Missoula's Dish

A Whole Meal of Gratitude

By Danielle Lattuga, 11-22-07

I moved to Montana when I was 21 years old.  I have not sat around a table on Thanksgiving with my family, since.  Occasionally, one of my sisters has made the road trip from the west coast.  This year is the first year that I can leave and join her for the holiday. 

I no longer work in the restaurant business, yet it is the restaurant business that reinvented the notion of family for me, and in fact those that have helped ease the void of living so far away from my own family are those who I have worked with over the years. After all, we’ve shared the kitchen and the dining room, day after day, and often, even when we close for the holidays, we gather in one of our homes and share a meal.

Turkey

I am running around the kitchen giggling and yelling as Jeff runs after me with a freshly butchered salmon head, still attached to bones and tailfins, bouncing from his shoulder.  He is laughing his most sinister laugh and threatening to wrap me in the fish carcass.  Just as I turn to see how if he is gaining on me, he slips on a floor mat, feet in the air, salmon slapping against his whites. He is covered in bits of pink flesh, the fish head resting in the crook of his neck.  Kim, our executive chef, steps out of the walk-in, looks down at Jeff and smirks as she looks at me, steps over him and says, “That’s what you get for running in the kitchen.”

Thanks for the absurdity.

Sweet Potatoes

I was the only female line cook (although having a female executive chef helped). Having four older brothers in the kitchen was fun because I never had any brothers, but it was also exhausting, constantly holding my own, listening to countless hours of Rush, and putting up with the never-ending antics and drum solos conducted with metal tongs against any solid surface behind the line.  I was thrilled when Kim hired Krista and put us both on pastry for the summer.  We had the kitchen to ourselves all morning.  She may have changed her mind one day when she came to set up for dinner and found us covered in flour with cake batter on the ceiling and a conspicuously small pantry stock.  Instead, she rolled her eyes, tied back her silver blond hair and said, “Rough morning?”

Thanks for the sisterhood in the face of all the brotherhood.

The mystery dish

Dawn hired me as a waitress.  When we found ourselves short on bartenders, I jumped at the chance to get behind the bar.  At the time, I weighed 112 pounds, and had short bleach blond hair. In Big Sky, there were still at least five men to every woman and a lot of drunk Peter Pans running around. Rocco’s was an Italian and Mexican restaurant and there were never more than two bartenders on at once. Usually there was just one closing down, after pouring to “go cups” and kicking folks out. 

She blinked from behind a puff of cigarette smoke, ran her hand through her own naturally blond short hair and said, “Well, I guess we can give it a go.” She put me on a Wednesday—a “slow night.” She told me that she wouldn’t be in that night.  It was just me.  She didn’t tell me that at 7 o’clock, everyone she knew in town would start showing up for a drink.  I blended margaritas and poured beers, gin and tonics, and whiskey cokes non-stop until midnight.  It was a big night for our little bar.  She came in the next day, checked out the immaculate condition of the bar, looked at the numbers and said, “Okay.  I’ll let you bartend,” never letting on that any of her friends knew it had been my first night behind the bar.

Thanks for the chance.

Green beans

They were old hippies that had lived at the resort since it’s early days.  Now they owned a funky little deli.  It was definitely the “green” place in the meadow.  He was training me as a server and he told me this little story, “When I first lived here, I was serving breakfast in the Huntley Lodge.  One morning, I had a family at one table and the Dad kept whistling and snapping his fingers whenever he needed something.  I told him, ‘Sir, my name is Dan.  If you need something, just say my name.’ But he kept whistling and snapping his fingers.  It really pissed me off.  So, finally, when he did it once more, I walked over to him, leaned down near his ear, so he could hear me clearly, and I said, ‘Sir, if you do that one more time, I am going to come over and pee and your leg.  I’m not a dog.’”

Thanks for the permission to maintain my self-respect.

Cranberry Sauce

I’d just been dumped by the love of my life.  It made absolutely no sense to me.  I showed up at the restaurant, just around closing time, my eyes puffy and red, my voice cracking and my heart in my belly. I was handed a glass of wine.  Everyone took turns pausing in their closing tasks and hugging me, sitting with me, and holding my hand.  Then we went bowling.  We typed my name in on the screen, “Dumped.” We drank copious pitchers of beer and ate bad bowling alley food—nachos, fries . . .

Thank you for holding me up.

Mashed Potatoes and Gravy

He’d been my boss for a couple of years.  By then he was my friend too.  I had just returned from a vacation and my grandmother, who had been ill had taken a turn for the worse.  I wasn’t sure that I was going to see her again.  I really needed to go home.  He gave me the time off, and when he found out that the ticket cost over $900, he helped me pay for it. 

Thank you isn’t enough.

Apple pie

Creamy Polenta.  Sottimano Barbera.  Butter leaf Asian tacos.  Spring rolls.  Tempura battered Salmon.  Smoked Tomato Aioli.  Bison Flank Steak with horseradish crème freche. Roasted tomato and red pepper soup.  Diver scallops and brown butter.  Scrambled Eggs at two in the morning.  Rissotto!  Ceviche.  Lightly steamed asparagus.  A sheet pan of pizza.  Blackfoot IPA.  Perfect froth on a cappuccino. All the words in between. 

Thank you life, for the food that nourishes my body and soul and the people in my heart—my family, those that I am bound to by blood and those that I am bound to by belly.

Danielle Lattuga writes each week at Missoula’s Dish: A home-cooked blog about service in a little big town. Bookmark and check back often at www.newwest.net/missouladish

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