No Experience Necessary: The Culinary Odyssey of Chef Norman Van Aken by Norman Van Aken

Author:Norman Van Aken
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Non-Fiction, Food & Wine, Cookbooks, Cookery
ISBN: 9781589799141
Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing
Published: 2013-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

Sinclair’s menu. We purposefully sought to create a New American Cuisine at Sinclair’s.

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C H15

A P T E R

Sinclair’s

Lake Forest, 1982–84

VERY DAY IT BECAME CLEARER to me that I was now

E the primary breadwinner for our baby boy. When he shouted

“Daddy!” I was the happiest I’d ever been. And we were, the

three of us, so lucky. Justin was almost two! It was time for me to fi nd my way to make it safe for him even though I still didn’t know quite how to do it. He looked at me with his big blue eyes as he tore through the world of discovery a child embarks upon whether Mom and Dad are ready or not. His mom was ready. She was a natural. And he was additionally surrounded also not only by the supernatural love of his maternal grandmother but maternal great-grandmother as well. Th

e prince of

Diamond Lake! We read him Mickey in the Night Kitchen and he loved it!

I spent the majority of daylight hours for many weeks that spring in my mother’s backyard. I was digging her a series of terraces that cascaded down to Diamond Lake. She had transformed the same piece of ground where we had lived in what was called the “Spanish House” into a beautiful, new wooden home with big glass windows and a fantastic porch. But the yard was still a straight drop to the water that was impossible to use and enjoy without risking a straight drop down into the lapping waters of the lake. I had railroad ties delivered to the side of the property and I dug 191

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NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY

that hard clay and heavy mud in an attempt to beautify her home but also to burn off the energy my body was used to draining in Key West kitchens.

I had put out my résumé around town but no restaurant needed my

help. So I dug. I positioned huge stereo speakers toward my work site and treated the neighborhood to a lot of Lightning Hopkins and Muddy Waters.

One aft ernoon Janet’s voice came cutting in over the din of my music and mudslinging: “Norman! A man named Gordon Sinclair is on the phone!”

I remembered the name from a collection of restaurant menus from Chicago, there might have been fi ft y of them, each with a photo of the chef or owner. One of the restaurants was a place downtown somewhere called Gordon—not Gordon’s—but Gordon, like it was a person. I remember looking at the photo of the man the place was named for and getting the oddest feeling of connection. He wore a very unusual sport coat (“natty” might be the word for it). It had stripes. He looked like he could be on an album cover.

Not the typical sober-looking conservative suit for a Chicago businessman.

And something in his face looked so empathetic. When Janet called out his name—as if it had been preordained—it changed the trajectory of my life.

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