Brandon Fazio – unfiltered

When I was 23 years old my late brother Mark was living in Gulfport, Florida a quaint gulf community full of artists and my favorite type of tree, the palm tree. After he described it to me, it sounded like paradise, and I was tired of the frigid Ohio winters . I packed up my car in January and headed south. My car blew up on arrival, luckily there were lots of bars and grills, as well as a few nice restaurants I could walk to from Marks apartment. I had a job in two days at a bar and grill named “H.T. Kane’s” after Helga and Tim the owners. They were extremely kind, wonderful people. The place was right on the water, and about a 5 minute walk from the apartment. The kitchen was the tiniest professional kitchen I had ever seen and worked in to this day. The line was set up to basically be a one cook show, two cooks if you didn’t mind being stuck in the corner running the deep fryer. The chef John, was a sweetheart of a man, extremely efficient on the line, but also one of the highest functioning alcoholics I have ever met. The way he danced on the line was like nothing I had ever seen before, he would drop some burgers on the grill – do a quick 180* spin, throw lettuce, tomatoes, onions on a bun then gracefully slide down the line to drop the onion rings and fries in the fryer. Every time he reached into the fridge for something he would grab his beer and have a sip, and astonishingly become more graceful with each sip that he took. At the end of the shift he would fix us both a sandwich, and we would have our 3 free shift drinks. He shared stories with me of his life, and we talked about music. It seemed that what he was living at this moment was his personal version of heaven, after all the hell the man had been through. Chef John was in his late 40’s at this point. He taught me how to dance on a line by myself, which is something I had never done, I was always part of a brigade. As well as multi-task like I had never done, between a grill, a 2 basket fryer, and 4 burner saute station. He made me stronger than ever. Wherever you are chef, thank you for everything and I hope that you are well.