Another thread, another chapter in my future memoir. I had reached the end of my string in DC by the spring of 2001. I was managing a trattoria in Cleveland Park, across from the Uptown theatre, & going nowhere professionally.
My National Guard career, such as it was, was hindered by a good-ol'-boy network that protected its own. I hadn't made any friends by flagging the son-in-law of a higher-up for failing his APFT, when everyone before me had just passed his tubby ass with a wink.
I had recently broken up with a woman who'd cheated on me while I was deployed with the Guard. I found out the day I returned, when she wasn't there. While I unpacked, in my closet I saw the BDU blouse of a medic I knew from the rear detachment.
Long story short, I drove to brigade, curb stomped the medic, & threw the uniform blouse on his broken face. I got the ring back from her. I think I stayed drunk for a full week. Sometime during that week, I chucked her ring from Key Bridge into the Potomac.
So yeah, it was time for a change. While I was overseas, my mother had written me about her declining health, so I packed everything into my car & moved in with her. I was 27 & trying to figure out where to go from here, what I'd do going forward.
Then one of those cartoon moments where a light bulb pops on above your head. The voice in my head said, you've done everything in the front of the house, & you've got a decent amount saved up, so why not culinary school? Within a month, I was enrolled at @iceculinary.
I had decided to do both their programs, culinary arts & culinary management - the latter, if only to validate what I'd done in my brief management career up to that point. I was truly blessed with instructors in both programs that forced me to expand my culinary horizons.
Day 1, module 1, of culinary arts. The instructor is a blonde woman with spiky hair who wouldn't speak until we'd all settled in & stopped trying to introduce ourselves to each other. Enter @chefanneburrell. Like I said, #blessed.
Parallel to this was the management program, helmed by Steven Zagor & Tony Masiello, both of whom were instrumental in helping me see that I was far more than a washed up former barman. I had done their curriculum before, but had no idea of any of the underpinning elements.
Anne had one hell of a motley crew in our class. 2/3 of them were career changers. 1/3 of us were/are restaurant lifers. The late Adam Devlet, who would later stand as my groomsman, was a fellow lifer. There was a dumb-as-bricks Southie who drove (what else?) a 10-yr-old Mustang.
Nick was a Russian who talked & drank & smoked like a Russian Шестёрка (Shestyorka, or mob underling) from Brighton Beach. But goddamn it, that rooskie could cook. There was "Carlton," which was our snide nickname for a very kind black man who'd been a financial planner.
And then my crush from culinary school, Sohui Kim, now the proprietor & chef of several Brooklyn restaurants, first @goodforkredhook & most recently @gageandtollner. Nothing happened, and in retrospect, more's the pity.
Then Pat, an ex-convict so winsome that you honestly wouldn't need to worry if your daughter went out with him, the abandoned son of a minor Hell's Kitchen Irish mob family, & full of graphic stories from his recent stint at Riker's Island.
Needless to say, with a disparate crew like this, we had some laughs in class. I became, by default, the pit boss when it came to clean up as class ended. At heart, I was still an NCO. Still am. I had more Texas in my accent back then, & it was always hilarious to watch people's
reactions when I spoke. Especially when I had to raise my voice to be heard above the din of 20 culinary students doing 20 different things during cleanup. I secretly suspect that Chef Anne didn't mind having me around, if only for this.
We had other chef instructors, most notably Ted Siegel, whose experience cooking for Alice Waters was seen like this by most of us.
We learned together. We drank & caroused together. After 9/11, & after I returned after working on the pile, we mourned together. There wasn't a day that went by back then, when I couldn't turn on my phone to find another worried voice mail from a classmate.
I still have my proposed menu for Chef Ted's module, which 19 years later, I'm still proud to say he'd be happy to cook with me. I still have (but hardly use) the knives that the school issued to me. I still use the knife skills I learned there.
I still flip the contents of a saute pan with the facility that earned me wondering looks from classmates, but to which I'd reply, "I've been working in restaurants for a while already, it's kind of osmosis at this point."
The epilogue to this story is here appafortwo.wordpress.com/2019/10/09/ano… I returned to a management role in the front of the house by mid-2002, but that's another story.
The aforementioned Adam Devlet, gods rest him, is the one kneeling in this photo. Goddamn, I miss cooking with him & picking fresh herbs from his garden in Asbury Park. 
Anyhoo, that’s how I wound up as a school trained cook, though not yet someone who could call himself a chef.
Here endeth the lesson.
Here endeth the lesson.
