Commando Team

MEET PEPPER STEBBINS

I am very excited about being a part of the Culinary Commando team. I thought for my first piece I would lightly touch upon some of my food and beverage history and experiences that may have influenced me along the way. My parents divorced when I was young and my father remarried into an Italian family who just so happened to own to very down-home popular restaurant in town. It was a small cinder block building with no windows in the shadows of the Oscar Meyer meat packing plant. On any given day you could hear the cattle being marched in for slaughter and the bar was always full with guys in white smocks splattered with cow’s blood sipping on Miller High Life with a side shot of rail whiskey. But at night the place was a mixing bowl of social strata filled with families from both the line workers and the executives of Oscar Meyer as well as locals and 6 nights a week there was a 45 minute wait for a table. The food was plentiful, fresh and authentically Italian. 8 inch high lasagna, frog legs, meat balls to rock your world and tasty fresh sauces. Mr. C would tend bar and Mrs. C would command the kitchen. But 2-3 times during the night Mrs. C would emerge and make her rounds of the tables, greeting clients, sitting down to rest her legs while talking with regulars. She would give me 50 cent pieces to plug the jukebox with songs like “That’s Amore” and “Moonlight Serenade”. She had a list of 12 songs that had to be played. My dad would sit at the bar with business associates, ex- Green Bay Packers and the workers of Oscar Mayer while my stepmother helped her family run the restaurant. I spent most my weekends here as a youth, playing pool, plugging quarters into the Gold Rush pinball machine and being invited to eat with my friend’s families when they came into eat. I did some dishwashing, but my job was Saturday mornings mopping up the place. Even though the restaurant has now been closed for over 20 years, people still talk about the lasagna and meatballs and my dad’s wife continues to amaze with her take on her parent’s traditional cuisine.

Years later finding myself in college and having absolutely no cash (most weeks I lived on a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter) I took a dish washing job at a Mexican restaurant called Paco’s. What always struck me as funny was that not a single Mexican worked there and the owners were from Eastern Kentucky. I worked washing dishes for a month or two, then got promoted up to a line cook, eventually becoming a prep cook working on chimichanga sauces, guacamole, taco shell baskets, nacho chips and more. And on occasion I would bartend. On Wednesday nights we had $1.50 jumbo margarita nights with Strawberry, Regular, Salt, No-Salt, Blended, On the Rocks and more. One night my fellow bartender Chris and I made over 320 margaritas. The blender smelled of burnt electrical components and the bar and the floors were as sticky as a whore house on nickel day. The only thing that kept us from going completely mad was that the rail liquor was on the soda gun so our sodas were only colored with sodas, wink wink. Paco’s was a great place to work and the owners and management were good people. I remember one time I was sitting at the bar after my shift sipping a Little King’s Cream Ale and Jim the manager sat down next to me.

“Pepper” he said. “I have some good news”

“Great” I offered not too thrilled as I still smelled of grease and tortilla from standing over the fryer for 4 hours crisping up nacho chips.

“We have to decided to give you a raise”

“Thanks Jim” I said lighting up a bit.

“Yep, as of Monday you will be getting 10 cents more an hour” I took a beat as I thought he was kidding, but as I could see on his droll dead pan face he was completely serious.

“Wow.... thanks” 

 Ah…. Paco’s, it was a great place where I learned the ropes of a kitchen, and how to appreciate Mexican cuisine ala Eastern Kentucky. It closed many years ago, but I discovered on Facebook there is a site for fans of the old Paco’s where folks share memories both good and bad.

After college I headed out West to find fame and fortune. None of that was had. I found myself driving a Pinto Wagon and working for my Uncle’s chemical factory making wood and window putty. One day at break I was reviewing the classified ads looking for additional income when I came across one that read “Beer Bar Only, Tender Wanted” I scribble down the address on a pad and went back to mixing putty. After work I drove down Colorado Blvd and passed the address several times not sure if I was in the right place. I called back to the putty mill and asked my Uncle to confirm the address I had scribbled down. “Why what’s wrong?” he asked. “Well…it’s kind of funky, dark and not much” I said. “Give it a whirl, ya never know”. So I headed in. It was dark and not much with a short bar, nothing fancy, bare bones drinking establishment, obviously “Beer Only”. I told the bartender I was here about the ad and he went into a back room of some sorts (I would later learn they kept all of the cash from the nightly business in a brown paper bag stuffed in the rafters in this room). Unexpectedly, an old woman walked out and escorted me to a booth at the far end of the bar under the only window in the place. (What’s with me and restaurants/bars not having windows?) She was an old German woman by the name of Freida who owned the beer joint. She asked me my name, age, told me the hours and said I was hired. My first night there, the day bartender Gabe was showing me the ropes and pointing everything out.

“Ya know Freida only hires guys she thinks has a nice ass” Gabe says. Creepy, she’s like 75 and my family has always been ass-less. Gabe continues “Here we have the coolers, napkins and matches, under here is the baseball bat, and over here is extra cue chalk”.

“Baseball bat? What you guys shagging fly balls out back?” I smirk.

“No, but there is trouble sometimes,” he continues showing me the bar. Wow…hmmm…definitely surprised, but not totally unexpected by looking at the place. I ended up working at this place for over a year. I am not giving the name out to protect the innocent. I had some incredible experiences in this beer-only bar from a Xmas eve with two homeless guys and a trumpet player to meeting the god father of my youngest daughter there. 

On the West Coast I did however have the chance to serve at a small fine dining establishment. It served fusion Asian and was fantastic. I lasted a week. The head server got wind of the fact that my Uncle knew the owner and for some reason felt threatened by me. So he spent my week there breaking dishes, making sure my orders were a mess and in his best Shakespearan Iago planted lies into the owner’s psyche about me. Granted I was fired. The only redemption I had was a few months later the owner realized what had happened and canned the guy. My Uncle and I were over picking up an old oven from the place and I actually received an apology. No job though.

I eventually abandoned the Pinto Wagon (six months later it had mushrooms growing out of the floor carpeting) and after the train wreck of LA I moved back to the Midwest and into the Chicago way. I discovered the wonders of the “neighborhood bar” and had several favorites. The L&L, The Nissei, Simon’s, O’Reilly’s, McGee’s, Burton Place, The Map Room, Goose Island, The Matchbook and more. I could list pages and pages and pages of favorites. Ah the memories…or lack thereof…..And of course I learned the way of the “Happy Hour Buffet” When you are broke you quickly learn where they have free food and on what nights. You could go in, order one beer and nurse it for hours while loading up on free food. Some of it was actually very good. There was one place down off Wells that had mussels, fresh fruit and hand thrown pizza, but there were plenty of others that had frozen pizzas, pastas and other indescribable delights, all heavily salted to induce more drinking or bring in deer. I served and sometimes tended bar at a casual Italian restaurant in the bottom of the Playboy building off Michigan Avenue. This is where I was christened “Chili” by the back of the house, all hard working Hispanics and great guys. This was truly ground zero for my server training. Lunches were busy with folks from Playboy (sadly never any centerfolds), Northwestern and the local CBS affiliate. Dinners were slow with high rise folks that lived in downtown Chicago and just off the Magnificent Mile. And of course these folks were considered ‘regulars’, an odd bunch of folks with too much money that spent way too much time in this restaurant. It was a pretty good place with super veggie pasta that consisted of French green beans, cauliflower, baby carrots tossed in garlic and oil. Sounds simple, but to this day I try to duplicate it and never quite get it. It was also a place where one of the owners used to get trashed on good wine and sleep it off in the back booths. There was always this hanging tension between the two owners and it seeped down into the staff. My friends in back of the house were huffing ‘one-hits’ and shooting Jack D in the walk-in. It got so bad that after a year I just did not show up one day. I felt bad, but in this business people come and go so quickly it tough to remember one day to the next.

After Chicago I spent the next 11 years in the Brazilian Amazon. I have eaten Tapir, Capybara, Piranha, Paca, Gator (Jacare), turtle and lots of Amazon fish and exotic fruits. And my last ‘job’ there gave me the opportunity to travel the world and all over Brazil and South America. In 2005 I opened a B&B there that tailors trips for each individual or groups. In future pieces for Culinary Commandos I will relate some of my food/beverage adventures within the interior of the Amazon and elsewhere in South America. I have extensive experience with front and back of house, food and of course beverages which I have consumed along the way. I am old enough where I could legally drink in Wisconsin when I turned 18. My first underage beer was actually a Pabst Blue Ribbon in the parking lot of Burrows Park. I couldn’t finish it. I attribute that to not being use to the taste of beer. Of course now I can quaff a PBR as the price always seems right. Currently I am in the Midwest so I am going to concentrate on things Midwestern with a special emphasis on beer.  I just happen to be stuck in what beer aficionados are calling the “Napa Valley” of microbrews. (The Beer Fest here sold out 6000 tickets in 45 minutes) But there are a lot of good beers out there from all over so I may stray outside the boundaries of the Midwest. I will also elaborate on some of my earlier experiences. And throw in a few of my culinary commando adventures in the Amazon. My family is still in the biz and I am pulling a few hours at a microbrewery. I will be interviewing, reviewing and general commentary. I look forward to this new adventure.

Any questions or comments please drop me a line. Pepjoamazon@aol.com or come along for the ride http://twitter.com/AmazonPepper Beer Happy Pepper Stebbins p.s.

As I finish this piece up, I am nursing a Hop Whore from Tyranena Brewery out of Lake Mills, WI. (or maybe it’s nursing me) Nice………..