ill-minded prophet

perhaps you have seen "hell's kitchen", the flamboyant "reality" t.v. show that is not very real but tends toward the dramatic.

i have seen exactly two episodes. i had to turn off the set when i realized there was not a hat nor a hair net to be seen in all of tv land's kitchen. apparently, hygiene and good old fashioned safety are not part of the "reality" tv realm. for want of a hairnet, a perfect health department rating was lost. all my years of building a conscientious kitchen staff died an immediate death with the LA notion that good hygiene just "doesn't sell" to the great unwashed called the general public.

but this is not really about hair nets and ball caps or erstwhile kitchen fashion and safety statements.

it is about one of the players on the show. perhaps you've seen him. they call him "dewberry", a round and saucy queen who scandalized angelina jolie with his references to being the next "mrs. brad pitt". he was the one who cried and walked off the line. and he was one of the most unforgettable characters in the cast.

and he is a fellow biscuiteer, working with me at the fabulous flying biscuit in hotlanta where he draws a crowd on the weekends and regales the clients (and the staff) with tales from the hottest parts of hell's kitchen.

it is the closest thing to celebrity i've known, despite the tenuous connections the restaurant has to the likes of the indigo girls, martina navratilova and ru paul. jeff dewberry is sweet, affectionate and pert as the breasts on a fifteen year old female equestrian.

but it is always the unlikely comment, the off-hand remark meant in all seriousness that really gets me going, like he is completely unaware on some level how absurd and hysterical the story he relates sounds. stories that make the goings on at hell's kitchen seem mundane and silly.

like the previous kitchen manager, he told me, who was a prophet. (i didn't see that one coming.) the one who had his own flock and prepared for armageddon and an alien invasion while carefully shaping tuilles and tempering chocolate. and who, in jeff's own words,"belongs to one of those weird kinda churches, you know, the kind without a steeple."

and the strange thing is, i knew exactly what he meant: the fact that the church was steeple-less gave strong testimony to how unorthodox the man and his congregation were. aliens and tuille ruining end of time battles be damned. all you needed to know about the man and the church was evident from the flat, unadorned facade.

and i feel like the "biscuit" is a little like that church: weird and off-set but charming, drawing a great crowd and quirky staff, not respectable in the way a restaurant with an actual parking lot might be but destined and ordained to be set aside despite and because of, its eccentricities.

we do what we are designed to do: me, jeff, brian(he is a blog all by himself.) and the rest of the biscuit fill a niche.

it's weird little place.

a church without a steeple.

with dewberry regaling the flock.