16 February 8 - 14, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Troy Gardner, a longtime Dallas chef known for his vegan fare, can relate to Belmore: He, too, has kept people on his staff even when they’ve given him ample cause for firing. As he told the Observer in 2021, Gardner knew an employee was stealing cash, but he had no plans to fire him. “It’s one part empa- thy, two parts necessity,” the chef said at the time. “Ironically, he’s one of my best employees, and I need him.” When he was inter- viewed again in late 2023, Gardner con- firmed he never fired that employee. In fact, he gave the guy a raise. “I try to supplement that raise when I can,” Gardner says, and the employee also takes out loans regularly. “I’m very understanding of his sit- uation. He works literally seven days a week. He works a day job at one place, then comes to us for his night job. He’s got two kids in college and another in high school.” Silver Gordon, the general manager of Hamburger Mary’s, says this isn’t unusual. “A lot of people in my kitchen are working two to three jobs,” he says. “Fifteen years ago I would’ve said, ‘You have to make this job a priority,’ but I really can’t do that any- more, because everyone’s gotta have two jobs to make it.” Getting a raise after being caught stealing is not typical; it’s just one way Gardner is trying to figure out how to retain and care for his small batch of employees. After the closures of his Trinity Groves restaurant V- Eats and his Garland ghost kitchen TLC Vegan Kitchen, Gardner opened TLC Vegan Cafe in Richardson in late 2022. He says he has tried to hire a manager for more than a year but so far has been unable to find one, so he’s han- dling manager duties himself. Despite the restaurant’s small size — 28 chairs inside and 12 outside — he has strug- gled to keep other positions staffed, too. “Smaller restaurants, we’re just dying for staffing,” says Gardner, defining a “smaller” restaurant as one with 60 seats or less. Bigger restaurants like Whiskey Cake have a revolving door, he says. Employees will leave after a month or so be- cause another place is offering 30 cents more per hour, but a restaurant with that size, budget and name recognition will be able to replace people much easier than a restaurant like his. Smaller places can’t afford revolving doors; for the place to stay open, the door can really only go one way. But it doesn’t. “At small places, there’s only so far people can go,” Gard- ner says. “A lot of people don’t have a vested interest in stick- ing it out; there’s very little to no loyalty. Most of the people in the service industry are here out of complete necessity, or they really love it. You really only have two types; there’s not a whole lot of people in the middle.” Gardner has no other option, then, to create some loyalty. He doesn’t have a master plan for doing this. His approach mostly amounts to being the opposite of the obsessive, pugi- listic chef as seen on TV. (“I’m a fucking psycho,” says Carmy Berzatto, the main character of The Bear. “That’s why I’m good at what I do.”) While he may be acting as manager on a (hopefully) temporary basis, Gardner says he tries to delegate when- ever possible, mostly because he has seen people respond well to the trust and respect that comes with more auton- omy. “You have to look at each person as an individual and en- courage everyone to do the same,” he says. “In a kitchen, you have different ability levels, different self-awareness levels, and what makes toxicity thrive in close quarters is when one person feels they aren’t being valued, or another person thinks you’re playing favorites.” Destiney, who has worked for Gardner for four years, says the chef succeeds at creating a healthy environment in a notoriously un- healthy industry. She fills multiple roles at the restaurant, includ- ing serving tables, han- dling the front of the house and managing customer complaints. “Troy is the main rea- son why I like it,” she says of her work. “He’s one of the most caring and talented chefs I’ve come into contact with. I’m not afraid to go to Troy if I feel like one of my coworkers is being disruptive or rude, and I trust he will handle the situation.” Fortunately, she hasn’t had to worry much about conflict with her teammates. Customers are another story. Destiney says she is in therapy in part because of her seven years working in the restaurant business. She is en- gaged, and she wants to get healthier before she gets mar- ried and starts a family. One of the more stressful parts of her gig — and a frequent topic in therapy — is disrespect from patrons. “It’s gotten worse in the last few years,” she says. “I think people don’t have patience anymore. They’re not really giv- ing businesses grace. They think we’re robots and don’t have feelings or we don’t mess up at times. People make a mistake when you’re working in a restaurant; it’s easy to make a mis- take.” The boss has seen this lack of patience, too, and he knows it takes a toll on his team. “So much of the anxiety and frustration comes from the lack of empathy on the customer side,” Gardner says. “You get so many over-the-top complaints that you wouldn’t ex- pect anywhere, and I get it, because people are passionate about food. But I don’t know when it became OK to treat people horribly when they’re doing their best.” This is a common sentiment among the people interviewed for this story, but once again, there ap- pears to be no single remedy. The consen- sus is that chefs and owners must be out in front of the com- plaint; letting their people bear the brunt of a customer’s abuse is a surefire way to make burnout worse. Chefs are equally vexed about how to handle toxic employ- ees — those people who follow the ar- chetype of the “fuck- ing psycho.” Staff shortages compound the problem. As Belmore and Gardner’s stories show, addiction and theft can be a problem. “A happy kitchen is the ultimate goal,” Provost says. “On rare occasions, I’ve let people go because they treat people poorly. If there’s tension and drama in the kitchen, that af- fects everything.” Provost wouldn’t elaborate on the specific reasons for those two firings, other than to say, “They weren’t polite. They weren’t Southern, let’s put it that way. You have to be able to effectively communicate with the front of the house and with your coworkers.” Provost worked in telecom sales before her love of food led her to the culinary program at El Centro. Her first job in the restaurant world was as a prep cook at Parigi, and she eventually bought the place and installed Joel Orsini as the executive chef. “I have to tell him, ‘Hold on, don’t get burned out,’” she says of the hard-working Orsini. “But I think he’s the uni- corn; he doesn’t get burned out.” She worries about others, though, particularly since she has had ample trouble filling openings on her team. “Looking for people is unnerving,” she says. “You wonder, ‘Are they even going to show up for the interview?’” (They often don’t.) One of the benefits of operating a chef-owned restau- rant is that Provost can close whenever she leaves. Parigi closes for a week around July 4, emulating a European approach Provost heard about. The restaurant is also closed on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Provost doesn’t think that’s enough, though; she’s searching for more. She wants to continue the work she started with the Greater Dallas Restaurant Association and Les Dames d’Escoffier, a group that mentors women in the culinary world. Through the Parigi Scholarship Endowment Fund, she recently raised over $1 million in scholarship funds for culinary students, including students at her alma ma- ter. And in house, at Parigi, she wants to create an appren- ticeship model so employees can rise in the ranks like she did. “We like to promote from within,” she says. “The fact that I was able to have female mentorship when I was so green had a major impact on my career, so I want to do the same.” Van Meter, whom Provost cites as one of her mentors, says women have not received enough credit for the work they’ve done to shape Dallas’ culinary scene. Provost, Mi- chelle Carpenter of Restaurant Beatrice and chocolatier Katherine Clapner are just a few of the people she says are bucking the archetype of the controlling, hot-tempered chef. “I see a lot of gentler kitchens now,” says Van Meter, a for- mer corporate chef at venues like the Ritz Carlton and Nei- man Marcus. In 2022, she opened Beckley 1115 in Oak Cliff. “I’m totally impressed by the younger generation, who prefer the work-life balance. It took me a lot of time to un- derstand that, and now that I do, I’m really envious of it,” she says. Unlike Provost, Van Meter came up through the French ranks where, she says, “any- thing went.” She was once “kicked in the be- hind” by a chef who was purportedly trying to teach her. Other chefs she saw or worked under made it a habit of being verbally abusive at every oppor- tunity. She’s seen some of that seep into the American model. “The U.S. has a lot more mental abuse than physical abuse in kitchens, but it’s gotten a lot better by far,” she says. Zack Gardner, Troy Gardner’s son, agrees. He has worked in his father’s kitchens since he was 5, and while his dad thought he’d be a drummer, Zack has spent years working for Front Burner Society, a management company In the Kitchen And Over the Line from p15 Illustrations by Bryan Kelly
