The other day I found myself watching a cooking show on television. That's not an unusual thing, given how cooking shows are just about my favorite thing to watch. But, the unusual thing is something that happened toward the end of that show ... I started to cry.
Gordon Ramsey, a British celebrity chef, has a show called Kitchen Nightmares. That evening, he traveled to a small restaurant in Philadelphia called The Hot Potato Cafe, to do what he does on this show which is to transform a restaurant that is a bog loser into a success story. He found a kitchen nightmare for sure in this place being run into the ground by three sisters who owned it. With his usual flare and coarse language, Ramsey moved himself into their lives for a few days and changed everything about the Cafe. He engineered changes from the signs on the building to the menus, from the putrid potato skin entrée's to the life of the young chef, a 21-year old girl, who hated her job and didn't even see herself as a real chef.
And, that's where the emotion came into the story. This young girl, the niece of one of the owners, was pressed into being the restaurant's chef when she never had any prior experience, never went to chef school, and hated every moment of her time in that kitchen. Despite the fact that she was literally pushing garbage out the kitchen door to the unsuspecting diners, she had a flare for cooking and did the best she could given the circumstances of the failing restaurant. In fact, as Ramsey found out very quickly, it was the passion that this girl had that kept the operation afloat. He exploited that as the ground upon which he would build a new restaurant.
When he started to talk to this young woman with compassion and kindness and a very accurate critique of her work, my eyes started to tear up. Here was this lost soul who was busting her hump trying to make the impossible work every day, who was suddenly being recognized by an expert chef for her talent, skill and devotion to duty. Here was "The Boss" of all bosses, seeing her for what she really was and pulling her toward success. Here was someone who needed love and affection and was being given it by the most unlikely of all sources...Chef Ramsey who is known for his relentless, scathing, and no-holds-barred diatribes against restaurant owners and their crews. It was impressive to watch, and it affected me tremendously.
I literally started to cry when he took this young woman under his wing. He sheltered her and encouraged her and taught her how to get the very best from herself. And, by doing so, he did the same to me. I watched and identified with this young woman. I remember how much I appreciated having Homer Page in my life, a man who took me aside and guided me in the early moments of my working life. When I was pressing hard in my public relations career and going nowhere, Page came into my life and saw that I had talent in photography and encouraged me by teaching me how to get the best from whatever skill and talent I had. And, like Ramsey did for that woman, Page set the standard for me where I could excel.
So...there I sat, in front of a television, crying over a cooking show! At first I wondered why, but then it came to me...there's no question that I miss Page very, very much. He was the most influential man in my business life and a model for me in my personal life. Page died more than 25 years ago and it's as if he left me only yesterday. All it takes is a cooking show to remind me of that loss. But also feel the depth of the tremendous gratitude I have that he was in my life to put his arm around me and say, "Good job...now go out there and do it!"... just like Gordon Ramsey.
All the best, Roger W.
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