Max told me a story about a black motorcycle gang thundering down the back alley. There’s a fire station behind the restaurant. A firetruck was backing into the garage. That was backing up traffic down Illinois- a black motorcycle gang included. They decided not to wait, turned and thundered down the alley, past Max. He said to two women at the closest patio table, “You know what about guys who have motorcycles.” He held his index finger an inch from his thumb. “No way,” a woman said back, over the roar of the bikes. She put her palms a foot apart.

Some kind of NATO summit is this weekend in Chicago. There will be roads closed to protect the presidents and heads of state and whonot. I overheard the silver fox talking to chef. The honchos from Australia needed a big table- their security detail would be coming sooner to lock down the perimeter. “Australia?” the chef asked incredulous. “But they’re not in NATO. NATO means North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Australia’s on the other side of the world.”

“Oh, well,” replied the silver fox, with a sly grin. “Maybe he said Austria.”

I attended a party for Lanie’s twenty first birthday. After cochinita pibil and cake at the house, and Larry’s toast to the “blues baby,” we all went to the drag theater across the street from the grill. I haven’t been to a drag show in years, but it felt right- coming on the heels of the President’s endorsement of equal rights and being in this place I’d never been to, directly across the street from the restaurant. I sat at a table with the accountant, his wife, and the assistant sommelier. Her name is Victoria and as a regular she took me under her wing, so to speak- she told me when to tip the queens. “I like her dress,” I said about one queen. “Did you give her a dollar? No. They buy all their own clothes. Don’t worry honey, I’ll give her a couple dollars for you.” All the people I work with, from the chefs to the cooks to the waiters to Larry, got up again and again and danced to the stage to tip the queens.

“That’s Miss Chilli Pepper,” said Victoria. “I never give her less than a ten. Chili is the absolute best- she gets a ten dollar bill. Every time. Don’t worry,” she told me, with a glimmer in her eye. “You’re still a real man. And guess what Arthur- they’re all men too.”

Chef Moyo talked to everybody on staff about the history of Frontera’s local food program. Instead of relying on any one stop shop like Cisco, the restaurant sources from over 47 local purveyors. The story begin 18 years ago, the advent of farmers markets in the city of Chicago. Chef Rick met an herb dealer (the legit kind) at one of the first markets, in Lincoln Park, and forged a business partnership. He and Deanne drove the family station wagon to the first markets downtown and in Evanston. At Daley Plaza, Rick piled produce on the sidewalk while Deanne circled the block so as not to get ticketed by police. They did this for years.

In the past twenty five years, Frontera helped created market for: free range, organic chicken, duck, pork, goat, Iroquois white corn, black beans, cornmeal, pea shoots, garlic, pawpaw, frozen tomatoes, Mexican chocolate, quince, figs, wild arugula, mache, tomatillos, red knob onions, tatume squash, wild spinach, pinto beans, huitlacoche, local eggs- and those are just the first to Chefs mind in the minutes before the meeting.

Chef broke down how human connections bring food from the ground to the fire- 1) Go to the market, talk to farmers about what they have. 2) Talk quantity, test the produce in kitchen. 3) Give farmer feedback and ask for input and ideas about how to use produce. 4) Through multiple visits to market, create relationship. 5) Make a significant purchase of product. 6) Put it on the menu, with the farmers name, and tell them. 7) Engage front of house staff to talk about product. 8.) Make new contacts at market. Respect older contacts- farmers are tight knit community. 9) Be fair with pricing, and give heads up before your needs change. 10) Work out best delivery system. 11) Develop trust.

I should have written more reviews on yelp- I say should because of my elite status. Unfortunately Etta and I have been on the receiving end of bad service. I don’t like to focus on the negative- that is part of my thought process I prefer to keep to myself. Despite the stress of the known unknowns, I have been making a concerted effort to smile more at diners.

President Obama made history with words this week. Mitt Romney looks more on the wrong side. Forward is a one word contrast. My friends Andrea and Julie were in the house that day- In the photo Dre is checking out a postcard from Etta’s mom Marcia Mello. She was in Robin Hood’s Bay. I have been listening to her track “Midnight Blues.” The best part of my week was when Meghan took us to Red Hot Ranch and we got three hotdogs and a pound of fried shrimp- at 2am listened to “Midnight Blues” driving Etta home the windows down and outside getting warmer.

The artichoke is the lobster of vegetables, or at least Etta and I eat it like lobster- steamed and cracked open, the meat dipped in butter. The insides remind me of lobster organs. I learned about chile torreado- releasing chile oils and cooking chiles in them. The other day I rode past a large rabbit in a cage but forgot to tell anyone for days. I don’t want to forget this story and almost did, so- Today this regular who sits at Frontera but orders off the Topo menu asked for all this specific stuff. It was ok because he knew exactly what he wanted. He asked what was the dayboat catch from the finer dining restaurant. I asked a server who replied simply- seared halibut, peas and ramps. I repeat to customer. He orders two.

After special salads and appetizers its time to serve the fish. To my surprise the fish is covered in tiny yellow flowers and grasped by giant pink squid tentacle next to mussel shell that contains pearl size puree vegetables that resemble multicolored fish eggs by its side. Its like Dr. Seuss fish. I put the plates down on the table without a word and the food runner deftly delicately strategically scoops paints mussels and green sauce on the plate from a copper pot. The regular looks down and says, “What the fuck.”

A few days ago on a Wednesday Etta and I walked to the green line and got off in the loop. She went to a UPS store and had her papers notarized and we went underground in the Daley Center to change address / renew her business license and she took the photo above of me and a bizarre floating photo of David Orr on the bare wall. The security guard hollered no photos and I threw up my arms “Don’t shoot!” and said sorry and we bought cream puffs and took them to Millenium park- she got strawberry cream filling and I got double chocolate. We saw Lost Bohemia- a sad documentary chronicling the former artist residence above Carnegie Hall and Etta cried because octogenarian dancer Star Szarek reminded her of her mother Marcia Mello. We ate Japanese food- a peanut broth soup and fried river shrimp and oysters and grilled small bites of black cod, mochi and scallops.

After my first Frontera brunch- which fell on Cinco de Mayo and I was not the captain of, nowhere close; I did not memorize the eggs, describe the menu, remember to put ice in my drink shakers, but also did not let the customers know of any such problems- I took an afternoon nap under the dog blanket. When I woke up Etta and I went to Stanley’s and bought watermelon, bananas, green apples, mint and basil (for chopped herb ice cubes), yogurt, strawberries, plums, mangoes, ginger, cucumber, a pineapple, arugula, grapefruit and kiwi for smoothies but my favorite is still chocolate peanut butter. Then we went to Phil’s and ate a char cheddar dog, a Fatso with cheese, macaroni and cheese with salami, and I bought an ice cream drumstick at the pharmacy. Today I had 2 cups of coffee, 2 sugar glazed poundcake donuts, half a bagel with cream cheese and cherry tomato, six microwaved dumplings, and got sad looking at photos of my grandmother Happy eating fried scrod.

I’m sitting here watching Nanook of the North. It’s so amazing, isn’t it? And it’s so inspiring- I can’t even believe how beautiful these eskimos are. And I love it- all the fur pants. The thing is, all I want to do is fur pants but I know if I do them I’ll get stoned on Seventh Avenue like some kind of wanton heretic or something. So there won’t be any fur pants coming down my runway. Its about women not wanting to look like cows I guess- you know. And in fact, there’s something very charming about cows- but anyway. Um- you know what I mean. There’s something very charming about a big fat fur pant, but you know.

Actually there was one thing I wanted to do which was a fur jumpsuit. Like the banana splits, you know- those big kind of, giant- I would love to have one of those, in beast. Let’s say in beast fur. To walk the dog in or something- you didn’t think about anything, you know- you have your bra and panties on- you just put this giant fur jumpsuit on. You know, head to toe, hood, and little hush puppy boots or something. You’re like, walking the dog. Looking amazing- surprising everyone in your neighborhood, which in this case would probably be Upper East Side. Or Alaska.

-Isaac Mizrahi in the 1995 documentary, Unzipped, the film Rolling Stone called, “the best party movie of the year”

The dreams blossomed again in my sleeping brain. I am on the floor and things need to be done, and its all in slow motion. Etta even had a stress dream about waiting tables- in her dream, I was on the other side of the restaurant, moving in slow motion. When I wake up and ride my bike to work I am on the floor and my biggest challenge is not the menu, I like food. It’s not the drink program, I shake the margaritas table side. It’s not politics- I work hard. It’s not not being Mexican- I work hard. My beef is sleep, and my brain adjusting to waking and working a quarter day earlier. It’s going to happen natural, but it feels like slow motion.

Amidst the rewriting of my routines, I found inspiration in a blog post by Crescent Dragonwagon, titled, Part 1: love / dead cat, or Becoming Lovable, about her first cat Beanblossom. I hope that my sister and her partner Peter read it together.

The temperature climbed back into the seventies in Chicago- following days of higher heat in St. Louis than New Orleans, where my friends John Hoota and Brian Bro were at Jazzfest. The first photos posted on Internet confirmed a rugged bro-down. Speaking of folks from Massachusetts, a professor of meteorology at MIT claimed clouds could offset human carbon dioxide fumes warming the planet. Clouds- I bet that guy listens to a lot of WMBR. In my spare time, I turned focus to the construction of memory palaces for the Frontera menu. In the first staff wine tasting I received an ovation for my description of the new Chardonnay-

Its the 2010 Thierry and Pascale Matrot Chardonnay from Meursault, France. I get bread dough, apples and macadamia nuts on the nose. It drinks bright with delicate oak and finishes crisp and well balanced. I would pair a glass with our wood grilled wahoo in tomato, arbol chile, sesame sauce.

As I continued to read, I realized there was more to it. Toto, in Latin, means all-encompassing. Jeffrey Thomas Porcaro, who died in 1992, was one of the most recorded session drummers in the history of rock. He rose to recognition playing drums on the album Katy Lied by Steely Dan, one of my favorite bands. Allmusic has characterized him as “arguably the most highly regarded studio drummer in rock from the mid-’70s to the early ’90s”, further stating that “It is no exaggeration to say that the sound of mainstream pop/rock drumming in the 1980s was, to a large extent, the sound of Jeff Porcaro.” I got angry at Etta a few nights ago when she stated I like pop music. But here is the sound of seventies and eighties rock drumming hailing from my hometown. Its in my roots.

Besides Errol Morris, I read a story out of Kansas by A.G. Sulzberger- Amid Rural Decay, Trees Take Root in Silos. Farms on the Great Plains have evolved to new efficiencies- machination has reduced the levels of farm staffs. Buildings no longer needed are cheaper left standing than demolished. The human footprint on the praire paradoxically aids vegetation growth- in part by protecting plants from the stress of wind. Trees reach out of many abandoned grain silos- the flora phenomenon has found fans amongst photographers on Flickr. Amateur photog Ken Wolf said, “It just struck me as, I don’t know, a symbol of something- I see it as a kind of passing.”