STEAK & ALE

My main man, J.R., was this six foot four black guy that had three front gold teeth. One of them had a star engraved into it. A five-pointed star. He wore steel-toe boots - Wolverine brand, I think, and suggested I do the same. After I fell on my ass and had hot grease splashed all over the rubber caps of my Nikes, I complied. Dude was a Steak & Ale lifer. He'd been in the corporate mag, hilariously entitled Prime Cuts, six fucking times. Chris, who worked as the expiditer, and put in about a decade under the heat lamp, only got his name in print once. J.R. was photographed; those photos were published. I'm talking folded arms, chef whites, toque, shit-eating grin, the works. He was a bad motherfucker.

Steak & Ale was THE ugly American steakhouse. It precedes Longhorn and Ruth Chris and any other chain you can conjure quickly. The style was decidely "bavarian;" the bar stocked zilch kraut pilsner but would preen it's EXOTIC $3.50 Heineken Dark as quick as you can say, "I didn't order this." Yes, diners would receive that little gummy sweet loaf of brown bread on a cutting board replete with margarine ramekin and then be asked if they'd like to "visit" the "salad bar," which was a depressing gulag of wilted iceberg, canned beets, corn niblets, green peppers and slimy shrooms. Vats of oil slicked dressings. Cheese. Bacon. Eggs. It smelled like dugong farts.

I worked as a server for a year and then begged to be trained as a cook after I waited on a table of meth'd up Canadians who drank all the in-house Moosehead and well whisky and ordered one salad bar and shared plates of pepperoncinis and pickled onions amongst themselves. They left me zilch tip. Steak & Ale's manager, a noted panty enthusiast and recreational street drug user who always appeared "oiled," acquiesced. So J.R. took me under his large, muscular wing. I felt more like his bitch than his trainee, and I still swear to this day he would have killed me if he thought he could have gotten away with it.

Alas, Steak & Ale is where I learned to really fucking grill a steak. It's where I learned to know just from listening to it how "done" it was or wasn't. It's where I learned to use a knife and steel. It's where I learned to hold my booze while working the line 'til midnight. It's where I learned all the words to every song on Blizzard of Oz and Diary of a Madman and School's Out. It's where I got my taste for tequila, viz, mezcal. It's where I got my brass pair as a cook; where I received my baptism of bovine blood. The hours were fuck you brutal. The waitstaff was a cadre of lowlife scrubs that supplemented its income with honest Injun corner tricks and peeks for gooey five-spots. One regular bar customer - balding, sansabelt toursers - was "caught" in the stock-room with a waitress one Saturday evening, "firing a steak" while feasting on a side of fried mushrooms. Said panty enthusiast manager lingered before he sprang into action. Well done.

The restaurant closed its doors years ago. Steak & Ale filed for bankruptcy in 2008, and the location I worked at remains FOR SALE. Prime Sound-of-Music site, ready and willing for a cineaste snuff-take deconstructo blah. Paging Rob Zombie.