Life, Love and Cooking

By Chef Nate Gross

Life, Love, and Cooking is about a boy's journey into manhood and the things he experiences through his private and culinary life. Michael Grant became a chef because he found that he was good at it, not because he couldn't do anything else. What was the secret in Michael's life that he kept to himself for more than forty years? Michael overcame the bullying, embarrassment, and humiliation by finding out there was life after childhood. He also found out what it meant to be a professional and to work with professionals. Were their lives much different from Michael's? Can you put a price on friendship, dignity, and credibility? Or is friendship just a stepping-stone to get you from one stage in your life to another? This book talks about Michael's experiences on the road of life. What were the decisions he made that helped him to become a better person? Who influenced his life the most? What changes did he make along the way? Michael found that success can be achieved even though the odds are against you. Problems never went away; Michael just came up with a plan on how to deal with them differently. Mostly set in a large country club kitchen, Michael created bonds in order to survive with the staff as they put out some of the most lavish buffets in the northeast. You may see yourself in this book. Then again, you may not want to. If you are happy with the way you are, then more power to you. If you notice that you have no friends, you have to do things by yourself, and you're not included with the group, then it's time for a change. Read this book with the understanding that we all have been there at one time or another. It's what we do with our learning experiences that define who we really are, what we want to become, and ultimately, how we want to be remembered.

Life, Love and Cooking is so much more than a book about a young boy dreaming of becoming a chef. It is a story of the redemption of a boy with a hardscrabble upbringing who prevailed and went on to become a successful chef and creative entrepreneur. But the extraordinary aspect of the story is Nathan Gross himself, looking for healing and growth and taking complete responsibility for making that happen, working for years at learning how to become the man he dreamed of being.

This book is a serious, raw, and sometimes comical look at refusing to let the past determine the future. It is a must read.

- Carol Berger

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781649521880

Book preview

This book is dedicated to my wife, Ann, my son, Brandon, and my daughter, Jessica, who are unquestionably the three most loving people in my life.

Let us not forget the culinarians of every culture, lifestyle and background, who provide us with great food and entertainment.

Chapter 1

Growing Up

Or

How I Spent My Youth on Vacation

When I was around twelve years old, all I wanted to do was to be a chef. Not the best chef, but a good honest one that was respected, versatile, and knowledgeable. Well, that’s what dreams are made of. But let me back up a little bit and tell you why I wanted to be a chef. It didn’t come to me in a dream or I saw a chef doing his thing. In those days, being a chef was very mysterious. They weren’t talked about very much or even seen very much, not like today. But I became interested in cooking when my grandfather came to the house and prepared all the items for my junior high school graduation. My parents wanted this party to be a special one. We had just moved into our new home about two years ago. The house had a fireplace, an upstairs, an unfinished basement, and a backyard with a garage. Not bad for a place in Queens, New York. The only problem was that we were too close to Kennedy Airport, which was called Idlewild Airport back then. The passenger planes almost touched the TV antenna on the top of the house as they made their final descent toward the runways. Every day my mom was on the phone with the police department, the mayor’s office, or the airport itself to complain about how low and how loud the planes were flying. How could you concentrate with all that noise! my mother used to say. You have to understand that after one plane flew over the house, another plane was on the way. It was no more than two minutes behind the first plane.

Well, my grandfather was a counter person back in the Great Depression down by Delaney Street in Brooklyn. Easy job, you say. Well, let me enlighten you. The counter person would come in early six days a week and open the place. He would turn the lights on, start the coffee, fill the pot sinks, and bring in the bread order. Then he would make the desserts, prep the menu items, and make the specials of the day. At 8:00 a.m., the breakfast crowd would come in, and so would the boss. If he was lucky, he had a person that would help him for the rest of the day. Sometimes my grandfather would make the breakfast, and sometimes the owner would cook if there were a lot of customers so my grandfather could concentrate on the lunch meal.

If my grandfather was really lucky, he only worked a twelve-hour day. It was not like today where a different person did a different task. Without him, the owner did everything himself, and then he would find another counter man. If the owner was really resourceful, he’d hire a guy off the street for the day. People still needed money, and you always got a good day’s work out of someone. Pride was everything back then. We lost that pride for a while, but now it’s coming back. Boy, was I impressed when I saw my grandfather cut those vegetables, slice those meats, and put together those platters. I was hooked right then and there. Instead of playing with my friends, I watched my grandfather and would occasionally ask, What did you do that for? He would tell me in as little words as possible. He was an immigrant and never spoke very much around other people.

But he passed this trait down to my father, who was first generation. About my father! He was not in the least way an educated or book-smart man. As a matter of fact, he left high school to go and join the army and fight the war in Europe when he was only seventeen. We’re not sure what he did over there, but he made it back alive. The one thing he was always good at was working with his hands. He finished the basement in our house, so when we moved away, we got a very good price for it. A finished basement is worth its weight in gold. He always did his own work on his car also. He was a cabdriver and made most of his money in the five boroughs. Dad did all his own repairs around our new house in Long Island too. He would finish the projects by painting the whole inside of the house. That’s how I learned to be a good painter. He was a tough guy though. He used to tell me, There are three ways of doing things. There’s the right way, there’s the wrong way, and there’s my way. It took me years to figure out that there was a fourth way, and that was the way of using your head, or the smart way.

I came home one day from an interview and told my father that this company was interested in me and was going to schedule me for a second interview. My father said to me, Don’t get your hopes up. They say that to everyone. What he was really saying was Why would they want a guy like you? I knew my father well enough to know what he wasn’t saying. Another time, my brother and I went to work at the local hamburger joint. My mother told us to be home at a certain time. We said that we had to work late tonight. My father got out of the car and slapped both of us across the face and said, You listen to your mother and don’t talk back. We were so afraid that some of our customers or coworkers had seen us that we just bowed our heads and tried to make believe we were someone else.

One time I stole a candy bar from a store on a dare from my friend. We ran out with the man chasing us. About an hour later, I went back to the store and told the owner that I was sorry and returned the candy. I told him that it would never happen again. He understood me and said, Let that be a lesson to you, young man. I went home and felt very proud of myself for what I had learned. I told my parents what had happened and that I knew it was wrong, so I returned the candy bar. I said I’ll never do it again. My father stood up and told me, Just to make sure that you never do it again. He pulled me upstairs by my arm, took me into my room, and beat the ever loving shit out of me with his belt.

My mother was pounding at the door, saying, That’s enough. Let him go.

But my father kept at it until I was red all over. Then he said,

Now you can go out and play.

I could not describe what I was feeling at the time. I thought all families were like this. So I sucked it in like all the other times and went outside and got lost in my thoughts.

Need I say more? You get the picture? I kept thinking that it was me. I just couldn’t do anything right. It was not a good time in my life. But the physical abuse was nothing compared to the emotional abuse that I suffered. I went through the first part of my life wondering what I did wrong to deserve this treatment. As I got older, I realized that my father was not the man I thought he was. I looked up to him when I was a child, but I later realized that he was an authentic bully toward me and took out his own failures and frustrations on me every chance he could. I began to resent him and ultimately distanced myself from him when I got older. The influence he had on my life was very damaging to the point that I became afraid of all father figures I encountered. This included my bosses at work, people I met on the street, and even teachers and businesspeople I worked for. In reality, my father beat up on me, and I beat up on my younger brother. Then my father would beat up on me for beating up on my younger brother. It was a vicious cycle. My future was not very bright at this point. I definitely was a product of my environment. I had to break out and find a different path somehow. That was easier said than done, given my age and everything else that was going on in my life.

It took many years of therapy to overcome this dilemma. I remember going to try out this therapist. He had me lie on the couch and said that I should just say what was on my mind. The couch, the position of his chair, and the room itself made me very uncomfortable. So I got up and said that this was not for me and walked out. The therapist tried to bring me back inside, but I kept walking out.

After one or two more interviews with therapists, I came upon a man who saw right through me. I knew that he was the one that could help me. I always knew what I wanted. We skirmished for a bit until he finally said to me, If you want to get better, you are going to have to let me be in charge. That was very scary to me. But I thought that I would take a chance with him. I decided to try him out for a few weeks and see what he could do. Well, for the first five sessions, I just sat there, waiting for him to cure me. Neither one of us said a word. We just looked at each other, then I would look out the window, then I would withdraw inside myself. By the sixth session, I finally said something. I don’t remember what it was, but it was the opening he was waiting for. He knew that he could not start the conversation. It had to be me that started speaking so he could be in control. Well, it worked. After I saw him for a number of years, I began to see things differently.

I was telling him about all the cruelty, beatings, and verbal abuse that I suffered that set the stage for the direction we were going to go in together. This all had to get out of the way so we could work on how I could deal with myself today in real time. It felt good getting this stuff off my shoulders. The reality of my situation was that because I was so abused, I felt most comfortable when I was being abused in my social and professional life. I did not know that I was doing this to myself. It was what I grew up believing. That was the way I was brought up, so that was the way I saw myself, and my father reinforced it every time I saw him. He kept me in my so-called comfort zone. The sad thing about all this was that he knew what he was doing to me, but he kept doing it to me anyway. He once told me that he came home on leave from the army. He was talking to his parents when out of the blue, his father smacked his mother across the face and said, Don’t say that. My father took a full swing at his father, knocking him across the room. When he landed on the floor, my father said to him, If you ever touch my mother again, I’ll kill you. My guess was that he did not want me to do the same thing to him.

As I learned a new set of values, I began to change. My therapist was with me every step of the way. When I encountered a problem, he helped me resolve it. I started seeing the things that I was doing to myself and to other people. Around this time, I started one of my hobbies, which was growing flowers, plants and a vegetable garden. This gave me a lot of joy and serenity. I loved gardening on many different levels. It was the opposite of cooking, which was very fast-paced. I could play in the dirt. I would go to the nurseries and pick out