonight his
bill was $265 and he shoved $400 in my hand and said goodbye.  He doesn’t stick
around too long these days, usually not past 9:00 pm.  It’s just
incomprehensible to think that this guy lost over $10 billion during the latest
financial crisis and he’s still worth more than $3 billion.  Maybe being
careful with every dollar, like sharing a salad, is how he became a
billionaire. Ha, I wish.

Across
from them, I was serving some new Russian starlet, Sofya Skya (show of hands if
you think that's her real name), who was on some trendy celebrity white food
diet. That was something new to me. She had a piece of roasted halibut served
with white rice and finished it all off with coconut sorbet.  I’ll never forget
that diet though I never did get to ask her anything about it.  I just can’t
imagine the benefit of limiting your diet to white foods. Her face was
remarkably beautiful, and when she stood up the whole dining room took a
breath.  She was all legs – six feet tall and wearing short shorts. Apparently
she’s a former ballet dancer and now an up-and-coming actress in Hollywood.
Well, at the very least she makes a great spokeswoman for that diet, if it can
make you look like her...

Through
the window, I saw Neil Diamond at one of the garden tables entertaining a much
younger girl. Maybe he was helping her with her homework.

It
was that time of the night when we often get seated too many tables at once and
our manager fails to control the scheduling of employee breaks.  So now once
again I’m running all over this huge restaurant, my ankles screaming at me to
slow the fuck down, trying to cover tables for employees who are on break – and
this time two waiters went to break together.  This wasn’t allowed but they get
away with it time and time again. No one seems to give a crap and I continued
to wonder why I’m the only one who does.

Despite
all of these delights and distractions, my mind kept circling around the two
issues that have been tearing at my complacency for quite some time.  It was
getting difficult to keep signing up for the same set of management challenges
year after year with no solutions in sight, and it was continually just getting
worse.  The more management got away with, the more it emboldened them to push
harder. New waiters came in all shiny and new, and in about two years’ time
they'd quit, tired, haggard and jaded.  Management in a place like this should
be concerned with consistency, giving their customers a pleasant experience
with familiar faces and warmth.  Instead, they run the wait staff into the
ground so that it’s a never-ending revolving door of new and untested servers. 
The Hollywood factory has two sides: one that churns out buxom blondes and one
that turns out ambitious wannabe actors portraying waiters. Both products have
built in expiration dates.

And,
thanks to our idiotic scheduling system, my colleagues and I walked at least
ten miles a night to cover the tables in our stations which are scattered all
over the restaurant. It amazed me that our leaders were either unable to fix
these problems or unwilling to present the situation to the upper management
executives who controlled the staff budgets. But as much as these thoughts
nagged at me, I didn’t have time to worry about them, I just had to get the job
done. My conscientious nature would accept nothing less.

Arthur
Cohn had his hand up and was looking annoyed.  I got to his table and he said,
“I want my cookies and we’ll take some tea. You want tea, Kirk?” Kirk nodded. 
When Mr. Cohn says he wants his cookies he’s actually serious, they are his
cookies – he has them sent over from Europe.  They’re just regular Linzer cookies
with a red fruit preserve in the middle; you could probably buy them at any
decent store, but he imports them. After I served their cookies I asked the
grouchy Mr. Cohn if he wanted anything else.  “No,” he said, so I moved on. We
never bring him a check as he considers this place his home away from home, so
we just put it on his house account with a 15% tip.  He never leaves any extra
tip and quite frankly I’m always glad when he’s done. If he thinks he’s at home
and we’re his family, I felt like telling him I wanted an increase in my
fucking allowance.

Nicole
Kidman and Keith Urban, whom I’d served many times before, were seated at a
discreet booth.  They are a very quiet couple, extremely reserved, and Kidman
comes off as quite self-conscious. Maybe it’s her height; she’s almost six feet
tall and stands out in a crowd, literally. As a couple, they are very
lovey-dovey although not overly touchy-feely in public.  You could see a lot of
mutual admiration between them. Since I know their drinking habits, I brought
bottled water with gas (sparkling) for Urban and some still water for his distinguished
wife.  Two minutes later, Nicole’s parents sat down to join them for dinner.  I
recommended they try the Krupp Brothers merlot by the glass, and once they
tasted it they were sold.  What really amazed me was when you looked at Nicole
Kidman up close, you could see that her skin is so youthful – she looked like
she could be in her late twenties.  She must have at least a two-hour regimen
of creams, lotions, potions, and magic tricks to make her face appear so
flawless.  She really doesn’t look like she’s been worked on at all.  She
looked truly amazing and very beautiful to boot. But, after a few minutes, I
realized she looked other-worldly in an odd way too.  There wasn’t a whole lot
of facial expression going on – her features were frozen.  Probably Botox, but
what do I know?  Actually I noticed how Urban looked really young too.  What
the hell are those two up to, smearing human placenta on their faces before bed
and sleeping in an oxygen tank? But once I looked more closely, her ravishing
beauty became darn near creepy, like a living wax museum figure. I pitied Urban
if that’s how she looked in bed: expressionless and static. I preferred less
perfection and more honest expression. I'd rather know from her expression of
anger that my wife is pissed, rather than get a book thrown at my head by
someone I thought was placid.