Michel Nischan on Making Changes, Cruising the Mediterranean, Meals with Pepin and Andres, Favorite CT Restaurants + More
Michel Nischan on Making Changes, Cruising the Mediterranean, Meals with Pepin and Andres, Favorite CT Restaurants + More
Enter a caption
We recently were able to interview one of our favorite chefs who is also a Nutmegger: Michel Nischan. We’ve loved his food, but even more than that we love what he stands for and how hard he works as CEO of Wholesome Waveto make change in the world. He’s the kind of person that inspires us to be better people and to help make change in our own worlds, too. So, here it is: a look…
You work with some special people in the service industry. Surely, they should at least be equal to your most 'special' customers because some of the time, your colleagues are customers. ..Somewhere. - And we all know what 'customers' get up to....
There's the crazy, the retarded, the genius, the mad, people with superb skills and knowledge, and someone who cant even understand you - on both sides of the bar.
So:
I worked with this one lad, a massive character, from a kind of 'backwater' town in Queensland, Australia. - Probably a loose term (backwater), but it serves to highlight that he was from a small town, where small things happen, lots of drinking occurs, opportunity is scant -that sort of thing.
Jez was simple in some ways, a bit of a country boy, certainly very 'Aussie'. That said, we did end up connecting beyond what I - or anyone - would expect, and I'm sure that’s because he was a far more complex gent than many would assume. We became pretty good buddies. All that aside though, Jez was always doing special things. - Being Jez.
Once we'd closed most nights, after work beers in the restaurant involved a lot of 'larrakin' stories of Jez and his mates in his antics back in his home town. Probably owing to my own stories of the same kind..
Anyway: Jez is the kind of person that really does take a turn once he's drunk, literally turning from a fairly boisterous but guarded and polite gent, into a complete twisted-eye lunatic, likely to stumble out on the road and lie down in front of oncoming cars as a 'joke', and certain to continue plundering booze, even though he's basically paralytic.
Makes things hard when he comes into your bar… This though, is all beside the point. Almost beyond it being worth mentioning. You have an idea about Jez, anyway…
I’m pretty certain there are ‘interesting’ people at your place of work, but I bet this never happened:
One day, I’m setting up the bar, one of the first employees in the restaurant. People start to arrive – my right hand man for the day, a chef or two, then Jez. He’s walking funny. Kind of skewed, sort of pulling the back of his shirt down, rifling through the restaurant’s table formation, staring at his shoes, en route to the staff room.
I go about my tasks – filling bottles, setting stations, laying mats, sorting fruit – see Jez in my periphery at bar’s end, slinking into the kitchen. The usual morning mutterings take place: ‘morning! And ‘how-are-you-today-mate?’s.
Suddenly, the tone changes: Our head chef is performing an inquisition, and a small cacophony of disbelieving laughter, and are-you-serious?! tones fills the morning air in the empty restaurant.
Jez has forgotten to wear pants. Not just to the kitchen - he failed to realise that he indeed didn’t have his chef pants on all the way in to work. Perhaps he thought he was having one of those dreams and everything was ok, he’d wake up soon. ...
I once didn’t wear pants to school, but it was a dream. Jez however, managed to ride the train from the end of one line, all the way in to town, refusing to let the awkward stares of other commuters bring his attention to his boxer shorts, or so it seemed.
He had no explanation. I merely thought I was lucky for having the opportunity to work with such people.
