so as my music aspirations were slowly crumbling, i landed a job at one the best restaurants in the country at the time Square One. Owned by the pragmatic and talented Joyce Goldstein, this restaurant was known for freshness and re-interpreting classic Mediterranean Cuisine through the so called California Cuisine lens. I gained an incredible amount of knowledge and had an incredible time making friendships that last to this day. i rode to sous chef there before moving on to Inverness CA to be co-chef of a little lodge called Manka's.
duting my time at Square One some significant things happened along with the afore mentioned food education in fine dining...i met my future wife to be who was a pastry assistant there. we had a fine friendship for about a year, then eventually fell for each other, i propsed to her on our fifth anniversary after we had moved to Kansas City (more on that later) and we were married in SF in April of 2000.
the second significant thing that happened during that time was i lost a friend, a contemporary and an excellent musician was tragically killed in an auto accident at the age of 26. it was devastating, and aside from my mother's mom passing two years erarlier, i had had no direct contact with death of anyone close to me. luckily, it did bring a lot of people together an we celebrated his life with music, poetry and lots of late night dicussions and philosophical spw on the NATURE OF THINGS. in 2000 i lost another friend to the ravages of alcohol-a second brother to me and one of my closest confidants from my square one days R.I.P. tim! speacking of brothers- i have one bro and one sis both from mom's first marriage and bothe 13 and 10 years older than i respectively. i have a 22 year old niece who just got married last september (my sis's daughter) my sister is currently going through chemo for very early stae breast cancer, and after a round of radiation is expected to be cancer free for years to come!!!
after a strange and bucolic small town experience in Inverness, my wife and i decided to move to Kansas City-her family was there, and, Ironically, my mom had moved there years earlier with her current and final (number 6) husband-well, to a town called sedalia about an hour away from KC. we spent 10 years there cooking, getting into the food scene. i kept playing drums for fun and gigged around off and on with a series of fairly decent popo punk bands. we opened our own cafe and had a fairly successful run for 5 years before economics and some mismanagement on our part led us to sell in '03. we continued to work and began our planning for our eventual return to california. while we were in KC our delightful son was born in 2002-he is our pride and joy, and is growing into an articulate, smart, creative little boy...it was also in kansas city that i met the guy you all know as Dutch MAster-we played in a band together for a little while, and then again years later, and finally i hired him to work in my kitchen for about a year, budget consideration led me let him go, and i believe he is doing graphic art work and working on getting his comic book art...
after our final long winter in KC we finally got our dollars together and loaded up the truck and moved to NAPA CA. where are now gainfully employed, renting a huge house near a feeder creek to the Napa river, and getting ourselves settled in. i am still looking for an executive chef position and hope to find one that fits in next 6 months. the weather is fantastic, i have been to a couple of giants games, ia m enjoying Warriors fever, and overall happy to be back in california...well its off to transfer title to our old eurotrash wagon now..again any questions just fire away and i'll try to get to them when i can.
thank you all for your patience
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THINK, it ain't Illegal YET--g clinton
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro--HST r.i.p.
80 percent of Republicans are just Democrats
who don't know what's going on--rfk jr.
Jacopo_Belbo made some Lasogna. ----anon
