The Seasoning Of A Chef: My Journey From Diner To Ducasse And Beyond

Book by Psaltis Doug Psaltis Michael

Chapter 1
The Olympia Diner
"Can he lift the potatoes?"

That was the question that launched me into the world of cooking. My family was sitting in our normal corner booth at the Olympia Diner, having just finished an early dinner, and Poppy was standing by our table as he always did. "Poppy" was what we called my grandfather and Olympia was his diner. That day was unusually tense, as Poppy had fired one of his three cooks that morning. He now needed someone to work Saturdays and Sundays. My parents were obviously off the hook; my older brother Andy had football; and it wasn't a job for my sister. That left my twin brother, Mike, who was too thin and seemed in no way inclined, and me. Of the six of us, I was the only one whose eyes weren't cast down at the table. I just looked up at Poppy, waiting for him to decide. The year was 1984 and I was ten years old.
My grandfather was part of the Old World. He was in his early eighties and had worked his whole life to have and to keep the diner where he spent nearly every minute. He had come to New York in the early 1920s and worked hard for everything he had. The only loyalties and obligations he understood were to his family. He would do anything for us and he expected the same in return. But we all knew he was a tough son of a bitch. Telling him no wasn't easy. Actually, it was difficult to tell him anything. That day it seemed impossible, as his blood was already boiling before we even showed up.

When he first opened Olympia, the entire staff consisted of Poppy, his brother, his cousin, and one outsider--a Turkish guy. When it was his turn, my father also worked for Poppy. Telling Poppy that he couldn't count on one of his grandsons wouldn't be easy. This wasn't a favor; it was expected.
The Olympia Diner was everything to my grandfather. He had worked from nothing to build it. Known to the rest of the world as Andrew George Psaltis (the "p" is silent and the name essentially means cantor, or singer), my grandfather arrived in the U.S. without a cent in his pockets. He had "jumped ship" when he was only seventeen years old and was working on a Greek freighter that picked up wheat from Canada and brought it back to Greece. Without any skills or much education, he worked as a common laborer on the ship. Andros, the island he was from, had very little to offer him. Working on one of the freighters was a chance to earn money, and, ultimately, it was a chance for him to escape a life with few possibilities. During his last trip to Canada, he got off the ship at a port in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and hid in the swamps to avoid being caught. He escaped undetected, but he had nothing and nowhere to go.

With almost as little English as he had money, my grandfather turned to one of the few things he knew he was good at to survive: fighting. He was not a big man; he was only five foot eight. But he was stocky and ferociously determined. And, as he had learned on the long trips on the ship, he had a natural talent for brawling. Not long off the boat, he became part of a group of other Greeks who had pretty much the same skills he had, and soon they found a way into professional boxing and wrestling matches.

Poppy had a big box filled with medals, and he gave us one almost every time we went to his house. There wasn't anything special about the medals. They were just dull metal emblems with red, white, and blue ribbons. But if each medal represented a win, he must have won hundreds of matches. In any case, his success was enough for him to live on, though he knew he couldn't be a fighter for the rest of his life. And, after his success eventually led him to New York, the girl he was dating--a third-generation German-American from Staten Island who would later become my grandmother--wouldn't have a fighter for a husband. Well, at least not a professional one, as he never stopped being a fighter, he just stopped getting paid for it.

Besides carrying bales of wheat and swinging his fists, the only other thing my grandfather knew he was good at was cleaning and cooking fish. He had done it throughout most of his childhood. As it turned out, many of the other Greek men with whom he arrived in New York had the same skill, and they were all getting jobs in restaurants around the city. This seemed to him to be as good a profession as any other, but he didn't want the dishwasher job that most of the other men landed.

Fortunately, he had an edge on the other Greeks: he knew French. His father, who owned a small general store on Andros, had made him take French classes in school. Because of this, instead of working in dives scrubbing dishes, he was able to find work at some of the best restaurants. Back then--as is mostly true today--the money to be made in a restaurant was in the front of the house and the job to have was headwaiter. My grandfather was not the type of man looking to be part of a system. He had made it this far by doing whatever he wanted. Being a waiter was perfect for him. It allowed him to earn a lot of money and pretty much do as he pleased. If he got tired of answering to one boss, he would move on to the next one.

The years he spent working in some of the finest restaurants and clubs in Manhattan were very good to my grandfather, but his pugnaciousness eventually got the best of him. As the story goes, his last job in Manhattan was as the headwaiter at the famous Stork Club. It was the place to see and be seen for New York's elite during the Cafe Society era. Joe DiMaggio, Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, and J. Edgar Hoover were among those who were regulars at the nightclub. As the cameras snapped photos of celebrities for the gossip columns, my grandfather made a lot of money wearing a tuxedo and serving drinks and food late into the night. But the job ended abruptly when he got into an argument with the owner, Sherman Billingsley, who was known to watch over everything like a hawk and would toss out bar customers or fire employees for almost any reason or no reason at all.

Billingsley became increasingly unhappy with the amount of money the waiters were making, and in particular was angry with my grandfather because all of the waiters listened to him and not the owner. So, Billingsley came up with what he thought was a clever way to keep some of the waiters' tips and he cut back on everyone's hours. Normally he would issue the new rules in a harshly worded employee memorandum. Instead, to get back at my grandfather directly, he insisted that my grandfather personally tell all of the waiters the new rules. I suppose he figured this would turn all of the waiters against my grandfather, but he never found out if it would work. My grandfather threw him through the restaurant's front window, effectively ending the argument, his job at the Stork Club, and his days waiting tables in Manhattan.

My grandfather and grandmother (now with two sons and a daughter) had been living in Flushing, Queens, for years. So, with Manhattan out of the picture, my grandfather looked in the other direction for work. He soon found that with his Manhattan experience he could easily get a job as a waiter at some of the best and most expensive restaurants on the "Gold Coast" (the north shore) of Long Island. In these restaurants, in exclusive neighborhoods, serving a wealthy clientele, my grandfather found he could make even more money than he could in the fanciest new restaurant in the city.

All of this work finally led to the opportunity he had always wanted: to be his own boss. Even though he had saved a decent amount over the years, he still couldn't open a restaurant like the expensive places he had worked in or one in some rich neighborhood on Long Island. So, he opened a small diner with about forty seats in Jamaica, Queens, not far from where his family had been living for years. Jamaica was really beginning to flourish at this time and the Olympia Diner fit right in. It had a simple motto: "A Good Place to Eat." And, on the sign that hung outside for all of the twenty-five years that he owned and operated the diner, a single phrase described the food: "Steaks and Chops." When I asked my dad what this meant, he said it simply meant they served everything.
On the ride to the diner from our house, we had all piled into my father's big black Cadillac Sedan DeVille--a company car, which was one of the few benefits he received as a salesman and manager at Mitchell Cadillac. The trip out to Queens was a half hour--or with traffic, half a day--and even with the big leather couch that was the sedan's backseat the drive always seemed to take forever.

We lived in Huntington (one of the larger towns on the north shore of Long Island) between extremely nice neighborhoods situated on Huntington Bay and the housing projects that were scattered throughout the south side of town. We were solidly in the middle in a two-story white house with blue shutters framing the five bedroom windows on the top floor, four decorative pillars standing stalwartly but pointlessly in front, and a wooden fence stretching out on both sides. It wasn't a particularly big house, just four bedrooms and one and a half bathrooms for the six of us. But we had other things, like a large yard on the corner of the cul-de-sac and a pool.

While my father backed out of our driveway--right arm on my mother's headrest, slowly over the bump at the end of the driveway--a round robin of arguing, an accepted form of communication in my family, had started. My dad knew that he'd either have to let Poppy down or sacrifice one of his young. We all knew this and each of us was fighting for the best way to handle the situation. During one of the few quiet moments, I put my two cents in. "I'll work for Poppy." The second or third time I said it, they heard.

"Like hell you will," was all my mother said and we all sat in a tense but quiet eye of the storm for the rest of the ride. Even though the "schlepping" (as my mother described it) didn't sound like a pleasant thing, it would just be on weekends and I wanted the job. I was always excited about going to the diner. Besides the fact that Poppy made us whatever we wanted, there was something I loved about the smell of the place and the way it always seemed to be in motion.

From the outside, Olympia was a squat, square building with four large front windows bordered on all sides by panels of chrome. Inside, Olympia's dining room had a white tile floor and an L-shaped row of red vinyl booths. There were only nine booths and as many seats at the counter bar. Poppy worked as the short-order cook behind the bar and on most days Aunt Bessie was the only waitress. Our booth was in the corner across from the griddle.

As soon as we sat down that day, Mike went right to work. As always, he ordered the biggest thing he could--this time a double hamburger with fries. For such a skinny kid, he was a phenomenal eater. Jen sat quietly waiting for her ziti. She no longer ordered, since Poppy knew what she wanted. My mother studied the menu that she must have known by heart, even though she was certainly going to order either a salad or chicken.

My father was talking with Aunt Bessie while she waited for the rest of us to order. Without losing focus on what my dad was saying, she took a pencil out from behind her ear and jotted everyone's order down. She had dark olive skin and a loose cloud of curly black hair.

"Up!" my grandfather called out, followed by a bang on the counter with the palm of his hand, and Aunt Bessie went for the plates. He glared at her as she picked up the plates. While she was busy serving the couple sitting at the table closest to the front door, I watched my grandfather working on our burgers and Dad's steak. The sizzle of the meat on the griddle was just barely audible from where we sat, but we had a good view and I watched a lot of the cooking.

All of the prep work and the heavy cooking was done in the back, but the short-order cooking was done in the front, right behind the counter. There were only a few feet separating the griddle from the countertop, which was nearly as long as the dining room.

While we were still eating, Poppy came over to the table. He had on a white button-down shirt with a large flat collar whose points reached almost to his shoulders. His head was round and bald--except for a gray fringe from ear to ear. His square chin was flat and didn't jut out as far as his boxer's nose. When he smiled, two and sometimes three creases would emerge in his cheeks, as though it was a great strain. He wasn't smiling at that moment.

I was looking at Poppy, but he was staring at my brother Andy. Then my father pointed to me (with my burger in my mouth but ears wide open) and said, "Doug can start coming in." A chain of emotions instantly erupted at the table. My mother, who had been overruled, was red with anger. I was, of course, excited. And everyone else seemed relieved.

My grandfather paused. He ran his hand through the messy white hair on the back of his head. I was the only one looking at him while he decided which of us could replace the guy he fired that morning. Poppy was still watching Andy, who was swirling his spoon in his rice pudding, when he said, "Can he lift the potatoes?" He thought some more. Then finally looking my way, he said, "The rebel." That's what he sometimes called me. I was told that it was because when I was very young I did whatever I wanted. "He'll ride with the Turk," he said, looking back toward my father.