Catering confidential (first post)

Disclaimer:
While the following post is inspired by what occurred in my life, there is no direct connection with real events or persons in this writing. All names have been changed and I modified identifying features like occupations, appearances, features and location, in order to preserve anonymity. I have altered characters, events and timelines in order to preserve the privacy of the individuals who inspired my stories.
In any case, although I preserve the integrity of my stories and try to maintain narrative flow, any resemblance between characters, events or locations in this post and characters, events or locations in real life is purely coincidental.

I was born, raised, and trained as a chef in France. My first contact with America, I experienced it through my craft. Cooking privately for wealthy suburbanites is a rich and powerful experience. A few nightmares here and there, but overwhelmingly a great American dream. Through this blog, I tell readers what I saw and heard, cooking for interesting people, sometimes a tad less so, movers and shakers, and other local personalities. It also relates 8 years of crispy anecdotes and reflects on cultural differences between two countries, the US and France, that love as much as they hate each other. Many of the names have been changed in these posts, for the purpose of shielding myself from the ire of potential high-profile lawyers, many of them I cooked for and watch partying anyway, sometimes with, hum, unconcerned attitude.

In my stories, i’m revealing the crusty secrets of catering in private homes, while offering my unique point of view.
Most people believe that being a chef is a rosy adventure, made of sparkling white chef jackets, foraged wild mushrooms, Viking stoves and occasional swear words.
Sure, I catered the best events. Cooking in palaces for celebrities and stars, poaching lobster in truffle butter, being flown to exotic places for beach weddings, and tasting 1982 Chateau d’Yquem were all part of my experience cooking in America.  

But the culinary routine is sometimes more brutal. Cooking sea sick on a yacht in blue waters, witnessing drunk public officials making racial jokes, being insulted for being French during the so called Shock & Awe and the Freedom Fries era, catering for funerals and the occasional sex & drug story; That also is part of my job, and somehow makes it that much more interesting, in a very strange kind of way.

Dedication to haute cuisine is ungrateful. It can also be very comical. A few years ago, I cooked a full buffet for a bunch of dogs (Rex, the 80 lb Dobberman, was turning 5) for instance. A couple once gobbled my ultra expensive truffles as if they were cocktail olives and I’ve been offered a bag of dope as a tip twice. I saw crooks turned millionaires and millionaires turned homeless.
And I’ve failed to recognize the Hulk when I met him. He was cool, though.