Chapter XVII - HOW TO LIKE FLORIDA

"Patricia!!! Come outside, what in the fuck is going on, is there an earthquake or so?" I was watering the lawn and I heard a deep threatening sound, a rumble, and the house windows were trembling.

She came running outside shouting "It's probably the shuttle going up, it must be the shuttle". We looked up and saw for the first time the rocket with the Space shuttle going up, it was amazing to see, that enormous flame under that rocket, going up with that incredible speed and loud rumble. We lived 29 miles from Cape Canaveral, Kennedy Space Center, but it felt like 1/2 a mile. What an experience!

I really had to get used to living in Florida, a lot of things were new to me, at sunset the sun was huge and filled up the sky with fantastic colors, it often didn't look real, more like a postcard. The heat could be mean but is also nice to wake up in the sunshine every day and wear just shorts, a T-shirt and slippers. The beach was close by, and we went often at night for a walk on the beach to see the big sea turtles, they are protected animals and there were a lot of rules like it was forbidden to bring flashlights to shine on them. It rains almost daily in the afternoon for five minutes, and you think it will freshen up everything, but 10 minutes later everything is dry again. Electrical storms I also never had seen before, 20 to 30 bolts of lightning on the horizon, next to each other. An armadillo walking by when I had coffee on the porch early in the morning, and an 8 feet alligator on the bike path in Merrit Island.

Buying a Christmas tree in your shorts is weird!

Patricia figured out that I should go for a chef's job at the Hilton in Melbourne Beach, so I went for an interview when we came on the trip to get a house, schools, and a job for me.

The interview didn't take very long, the food & beverage manager read my resume and told me that I had a great deal of experience but could-I-do-ice-carving?

I said to him that his question was confusing, was he hiring an executive chef or an ice sculptor? He said it was really a must, I think I just stared at him and asked if he realized that it was already 1990. So, we didn't become friends!

Shortly after we arrived in Florida, impatient as I was, I took the first job they offered me until something better would knock on the door. Cook in a retirement community, what a horror! The recipes were so poor and tasteless, I think that you better stay in your own home until the end. But recipes are there to adjust, so that was what I did. I did have fun cooking the good stuff for the people in their restaurant. It didn't take long before all those grey faces peeked in the kitchen and asked which one of us the new chef was. At least they had good food for a couple of months! I almost felt sorry for them when I left for a nicer job.

After two months I found myself a new job in Melbourne, in a classic Cajun restaurant called Anne Marie's where the atmosphere was good and laid back in a Southern way, the food was great, generous, homemade, and all the dishes were served on pretty antique china, On the menu were lobster, scallops, lots of shrimp dishes, Bourbon street pecan pie, blackened mahi-mahi, and of course Jambalaya and gumbo! I hated gumbo right away after understanding how to make a black roux, which is the base of this soup, stirring the flour and butter for 1 1/2 hours until black. Anne Marie was a perfectionist and that showed in all the food we put out, it was fun to be a chef there and to work with her.

But something good came by, we found a small restaurant on Merritt Island to take over and we could pay it off in installments, seemed good to do. We both were excited to have our own business again. The restaurant needed a lot of TLC, Patricia and I cleaned and painted it, and we bought curtains, some nice pictures on the wall, and a new tile floor.

The kitchen had a couple of million cockroaches in it so that took a professional exterminator to come. Happily, it worked.

I made a nice menu with some good Maryland seafood on it, blackened rib-eye steak, pasta dishes, shrimp dishes, Spanish fish soup, some nice appetizers and salads, and homemade cheesecakes from Patricia.

With the restaurant came Maria, a loud-spoken-heavy-accented Italian-American waitress who told the guests what to eat, she kind of made all the decisions for everybody, but the guests liked her. After a couple of months, we got some good write-ups in two local magazines and the customers started coming in, the first full evenings were a fact! Patricia's sister Anne came to help ("Anne, have you ever been a hostess" "No!" Ok, your good") and Eryn, our oldest daughter ("Eryn can you wait tables? " "No!" "Ok, you're on tonight!")

One afternoon, we did a good lunch and Maria came into the kitchen to tell me:

"Chef, there are two ladies, who want to speak to you".

So I went to the front and found two young pretty women, like 25 or so.

"Are you the chef?"

"Yes"

"WE WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT WE THINK YOUR FISH SOUP IS BETTER THAN AN ORGASM"

It was a long time ago that I felt my face turning red. "Thank you for your compliment" I stumbled over my words.

It was the best compliment I ever got!