Lawyer switches gears, eyes following in Child's footsteps

Nation's Restaurant News, May 8, 2000 by Andrea Strong

NEW YORK -- I was a lawyer, a corporate lawyer. Please continue reading. Try to put things in perspective. After all, I am now in the food business. For five long years I worked into the night, doing deals -- financing start-up companies, writing merger agreements, faxing, filing, drinking too much coffee and using too much undereye concealer. Five years of my life were spent wanting to get out and somehow find a career in the restaurant business. This is my story.

There are those of us who grow up dreaming of curing cancer or flying to the moon. I was never one of those individuals. I grew up with a mind full of dreams, most of which revolved around food, and my guide throughout was Julia Child. Way back when I was 3 or 4, I would sit cross-legged on the carpet in my TV room, glued to her show on PBS. I was mesmerized by her rich voice. My mom still tells me of the times she would find me sitting there, mouth wide open, completely engrossed with Julia. No "Sesame Street," no Big Bird, just Julia -- every day. As I got older, Julia left PBS, quite a devastating event for her young viewer, but my dedication to the food world remained.

As the years passed, I found myself working in restaurants, hostessing, waitressing, bartending and dreaming of the day that I would have my own little place. It would be a place where I could welcome guests into a small, warm room and feed them homemade feasts. I wanted to stand by a table of smiling people and refill their wine glasses and offer them our nightly specials. I imagined watching their faces light up as the waiters placed plates piled high with the chef's myriad seasonal offerings. I longed for the feeling of exhausted satisfaction that would come from watching my last guests leave, their bellies pushing against their now very snug trousers -- smiling grateful families, couples interlocking fingers as they strolled out into the cool night air, children asleep in the arms of their parents. I would fill their nights with warmth, hospitality and love.

It would seem to be perfectly logical at this point for me to have pursued a career in the restaurant business. Well, here's where things got complicated. You see, after college, I had no idea how to pursue a career in hospitality, nor did I think of it as a "career." You see, I come from a family of individuals whose last names are followed by several capital letters with periods in between them, that is, J.D., Ph.D, M.D, C.P.A., you get the idea. No capital letters follow your name in the hospitality business. Because I felt lost, I did what most people do when they are too scared to do what they really want to do. I went to law school. But being a lawyer was about as satisfying as eating two rice cakes for lunch. And as the years passed, I felt trapped in a career leading me nowhere near the fulfillment of my food-filled dreams.

Then one night, at a meeting of the International Association of Women Chefs and Restaurateurs, a group I had joined to get to know other women in the field, someone suggested I get involved with Share Our Strength, the nation's largest anti-hunger and poverty organization. So I joined the planning committee for Taste of the Nation's Taste of New York, a culinary extravaganza to raise money to feed our city's hungry. That was all it took. After two years of serving on the committee and two years of being surrounded by some of the world's most inspired and acclaimed chefs and restaurateurs, I gave notice at my law firm. I said goodbye to my windowed office, goodbye to my fabulous secretary and a tearful goodbye to my six-figure salary. I took a position working with Drew Nieporent at Heartbeat as a hostess-reservationist and management trainee.

Today I am living my dream, a dream I thought I didn't have but I was just too scared to chase. I don't know what will happen. I have been working in the business for almost six months now, and though my role is a small one, I know that for every guest -- from the moment I answer the phone to make a reservation for someone to the moment I welcome them into the room that will be their home for a few hours to the moment I wish them a goodnight and thank them at the door -- I am making a difference. Some nights I am a part of bringing a family together; other days I unite old friends or watch young love in its precious and innocent bliss. But every night, when I lock the door behind that last guest, my tired feet burning from standing, I know the exhausted sense of satisfaction that I once dreamed of feeling. And some very late nights, I am transported back to my TV room, and I am a child again, sitting cross-legged and mesmerized by a rich voice. It is on those nights that I know Julia is watching over me, and that she is proud.