I was a few weeks old when my parents bought a restaurant and only 7-years-old when they sold it. However, I will never forget an evening when it dawned on me that no matter what I did in life, I wanted to love it as much as my father loved cooking. Cooking has been my father’s passion since he was a little boy. As a child, he began to experiment with food for family dinners. He grew up in a large family, in the small, sun-drenched town of Vero Beach, Florida. Cooking for six siblings and his parents gave him a lot of practice, a lot of critique, and eventually, a lot of praise. Â
As time went on, this hobby blossomed into a profession. He pursued culinary school, worked in restaurants around the world, and even worked for a few years as a head chef on a Caribbean charter yacht, which is also how he met my mother. Together, they moved back to the States and opened our restaurant, Pronto on Thames Street.
It was Pronto, finally his very own restaurant, that was the culmination of over 20 years as a professional chef. My father has always been a hard-working and assiduous man. At Pronto, he was the head chef and managed the kitchen staff, while my mother managed the business side of the restaurant and the front-of-the-house staff. Every day, my father would be the first person at the restaurant and he’d be the last person to leave in the evening, even on holidays. The restaurant was a great success, where the staff and the regulars were like family. However, he knew that they weren’t his real family, and eventually a sacrifice had to be made to spend more time with my sister and me, who knew nothing other than the restaurant lifestyle.
I’ve never seen him more alive, though, than in Pronto’s kitchen at 464 Thames Street, the main street of Newport that carried tourist traffic from all over the world. Pronto sat on a corner, just a minute’s walk from the busy town center, and gave shelter to the overflow of hungry visitors. The gray house was commercially zoned and boasted a blue and gold Pronto sign. It stood 3 stories tall, with the restaurant occupying the bottom 2 floors. The main floor housed the heart of the building, Pronto’s open kitchen, which ran the entire length of the building’s backside. There was a small dining room with tin ceilings, antique chandeliers, two bay windows, and a small bar with seating for three. The second floor featured an additional dining room and a large bar, often used for private events, along with a few back rooms for wine storage. The walls were covered with mirrors and tasteful artwork. The third floor was where my family resided, in a small, but dramatic 2-bedroom apartment. The kitchen was tiny, and the rooms had angled ceilings, where my parents often bumped their heads. However, the oversized front windows of the apartment provided sweeping views of the Newport harbor, and we could look down on the bustling masses of people on Thames Street.Â
On the evening when my parents told me we were selling the restaurant, I watched my father cooking in the Pronto kitchen, just as I had done countless times before. Smoke rose from the pans, occasionally ablaze from the oil and vegetables. The sous chefs in white coats whisked past me in a hurry to get food on the line out to the servers. Loud chatter and laughter drifted in from the service window that connected the kitchen to, seemingly, the rest of the world. Different aromas of Mediterranean food filled the air, as the adept chefs created dishes inspired by visits to places from Portugal to Morocco. As per usual, I sat front and center. In the corner of the kitchen was a bar stool and an early version of the Mac OS, where I would play children’s games like Hello Kitty and Pixie Hollow. There, I would eat a dinner that my father and his sous chefs had made especially for me. From my little corner of the open kitchen, I began people watching at a young age and experienced the fast-paced environment of the restaurant world. My father would move quickly and adeptly around the kitchen, yelling out orders. It was so chaotic, yet it ran so smoothly. He was always focused and would check that each dish sent out was up to his standards, which I might add were incredibly high. That night, he was preparing a dish for a guest when they changed their order at the last minute. Instead of scraping the meal, he finished the creation and served it to me for my dinner. The pecan-crusted duck with sauteed vegetables was one of his signature dishes at the time. I remember him watching for my reaction to the first bite. I smiled and told him it was good. I always gave truthful reviews, but this was an understatement.
And honestly, I don’t think I can describe it better than Jessi T. did in her Yelp review, “PECAN CRUSTED DUCK B**CHES! Okay, I think I just stripped away all the classiness from this establishment. The pecan crusted duck was the most delicious, savory dish I have ever tasted anywhere. It was a samba of flavors in my mouth followed by a sexy tango aftertaste. I could not believe how delicious I found this dish to be. The funny thing is… this wasn’t even my dish. I had about two or three bites of my boyfriend’s dish and was converted. It was fantastic.”Â
I had tasted my father’s cooking countless times over the years; however, I will never forget my meal that evening. The moment was bittersweet, even to a child, to recognize the passion my father had in creating that dish and in his work, but knowing that season of his life was coming to an end. It’s at that moment that I realized I also wanted to find that type of passion in my life and follow it wherever it leads me.Â