All the kitchen's a stage: Bay Area operator rolls amateur chef's night

Nation's Restaurant News, August 5, 1991 by Alan Liddle

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. -- Restaurateurs have long used "guest" celebrity chefs to keep the attention of regular customers and garner publicity, but an operator here has put a successful spin on that promotional ploy by hosting a weekly amateur night.

Since late May the owners of Calda! Calda!, a 17-month-old Italian restaurant in this East San Francisco Bay community, have turned their pizza oven over to strangers on Wednesday. David Nugent, who co-owns the 100-seat casual restaurant with his wife, Kathryn, said the amateur-night concept was suggested by his wife after a guest remarked that he had a foodie friend who would get a thrill out of cooking at Calda! Calda!

"It was an easy [mental] step to think there might be other people who would like to [cook at the restaurant], too, and that their friends, relatives and co-workers would come in to observe," Nugent recalled. "I thought it would generate good publicity for the restaurant and help our grass-roots effort to build the customer base."

Customer counts have risen by 10 to 20 people on amateur night, but the biggest news to date was just that: news. The New York Times recently ran a feature on a surgeon's night as a pizza chef, which touched off a wave of local and international stories about the restaurant.

"I got two calls from television [news] production people and a call from German radio. This exposure has been terrific," Nugent said.

Among those people who have moved beyond the Walter Mitty stage to chase their fantasies of culinary stardom right into the dining room of Calda! Calda!: A winery owner, the mayor of Walnut Creek, a florist and a physician with ties to a national health foundation.

Donald Palmer, the surgeon-subject of the Times article, prepared and served a "Thai" pizza topped with beef and eggplant and flavored with lemongrass and chili oil, Nugent said. Dentist Shannon Haynes, he said, prepared a "Mexican" variation, complete with refried black beans, strips of cactus, red chilies, olives and cheese.

The featured amateurs are stationed at the exhibition wood-burning oven and, as befits a person in the limelight, they have to undergo an audition of sorts to get there.

"They call, and we talk about the kind of creation they would like to offer. Sometimes we have to adjust ingredients," Nugent said. "We always cook one [ahead of time] to make sure it tastes good."

Before taking center stage, the chef-for-a-night is given a crash course in dough rolling and shown how to tend to the cooking pizza, which must be rotated several times because the side closest to the coals cooks faster.

The Nugents, in appreciation for the help in publicizing their restaurant and for assisting in traffic-building endeavors, are immortalizing the Wednesday-night wonders by capturing the likenesses on film. They said they plan to hang the photos on a wall in the restaurant.

Calda! Calda! also serves pasta dishes and grilled items, but Nugent, the executive chef, has favored pizzas for his promotional programs. He has netted publicity and favorable customer response with a "chocolate" pizza.

Though hesitant to provide details about his dessert pizza, Nugent said he tops a chocolate-flavored yeast dough with pastry creme and then bakes it. After pulling it from the oven, he said he tops the pie with chocolate sauce, caramel and pralines.

"I was informed it is going to be declared the 'Best Chocolate Dessert in the Bay Area,'" Nugent said, beaming, in reference to his speciality pizza and an honor being bestowed upon it by the Bay Guardian newspaper.

Nugent, who is self-taught in the ways of the kitchen, realized his dream of becoming a chef-restaurateur relatively late in life, at age 46, when he opened La Creme de La Creme in Oakland in 1983. He and his wife opened Calda! Calda! in March 1990.