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My Grilling Life – Jani Allan

~ Sautéing and Satire. Blue Jasmine story about someone who was a household name in South Africa who becomes a waitress in New Jersey.

My Grilling Life – Jani Allan

Monthly Archives: June 2013

Zou Bisou Bisou

21 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by janiallan in Charles Saatchi, Death, Jani Allan, My Grilling Life

≈ 4 Comments

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Charles Saatchi

If there were flags they would be flying at half mast in the little river town in which I live.

I would rather write something amusant about the restaurant – I really would. But André’s passing has touched us all.

André was a chef who ran a little place in the next town. Actually, he did more than that. He ran the town.

A Frenchman with a porcelain complexion and periwinkle blue eyes, he had a coterie of admirers, the likes of which I haven’t seen since Gaetan DuVal ruled the roost in Mauritius.

Despite being twice their age, André would party with them until rosy-fingered dawn drew back the coverlet of night.

I remember dancing at his seventy-fifth birthday and thinking that I had underwear older than most of the people there. He would come to the restaurant and bring Billecart-Salmon champagne and eat like a bird. He always offered me a glass.
He called me Coco because I used to wear a Coco Chanel brooch.

He was like a Pied Piper. The jeunesse dorée trailed him and sat at his knees and learned from him. He was both wickedly naughty and fiercely kind.

He would turn up at parties parenthesized by a pair of glamorous girls or boys. I used to pester him to marry me. “Ah oui! Maybe when I am zeventy-six,” he would laugh.

For more than a quarter of a century he was mentor to our executive chef.

Occasionally he would make a guest appearance at our resto and cook. He claimed his bread pudding was the best in ze world.

Perhaps it was.

During Hurricane Sandy, we all converged on the chef’s house. He had electricity and we didn’t. As always André was the magic that kept us mesmerized. He would stay overnight, but then leave. He knew that one must maintain one’s mystique.

I would see him at the odd supper party. He was always the one to bring the most interesting salad and have the most interesting stories to tell. Stories about his life in France. He knew what chic was. He knew how to behave. He studied people. Once when I was setting up a party he said:

“You should not put ‘im on zis table. Zees people are not the zame people as zose peeple.” I knew exactly what he meant.

Of course he could be sharper than a serpent’s tooth, but who worth their salt isn’t?
When cancer threatened to overwhelm him, the river town banded together. Within a couple of days enough money was raised to fly André back to Nice. He died four hours after touching down in France. His sister was holding his hand when he passed.

Somehow André’s passing has muffled us all in a cotton wool of grief.

Why, not ten days ago, he came to the restaurant. When it was time for him to leave, he had to make a sixteen point turn to exit. He bumped into a flashy BMW with his old battered jalopy.

With a shrug and a giggle he drove off.

We will continue to swap André stories for years. He was an original. A kind of French Quentin Crisp.

I pray that death came to him like a delicious sleep with the fragrance of magnolia blossoms.

Finally, no column – oops – blog – would be worth its weight in air guitars if it didn’t mention the Lawson/Saatchi spat.

Many years ago I had a fiery relationship with an Italian. The rows, which took place in Italy, Mauritius and Africa were Wagnerian. I would lock him out. He would climb over the wall. There were guns involved and broken noses.

I would call my mother sobbing hysterically.

“It sounds quite romantic to me,” she said placidly. “You don’t understand! He is pazzo – MAD!” I would shriek.

Many years later, I was in an abusive marriage. I became cowed and frightened. Even my tone of voice altered.

I determined that I would write about my experience to encourage other women trapped in abusive relationships to leave, to seek help and support.

Many years later, I am entrapped in a mule-like existence. I have to earn my living by dint of physical labour. The abuse is now ambient.

I wouldn’t mind Charles Saatchi – or any other seriously wealthy man – clapping his pudgy hand over my mouth – if it meant going home to a Knightsbridge townhouse with original Paul Klees, a butler and a housekeeper.

The wheel has turned full circle.

Germs, Gross and Abuse

15 Saturday Jun 2013

Posted by janiallan in Jani Allan, My Grilling Life

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Cape Talk, Cruelty to animals, iPhone, McDonalds, Michael Douglas, Pom, Taco Bell, United States

The three words I see most in America are ”Made in China.” The three words I hear are ”Ew. How gross.”

In the same week that Michael Douglas overshared with us about why he has cancer, we read that a Taco Bell employee was fired for licking a ziggurat of taco shells.

The general response to the former was mild, but the latter caused outrage among the chefs.

How disgusting. I wouldn’t want to eat anything someone had licked.

But, said I, the devil’s advocate, what about when you kiss someone?

Oooooh that’s different.

Gross is a blanket term that covers everything except things that I find gross. My grossometer is clearly out of whack.

Gross can even refer to a colour. As in ”How gross are those orange sweat pants.”

I can’t get a handle on what Americans find disgusting and repulsive. Or what they find abusive.

As far as I can tell they are horrified by dogs anywhere near the restaurant. Yet they are OK with changing a baby’s diaper on the banquet in full view of other diners. They are perfectly OK with belching and Chaucerian farts.

There is a frenetic germophobia in the restaurant where I work.

The servers have elaborate methods of marking their water glasses. Perish the thought you could accidentally swig from someone else’s glass. EW. They are constantly wiping their hands with sanitizer.

They are horrified at the thought of picking a napkin off the carpeted floor….horrified by putting a basket of rolled up silverware on the floor….it’s in the basket not on the floor for heaven’s sake. Yet they will prod every bread roll in the oven before putting it in a basket to be served.

In America even the wafers at Roman Catholic churches come in sterilized, sanitized little sachets. They want to meet their Maker. But not yet.

As for going to the supermarket – the trolleys are equipped with hand sanitizers and the proadeuce (sic) has to be approached with tongs and plastic gloves and little sheets of paper. I can remember buying fresh bread in South Africa when the warm loaf wore a little paper cummerbund and nothing else.

I stopped going to a local hairdresser a few years ago because they wouldn’t allow me to bring a three-pound Pomeranian who sat in her travelling bag.

There is a clear dividing line between disgusting and unattractive.

Once I saw a large woman doing her business in Victoria Road Clifton. I found that disgusting.

I find people peeing in public disgusting. I find people who hold their knives as though they are expecting to be attacked by a street gang deeply unattractive. As for people who attempt to eat artichokes with a knife and fork – they are just plain silly. Slum prudery, Henry Higgins would have called it.

Then there’s Abuse. Abuse is another can of haricots entirely.

You are not allowed to call someone Chinese. That’s abuse. They have to be referred to as Asian. (Not oriental. That’s a rug.)

You are not allowed to say someone is fat. They are heavy. Calling them fat is abuse.

Which brings me to my little adventurette this week.

Those who have the slightest acquaintance with me will know that I prefer – no FAR prefer- most animals to humans. During my career as a hackette, I have championed the cause of the Lipizzaners (when it seemed that the dressage school would have to shut down because of lack of funds), I have worked – actually people are always said to ”work tirelessly” aren’t they- for Domestic Animal Rescue Group. Together with Ahmed Aloudien we spotlighted the horrors committed on horses during gang initiation in the Cape. The Cape Horse Protection Society garnered considerable support by my bullying listeners on Cape Talk and pointing out the connection between cruelty to animals and murder.

Since coming to States I have written extensively about the decimation of wildlife in Africa.

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated,’ Gandhi once said.

When a man wantonly destroys a work of art, we call him a vandal. What then, do we call a man who cuts the legs off a horse – or gouges the eyes out of a cow.

What do we call soi-disant ”war veterans” in Zimbabwe who are shooting, snaring , spearing and using landmines to destroy herds of elephant and the endangered Black rhino, cheetah, leopard, antelope and giraffe?

Once, when I had a guest slot on a New York Radio Show with Barry Farber, I called Johnny Rodriguez of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force to talk about the mutilation of rhinos.

After the show Bah Fah (as I call him) shook his head sadly.

“They don’t even know where Zimbabwe is. Nor do they care….”

More recently I was introduced to Bill Smith of Main Line Animal Rescue.

MLAR have a huge celebrity support base whose main purpose is to draw attention to the horrific puppy mills (or Poppy Meals as Cesar Milan pronounces it.) The conditions in which animals are kept in dark barns in wire cages no bigger than shoeboxes and forced to breed leaves this hackette at a loss for words, so gut-wrenching it is.

The worst offenders are the Amish in Lancaster County who make millions of dollars a year by selling puppies to pet shops. It is my fervent hope that there will be a special place in hell for these who regard animals merely as cash crops.

I give you this potted history of my involvement and love of animals merely as the backstory.

I have rotten luck with men, but I have been blessed with three Pomeranians. Two are retired American champions. To say that I dote on them is an understatement. They eat only organic chicky wicky, organic broccoli-woccoli and drink Poland Spring distilled water. (Heaven’s I would never give them tap water!)

While I wear schmattas from the Gap, in the winter they have real shearling coats. They have miniature Ugg boots and Italian harnesses.

I spend $80 per Pom for their grooming. (My blow out costs a mere $35….)

They have a sheepskin staircase so that they can ascend and descend from my bed as and when.

I fear I am over-egging the omelette….but I need you to get the Polaroid.

Sunday morning, before work, I raced to the local market to buy some of the aforementioned organic, cage free, no steroids or hormone-fed chicken breasts for the pups.

As is my habit I took all three with me. Breeze sits in a carrier on the front seat, China is on the back seat on a sheepskin pillow and bossy Molly is on my lap.

I parked the car in the shade and left it running with the aircon on high. It was so cold, the Poms teeth were practically chattering. I was gone for all of 10 minutes.

When I returned there was a fat – oops – heavy woman in plaid Bermuda shorts standing a short distance away from my little car. Actually from the back her bottom looked like a covered wagon.

“Its abuse!” she was nasally whining into her iPhone. “Its gross abuse! There’s no other word! The woman has turned up now so I don’t know what she’ll do…but its GROSS and its ABUSE.” Her eyes were flat and malevolent. I felt as though I was being watched by something I had just put in in the garbage.

It took me a few moments to understand that she was calling the police because I was, in her view, abusing my pets by leaving them in the air-conditioned car.

You can’t make this stuff up.

“If you’re concerned about animal abuse, perhaps you should investigate the puppy mill industry ma’am,” I suggested politely.

Privately I thought that given that she had a girth the size of a redwood tree, she was abusing not only the McDonalds, but the Pizza Hut and both Ben and Jerrys. But what do I know?

I drove off and left her still yakking away to the police.

As someone famously said ”You cannot underestimate the intelligence of some people.”

Oh the Sweet Agony…

06 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by janiallan in Jani Allan, My Grilling Life

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It’s a deep mystery to me how people can be so categoric and decisive about what they eat for their appetizer and their entrée, but when it comes to dessert they lapse into a coma.


Thus I will take an order which goes something like this.

“I will have the watercress salad but NO endive and the dressing on the side” (Don’t you love it when they deconstruct a dish?)

“Then I will have the pasta, but the peas must be on the side. Oh and I’ll have a cup of coffee now. Decaf and regular. And be sure to pour the regular in first.” (You’re joking me right?) “I want milk and not cream. Do you only have Splenda? Don’t you have Sweet and Low?”

The tuna must be seared (this is said threateningly) “or I won’t eat it”. The New York strip steak must be medium to medium rare…Actually more on the rare side. NO butter on the asparagus but I want pommes frites with mayonnaise. The bronzino (a Mediterranean sea-bass) must be feelaid (sic) because she can’t stand the little face looking at her.

“Are you sure there won’t be any bones? I am allergic to bones!”

I go to the computer and type in a modification: Allergic to bones. There are snorts from the chef.

The strip steak comes out as per order but the eyes roll back.

“Oh ew! That’s far too bloody!”

This means that the strip must be taken to the executive chef, the kitchen must be notified that there is a reheat for position one on 43….it’s a megillah.

The evening goes according to plan. They have finished their bottle of Moët (without leaving a thimble for me), and I have been instructed to open their dessert wine.

Now comes the part of the script where I say

“Would you like to see the dessert tray?”

The tortuous ritual that follows is as intricate as a Japanese tea ceremony.

The response to “Would you like to see the dessert tray?” is complete silence.

There is an exchange of coy glances.

Finally ”Well we’ll LOOK!” Mrs Queen for the Day allows.

I return with the heavy ornate silver tray on which are seven desserts.

“May I tell you about them …er…sir….ma’am?”

Sir and Ma’am have locked fingers and are gazing into each other’s eyes. I am seeing a pair of humans morph into llamas.

“May I…?”
“Oh Hon! Here’s the tray!” she squeals. The llama has morphed into Miss Piggy.
“Are they fresh?” she demands bossily.

I explain that they have been made on the premises by our pastry chef who used to work at the Algonquin in New York. He is known for his fabulous creations.

I then proceed to give a brief description of every dessert.

After I have done so, there is more silence. In fact the silence is as thick as a roux.

More glances are exchanged. Deep. Meaningful. Glances. I could polish the fish-knives on the Titanic while waiting for them to come to a decision.

My eyes dart around the room. I take mental polaroids. The bloke at 45 is scribbling in the air (or having a petit mal seizure) which I take to mean he wants the check.

The people outside are waiting for their first course to be cleared. The octogenarians on table eighty want another bottle of wine opened.

All of which is as irrelevant as last winter’s magazines left in a dentist’s office.

The couple who have skewered me with the lance of their indecision have my full attention.

“What do you think, hon?”

Hon! You’re not torn between the whether you want the Hermes or the Kelly bag.

You’re not even torn between a Lamborghini or a Ferrari.

This is a $7.50 pudding!

“I’m OK….I’m quite full.”

“REALLY? You don’t want to share one with me?”

“Well maybe I’ll have a bite….”

“Well then YOU pick….”

“No, YOU pick….”

“No, its your birthday….YOU pick…”

She sighs like a tiny pair of bagpipes.

Decisions, decisions.

“What’s that one again? And what’s that? What’s THAT one?”

This is when I have to call on my acting skills to recite the whole tray again.

Finally they decide on a desert. I order it on the computer and then go and wait for it in the kitchen.

I am verbally abused by the garde manger, a fearless deity in the culinary world.

“Why you here so soon? Hnh? HNH?? I ponch (punch) you if you come here too soon….”

That’s one option. If I wait too long to pick up the dessert from the line it is

”Why you so late? How long will you take to learn. Burra!”

Usually I am able to impersonate a server adequately. I feign interest and do a lot of solicitous hovering.

Believe it or not, I have met and become friends with some of the people I wait on. But these are the ones who know that I am their server, not their servant.

When it’s time for the dessert ritual I give thanks that I do not sell real estate, merely puddings.

If there is such agonising about whether to have a scoop of ice-cream on the pear and ginger tart or whether to have it plain, can you imagine the fresh hells that a realtor must go through?

Jani Allan

Jani Allan
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