Accidental Chef is a sobering account of what it's really like to be a professional chef, not the glamorized, sugar-coated depictions we see on cable television. This book offers a glimpse of what it really like to work in a hotel patry shop and a busy restaurant. When you read Accidental Chef you can't help feeling that you right there with Charles in the kitchen. Through his vivid descriptions you'll be able to imagine the sights, sounds and smells of a real kitchen. Accidental Chef puts a real face on the hospitality industry in America. Charles reveals many of the unsavory aspects of the hotel and restaurant business. For example, he relates true life stories about how our food supply isn't always as sanitary as we might believe. You'll get an idea of just how prevalent drug abuse and sex are in the food world. Through Accidental Chef, Charles also shares some of stories of the colorful characters he's worked with thoughout his long career. He illusrtates how professioanl cooking attracts a variety of characters. Charles introduces you to some of the bizarre people he's worked with. In his own words, Charles gives us the captivating story of how he abandoned a prosperous career in hospital adminstration to become a chef in New Orleans. It's an inspiring story for those who are disenchanted with their career, but are afraid of the risks of a career transition. Above all, Charles reveals the irrepressable determination and genuine love of cooking that made his success possible.

Accidental Chef

An Insider's View of Professional CookingBy Charles Oppman

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2011 Chef Charles Oppman
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4634-1471-9

Contents

Preface..........................................................ixIntroduction.....................................................xvii1 Home Schooled.................................................12 Accidental Chef...............................................143 The Big Easy..................................................284 Blackened Blues...............................................455 Soul Kitchen..................................................576 Happiness is a Warm Bun.......................................657 Oh Chef! My Chef!.............................................788 Requiem for a Café.......................................949 The Restaurant World According to America.....................11910 Fool Network..................................................15011 A Cook Book...................................................165Appendix A.......................................................199Appendix B.......................................................240Appendix C.......................................................298Appendix D.......................................................309Acknowledgements.................................................327Selected Bibliography............................................329

Chapter One

Home Schooled

"I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage."

Erma Bombeck

I WAS BORN in 1949, the sixth child in a family that would become eight. For the first year of my life we lived in a low-income housing project whose austere brick structures looked more like military barracks than blocks of flats. Our parents eked a hardscrabble life; too many mouths to feed with too little money. My father did what he could; truck driver, welder, electrician. Our mother did her level best to make ends meet with scant resources. In those days there was no food stamp program; parents were responsible to feed their own or they didn't eat. Our mother bought potatoes by the hundred pound sack, beef, pork and poultry were luxuries. When we could afford it, our mother would send one of my brothers to the poulterer to fetch a couple of freshly-killed chickens. She wouldn't just roast the birds; that would be too extravagant. She boiled them first to make chicken soup and matzo balls; that would fill more bellies. She learned this quintessential Jewish soup from my father's mother, a Jewess who emigrated from Hungary circa 1913. As was the custom in those days, my grandparents' marriage was prearranged.

From Hard Work to Hard Times

EFFECTIVELY A SUBURB of Chicago, Gary, Indiana was once the beating heart of the nation's industrial heartland. In its heyday Gary was one of the most prolific steel manufacturing centers in the world. In tandem with Pittsburgh, Gary produced the steel required to build the armaments needed to defeat Nazi Germany. It's questionable that either city could have produced enough steel on its own to get America through the war effort. More recently, Gary is notable for its favorite son, Michael Jackson, and his charming family. The Jacksons escaped from Gary in the 1970s and never looked back. Can't say as I blame them; Gary has been a city in decline since the late 1960s. It's a classic example of urban decay American-style and a deep source of embarrassment and sadness for those of us who grew up in Gary. We remember our city as a vibrant and prosperous blue-collar community. Gary was a wonderful place to grow up.

Gary was created in 1906, as a company town for U.S. Steel, providing a constant supply of labor to work its Bessemer furnaces and rolling mills. After the WWII, Gary and its neighboring communities boomed—East Chicago, Hammond and Whiting. Unemployment wasn't something we ever discussed because it was never much of an issue. There were occasional lay-offs, but it was always temporary, the mills always rebounded. After high school you were expected to work in the steel mills. Everybody did. It was only natural. Our fathers and grandfathers worked in the mills. "If U.S. Steel was good enough for my generation then U.S. Steel is good enough for you," was a constant refrain throughout my childhood. It wasn't just the native Garyites who worked the mills, so did the immigrants and migrants. For thousands of immigrants from war-torn Europe, Gary represented a new start; for Americans from the Deep South, Gary offered the promise of a better life. Blacks flocked to Northwest Indiana where the mills represented opportunities at good-paying jobs. But they offered something more; a chance to escape the vestiges of the oppressive Jim Crow past. The mills were color blind; if a man was willing to work he could find work in the mills.

Gary's fortunes have risen and fallen with those of the steel industry. When the mills were hiring—and the mills were almost always hiring during my childhood—few were unemployed. All through my youth, working men could depend on the mills for a job, but that all began to change in the early 1970s when Gary entered a spiral of decline brought on by growing overseas competition in the steel and auto industries. This downturn caused the steel manufacturers—with U.S. Steel being the main one—to lay off workers in droves. Unemployment brought with it social ills. Crime increased, including rampant drug use and trade in illegal drugs. Gary's first black mayor, Richard Hatcher, was an unmitigated disaster. Hatcher ushered in an era of unprecedented corruption, incompetence and malfeasance by city officials. Seeing their city crumble before their eyes, long-time residents fled to surrounding suburbs or left the area entirely for better employment opportunities.

U.S. Steel continues to be one of the world's major steel producers, but with only a fraction of its former workforce. While Gary has failed to reestablish a manufacturing base since its population peak, several casinos opened on the shores of Lake Michigan in the 1990s. Today, Gary faces enormous difficulties, staggering unemployment, chronic economic problems and perennially one of the nation's highest crime rates. For more than forty years Gary's downtown area has slid into a state of irreversible decrepitude. Businesses that once thrived have been boarded up for decades. Where a generation ago there was always hope for a brighter future, now there is only hopeless despair. Gary, Indiana has gone from hard work to hard times.

Home Is Where the Hearth Is

WHAT NOSTALGIA I have about my youth was largely due to the wonderful foods to which I was exposed. Northwest Indiana was a true melting pot. Immigrants brought their culture and cuisine of their native lands. Immigrants discovered dishes they'd only heard about, but never sampled. Greeks and Serbs grew partial to tamales and tostadas while Mexicans developed a taste for gyros and spit-roasted lamb. Gastronomic diversity is a prerequisite to becoming a well-rounded chef. I was exposed to a veritable smorgasbord of ethnic dishes from an early age—Polish, Mexican, Greek, Puerto Rican, Croatian and Serbian. Being exposed to these cuisines during my formative years would have a lasting impact and prove invaluable throughout my culinary career.

My own family's Canadian and European culinary traditions would have an...