The new owners of Work Progress, our putative masters, were a textbook
example of People Who Should Never Own A Restaurant. There were
two brothers—one half-smart, the other genuinely dumb—who'd gotten
a few bucks from Mommy and Daddy, along with their partner, a slightly
more cognizant college friend who could actually read a P and L sheet
and crunch a few numbers. Their principal business was investing in off-
Broadway shows. As this, apparently, wasn't unprofitable enough, they'd
chosen the restaurant business as a way to lose their money more quickly
and assuredly.
From the get-go, Sammy, Dimitri and I managed to intimidate the
partners right out of their own restaurant. At every suggestion from this
novice triumvirate, we'd snort with contempt, roll our eyes with world-
weary derision and shoot down whatever outrage—be it tablecloths,
flatware or menu items—they'd come up with. We were merciless in our
naked contempt for every idea they came in with, and we out-snobbed,
out-maneuvered and out-bullied them at every turn.
As the three principal masterminds of this culinary Utopia were all P-
Town veterans, we constructed our downstairs kitchen along familiar
lines—as a faithful re-creation of the kitchens we'd grown up in: insular,
chaotic, drenched in drugs and alcohol, and accompanied constantly by
loud rock and roll music. When the restaurant opened, we'd begin every
shift with a solemn invocation of the first moments of Apocalypse Now,
our favorite movie. Emulating the title sequence, we'd play the
soundtrack album, choppers coming in low and fast, the whirr of the
blades getting louder and more unearthly, and just before Jim Morrison
kicked in with the first few words, "This is the end, my brand-new friend
. . . the end . . ." we'd soak the entire range-top with brandy and ignite it,
causing a huge, napalm-like fireball to rush up into the hoods—just like
in the movie when the tree-line goes up. If our boobish owners and
newly hired floor staff weren't already thoroughly spooked by our antics,
then they were by this act.