Essays in Restaurant Debauchery, number four

Holiday in the Sun

This is one of the many stories of my life that I feel better having in writing, because it would be a shame to forget. It also amazes me that I can remember any of it at this point.

One of the people most responsible for the way I am today was my friend Andrew, a 30 year old, very gay, Vietnamese man whom I met when I was 21 and working in a shitty Chicago nightclub called “Pasha.” Andrew worked up the street at a much cooler venue, which we’ll call “Caviar & Blow,” that I used to frequent before and after my shifts. He became my mentor of sorts, teaching me the way to live an excessive lifestyle in the most decadent fashion and how to deal with the people I met along the way. He was the ultimate entertainer and introduced me to the joys of ethnic neighborhoods, Champagne, and beautiful Asian women. My tolerance combined with his know-how made for a very dangerous combination...

When I finally got tired of Pasha and told them to fuck off, Andrew got me a job at Caviar & Blow, officially entering me into one of the most ridiculous periods of my entire life.

“C&B” was a nightclub with a Champagne list that read like a novel. Each house had it’s own page, with bottles as rare as 1979 Krug represented. Caviar had it’s own section of the menu, and we used to present it in lavish crystal serving dishes with all of the traditional garnishes. Half bottles of vodka frozen in ice made a nice alternative accompaniment instead of Champagne. The bar had two floors, with the downstairs, referred to as “the boudoir,” having several booths with curtains that could be drawn (so you could have some privacy while you fuck or do drugs or both) and a large Victorian-style bed in the center of the room.
It was the kind of place where you would be working on a very busy night and your boss would yank you into the office, declaring that he had poured out way too much blow on his desk and that you would need to finish it – now. This was also the same person whom I eventually had a cocaine-induced threesome with involving a girl I was dating at the time (who did S&M porn, but she’s a another story). There were always coke dealers present, and the bar was so out of control that once I caught a busboy slugging Hennessey Richard (Cognac that was $275.00 a shot) out of a paper cup.

Clientele while I worked there included Prince, Jimmy Page, The Cure, Stone Temple Pilots, and Simon LeBon from Duran Duran (who had a most memorable visit, when he fucked two twin sisters on the bed after-hours downstairs in front of everyone, after walking around the bar in his underwear playing the guitar). Others included this guy Mark who was one of the first salesmen of Viagra. He used to purchase ridiculously expensive bottles just for the staff to drink, which is how I drank vintage Salon for the first time (the second was with the pastry chef at another restaurant, when we stole a 1985 from the wine cooler and then drank it straight out of the bottle while driving up Lakeshore Drive blaring Motley Crue's "Too Fast for Love" on the stereo).

"C&B" has since closed, last I heard my former bosses had sold it to two idiots who had run it into the ground within a few months. One of the last incidents reported back to me was that my friend Brett, who I had worked with at another restaurant for a long while, had become the "head chef" there. We had waited tables together, and had gotten along because he was from Boston so we felt like we had some kind of bond, even though he was kind of a fucking idiot. He was randomly one of the people who ended up at my house the day of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, because we had all been scheduled to work that morning and ended up closing the restaurant and watching the news while getting drunk all day. Anyway, apparently during his second week as chef at "C&B," he had gone to the bathroom, shot up a bunch of heroin, and died on the toilet. The rumor is that they took him right out the back door and continued service, but who knows if that's true or not.

Now that this background is provided, I will tell you about this one particular Sunday…

I had just finished a few fairly profitable days at work, and had managed to stash about $1400 cash in my nightstand even after partying all week. As I pondered the idea of the doing something responsible with the money, like starting a savings account or taking a trip home to Maine, my phone rang. It was Andrew, seeing if I wanted to join a crew for late lunch at a French-Vietnamese spot in our neighborhood called “Pasteur.” I agreed, and for some reason decided to put all $1400 in my pocket before I headed out, not knowing what I was getting myself into.

Pasteur was a cool spot that was located in the North Side of Chicago, but when you walked in you felt like you were in what I can only describe as an “elegant jungle.” Andrew was there with a couple of other restaurant queens, Paulie and Wayne, who ran an Italian restaurant in Evanston. We hammered through three bottles of Veuve Cliquot with our lunch, and proceeded to roll to a nearby bar to discuss plans for the evening.

As darkness fell we headed over to Wicker Park to eat at a trendy new sushi restaurant called “Mirai.” It was here that I learned for the first time that the sake should be enjoyed chilled, and that the stuff they served warm was the sake-equivalent of white zinfandel. A couple bottles later, we are definitely in rare form and decide to make a run to get some blow. Paulie’s connection is in a sketchy neighborhood on the south side of the city, and he refers to her as “Mama.” I could see why when I met her, a large Hispanic woman with two kids watching cartoons on the couch of her large apartment. She was very kind, and she doled out two golf ball-sized bags as if she were giving us fresh baked cookies.

After doing several bumps in the car, we arrive back to our neighborhood and begin to drink furiously at a cool, old-school bar known as “The Green Mill.” Very prominently displayed on the piano is a sign that says: “Al Capone used to drink here – often.” 4:00 a.m. arrives quickly and we transition to Paulie’s house for more drinks. At 6:00 a.m., Wayne proposes that we could go to Saugatuck, Michigan to hang out for a couple of days. This seems like a good idea so we pile into Paulie’s car, purchase a case of beer, and hit the road.

Saugatuck is a lot like Oquniquit, Maine. It’s a tourist-driven predominantly gay town, filled with quaint little shops and lots of outdoor bars. We arrive after a two and a half hour drive, and settle in at a hotel called ‘The Dunes,” that Wayne suggested because they have an amazing pool bar.

And right he was. I spent the entire day blowing rails in the bathroom and drinking probably about 15 Absolut Citron and lemonades poolside. I remember wearing these ridiculously large Helmut Lang aviator sunglasses, and the bartender, who was becoming quite friendly, giving me the heads-up that I had coke all over my nose and maybe I should go in the pool for a bit…

The bag of drugs is still going fairly strong, and we decide to head out to town to check out a few bars. It’s now about 2:00 pm, and we’ve been up for a very long time now, so I’m not sure the tourists were very impressed with our behavior. Luckily, we were throwing around enough cash with the bartenders that no one bothered to “deal” with the four crazed demons from the big city.


We finally head back to the hotel around 5:00 p.m. for a 45-minute “disco nap” before waking up and going out to dinner at one of the higher-end restaurants in town. The nap did little for my sobriety, and I barely remember the meal. I do remember drinking red zinfandel with steak au poivre, and thinking it was good. The food definitely has slowed us all down, but we pull it together to go drink some tequila and finish off the bag, before eventually passing out in a heap by 11:00 p.m.

The ride back early in the morning goes well with the warm beers that were left in the car, and I decide not to bother assessing my financial situation until I get back. I arrive home around 8:30 a.m., and decide to have a few beers in my sunroom to aid me in crashing into a deep sleep for about 17 hours. My roommate wakes up at this time, takes one look at me, and just says: “drug bender?”

“Yeah,” I replied, “It was way more fun than opening a savings account.”

The Dim Sum Party, and so much more....

Let me begin by saying that, although it resembles one, this was NOT a Deathmatch. A few weeks ago I decided to throw together what I promised would be the last Chinese-themed dinner party before I moved on to bastardizing cuisine from another Asian country. This was the last hurrah…


I will also say that Mr. Panda, to quote Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes from Dirty Dancing, “had the time of his life,” as you will see depicted throughout this post.



Lauren and Aaron were given the task of decorating the house in a “sexy communist” theme, and they succeeded with flying colors (actually, pretty much just red). I had been at work while they were setting up the night before, so when I arrived home to Mr. Panda surrounded by “Communist Funtown,” it was fairly overwhelming.




Because the theme was Dim Sum, I had scheduled the party to start at noon. Of course, no one took me seriously and everything got going around 3:30. In a desperate attempt to preserve the tradition of Dim Sum, and mask the fact that we’re raging alcoholics, Dietz and I purchased fourteen different kinds of tea for everyone to taste- and we only ended up brewing one. Instead we plowed through case after case of wine, a bottle of bourbon, a half gallon of tequila, and countless beers – just like we always do.




We streamed in a “top 40” radio station from China to enhance the mood, and it turns out that people still listen to the Backstreet Boys over there.
When people arrived I greeted them with course number one, Bak Kut Teh soup. This is a traditional Chinese breakfast dish usually consisting of a heavily spiced broth and several different parts of the pig. I chose to just serve broth garnished with cilantro as a meaty beverage designed to coat your stomach for some serious drinking.




Next up was Otis & Marya, who made their own Lup Cheong sausage and did a version of “pigs in a blanket” with steamed dough wrappers. Both a Chinese ketchup and mustard condiment were served alongside. You'll also notice Kate, Gemma, and Alysia starting to get pretty friendly with Mr. Panda...




Leslie, who had per usual gone over the top in helping with party preparations, was next with deep fried shrimp toasts. They were delicious and heavy enough to keep people satisfied for awhile, which was good because now it was Dietz’s turn in the kitchen for what is lovingly referred to as ‘the Congee hour.”




In his usual fashion Dietz had chosen to prepare three different styles of congee with countless garnishes, an enormously time-consuming undertaking right in the middle of the party. Knowing how he works I cleared everyone out of the kitchen and declared it to be a “no fly zone” until the congee hour was over.




During this period, Karl gets the grill going for his BBQ ribs and we start handing around the half gallon of Sauza Hornitos that Gemma and Josh had rolled in with. After destroying the ribs, which were fucking awesome, congee madness was still monopolizing all four of the stove burners, so we fire up the steamer on the grill.




Next up is Stephen with spicy lemongrass pork sausage and sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaf. This was a very well balanced dish, and I felt bad because just as he finished and started serving, the congee circus was also complete, accompanied by a presentation from Dietz on what the fuck to do with what.




The three kinds of congee were traditional, green mung bean, and black rice with red dates. They were served with a multitude of condiments, including a nuclear but delicious homemade sambal.






Melissa, who is an actual Asian person, was consulted on each dish, and knowing what was being served next I tried to distract her by (apparently, I don’t remember this that well…) licking her boot, because the next course was “Dim Sum Americana.”




Kate and Josh had created what would probably be the bane of any Chinese person’s existence: dumplings filled, separately, with Cheese Wiz, red hot dog, and pimento & ham. They were delicious and yet so wrong in so many ways, which is why I love everything these two come up with for pretty much fucking anything.




At this point Masa shows up and upon being greeted with a cheesy dumpling, realizes he better get drinking to catch up with everyone. It seemed like a good time to have Melissa start on her dish, pan-fried daikon rice cakes, to show him that we did, in fact, have some authentic food to offer. I was getting full, but these were so good I had two servings against my better judgment, of which I have none anyway.






Outside Pieper was steaming up his pig’s head soup dumplings, which were delicious even though they started to fall apart. Honestly, I’ve never made soup dumplings and neither had he, so doing it for the first time for 35 people was quite a challenge.




At this point I get “Iced.”





Courtney finally gets a stove burner and starts searing her duck dumplings. The bottle of Tequila is now gone, and the music is getting louder and louder. Knowing that my palate isn’t long for the world, Dietz and I open two bottles of Nicolas Joly Savennieres, just to say we had something ridiculous. It is one of the funkier wines I’ve drunk in a while, and it was a nice break from slaughtering tequila and vinho verde.




Joel, the only man I know who can pull of salmon-colored shorts, steps up and serves his honey BBQ pork-stuffed puff pastry. These are outrageously delicious, and I’m pissed I didn’t stash a few away for breakfast. The Chinese radio has officially been jettisoned in favor of Heidi as DJ, and things start to go downhill fast.




One of the most amazing moments of the party occurs when I decide to Ice Nolan with a green apple Smirnoff I had in the fridge (the link will explain a lot). Gemma agrees to help, puts it in her dress, and asks Nolan for “assistance.” Nolan pulls his pant leg up to reveal a blueberry Smirnoff duct taped to his leg and officially “ice blocks” Gemma. What made me wonder is just how long he was going to walk around with an Ice taped to his leg - something tells me he would have gone all night.




With the icing out of the way, Nolan begins frying his shrimp balls to serve with a coriander dipping sauce and Szechuan pepper salt. I’m sure at this point everyone is tired of the sound of my voice, but I continue to entertain the entire group from the top of the stairs.






Brad just barely gets his egg custard served before the dance party erupts. As I enter the living room Joel is on the coffee table dancing to Lady GaGa so I decide to join him. Mr. Panda, probably a little sore now, keeps getting it hard as everybody gets in on the fun. I remember lying on my stairs and slugging out of a bottle of Woodford’s Reserve Bourbon in between songs,





I can tell you that somehow I ended up on a couch that wasn't located in my house, and Mr. Panda was there - I can tell you that much. Once I figured out where I was I decided to leave Mr. Panda behind and come back for him, because I was way too out of it to explain the story to a cab driver.

After pissing off the gas station attendant by paying for a bottle of water with a hundred dollar bill, I get a taxi home and gather up the rentals (glasses, tablecloths, etc.) to return to One-Stop Party Shop before my hangover really kicks in. I then proceed to have an epic hangover meal at Po' Boys & Pickles, and collapse into a deep sleep until work starts at 5.


For a less Panda-Centric account, go to Johnny D's Egullet post here.



All photos by Jessica Joseph & John Dennison.

Miyake Staff Meals Part Two

Staff Meal continues to be a big deal at Miyake, where every night we start brainstorming the beginning of the shift as to what we'll be eating. Wine pairing is optional...