It all started six weeks or so ago, when Zak and I were in Columbus doing errands, we drove into one of the seemingly endless strip mall parking lots that dot Sawmill Road. Zak wanted to visit the tobacco shop in this shopping center, and I was just going along. But, as we walked, my Curry Sense went off.

Okay, let me explain Curry Sense. I don’t have Spidey Sense, because I haven’t been bitten by a radioactive spider, and would never go clambering around in a lycra bodysuit, even if I had. But I do have an unerring ability to be able to feel the proximity of a delicious curry. Even if it is out of sight and I can’t smell it, something subliminal prickles in my mind and causes me to look around my environment, and nine times out of ten, there is Indian food nearby.

And lo and behold–just down the way from the tobacconist’s was an Indian restaurant that hadn’t been there before. Of course, even though we had just eaten and we needed to leave town so we could drive back to Athens in time to pick Kat up from preschool, I glanced in. And saw, to my delight, a table full of Indian ladies in saris lunching happily next to another table filled with Indian folks. I knew then, without even getting a whiff of a curry leaf, that this was going to be a good restaurant.

See–I have never in my life been steered wrongly about any ethnic restaurant when I see a majority of its patrons are of the same ethnicity as the cuisine being served. When we were in San Francisco years and years ago, and were wandering around in Chinatown, when we got hungry, Zak and I looked for restaurants where everyone was Chinese-American. And if they were speaking Chinese, so much the better–and lo and behold–in each of those establishments, the food was out of this world amazing and we could order stuff that you seldom see on most American Chinese restaurant menus.

I judge Indian restaurants the same way, as well as Japanese and Thai, and I have never been led astray. Doesn’t matter where in the US we are, my system has always worked.

So, I nudged Zak, pointed the restaurant, which had a banner over their window reading, “Reethika,” out to him and he said, “Well, you have to come back to Columbus next week for your appointment, so your assignment is to scope the place out for us.”

And that is what I did.

Except, I hadn’t looked at the business hours so I was unaware that by the time I was out of my appointment, that the restaurant had closed up in order to prepare for the dinner hours. So, I showed up at the door, saw a couple of tables full of Indian folks eating, and I walked right in to immediately realize my mistake, for everyone looked up and blinked at me. I saw that these were the restaurant employees eating their midday meal, and the apologies bubbled up from me–because I know exactly how hungry restaurant staff are between lunch and dinner shifts and how tired they are of looking at people.

But as I started backpedaling, embarrassed, Mr. Reddy, one of the owners, stood up, and shook his head, motioning me to a table. “Sit, sit,” he said, “We have plenty.”

So, I sat, and was astonished at the absolute graciousness and genuine friendliness with which I was served by Mr. Reddy and his daughter for whom they had named the restaurant. They heated up and brought me some of everything from the buffet, which was a huge amount of food, and were very attentive to me, and asked how I liked the food, because the chef, Mrs. Reddy, who was seated at one of the tables with some of the employees, having her own lunch, spiced the dishes to their taste. Which meant the flavors were complex and fresh and redolent of curry leaves, cardamom, cinnamon and chilies.

Which is to say, the food was absolutely divine. The food is home-style non-vegetarian South Indian dishes, specifically in the style of Hyderabad. Completely different in flavor, aroma and style to the typical North Indian dishes found on most Indian restaurants in the US, the food made me nearly weep with joy.

Mrs. Reddy, who had been watching me off and on as I ate, asked me if I lived in Columbus, and I shook my head and said no, but that I came to the city every Tuesday for a standing appointment. She smiled broadly and said quite confidently, “Then we will see you every Tuesday.”

That wasn’t bravado talking–she was absolutely right. I have eaten lunch there nearly every Tuesday for the past month. I have yet to have a dish I have not liked. The rasam–a thin, peppery soup based on lentils and vegetables–is amazing, and never fails to clear my sinuses. Some of her curries are redolent of cardamom, so fragrant that I was nearly carried away on a cloud of sweetly spicy aroma. Others, like her “Green Chicken”, which I had today, are so complex and yet simple, it is hard to pin down exactly what is in them. (And for me, this is a rarity–I can nearly always untangle the intricate flavors of most dishes in any Indian restaurant. Not at Reethika.)

The chapati–they were the best I have ever eaten. They have a unique flavor that I can neither describe, nor put my finger on what it could be. The bread was brought out to me fresh and hot from the griddle and it was chewy and tender at the same time and fragrant with a toasty wheat flavor that was reminiscent of roasted almonds.

I stood up to pay, and Reethika shook her head and said, “But you haven’t had dessert yet, sit back down, I’ll bring it to you!”

And, even though I was stuffed to the gills with some of the best Indian food ever, I was presented with a warm bowl of kheer. Which was thicker and creamier than the kheer I am used to, but it was so good! Even though I thought I might burst, I scraped the bowl clean, and as I waddled up to the counter to pay, I thanked everyone profusely for their generosity and friendliness. I promised to come back the next Tuesday, this time before they closed and I did. And have returned every Tuesday (plus an extra Thursday with Zak) up to and including today.

Which brings us to the subject of today.

I showed up at ten minutes after eleven in the morning, just after they regularly open. The door was locked, but one of the smiling servers opened the door and said, “We are not opening for lunch today, but come in.”

And there were Mr. and Mrs. Reddy, waving me in. It seems that the steam table had refused to work that morning, so they couldn’t set up their buffet. But, they would not turn me away unfed–I was ushered to a seat, where a large bowl of rice was placed before me. As I waited, a string of little bowls of green chicken, rasam and egg curry were brought to me, as well as a cup of chai masala so that I could warm up. (It was beastly cold in Columbus–about twenty two degrees with ten and twenty mile an hour winds. Ugh.)

Mrs. Reddy came and asked how I liked everything, and I told her that her green chicken was superb, and that if it wouldn’t be considered to be rude, I’d have licked the bowl. She then promptly whisked away the empty bowl, refilled it with green chicken and sat it down before me and watched with satisfaction as I ate it gleefully. We chatted about rasam–she was happy to find that I knew what it was–apparently most Americans don’t–and I thanked her profusely for letting me come in for lunch even though they were closed, not once, but twice.

She smiled went back to the kitchen.

When I went to pay at the counter, they didn’t even charge for the full buffet, because, as they said, I had not eaten the full buffet. I left a generous tip.

I am still mightily impressed with the warmth and graciousness of the Reddy family at Reethika, and I suspect I always will be. They have treated me as a guest, as if I were in their home, not a restaurant, and that kind of care is rare these days. I appreciate it greatly, and want others to appreciate it, too.

And, of course, I want you to try Mrs. Reddy’s wonderful curries. Especially the green chicken.

So, I will end my “not really a restaurant review” post with the address and telephone number of Reethika in Columbus, though you can get the same information, including the hours they are open, by clicking on the link above.

Reethika Indian Restaurant
2661 Federated Blvd
Columbus OH 43017
614-659-0889

It seems that anyone who can cook competently, whether at home or under the scrutiny of television cameras, is now called a chef, either by himself or by others.

I think it is time to stop indiscriminately using the word and return to its original context: that of a professional kitchen.

Chef is actually the shortened form of the French term, “chef de cuisine,” which is defined quite simply as the “head of the kitchen,” and refers precisely to a professional cook who manages all facets of a professional kitchen. Whether that kitchen is large or small and in a restaurant, a hotel, a cruise ship, The White House, an in-house catering facility or Disneyland doesn’t matter. What matters is that it is a professional kitchen, and as such is one that is run, in the best of cases, like the military.

A home cook should never be referred to seriously as a chef.

Nor should a cooking instructor.

Or a food writer.

Or a food blogger.

Or a line cook.

Or a television personality–unless of course, the home cook, cooking instructor, food writer, food blogger, line cook, or television personality have actually done time as the head of a professional kitchen somewhere.

OK–I will cut some slack here. If an individual has worked as a sous chef, that is, as an under-chef who does the job of the chef or executive chef, when the exec is out of the kitchen, then they can be called chef.

But otherwise, no. Sorry. Nope. Nada. Zip.

If you have not run a professional kitchen, you are not a chef.

Period.

End. Of. Story.

So what do I mean by “run” a professional kitchen? What is it that a chef does that home cooks, cooking instructors, food writers, food bloggers, line cooks and television personalities do not do?

They don’t create menus, cost out each menu item so that accurate prices can be assigned to them, set up pantries, understand and effectively run and repair arcane kitchen equipment, much of which is dangerous to life and limb, deal with multiple purveyors, keep track of inventory, order foodstuffs, hire and train staff, create plate presentation, devise and cook off-menu specials, expedite during service, deal with cranky dining room staff, cook and act as both den mother and field marshal at the same time.

In short, these folks, who all may be wonderful cooks and great people, don’t run professional kitchens.

Which is why they shouldn’t be called chefs.

They should be called home cooks, cooking instructors, food writers, food bloggers, line cooks and television personalities. (And yes, Rachael Ray is a television personality, but no, she is not a chef. You will notice that she does not call herself a chef. Neither does Nigella Lawson, another food writer and television personality.)

And there is nothing wrong with that. Home cooks, cooking instructors, food writers, food bloggers, line cooks and television personalities are all fine in their own rights and have their own unique sets of skills and experiences which are just as interesting and fascinating as the skill sets of a chef.

The problem is, there is a new aura of prestige that surrounds the idea of a chef these days, that is probably the result of too much exposure to The Food Network. Although, frankly, Anthony Bourdain, as much as he would hate to admit it, probably has to carry a tiny bit of the blame for this recent fascination with the people food-obsessed enough to want to spend twelve hours or more a day in a cramped, crowded inferno, producing delicious food for throngs of diners.

As much as Bourdain has tried his best to paint the life of a chef as lonely, gritty, dirty, grueling, physically and emotionally dangerous and usually not particularly monetarily rewarding, the fact is, lots of folks find his descriptions of chefs as tough, mean, hard-drinking, substance-using, womanizing he-men alluring.

And when I say folks, I mean, both men and women are fascinated by the ideal of a chef as a pirate captain, a bad boy, a rock star,and an iron-fisted gunslinger all rolled into one.

And it seems that everyone wants to be a chef these days.

So, how do you get to be a chef?

You run a professional kitchen.

OK, so how do you get to run a professional kitchen? I mean, you go to culinary school, right?

Sometimes. That is how Bourdain did it. And Emeril Lagasse. And Cat Cora. And Dean Fearing. And David Chang. And Eric Ripert. And Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger.

But, you know, going to culinary school does not make you a chef, as any of the folks I just listed above will tell you. And, as a culinary school graduate, I can tell you the same thing–just because you graduated from culinary school, doesn’t mean you emerge from your student chrysalis, toque unfurling and whisk in hand as a chef. It just means that you graduated from culinary school with a degree that may or may not help you get a job in a professional kitchen at a level slightly above that of dishwasher, prep cook or commis. (And then again, in some kitchens, a culinary school grad may well start down at the bottom anyway. It depends on the chef running the kitchen.)

Look at it this way. Michael Ruhlman graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, but he doesn’t call himself a chef.

He calls himself a food writer, which is what he is–and a damned fine one at that, one who has collaborated with chefs such as Thomas Keller on cookbooks.

And yes, Ruhlman can throw down and cook up a magnificent feast, but as he and I both know, and as everyone else should know, that doesn’t make him a chef.

Ruhlman knows he isn’t a chef–because he sees what chefs like Keller do and while he understands the language that Keller speaks, and he can explicate Keller’s techniques and recipes in prose that is both evocative and practically accessible, he isn’t like Keller.

Keller does things that are beyond Ruhlman’s ken and that is fine, because the world needs both its Thomas Kellers and its Michael Ruhlmans.

Let’s look at another example: Julia Child.

A graduate of Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, Child became a fine cook under the tutelage of Master Chef Max Bugnard and other master chefs. She went on to become one of the best cookbook writers and cooking instructors in the world and probably the most iconic television cooking personality ever.

But she never ran a professional kitchen.

And so, even though her first television series was entitled “The French Chef,” (the title wasn’t her idea, by the way) she never considered herself to be a chef, because she knew and respected what that title truly meant.

So, culinary school alone does not a chef make.

It is culinary school plus practical experience that makes a chef.

Or, if you want to kick it old-school and do it the way it was in the old days, you can just skip school and go straight for the practical experience by starting at the bottom of the kitchen hierarchy (as a dishwasher, prep cook or commis) and clawing your way up to the top.

That’s how Marco Pierre White, Thomas Keller, Cristeta Comerford, Jeremiah Tower, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Judy Rodgers and Lidia Bastianich all became chefs.

Or, you could grow up in a family of great professional cooks and spend your childhood in the kitchen of family-owned restaurants, working as a dishwasher and prep cook at an early age while culinary expertise is absorbed directly in your brain as you live, breathe, eat and drink the heady atmosphere of a professional kitchen.

And then, when you grow up, you can decide to open your own restaurant, and continue the family tradition anew.

Which is how Paul Prudhomme became a chef.

Or, you can be like Alice Waters and just up and one day decide to open a restaurant which will become world famous and inspire a cooking style and food movement without much in the way of culinary experience, but she is unique.

The key to becoming a chef–the one commonality in all of these chef’s disparate backgrounds–is experience. Years and years of it. Whether some of it is in the form of culinary school or not, the bulk of this experience takes place in professional kitchens where a cook learns to become a chef by working hands-on, under the supervision of other cooks and chefs.

These experiences do not come instantly. They do not come overnight.

One just does not wake up and become a chef. One does not just decide that one is a chef and start calling oneself a chef.

It is a long, gradual process, one that should be respected by those both within and without the food service industry.

And one way to show that respect is to stop calling every Tom, Dick and Mary who can cook competently on and off camera a chef, and reserve that title for the ones who have put in the time and effort to really become culinary professionals.

Note: The inspiration for this rant came from a commenter on a story last month at The Huffington Post about how Michelle Obama was going to keep the current White House Chef, Cristeta Comerford, as the executive chef.

The commenter in question said that Comerford wasn’t a real chef like Emeril Lagasse, Bobby Flay and Gordon Ramsay, I suppose because she didn’t have a television show.

I got all up in the guy’s face, because it was obvious that he had no idea what being a chef meant, and what a real chef was. To his mind, one was only a real chef if one was famous and had multiple restaurants and television shows and lots of adoring fans out there in TV land. Right. I then decided to write this post, but never got around to it until last night, so here it is.

This little dragon was carved by Morganna last night in the kitchen at Salaam, before our rush of customers came in for dinner. She started playing with her paring knife and a spinach leaf, and ended up essentially tooling it as one would do leather, in order to put the three-dimensional veins on the wings, although she admitted that when she first started working with the spinach, she didn’t have the dragon in mind.

Now, the truth is, I have never seen anyone tool spinach leaves. I am not saying that no one has ever made a garnish from tooled spinach leaves–I just have never seen it done before. And I think it was pretty cool, especially considering that Morganna swears up and down that she doesn’t have patience to make fiddly things like carved garnishes and isn’t into it. (Mind you, she makes tomato lotus blossoms all the time for garnishes at Salaam, and last night asked for me to show her how to make tomato roses, but she doesn’t consider making those to be particularly fiddly.)

For someone who isn’t into doing fiddly stuff, the spinach leaves are pretty fantastic.

After the first spinach leaf was done, she did another, and then decided to carve the dragon out of two thin diagonal slices of seeded cucumber. A paper-thin slice of red bell pepper became the flames and the eye (she cut a hole in the dragon’s face for the eye, and then the pepper showed through when she laid the bell pepper under it.)

A pair of chive leaves made the dragon’s horns, and completed the little carving.

I think it would make a beautiful presentation on a big square black platter with sushi on it–like a dragon roll, perhaps? Of course, we don’t do sushi at Salaam, so I am trying to figure out a context where we could use a pretty vegetable carving like this on one of our platters.

Maybe my readers can come up with an idea?

At Restaurant Salaam, we use a lot of basmati rice; it is the main starch which accompanies our curries, our kofta and dals. Twice, sometimes three times a day, we fill up our large electric rice cooker with basmati and water and in about twenty-five minutes we have perfectly fluffy, steaming hot rice.

Which is wonderful, because cooking it is a no-brainer for all of us; the rice cooker does all of the work.

But sometimes, particularly during the summer months, business is unpredictable, and we will have a large amount of cooked rice left over at the end of a shift.

Even if we were not dealing with rising food prices and food shortages around the world, I am loathe to waste any perfectly edible food, so I am constantly working to come up with new and different ways to use cooked rice.

My new favorite is to make a salad from it, and use it to stuff ripe, juicy local tomatoes.

The version pictured here has feta cheese on top, but the truth is, you could leave that out and have a wonderful vegan entree. Even so, as a vegetarian entree, the rice and tomato salad sold out last Friday night when I ran it as a special–it tasted so good you would never know that I put it together to use up leftover cooked rice.

To make it, I broke up the clumps of rice so that it all fell apart into individual grains, and then seasoned it with chopped raw red bell pepper, scallions, chopped Kalamata olives, Aleppo pepper flakes, finely diced red onion, toasted pine nuts, finely chopped parsley and lots of fresh basil. I also mixed into the dish leftover cold squash and eggplant simmered with onions, garlic, sweet peppers and tomatoes which I chopped roughly in the food processor. (You could use leftover ratatouille for this purpose, or just saute lots of onions and garlic, then add sliced green and red bell peppers. Finally add chunks of eggplants and squash and cook for a few more minutes before adding fresh or canned tomatoes and salt and pepper to taste.)

Then, I seasoned the rice salad with a simple lemon and olive oil vinaigrette, and let it chill.

The tomatoes were large fresh ones that I cored and then cut into quarters by cutting in a cross shape from the top almost all the way to the bottom. That way, the tomatoes fell open in a flower-shape, and that is where I stuffed the rice salad.

To assemble the salad, I used a mixture of baby spinach and romaine lettuce as the base of greens. Over that, I put a generous scoop of the rice salad, which makes a nest for the tomato to rest in–it keeps it from rolling around on the plate. Then, I put the tomato on top, stuffed it with another couple of scoops of rice salad, sprinkled it with feta cheese and then garnished it with a mixture of finely diced green and red bell peppers and red onion, a lemon twist and some chopped basil. I put a little bit of the same lemon olive oil vinagrette that I used in the rice in a cup on the side, and the dish was done.

I was clever and made up a salad to keep on the bar for the servers to carry to each table as a visual example of what the special looked like. The beauty of it is what sold it, and people loved it. It was light, yet still satisfying and was perfect for a hot, humid late-July night. It was also easy to make and a great way to use up rice that might otherwise have gone to waste–something which I hate to see happen.

Local Tomatoes Stuffed With Mediterranean Rice Salad
Ingredients:

Assemble all five salads the same way, and pass remaining vinaigrette for each diner to drizzle over the salad as they choose.

But people seem to have an endless appetite for tales on the myriad sorts of weirdness that restaurant workers are exposed to every day. I guess that Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential whetted everyone’s appetites for true stories of what happens behind the kitchen door in America’s restaurants, and people never seem to grow wearing with hearing of the antics that occur in and around restaurants. Many of the stories are about customers, to be certain, but the genre is not limited to the (rightfully) cranky vent-fests like you find on Waiter Rant, where we learn about the disgusting dining habits and obnoxious entitlement issues that a certain segment of the restaurant-going public feel the need to exhibit every time they sit down in a dining room.

Nor are all of the stories about the after-hours fun and frolic that kitchen staff and front-of-the-house folks get into when the cleaning is done, the lights are off and the doors are locked. As entertaining as those stories are, you don’t need to read my blog to get those–Bourdain’s writing on the subject is the standard–and my own experiences of the sort are not quite so fascinating that you need to hear them. (Yeah, when I was a young waitress, I drank a lot, and like the rest of the employees much of my inebriation was courtesy of alcohol filched from the restaurant’s bar. And yeah, I watched a lot of folks take a lot of drugs, but I was a boring little girl and stayed clean of that. As for the sex–I do not kiss and tell, nor do I tell other people’s sexual exploits. Those stories are for them to tell, and none of the stories from my wild and wicked youth are that interesting anyway.)

So, what the hell am I writing about if I am not talking about how awful some diners can be, or the freakishness of the restaurant lifestyle and how it affects the social deviants who live it. (Unlike Bourdain, I don’t think that everyone who works in restaurants is terminally messed up, although I have to say he is right–a large number of us are just a little bit on the, uh, how shall I say it, odd side. Most chefs are control freaks, a lot of line cooks are line cooks because they just cannot make it in a regular 9 to 5 job for whatever reason, savory or unsavory, and a lot of bartenders, servers and front of the house folks do drink a lot–but then, if you had to put up with people snapping their fingers at you to get your attention, and verbally harassing you because the food is just not perfect, or sexually harassing you or laying their hands upon your person because they get the idea that because you serve them food, you are there to cater to their every need–if you had to deal with that, you might well drink a hell of a lot, too.)

(OK. Maybe Bourdain is right. Maybe restaurant people are all bonkers. We’d have to be to put up with the weird shit that happens to us daily.)

So, what am I talking about?

I am talking about The Pantsless Douchebag, from here on out to be known by the initials TPD.

I can hear the “What?” from here. Let me elaborate.

Here’s the deal: Restaurant Salaam is located off of the main street of Athens, down a little brick alley, and you have to step down a set of stairs when you enter the door. We are literally, underground, and when you come in the door, it is like entering another world. There is the aura of some hybrid of a 1920′s speakeasy and a harem straight out of the tales of Scheherazade. And since we serve primarily Middle Eastern, Moroccan and Indian food, it is only natural that in this little place that is filled with beaded curtains, gurgling fountains, jeweled pillows, mirrors and flickering candle lanterns, which is scented with the fragrance of spices from all over the world, we have a belly dancer in on Saturday nights, and sometimes, a live drummer.

Two dancers perform on alternate weeks, and both Anoushka and Leah are gorgeous and graceful, and our customers love them, as do all of the rest of the Salaam family. And I have never seen anyone in our restaurant behave in any way which could be construed as disrespectful to either of them, which is pretty remarkable, because Middle Eastern dance still has a somewhat tawdry reputation among people who do not understand that there is a big difference between it and pole dancing.

In case any readers don’t know this, I am going to state it up front: belly dancers are not sex workers. They are not exotic dancers. They do not take off their clothes as a regular part of their performances. As sexy as Middle Eastern dance is, and as gorgeous as the dancers are, it did not originate as a dance to titillate or excite male viewers. It began as a dance imitating the throes that women go through in childbirth, and originally, it was done by women for other women. And yes, it is a dance that embraces women’s sexual nature, but that doesn’t mean that it is also not art, nor does it mean that there is anything shameful about the dancers who master it.

So, now that I have given you more background on belly dance than you ever thought you’d need, let me tell you about Mr. TPD–remember him?

This past Saturday, it was quiet. Very quiet. Apparently, everyone who was going to eat out that weekend had gone out the night before, and the kitchen staff at Salaam were dying of boredom, and eating bits and pieces of everything in order to pass the time. The dining room staff was equally sad, and when Leah, and my friend Dan, who has been drumming for our dancers off and on for a few weeks, showed up, they were confronted by a nearly empty dining room.

And when Leah danced, even with Dan drumming, she was greeted by a vast round of indifference. (And for a group of people to be indifferent to Leah is amazing to me–she generally has no trouble getting people to pay attention to her.) There was a dance professor from OU who was nice to Leah, and who watched attentively and tipped her well (we put out a tip jar for the dancers on our counter and most of the time they do very well with tips from our customers), but other than that, it was just deadly dull.

I was back in the kitchen when this happened, but apparently, Leah said she used to dance out on the sidewalk at the end of the alley in order to bring in customers, so she and Dan went out to see if they could literally drum up business.

And it seemed to work–two small parties (a two top and a three top) came in, and all was well.

But even as we sent out the appetizers for these tables, I had a bad feeling. A disturbance in the force, I guess you could say. So, I walked out and asked where Leah and Dan were, and was told by Kim that they were outside.

And I just knew I had to go out and check on them.

Just as I walked outside, I saw the door to the bar across the street open, and an entire gaggle of drunk young men staggered out and commenced to goggle and catcall at Leah.

One came across the street as I stepped out of the shadows of the alley and stood at Dan’s shoulder, waiting. This guy danced with Leah, but stayed well out of her personal space. He lifted his shirt and did belly rolls in imitation of her, and even managed a hip roll or two. Sure, he had to show off his nipples, but he was basically just having fun, and didn’t worry Leah or anyone else in the slightest.

But, then, another one started wriggling his way across the street. I noticed instantly that he was barefoot, and glanced down at my Dansko clogs, and filed away that information for possible future use in the back of my brain while I watched him warily.

Unlike the first guy, this one was all up in Leah’s stuff. He, too, raised his shirt, and writhed rather incompetently, while saying such sweet nothings as, “Get wild, baby, get wild, yeah!” Leah kept darting away, while still dancing, and I kept my eye on the other seven guys who were still across the street, watching and calling out encouragement to TPD who kept circling Leah, getting closer and closer. Dan kept playing, although, as he said later, he was ready to whack the guy with his aluminum doumbek if need be.

I stepped closer, just as TPD dropped his pants, and shimmied his hips right up against Leah, all but humping her. Lucky for him, he was both wearing boxers and he did not even brush up against Leah (but that is because she moves fast), because if either of these conditions had not been met, he would have learned to his detriment how fast the Chef in Black can move, and how nasty she can be to drunken assholes who think it is their right to put their hands on a woman without her permission.

At that point, Leah stopped dancing and Dan stopped drumming, and she turned on her heel and walked quickly back to the restaurant, Dan right behind her. As he passed me, I muttered to him, “Get Leah out, I’ll deal with these guys.”

TPD and his more sober friend tried to follow Leah and Dan, but I was between them. He kept calling after Leah, “What do I need to do, baby, what did I do wrong, hey, what happened, I thought you were getting wild!” His friend, the first dancer, the one who had a sense of personal space and decency, said, “Man, I can’t believe you dropped your drawers,” as he picked up said drawers and stalked after him, shaking his head.

I stayed between the two of them and the door, and would not let TPD in the restaurant, even as he tried to follow Leah.

“Can I go in?” he pleaded, “What do I have to do to see more–buy some french fries? Pizza?”

“We have neither,” I answered, as I sized up my possible opponent. I decided quickly that a bare foot crushed under my Dansko clog was my first move, in the case TPD tried to move past me and go into the restaurant. If that did not stop him, I figured an elbow to the undefended gut would make him bend over, putting his chin in line with my knee. (Yes, I have had martial arts training, along with lessons in the quick and dirty art of street fighting.)

TPD did try to get past me to open the door, but I was too fast and kept getting in his way, and I kept him talking. “What do I need to do? I want tog et wild.”

“What you need to do is put on your pants and leave,” I answered calmly, never letting on that his foot was in danger of being broken if he so much as laid one finger on me or that door.

“But I want to see more–do you guys get crazy in there?”

I sighed. “She isn’t a stripper. She is a dancer, but she doesn’t take off her clothes. Not now, not ever, and not in my restaurant. Now, please, put on your pants and go about your business somewhere else.”

He looked crestfallen, and then I realized that he was likely not going to be touching me or the door anytime soon, so I relaxed a notch. His friend kept telling him, “Would you just put your damned pants on–the lady doesn’t want to see your drawers, now take them and put them on, dumbass.”

TPD looked at me pitifully and said, “Can I step in so I can put on my pants?”

I gave him a glare and said, “You took them off on the street, and so as far as I am concerned, you should be able to put them back on in the street, but I will be nice this once.”

I backed into the restaurant, let him duck in, and blocked the stairway. (Leah saw him come in, and got a bit freaked that he was coming after her. My quick thinking daughter/line cook, Morganna, grabbed Leah and hustled her to the back, and said, “You disappear–let Mom deal with him. She won’t let him touch you–trust me.)

He struggled to put on his pants–apparently they come off easier than they go on, and said, “I thought she was getting wild, I’m sorry, I didn’t oh, I, uh, can I come in for dinner?”

I looked down at his bare feet and still pantsless self and said drily, “Not without pants or shoes, you cannot come in and eat dinner. We have standards here.”

He finally got his pants up and before he could step forward, I did, and essentially, got him to back right back out the door into the alley. “Can I please come in?” he asked. “No,” I said. “You don’t have any shoes, and you don’t even know where your shoes are, so why don’t you just run along now and find something else to do with yourself.”

He did finally shuffle off, finally, but his friend stayed behind and apologized for TPD.

It turns out that his friend is a hotel and hospitality major, and had heard how good our food was and had been meaning to come in and eat, but hadn;t yet. When he found out that I made Thai food, particularly on weekends, he asked if he could bring in his buddies with some Thai beer and eat, and I said, “So long as they keep their pants on and their hands to themselves, you are all welcome. But if they lose any clothes or touch one our dancers or servers or are verbally abusive, I and my kitchen crew will come out and ask you to leave, and if you don’t leave for us, the police will come and take you out. Do you understand?”

He smiled, and said, “Yes, Chef. I promise that if I bring my boys in they’ll act like they’ve got manners.”

We shook hands, and I said, “I’ll hold you to that promise.”

He nodded, smiled and went on his way, hopefully to catch up to TPD and teach him a little lesson in how to act.

So, see–these are the kinds of things that make chefs want to go postal.

Now, I can laugh about it–OK, I could laugh about it right afterwards. We all could. Galen, one of my line cooks, shook his head upon hearing the tale and said, “He must have thought it was a strip club. But, shit, he must never have been in a strip club, because if you drop your pants in one, the bouncers are on you so fast you’re on the curb before you can even think of touching your underwear.”

Leah was glad I had come out so if there needed to be a forceful demonstration that TPD wasn’t allowed to touch her, that it didn’t have to be her who landed the blow–she glanced down at her sparkly halter top, bangly belt and swirly skirt and said, “It would really suck to have to get in a brawl dressed like this–and then be in the front page of the newspaper with some drunk guy knocked out at my feet.”

Yeah. And you don’t want to get arrested in a belly dance outfit, either.

So, I told her to leave the forceful explanations of proper behavior to Chef Vader. (That is one of my nicknames in the kitchen, bestowed because I wear all black and sometimes have a rather–forceful tone when I am working. Chefs are control freaks. Remember that.) And it comes from my uncanny intuition of knowing when something is awry, too, as illustrated in this experience.

There are other stories to tell, but I will leave them for another time–I guess I could write a series and call it “The Misadventures of Chef Vader,” or something.

That is, if you want to hear them…