So, this is the New Year
Ringing in the New Year, I reflected a bit on the many things that I had done since the last. I remembered that one year ago, today, I was working as a Room Service Attendant that took his spare time to learn to cook in a professional kitchen, without pay. On New Year’s Eve, I came in at 4:30AM and worked until 2PM in Room Service and then changed into my whites, walked into the kitchen and spent the next twelve hours doing prep work and running the fryer. I must’ve put out over 200 orders of calamari that night - all without making a cent. I learned so much about that night, that first night of 2010 - I learned why we cook, rather than simply how to cook. I learned how it felt to care for several hundred people with a single dish and how it felt, during the busiest times, when a dish was rejected. A feeling I didn’t want to feel again. It was because of people like Chef Paul and Chef Kevin, who believed in me from the start, that everything following was possible. I had worked a solid 22 hour day and I’ll never forget it.
Now, after the blood, sweat and tears of my labors, I’m seeing myself in an entirely new light.
I was given another chance: to work as a barback during the summertime at the hotel’s outdoor bar. I had never even touched a bottle before, and if you had told me to find the bottle of Maker’s Mark on the shelf, I’d have stared at you blankly, asking if that was some kind of rum or something.
Yea, a lot changed.
In that short summer, I learned to make nearly any cocktail you could throw at me, and I did it faster than most of the bartenders. If it wasn’t for them teaching me, though, everything would be different. They could see my passion and desire to learn everything and anything, but learn it properly.
At the end of summer I was made the new bartender at the SoHo Grand Hotel. This incredible news was followed by Chef Paul asking me to work for him and with his flawless team at the SoHo House!
In less than one year I became a professional bartender and a professional cook, working in two of the best houses in Manhattan.
I work hard - harder than most people I know, but certainly not harder than others I’ve met - but I’ll work as hard as I can until I’m numb and in a chair because that’s the way I am, the man I’ve become and that’s why I’ve been given a single one of these opportunities.
If I even had a New Year’s resolution, I’d have to say that I could only dream a little more, go farther and do it with Keiko, because if it weren’t for her, I’d be a lesser man. It’s because of her that I am the way I am, though she’ll never admit it.
This will be my year. This will be our year. All we have to do is want it more than we did last year. Ya dig?
Bobby
