Small Restaurant, Small Town and Bighearted People

Let me start out by saying that I am the Chef at a small country cafe in a small West Virginia town. I have a great boss and a great staff. I work with a limited supply of product but turn out some damn good food, I have Yelp! to prove it.

It was strange when I first moved to this area and tried to order certain products, that nobody seemed to know what in the heck that I was talking about . I  moved here from a larger metropolitan area so I had to improvise on a lot of things. My boss calls me her little miracle worker, because I can think outside the box on a lot of things (just tooting my own horn for a moment) and still can produce a great menu.

But the great thing about my restaurant is the people that come in. I love the customers, the new customers have no idea what to think of our small and daily changing menu items but the locals love it. One day it is Thai, the next is German. I tell them that it is to keep them on their toes and to introduce them to new things.

The people that I work with are what you would consider to be almost a family, even though at times, we can be a dysfunctional family. We have our arguments and the typical bickering that goes on in a restaurant setting but at the end of the night we are still family or at least try to be.

The locals to my restaurant are the backbone of the place, they always come in on Friday night, they always cause a ruckus and they always have some advice for you or just a couple of bad jokes to make you feel good.

And some of the locals can be trying at times, there is the gentleman that always tells me what sauce I should put on something and how I should serve breakfast until dinner time because some people like breakfast late in the day. Ummmmm, I am not Denny’s.

Or the gentleman that walks in the kitchen and starts opening oven doors to check out what is cooking. Hmmmm, close that door, you are letting out the heat. But he is a sweetheart so I try to let him get away with it at times. Other times, he gets kicked out of the kitchen, no ifs,ands,or buts. Don’t touch.

My customers are a bunch of characters and I don’t think I would want them any other way. They always stand up for me, always compliment me on the food (even when I have one of those "What was I thinking" moments)and think it is cool that I am the first professional chef that their town has. There are probably other great chefs in town but the locals have claimed me as their own and try not to let me forget it. I am never going to be able to escape this place without a very large hole in my heart.

Recently, I have a small crisis of a sort and not only have the people that I work with or for but the locals have stood up in support of me. This has not only made me feel good but it has made me feel wanted, needed and a part of the community where I was feeling not a small amount of pity for myself.

So, when I had this set back, the people in this community stood behind me and still continue to stand there. They are my support system and they have my back so to speak. When I feel blue, they make me laugh, when I get lost in thought, the boss throws a food issue at me and then I have to re-direct my thoughts on how to solve it. They do not let me work myself into an emotional funk.

People say that as a Chef that you have to work in a big name place in a big named city to make a name for yourself. But with great people like those I work with or that come into my restaurant, they make me feel like I have made a name for myself. Chef Rachel and I am proud of that name.