I realized this past week that today marks the one year anniversary that we got my friend, Rich Seigel’s restaurant, La Crepe Nanou, open uptown. We had a skeleton staff because many of the Vietnamese guys had suffered devastating loss from the flood. I ran food, the Paris Hilton job, but also washed dishes. We prided ourselves on having real plates when only 20% of the restaurants were open and using paper. The dishwasher position is the hardest to fill. I washed them all myself on the third day, when the dishwasher broke down. We had about 3 people from the original staff. The rest were friends, like myself, writers, like Eve Trough, from NPR. Mike, who y’all know from Dick and Jennie’s helped us out for a while, along with other cameo appearances by local kitchen celebrities. We had photographers in the kitchen, like Renee Allie who’s photos were included in the NOMA exhibition in May of this year. Patrick who is making his own documentary of his family’s home in MS., which was destroyed. Joe, our utility man from the East who lost everything. One day, Joe just said to me, “you’re for real”. The highest of compliments. And dear Miss Ella, who waded through waste deep water with her mother in the flood and was there, in ankle deep water, washing dishes next to me with her bad knee. All of us had lost something . . . everything.

Much of the wait staff was back, which the customers loved. Melissa wore the gold star for having stayed during the storm and cleaned out the walk-ins while we were all on evacucation. It was nuts. I had no idea what the hell I was doing, but these were my friends who had entertained my ratty little friends late into the night for years. It was payback time. Two or three weeks of duty became five months without blinking.

I was lucky because I worked in the kitchen, where the hardcore camaraderie flourished. I got to wear an apron ! I stole one as a souvenir. Uniquely, I got to spend equal time on the floor. With the apron on, customers assumed I was cooking the food, so I got all the accolades. People gushed with gratefulness at having a familiar place to come home and meet up with their friends and get liquored up and cope. They thanked me, they cried. We saw a few nervous breakdowns, someone peed in their chair, some else got engaged, Ben saved someone from choking, I cut my finger real bad.

At the end of the day, I would fall into bed in my work clothes! If you’ve worked in a kitchen, you know this is a crazy thing to do. But I was cleaning people’s houses out during the day, or cleaning the gutters of Magazine St. or I was at the PRC office and then heading into the restaurant. It’s grueling work. I was so dead at the end of the day. And I posted for y’all too ! And I was hosting the big mainstream media folks in the middle of it all, out of pride for my city. How did I do it? La Crepe saved us too, they fed us. I would have died without the cheese and pate snacks while prepping. Or the filet’s with bernaise sauce. We lived on les pommes frites! We all stayed after work and drank wine together. Geoffrey , who is now suffering through a divorce from his life-long love, is currently working in the test kitchen for the concept restaurant, Dagwood’s. He taught me how to make the crepes, along with lots of other great tips. Customers pined for the fondue, which was missing from the menu. Fondue is not back yet but the french onion soup is there.

Anyway, Gail, who’s story I sent over to the Weather Channel last November, Renee and I are going to the restaurant to eat tonight to mark this great feat. I’m going to bus my own table for old times’ sake.

Many of us have moved on but we’re still tight friends. I am enjoying being back as a professional eater. Patrick is still there on the salad line. Son, one of the original Vietnamese cooks (as in 23 yrs original), is still in the kitchen, he was from day one, back when he had his AK-47 hanging above the back window. Son’s an amazing guy. He has so much energy, he loves to fish. He’s quick to laugh, and he always says, ‘aw! Man!, Shit! when something is very wrong. Recently, his son was shipped to Iraq. We’re all praying for his safe return. He’s a medic.

Son taught us one really funny, Vietnamese (prostitution) phrase, the restaurant kitchen is a man’s world. We still say it with regularity . . . “Love you long time.”

Chest pats to y’all ~ we have come a long way.

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