Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to The Moth. I'm Chloe Salmon. It's restaurant week here in New York City, and that's got us reflecting on dining out, a true forte of mine. I'm thinking about all of the incredible meals I've shared with family and friends, about the neighborhood spots that feel almost like home, and about all the hardworking chefs and servers who make a space come alive.
It takes a lot to make a restaurant run. So to honor the hustle, we've got two stories for you from behind the scenes and inside the kitchen.
Chapter 2: What reflections does Chloe Salmon share about dining out in NYC?
Our first one is from Trevor Craig, who told this at a Pittsburgh Story Slam where the theme was bold. Here's Trevor, live at the Moth.
The sophomore year between my sophomore and junior year of college, I told my parents I had a job in Des Moines, Iowa, and I wasn't going to stay home. I lied. There was anything I could do to not live at home with my non-drinking Mormon parents when I was secretly gay, except for it wasn't so secret.
I moved to Iowa and I stayed with a friend and I stayed on her couch, even though she promised me a bed. I stayed on the couch, no air conditioning because I could not live at home. And I talked her into getting me a job at a restaurant. This restaurant was one of those Japanese-style restaurants where they cook in front of you. There was zero Japanese people who worked there.
There was also zero gay people who worked there. So my first day coming in, I was told I'd be a server because I wanted that money. But what I ended up doing is working in the cash office because I looked trustworthy and I could count past 10 and give change.
So that service office had a little window and I looked out through that window, but if you stood a little bit to the side, I couldn't see you. And the girl who was training me, we'll call her Sarah, was way more confident about my gayness than I was. And she would see guys standing and looking at me and she'd yell out, Scotty, do you have a problem? Do you want to say something?
As much as you're staring at him, I think you have a crush. And I was terrified because I did not want to get hate-crimed in Iowa. Eventually, I got just as strong about it as she did and would yell at people just as much as she would and had nothing to do with any of their nonsense. And that eventually moved me into being a server. The whole restaurant was run by a general manager.
His name was Marco. And when I look back on it, I think of him kind of like a hyperbole. He was six foot seven and 500 pounds and all muscle. Really, he was like 6'3", kind of chubby, but it was a really nice guy. And he was fine with me being out there and he didn't care that I was gay. But the rest of the restaurant did. In the kitchen,
We would have all kinds of issues where they would call people gay for doing something wrong. They would drop the F word all the time. And I would meekly kind of head out of the room and not say anything. One day I was back there with my friend who worked there.
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Chapter 3: How did Trevor Craig find his chosen family at a steakhouse in Iowa?
And she turned and said, you can't say that. That's not okay. How would you like it if he said, that's so white, or that's so Puerto Rican? They would hate it. And so they slowly but surely stopped using that word. And I slowly but surely started screaming every time they said it. I got violent about it.
I would throw things, throw a fit, and do everything else to get the attention I needed for them to stop doing it. About two years into working there, people were starting to get on my side. They realized I was a lot of fun, and they realized that a lot of gay people go out to eat. And if you put a gay guy with a gay group of people, I can make some serious money.
And I'm pretty damn adorable, so if you put me with a bachelorette party, they also want to tip me a lot, and they will take a ton of sake bombs if I tell them to. So they started using my gayness as an advantage for the company, and I started getting very strategically put with tables, and I would very strategically walk out with $300 or $400 in tips every night. I was making some serious cash.
But it came with some drawbacks. Of course, I over-served people, so I would get in trouble for that. I had to fight with people who were a little bit slow. I had one of the chefs who would get really aggressive with me because one night he said I was walking to tables with limp wrists. And I said, yeah, you're right. Accurate. And he eventually got over it and I made him practice his limp wrist.
Iowa was one of the first states to legalize gay marriage, and I was in school right now, and so I had a lot of free time to go to a lot of protests and a lot of things at the courthouse. So there's a lot of pictures of me when they legalized gay marriage with signs, with all my friends, and it went all over newspapers, it was all over my university's website, and it was all over my Facebook.
And one of the first things I put on my Facebook is, gay marriage is legal in Iowa, currently taking applications. The next Saturday when I got to work, all the chefs had filled out applications for me. And it was really, really sweet. And slowly but surely, all of the chefs became kind of allies. And this is a bunch of guys who, again, not Asian, working at a Japanese steakhouse.
It was very questionable. A lot of them had some history, but they were all kind of on my side now. And they always stood up for me, and they were always really excited when they saw a bunch of gay guys come in and I was on their table, because they knew they were getting tipped pretty well, too.
So it became this big thing where everyone really liked working with me and eventually I snuck in my family. So there was another gay guy that I got to a job there. There's a couple other people. One night we got another table and it was half gay people and half not gay people and I was getting really long well with some people and the other side wasn't so happy for me.
And at the end of the night when I bring you receipts, it's the worst part of my job because I talk you into spending a lot of money, everyone paid except for one guy who was really upset with me. And I took all the receipts up there. And he came to speak to me at the cash office. And he said, I know your faggy friends are out there.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did Trevor face while working in a restaurant?
But you can't do this to me. And I was like, Oh, I'm sorry, what? He's like, you overcharged me. I was like, Oh, let me get that fixed for you. And then he grabbed me by my arm. And he said, No, this isn't right. You're going to give it to me for free. And I said, No, I'm not. And he kind of shook me.
And I don't know what happened next, but I remember Marco grabbing this guy by his collar and shoving him up against a wall and walking him out the building. And it was a big thing for me. Two years later, Ohana walked with me to Pride. They went with me on my 21st birthday to the gay bar. And when I moved, I don't make a lot of time to go back to Iowa, but I haven't paid for a meal since.
And the restaurant there, I won't say, but when you translate it, it means family and that's always been my family and it's changed me a lot.
That was Trevor Craig. Trevor no longer works in restaurants. He's now regional director of operations for one of the largest independent lab companies in the world testing food for nutrition and safety. He's still a foodie and hosts pride parties every year in downtown Pittsburgh, where he and his chosen family cheer on the parade.
Up next, a story of a restaurant built upon a very special legacy. Back in a moment. Welcome back. Our next story was told at a New York City main stage, where the theme was only in New York. In the show, we heard stories from each of the five boroughs of the city. Shanae took the stage to Rep's Staten Island, the place she grew up,
and where she can trace her roots back generations to a very special community called Sandy Ground. It's one of the oldest, if not the oldest, continuous free Black communities in the United States, as you'll hear in just a moment. Here she is, live at the MOP.
I want to take you back to June 5th, 2021. I'm standing in front of this building, and as I'm staring at this building that I just painted red because I seek attention, I am looking at a $22,000 life after death DIY renovation that I had done, and at this point, I want to do a D.I.E. I said, just kill the whole dream.
I don't know why I'm standing here doing this, but I'm getting ready to have a grand opening. I'm getting ready to do a grand opening for a restaurant, a soul food restaurant at that, on the toughest block in Staten Island, in Stapleton, where the cars are driving by so fast, and there's only three other stores what the hell did I just do?
As I'm standing there looking at the building with the big balloon arch over the door and I just roped every single family member that I possibly could into taking orders from me and putting this grill on and getting the DJ ready and making sure that my tiny little soul food exclusive boutique owned by a family and owned and operated by just us was going to go well.
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Chapter 5: How did Trevor's experience shape his views on community and acceptance?
And so a year and a half had gone by, and I still wasn't really selling any food. Someone comes into the restaurant and they said, hey, we want to film you while you're bringing food out to the table. And I said, oh, I don't really know if I want to do that because there's nobody here. They said, no, it'll be fine.
We'll just put the word out and we'll get people to come and, you know, we'll bring community together. And I said, oh, I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with that. They came and they did it anyway. And sure enough, it shows up and it's on TikTok. I don't know what TikTok is. And then I started showing up into these Facebook groups where those 4,000 people were. The people started to talk.
And sure enough, as they were talking, people started to also come into the restaurant. The community wasn't really tied together because we're kind of like separated by shores, north and south shore. And so when I say the south shore that way, I'm pretty sure you kind of understand where I'm going with all of this.
I planted a soul food restaurant in the middle of a sea of pasta, meatballs, and pizza. The South Shore showed up and they came in in droves and they supported and they told me how much they loved me and I hugged and kissed them. And then they started to ask me lots of questions. Well, why did you open this restaurant up and why over here?
I said, well, I'm the eighth generation direct descendant to the first free black man to purchase property on Staten Island in Sandy Grounds. I figure I owe my ancestors something, so I need to be doing something here on Staten Island. And they were excited about that. And that became a part of my marketing strategy, because people's faces and mouths would start to drop every time I said it.
We'd hug. We'd kiss. We'd break bread. We'd enjoy each other. And then there was chatter all over Facebook. There's this girl. She's in the restaurant. She shows up. She comes out. She kisses you. She hugs you. She tells you she loves you. My 20 seat. Soul Food Boutique was staying a little bit full. And my Google reviews on Google were showing that something was happening on Staten Island.
It was nothing like my bank account where the numbers were going kind of up but the dash in the front sort of kind of like my name was like over there. Two and a half year mark and a gentleman walks in and we sit him at the kids table. At this point, the kids' table is operating like the chef's table.
And the guy and the two other people are sitting at the table, and it's about 9.30 at night, and they start to ask me all kinds of questions like, what do you have on the menu? Can I get oxtail? Do you have ribs? Is there jerk chicken left? And I would say, nope, nope, and I don't have that either. I said, what I do got is I got scraps because you came here kind of late.
And you wouldn't do this to your grandmother asking her at 10 o'clock for anything exquisite. So don't ask me. I should just give you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But if you trust me, I'm going to bring you out a spread that's going to still blow your mind. Do you trust me? He said, sure, no problem. You're the chef, right? I said, yeah, I'm the chef. So I go back. I get the food.
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