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