Flashback 2005: Liberty overrated, and one proud chef

Cherry Pit grub

    Chicago Restaurant Week begins Monday. Regular readers know that I'm a restaurant guy — restaurants help create the illusion of meaning in life — from dining at three Michelin Star Alinea, to lauding a favorite hot dog joint owner. I think I'm going to weigh in this week about it, in the paper. But in the meantime, here's a moment from 2005 worth remembering. I left in the section that ran above it, just in case you've got time to kill. Alas it's as current now as it was 19 years ago, and the last paragraph explains Trump about as well as he can be explained. The original headline was, "Liberty seems pretty far down on world's to-do list."

Opening shot

     Is liberty really "the universal longing of every soul," as Condoleezza Rice told an audience in Egypt this week? Or is that belief merely our gosh-darn American presumption leading us astray again?
     Because, frankly, when I look over the wide swoop of human history, I don't see much pining after liberty. I see a whole lot of "let's go kill those guys and take their stuff." I see quite a bit of "let's roll at the feet of that king." But not much "let's promote liberty so that each of us can breathe free."
     Surveying our world today, people seem to leap to put on the chains of some religion or drug or cause. Even in America, the supposed land of liberty, a big chunk of the population is eager to yank the leash the moment somebody tries to use that liberty to do something they don't like.
     Which liberty, supposedly, allows you to do. The error Rice makes is to assume that, if only Egypt had democracy, why, it would elect a bunch of swarthy Jeffersons. More likely that, given their choice, Egyptians would opt for radical Islamic theocracy, via popular election. We wouldn't like that.
     Rice's mistake is a common one. Those free of oppression have a very difficult time understanding the taste that so many develop for it. I'll never forget, when I finally got the old family boot off my neck and fled to college, the shock I felt that any sane man would join a fraternity.
     "They spend 18 years being told what to do," I said at the time. "Then they go out on their own, finally, and what's the first choice they make? To join a group that forces them to roll an egg with their nose across the quad at midnight, blindfolded."
     Oppression, like drugs, brings some measure of pleasure to those under the yoke. Why else do you think all those Russians are still mooning after Stalin, a half century after his death?

Because good food isn't enough

     I've eaten at a lot of fancy Chicago restaurants over the years, and I thought I knew what good service is. A little bit of theater -- the spinning salad bowl at the old Blackhawk. Some personal service -- Chef Louis Szathmary going from table to table at the Bakery to make sure everybody was happy. The brisk snap of the waiters at Charlie Trotter's. The knowledgeable, I-grew-this-lettuce-from-a-seed-and-now-I'm-gonna-tell-you-all-about-it authority of the staff at Tru.
     But I never grasped what the heart of dining-out hospitality really is, didn't look for, never mind touch, its essence, not until a fry cook named Carmen Vargas turned away from his grill at the Cherry Pit Cafe in Deerfield this past Sunday.
     It was Father's Day and the place — a narrow front with a lunch counter and a big square room in back — was packed. My family had to wait. Four seats opened up at the counter, and we slid on in, picked up our menus, and had that chin-stroking, what-shall-we-have-today moment.
     The special was buttermilk oatmeal pancakes. "I make my own oatmeal pancakes at home," my wife said out loud, to no one in particular, perhaps with a touch of loftiness, the way Queen Elizabeth, offered a $50 gift certificate at Zales, might murmur, "I have jewels back in London."
     We ordered. A few minutes went by while we watched eggs sizzling on the grill and customers bustling in and out behind us. Then Vargas, tall, with an elegant mustache, turned and set a small plate in front of my wife. On it was a single pancake.
     "You mentioned that you make these at home," he said. "But do they taste like this?"
     My wife cut the pancake into four pieces, and we each tried one. Fluffy, oatmeal-infused, slightly sweet — during the comparison of ingredients that followed, Vargas said he puts sugar in the batter.
     "You don't need syrup," he said. My wife pronounced them lighter than her own, my older son decreed they were better, too, which seemed to satisfy him.
     Maybe I wouldn't have noticed if he wasn't a fry cook — usually they stand stolidly before the grills, never turning, pushing out the orders, which were flying fast and furious at the Cherry Pit.
      But his impulse resonated in me. Isn't that the essence of hospitality? The open generosity of sharing, seasoned with a bit of here-try-this-I-made-it-you'll-like-it pride? I thought it exceptional.
                 — Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 22, 2005