Six AM Cinema: Big Al's Pizzeria

A note to readers.  When I ported this story over to my blog from my Imac's word processing  program, the embedded formatting commands were not common to Google's Blog-spot.  Thus the wording is cut up and mis-spaced.  You kind of have to read it like an e.e. cummings poem.  Sorry about that but I'm not about to re-type the whole thing.  Mickey da Mayor


     When I pick a movie from my NetFlix "My List" I know that something about the description of the movie on the NetFlix web site intrigued me.  NetFlix has done their micro-marketing job pretty well.  They know from my past selections what I'll probably like.  But when I sit down in the early morning darkness with my mug of English breakfast tea and my morning cigarette, the movie I select sometimes doesn't work out.  As my friend Davey says:  Some days chickens...Some days feathers.  This morning I was favored with a big fat tasty chicken.

The movie is called "Today's Special". Our protagonist is played by Aasif Mandvian Indian actor and comedian who is well known to any of you "Daily Show with 
John Stewart" fans. I'd always thought of him as one of Stewart's "funny-man-
side-kicks". As a big fan of the Daily Show, I was rooting for a good performance 

from Aasif in this movie. He didn't disappoint. Short plot  summary: Aasif is a 

sous chef in a chi chi restaurant in New York. He gets passed over for a 

chef position; quits his job and decides to go to Paris to apprentice there and 

hopefully find the epicurean "magic" that his boss says he lacks.  

His dad runs a small, tired "Tandoori Palace" in a funky part of Queens. The dad gets a heart attack and Aasif must take over the family biz. The taxi driver 

who takes him to Queens is a talkative fellow. He is also Indian. He finds out thatAasif is a sous chef and starts telling an exasperated Aasif that he also used to bea cook in a very reputable restaurant in Mumbai. "I cooked for a huge banquet 

that was hosted by Indira Ghandi. She liked the food so much, she came back 

the next day and brought all her friends. She even came back to the kitchen and 

congratulated me. I have a picture with her in my home." Aasif, who is preoc-

cupied with the challenge of saving his father's failing restaurant doesn't want to 

hear about how a taxi driver in New York used to be a fantastic chef. As the taxi 

driver, Akhbar, lets him out at the restaurant he gives him his card. Akhbar tells 

Aasif not to worry: "Despair is the solace of fools".

Well, the "Tandoori Palace" is nothing more than an Indian greasy spoon.  

The cook has a huge red beard. He chews tobacco and spits into a cup that sits on the food prep table. To say he is indifferent about his job is to give him too 

much credit. You hear horror stories in the news sometimes about workers in the kitchen doing unspeakable things to the food just to spite the diners. This guy is 

just one step up from them. Aasif, of course, is horrified at the state of the

kitchen and quickly realizes why the family business is failing. He remembers the card that the taxi driver gave him.  He goes to see him at his house. There he's 

amazed to see pictures of this guy in a chef's uniform with the Queen of England, Indira Ghandi and other notables. Slowly, through the movie, Aasif realizes he 

has inadvertently rubbed the magic lamp and Akhbar is the genie who could save the restaurant. Like in the movie "Like Water for Chocolate", Akhbar's cooking is

transformative. The place gets three stars from the New York Times restaurant 

critic and the people are soon lining up around the block to get in. Amusing and moving hi-jinks ensue along the way but, of course, they save the restaurant, 

Aasif gets the girl, and they all live happily ever after. Even the dad with the heartattack...  

I'm now going to segue into one of my own restaurant cook misadventures.  

Now would be a good time for the less tenacious of you to bail out...  

When I saw the kitchen, I was instantly transported back to my first cooking 

job at Big Al's  Pizzeria in Mountain View. It was probably '72 and I was living in arented room at Stanford in one of the less successful frat houses (plenty of empty rooms available). One of my frat brothers (Hans Carstenson--Kirk; can you Cc 

him? I'd love to have Hans's e-mail address) had loaned me his Ducati motor-

cycle. I was at sixes and sevens at that point in my life and I just needed a

job, any job. I rode up and down the El Camino Real looking for restaurant work. I had some previous experience, having toiled at a steak and lobster joint in 

various capacities. Unfortunately, times were tough back then and I was shown 

the door at every establishment I called on, until I got to "Big Al's Pizzeria". I went

into this cavernous dining room/bar. There were very few patrons in the joint.  

"Hi", I said to the bartender, "I'm here to see Al Martin about a job in the 

kitchen." Well, "Big Al" took a liking to me, for some reason, and put me to work.

"We make our pizza dough right here in the back of the kitchen." Al explained, 
"Flour, sugar, water, salt and a block of Fleischman's yeast. We mix it up in this 
industrial mixer (I could almost fit in the bowl), we let it rise in the walk-in fridge, 
then we punch it down; let it rise once more; punch it down again; then we roll the dough out on this machine. Then we cut it into circles with these cutters, small, 
medium and large. We use this large paint brush to paint the sauce on the pie. We make our own sauce too. The condiments we get in large cans from Sexton Food Company; diced onions, diced green peppers, chopped olives, shrimp, pepperoni etc. The condiments are ready to go right into the bins on this island 
counter here. The rotating pizza oven is on your left; the takeout window is on theright.  The condiment table is in the middle. That way the customers can see you make the pizza. None of this frozen crap for us. We make pies from scratch!...
except, uh, for the condiments. You take delivery every Thursday morning for thecooking supplies. The delivery guy's name is Tony. Great guy. He used to work here but he's got himself a sweet new gig. The boss gave him the best route 

here on El Camino. You'll like him."

Come Thursday morning, I hear the "Alum Rock Food Co." truck rumble up 

to the back door. Out pops this classic Italian guy. By which I mean as in the 

Soprano's "Bada Bing" club. He gives me a perfunctory handshake and a nod of the head and heads right past me into the kitchen. The head waitress is standing there with a big smile and open arms. "Tony, baby, c'mer you!"  And  with that 

Tony strides over and takes our waitress, Sophia, in his arms and they start 

making out right there, next to the condiments.  

Now, Sophy is engaged to Alex, the manager; who's good buddies with Tony. "So", I'm thinking to myself, "The food guy is boinking his good buddy's engaged 

girlfriend, our waitress. Good buddy pizza parlor manager is obviously clueless tothis kitchen canoodling. Meanwhile the big boss man, Al, is trying to sell rotating pizza ovens to restaurants all over. His buddy, who "repped" the oven makers, 

offered a sales proposition where Al would be this 'Willy Loman' traveling sales-

man, dragging around a rotating pizza oven, trying to convince skeptical restaur-

ant owners to take a flyer on this amazing new pizza oven that rotates, providing a superior cooked pie. This should be an interesting gig..."

So Al's back in the restaurant now after a tragi-comic sales trip to the casino's etc. at Tahoe's tacky south shore. He's talking to the oven rep buddy who sent him out. Turns out that sometimes the door doesn't work right. During one forget-

table sales demo, Al's demonstrating the oven for some assistant manager, in 

charge of the kitchen at one of the big casinos. As he opens the oven door to 

take the finished pie out, the door falls off. He didn't make the sale, or any sales 

on this trip. Which was a big shame for all of us working there because, Big Al's 

day had, unfortunately, come and gone and the restaurant was running on fumes.  

Big Al was close to being tapped out and that made for a nervous staff.  

Especially the new help, me. Every Friday at the end of the shift we raided the till for our pay. The checks that were handed to us were no good. We were told to 

take out of the till the amount written on the paycheck. Think fumble at a 

football game...

One time, the "other" cook on duty with me was taking a finished pie out of 

the oven. The oven is three rotating round metal discs. When you put the pie in, 

first you scatter some corn meal so the pie won't stick. When it's done you slide 

the pie onto this flat long handled shovel. You do a 180 and transfer the pie to thetake-out box or the metal tray if its in-house. So, anyway, it's a typical Saturday 

night when the joint finally sees some life. There's three of us back there whip-

ping up the pies and putting out the other stuff on the menu. Lasagna, spaghetti with meatballs, ravioli, the usual stuff. All of which we made ourselves.

The kitchen floor is a mess of spilled pizza sauce, flour and smashed condi-

ments; probably a few cigarette butts; who knows...maybe some spit... So as my fellow "chef" is doing the 180 to transfer the pie to the box for the customers wait-

ing at the take out window. The corn meal makes pie slide off the shovel and it 

lands on the floor, right side up. Fellow chef quickly bends down and slides the 

pizza back on the shovel. Since he's behind the condiment counter, the

customers can't see that he dropped it. "Oops! Almost dropped it! Here ya go, 

folks! Just brush the corn meal off the bottom before you eat it."

Big Al's Italian Restaurant and Pizzeria, where everything is home-made and the paychecks are made out of rubber. They're not making 'em like that anymore...I hope. To those of you who made it this far, I congratulate you for your tenacity.  

L&K, Mickey da Mayor of Happy Acres