Facing the challenge in New York – part 9

From July Roland Oláh, formerly the chef of Café Erté, tries his luck in the USA. He regularly reports to our magazine: ‘I have completely found my part in the system. It is a great feeling that everyone appreciates my work. Running a restaurant is a great business here – American people like to eat out. I have the feeling that even when Hungarians will have the money, they will not start going to restaurants regularly. As the time to change the chef is approaching, we are talking a lot about who is going to work in which section. Our present chef, Olivier is going to be corporate chef in London. Laurent Kalkotour will be the new chef here, he comes from the two-star Ducasse restaurant in New York. Finally I get the afternoon Cuison section on a permanent basis – hard work for ridiculous money. I have to move on if I want to live a normal life with my family. I contacted a French friend, Alain who is the head of a wine bar on South Norwalk. He has been living here for more than 20 years and has good connections.

He helped me to get a job in L’escale, a French restaurant in Greenwich where after a test day the head chef, Francois told me that we would discuss my future after he came back from his holiday in South Africa. Meanwhile I got on with the new chef at DB really well, he saw my attitude and thanked my work every evening. When Francois returned from his holiday we sat down to talk about my salary. I asked for 150 percent more than I got at DB and after a few days we reached a compromise. The following day I talked to chef Olivier at DB about my 2-week notice period. His first question was: How much will you earn? I had asked him twice to raise my salary, but he refused – I completely understand this, as they will always have cooks: young people come here to learn and if they want to earn better they move on with a good letter of recommendation. My last two weeks in the bistro was really pleasant.

On 27 April, my final day at DB, while I was preparing the fish for dinner my colleagues filled a huge meat box with ice cold water and threw me into it, with a jar of honey and icing sugar – it is a tradition here; you can imagine what I looked like. Afterwards I opened a bottle of Jameson’s with the guys and went to a Belgian beer bar. Everyone was there at RoRo’s (this is how they called me) farewell party. The following day I went to L’Escale to do the paperwork – I am starting on Monday.’