failed to meet his expectations. I don't remember the finished product
going out, but the chef showed up to work the next day, so I imagine the
customer was happy.
Another memorable evening was the RFK charity tennis tournament. The
whole place was taken over by actors, politicians, famous faces, and
long-haired Kennedy kids in tuxes and basketball sneakers. Secret
Service agents and sniffer dogs combed the kitchen for fissionable
material and hidden weapons. I was surprised when they didn't find any.
The highlight of the event was a mishap involving honored guest Dina
Merrill, sitting near the head of the banquet table with hubby Cliff
Robertson. One of our veteran waiters lost control of an entire tray of
bubbling tortellini alfredo, depositing an upended pile of Parmesan-laced
heavy cream and pasta directly on Ms Merrill's coif. There was weeping
and rending of garments in the kitchen that night, I can tell you, the
offending waiter nearly suicidal with fear, shame and grief. He was part
of a father-son waiting team, Dad having been relegated to running
coffee orders for his golden years, and son was despondent. I don't know
what he was crying about; it was a union house, after all.
As in any large restaurant operation, there were tiny centers of power,
fiefdoms, little empires that seemed to exist outside of the normal
hierarchy. Gianni was the pastry chef, and his shop, set apart from the
main kitchen, was a relative fortress of solitude and civility in a sea of
chaos. I worked with Gianni every once in a while—just to escape the
heat and frenzied pace of the main kitchen, and because the quality of
life was significantly better in Gianni's tiny kingdom. I could, thanks to
Chef Bernard at CIA, throw together a decent soufflé when called upon
to do so, and I was good at decorating and inscribing cakes, for which
there was a lot of call. The Gianni crew consisted of a taciturn Swiss who
worked three other jobs and always looked ready to die from fatigue, and
an aged ex-Wehrmacht corporal with dyed red hair and moustache who
loved to regale me with stories of Weimar era perversions: "Zey vould
feed ze girls bananas," he said once, leering and winking as he described