TAKE ME OUT TO THE DINER!

A big handwritten sign, “Yo, Adrienne!” looms large on the wall behind Doreen Racklin and Ali Bey’s serving station. Next to the sign is of a set of sixteen iconic photos from the Mid Atlantic Region of the US. These include the Philadelphia Liberty Bell, the New York Harbor, a Maryland crab, Rocky Balboa - - arms raised in triumph - - on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum, and two close-ups of the Miss America Diner on West Side Avenue in Jersey City.

It’s the first day of the once-a-term Food Competition at the Food Service Training Academy. US Regional Cuisines are on display, to be followed over three more days by international offerings from around the world. Twelve different teams are hoping to medal.

Napkins in red and blue with dancing white stars decorate Doreen and Ali’s long serving table. Diners, they remind us, are All-American places, whether owned by food loving Italians or Greeks who dominate the business.  Red-checkered table cloths and red bandanas wrapped around display stands reinforce the down home, made-in-the-USA look.  New Jersey, Doreen and Ali report, has more diners per capita than any state in the nation.

Here’s to the Diner, the perky setting says! Here’s to New Jersey-on-the-turnpike, book-ended by Philly and the Big Apple! Here’s to great, no nonsense East Coast eating, the menu announces: the Maryland crab cake, the Philly cheese steak, Jersey “disco fries,” and New York Cheesecake!  Here’s to taste-friendly food for folks on the road, in a rush!
 
Let's think miniature, I can almost hear Doreen telling Ali. This way, our customers can sample all four East Coast items without slowing down service or the mess of slicing and spooning small potions. Diners, I can hear them chuckling, are about efficiency and abundance. How will the big guys in our crowd react to a “tasting” ?
 
In the division of labor, Doreen presides over the station while Ali is back at the stove. Both hostess and waitress, Doreen greets customers as if they are her friends, her regulars, her reason for getting up in the morning and standing on her feet all day. Her routine is smooth as a dancer’s. First she serves mini steak sandwiches on home-made potato rolls. “Cheese,” she asks as she waves a mustard dispenser filled with cheesy sauce -- “Cheese Whiz” is the classic - - in the direction of the roll. Next, she reaches to grab a tiny paper cup of miniature fries and drops it neatly into each customer's black plastic box. With another twist of her torso, she plops in a quarter-size spiced crab cake. Into her rhythm, Doreen points to the small squares of cheese cake, each topped by a slice of strawberry, at the far end of her table. “New York’s best,” she says. “You’ve gotta have it.”

Back in the kitchen, Ali keeps the food coming, sweating and smiling as he works. Ali is a social creature, at ease in groups. He would have enjoyed socializing with customers and hearing their responses to the setting and food. But Ali is also a team player with a well controlled ego. In fact, in his backstage role, focused on cooking, he’s into his own Rocky Balboa moment.

Ali (named Sir Ali by his parents) is a tall, muscled man with golden brown skin and training as a boxer. The diner, “Yo, Adrienne,” (the spelling is the students’) speaks to his knowledge of boxing history; and it speaks in larger, mythic terms to both student cooks. The name comes from the sixth and last of Sylvester Stallone's Rocky films, entitled "Rocky Balboa." Rocky, now a retired boxer, owns and runs an Italian restaurant in Philadelphia. The restaurant is named "Adrian," for Rocky's wife, dead of cancer.
 
In "Rocky Balboa," the protagonist, played once again by Stallone, is in his 50's. He's lured back into the ring to fight the heavy-weight champ, Mason "On the Line" Dixon, a man in his prime. At one point, as he begins training, Rocky tells his son, ”it ain't about how hard you fight but about how you take the punches and keep  going forward.” When the fight actually occurs, the aging Balboa and the youthful Dixon batter one another for ten rounds. In the end there's a split decision - - in favor of Dixon. After the match, Balboa goes to Adrian's grave and thanks her for her support. "Yo, Adrian," he exclaims, "we did it. We did it."
 
Doreen Racklin and Ali Bey, fighters both, understand the power of the Balboa's monumental comeback effort. They understand from the inside. They are both, in their different ways, Rocky Balboa coming back: Doreen, at age 50, from 15 years of addiction to painkillers, crack cocaine and heroin. She's coming back, too, from the loss of her home, marriage and children. Ali, also 50, is coming back from a lifetime of drug dealing (he was never a user) and from 25 years - - or half his life - - behind bars.
 
Ali and Doreen see Rocky with his dreams, grit and tragic sense as Their Guy. They have transformed his homey restaurant in Philly into their star-spangled East Coast diner. While they’re not calling it a place for American dreamers, the diner is all about inspiration: their precious opportunity for a different way of living and being.

* * *

It's not everyday that two mature students, who have been terrible places and understand the awfulness of where they've been, allow the Food Competition  to connect with their deepest concerns. Ali and Doreen have done this with wit, strong research, delicious food, and in easy harmony with one another.
 
“It's Doreen's concept,” Ali says, "So I let her be the engine and I be the caboose."  "I thought we would do everything together," Doreen explains. "But in the end we divided the tasks. I did the rolls, the cheesecake, the table and the serving, and Ali did all the heavy cooking."  Ali and Doreen know in their bones that no one comes back alone from the places they've been. Everyone needs a team. Most of us need an audience. Cooks need hungry customers or friends and lovers with hearty appetites.

* * *

The Food Service Training Academy can claim a share of credit for “Yo! Adrienne.” It announced the terms of the contest, provided raw materials, and set deadlines. Doreen and Ali took on the assignment as if they had been in training with Rocky: Rocky, the restaurateur and Rocky, the big-hearted comeback fighter. Regardless of the outcome of the Competition, they have already triumphed.

Doris Friedensohn
30 August 2009

(Doris Friedensohn is Professor Emerita at New Jersey City University. She writes about eating, education, feminism, and social change. A chapter in her food memoir, Eating as I Go: Scenes from America and Abroad, published in 2006 by the University Press of Kentucky, deals with the Food Service Training Academy.)