06 May 2010
 
Willow

(Willow's Icon. Photo From Willow)

Life is pretty good. Looking down on the Big Pink pool, things are ready for the season. The ladders are up, the water level is full, and the only thing missing is the new pool furniture, which the Board says will be in place for opening day.
 
I am not going to stress about being first and last in the pool this year. If the former happens, then the latter will assume a slightly larger urgency. Maybe I will just sleep in this year and not worry about it. I have made a parallel resolution to stop stressing about Koreans of either persuasion, North or South, and believe the most optimistic assessments about oil spills, health care and global warming.
 
Bob Seger, the guy who starting rocking down at the Hideout in Royal Oak Michigan is sixty-five today; Ernie Harwell, who broadcast the Tigers games in my old lost hometown from the beginning of time is dead. Summer is not ever going to be the same with his voice stilled and Bob on Social Security, so it is time to start enjoying things before it is too late.
 
The weather may be contributing to the feeling of buoyancy. Soaking up the vitamin D in the afternoon sun is a positive tonic, and the only thing that would keep me off the balcony in the glow of the westering solar disk is an invitation to stop at Willow on the way home from work.
 
Doc is in town from the West Coast today, and I am thinking a glass or two of Chardonnay with a little sampler of those insanely good pork spring rolls with dipping sauce that Tracy rolls out might be just what the doctor ordered.
 
I may be doing pretty well at the moment, but I could not afford to dine there as often as I visit. Tracy recognized that and came up with a cool bar menu, sort of a tapas thing, and for $5 bucks you can sample some fabulous appetizers. The mini-fish and chips is not that; it is a fantasy tempura of shrimp and cod and scallops with lacy onion rings that have nothing to do with the plebian fried version.
 
There is passion in those little dishes, and that is what the place is about.
 
When Willow was still Gaffney’s, and a dive, I used it only as a convenient and uncrowded place to catch a generic drink. I planned some intricate information operations campaigns there with my pal Doc McFate, before she rocketed to fame, and then into seclusion. That was when I still thought I could make a difference about anything, and before I realized it was really just every person for themselves out here in the wild world.
 
I worked up the street then, before venturing down to the Bus Station on New York Avenue, and when the gig with the Phone Company ended, I managed to work out of Big Pink for a year before hiring on with my current firm. Remarkably, I have just hop-scotched around what became the Willow Restaurant, which is where I did my interview with my current firm.
 
Willow opened in the former Gaffney’s in 2005, just after the Admiral retired and took over his unit at the company, and let out the drag net for retired spooks to help him build some commercial business in the government sector where we all spent our working lives.
 
I think I had Tracy’s flat bread, or maybe it was the half-sandwich with the crazy beets on the side and a cup of delicious savory soup.
 
I don’t know. It is hard to enjoy food when you are concerned about what you are spilling on yourself, but I noted how solicitous the service was and how the place filled up as noon came and went.
 
Willow capitalized on good bones. Gaffney’s had worn the furnishings down, but the Vienna Workshop style of the original upscale steakhouse was refined by architects Sas Gharai, Lisa Rigazio and fitted out by designer Charma Le Edmond. The bar and dining room are warm and inviting, or are now,  once the workmen sanded down the bar to remove the cigarette burns and glass-rings.
 
The warm mahogany wood and tones of gold, deep purple and burgundy blend like a fine red wine, emblazoned with the striking image of the slim lady in her flowing gown are prominent throughout the restaurant. It feels like Scott Fitzgerals could step out of the men’s room at any moment.
 
I had no idea how much more to the story there was. How was I to know that Tracy O’Grady had made a run at being recognized as the best chef in the entire freaking world, and devoted her life to the pursuit or it for a while?
 
I didn’t know the back-story until just this week, which was a revelation on the order of discovering a Nobel Laureate was perched on the stool next you at Whitey's.
 
Tracy came up locally. She had a degree in communications from Canisius College, but had a passion for cooking. She wound up doing her apprenticeship at Kinkead’s downtown, a legendary upscale brasserie-style Foggy Bottom restaurant specializing in fresh seafood. That accounts for half of the menu she would have to cook in competition, in front of an audience and twenty-two judges.
 
I admire people that follow their passion greatly, and am proud to consider that I did the same thing, even if it didn’t turn out quite they way I had hoped.
 
At the 2001 Bocuse D’or, she had five hours to prepare twelve portions of leg of lamb and sea bass. No American chef had ever taken home a medal or even stumbled on the podium.
 
She met her husband, Brian at Kinkead’s when she was getting ready to compete. They were both divorced and both driven. Brian was on the production line chef and Tracy was sous chef, who barked out the orders. It is a story of romance in the kitchen, with Tracy stepping up to challenge the world in Lyon, France. Four years later, they decided to open  Willow, and began serving customers in September 2005,  just a week after the wedding.
 
It is Tracy’s vision, but the pork spring rolls might be all Brian.
 
I don’t know. I am reading Andrew Friedman’s account of the 2009 Bocuse d’Or now, since he was kind enough to sign my copy, as was former White House Chef Walter Scheib. I have been trying to get to that story all week, and it looks like I didn’t make it again.
.
On the other hand, if Doc and I wander over to Willow for a glass of wine tonight, I might be able to ask Tracy or Brian exactly what it is like to cook inside a pressure cooker. We will see who is at the bar.

Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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