Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue (Cornbread Nation: Best of Southern Food Writing) (38 page)

In almost every way way, Uglesich and his restaurant are at the top of their
game. But regulars and friends watch anxiously as the restaurant seems to
slide toward inevitable extinction. In December of 2003, Anthony turned
sixty-five, traditional retirement age. He has no logical successor in the
kitchen, no suitable business partner waiting in the wings, and neither of his
two children are interested in carrying on the family business. Each year, fans
fear he may close for his annual summer vacation and never reopen. Even
under the best of circumstances, the restaurant's remaining life span will most
likely be measured in months rather than years.

Talk of "the transition"-a sale, a change of heart, or another miraculous
event that would keep the restaurant open-has become an annual tradition
for Uggie watchers. They acknowledge that after fifty hard years in the restaurant business, the couple has earned a rest. But they also dread the day when
Uglesich's shuts its doors forever.

"I've heard them talk about it over the years," says Frank Brigtsen, chef/
owner of Brigtsen's Restaurant and longtime regular. "A few years back he told me it'd be another three years, maybe five on the outside. Then there was talk
about finding somebody to take Gail's place. You never know. We had quite
a panic last summer. When it looked like they weren't going to open, we
couldn't believe it. We thought we'd missed our chance for one last meal."

The lunch shift at Uglesich's lasts for six hours, but preparation for that single service is a round-the-clock routine.

It's 8:30 A.m., and Uglesich already has been busy for nearly four hours.
He's up every weekday at five talking to his seafood suppliers, then he works
in his home kitchen for a couple of hours. By the time he pulls into the restaurant's parking lot, the back of his truck is filled with a jumble of mismatched
Tupperware marked with names lifted straight from the menu. A bright red
oil-based sauce sloshes in a tall container marked "Uggie" next to a two-quart
plastic casserole packed with seasoned lump crabmeat. Other containers hold
soups, sauces, and mixes that Gail and Anthony whip up during their predawn prep sessions.

"We bring some of the ingredients home so we can do our early work in the
morning," he says. "You gotta get a head start."

The January cold cuts to the bone, and Uglesich, dressed in a denim shirt,
fleece vest, and hooded sweatshirt, unlocks the back door. He picks his way
past six oversized white coolers-fresh shrimp delivered the previous evening-and surveys the room where he's spent nearly fifty years of his working
life.

Inside, Uglesich's is pretty much the same as it's always been-a twenty-bytwenty box with concrete floors and a low drop ceiling. Stainless industrial refrigerators and utilitarian plastic shelving units line the walls. Cases of Barq's
long-necks, bottled spring water, and various beers support the six-foot
wood-paneled divider between the small dining area and the even smaller tenby-ten kitchen. Fifteen beige-flecked Formica tables (ten for indoor dining, five
more for warm-weather sidewalk seating) clutter the main floor. A stainlesssteel bar runs from the front door to the kitchen, with a six-foot extensionthe famed oyster bar-jutting off at a right angle.

The room is still dank when the seven-person crew arrives to start prep
work. There's not much talk; everyone still seems to be gathering momentum
for the long day ahead. John Rea, the restaurant's only waiter, gets Anthony's
keys and unbolts the outside doors. Line cook Zina Cooper greets her kitchen
compatriots, Cynthia Mack and Michelle Rogers. Michelle's uncles-thirtyyear oyster shucker Michael Rogers and dishwasher Anthony-arrange chairs
to make room for trays, colanders, and other morning prep essentials. The
group sizes up the mountain of ice chests.

"I'm glad we got this shrimp yesterday, because there ain't gonna be nothin'
today," Uglesich says. "We need to deal with these shrimp and bag 'em.
They're mixed, so separate them out by size. John, help me unload the truck."

Like his restaurant, Uglesich's accent is classic New Orleans-his waiter's
name cone out as "JAw-wuhn." The second-generation restaurateur is the
son of a Croatian immigrant father and Italian/French mother from rural
St. James Parish. His father, Sam Uglesich, came to New Orleans from Dugi
Otok, Croatia, in 1924 after an unsuccessful attempt to jump ship in New York
harbor three years earlier. The elder Uglesich originally founded a restaurant
on South Rampart Street-a neighborhood establishment with a straightforward seafood menu to accompany its bar business. Anthony lists the old
menu: "Raw oysters. Fried shrimp, soft-shelled crab, oysters, or trout. Sandwiches or plate."

In 1927, Sam moved the operation to Baronne Street in Central City, then a
burgeoning neighborhood for New Orleans's flourishing Jewish merchant
class. "Back then," Anthony says, motioning across the street to Brown's Velvet Dairy, "milk from the dairy was still delivered by mule."

Eleven years later, in December 1938, Anthony was born into the business
that bears his family name. "I started working in the restaurant when I was
about fifteen. Back then it was all family, my daddy ran it with my Uncle Tony
and me, maybe a nephew. I'd open oysters, clean fish, work the kitchenwhatever they told me to do. But I can tell you, when I first started working
there, and I found out how much work it was, I was not impressed. We'd be
open from six in the morning until ten at night. That's just too much work,
but people didn't know any better then"

In the early i96os, Anthony met and eventually wed Gail Flettrich, a
Marerro-born school teacher. The two started their own family, and Gail
started working in the restaurant. In 1969, Sam began a five-year bout with
cancer, and Anthony gradually took over the business, with Gail working in
the kitchen.

The Sam Uglesich era was summed up neatly in the 1973 edition of the New
Orleans Underground Gourmet. Author Richard Collins listed Uglesich's under
the heading "workingmen's restaurants" with the following description: "This
restaurant has been in operation since 1849. Across from Brown's Velvet Dairy,
it offers good freshly shucked oysters, poor boys, and fried seafood with cold
draft beer. Prices are inexpensive."

After his father passed away in 1974, Anthony inherited the restaurant, and
the second era of its history began. Anthony and Gail built on the joint's
mostly fried menu, expanding it with more creative seafood dishes. "We saw that people didn't want so much fried food, so we started changing," Uglesich
says. "We put on more grilled items with our own seasoning, our own formula.

"My daddy was Yugoslavian, and his tastes influenced a lot of how we
cook-lots of garlic, lots of olive oil, lot of oysters. We wanted to make our
own barbecued shrimp recipe based on olive oil instead of butter, then we
tried oysters instead of shrimp. It's been real popular."

The more diverse menu also allowed Anthony and Gail to accommodate
their expanding family, which now included their two children, John and
Donna. "When we first got married, I used to work in the back," says Gail.
"But when we started changing the menu, I stayed at home and experimented.
First with the gumbo, because we never had that. Then we added appetizers
and the grilled seafood."

Many initial ideas were inspired by their favorite local chefs. Anthony says
his first appetizer was based on the fried green tomatoes at Joanne Clevenger's
Upperline. "But we wanted to do our own version of the sauce-something
with good flavor, but no mayonnaise."

The home kitchen soon became a development laboratory to feed ideas to
their production line-the restaurant kitchen. "When I first met him, I didn't
cook much - I was a school teacher," Gail says. "Anthony was my taster. When
we would work on a dish, we were each other's tasters. I would make, he
would try. He would make, I would try."

This work ritual they started in the 1970s continues today. Gail begins her
day well before sunup to prepare the day's sauces, soups, gumbos, and dressings. "I'm up at 4:3o doing my work in the kitchen, and by the time Anthony's
up, I'm about done. Then he does his work."

Both are quick to describe themselves as "cooks" rather than "chefs," a
recognition of their self-taught roots. "Gail and I are different kinds of cooks,"
Anthony says. "She's very precise in her measurements, but that's not the way
I work. We'll help each other out in the kitchen."

Emeril Lagasse, local empire-building chef and Food Network personality,
has admired their collaboration for years. "Their teamwork is about 75 percent of their success," he says. "Gail is just there for Anthony, wherever he
needs her. Working the front, on the side, in the back. When you get a partner
like that, it's a beautiful thing."

As the restaurant's 1o:3o A.M. opening approaches, the kitchen crew races
to finish its prerush prep work. Flashing knives mince onions, quarter new
potatoes, and reduce bunches of fresh parsley to fine, fragrant powder.
Cooper readies her station-six industrial-grade gas burners, a steel flattop
griddle, and a double-basket deep fryer-for the first orders of the day. Mack and Michelle Rogers arrange piles of sliced tomatoes, mounds of shredded lettuce, and bins of lemon wedges on the top of a "lowboy" cooler. With the
griddle fired up and burners heating two ancient pots filled with fresh frying
oil, the morning chill is all but gone.

A few feet away in the dining area, Anthony carefully wraps shrimp in halfpieces of defatted bacon ("Something new I want to try today"). At the bar,
Michael Rogers shucks well-iced oysters. With a blunt oyster knife in one
hand and a heavy-gauge rubber glove on the other, he scoops up a jagged
shellfish and slams it onto a curved soft metal anvil. Deftly finding the vulnerable spot near the oyster's hinge, he pries the rocky shell open, zips the
knife through the strong twin adductor muscles, and plops the very surprised
bivalve into a waiting bowl. For now, Rogers works quietly and quicklywhen the rush starts, he'll be quick to chat up the waiting customers while
performing his duties.

The practice of fresh-shucking "cooking oysters" is fairly rare in modern
restaurants, since most kitchens rely on preshucked shellfish for fried or
sauteed dishes. But old-school attention to freshness is a trademark of
Uglesich's and its owner. "If the quality's not there, I'm not gonna sell it," he
says. "I'd rather be honest with people. It kills your sales, but I'd rather tell
people in advance.

"I love my Louisiana seafood, it's just got superior quality. The imported
seafood puts a hit on the local producers, and it doesn't taste as good. I got
people coming in here every day trying to sell me frozen, imported seafood
for cheaper, but the flavor isn't there. I tell them, `I like des Allemandes catfish - I don't care how cheap you can get me something else.' I like what I like."

"That's a big lesson I learned from Anthony," says Frank Brigtsen, "that you
need to nurture relationships with your suppliers. Anthony doesn't nickel and
dime his purveyors and builds a good relationship from both sides. Not all
fish are the same, so if you want the best, you have to earn it."

Mary Schneider of P&J Oysters is one of the suppliers who has learned
firsthand about Uglesich's standards. "We started working with Mr. Anthony
about eleven years ago," she says. "Just before his longtime provider (David
Cvintanovich) retired, he came into our shop and explained that he'd like us
to take over Mr. Anthony's account. Since then, we've supplied all his product.
But it hasn't been easy.

"Every morning, I'll personally taste the different lots of oysters for the
day," Schneider says. "About five o'clock, he'll call me before he's had his coffee and ask me what they taste like. He's looking for size, flavor, and shell size.
We know which ones he wants, and he's willing to pay a premium for the best product. He'll pay extra for the big shells, because he knows his clientele, and
that's how he likes to present them. And he always gets what he wants. He's
one of my favorite people, but he's picky, picky, picky."

The day's first customers-lone tourists toting guidebooks and bracing
against the cold-arrive dutifully at 1o:3o A.M. sharp, the official opening
time. Each wears blue jeans, a black leather jacket, and a puzzled expression.

A few straggling deliveries-'a huge brown bag filled with Leidenheimer
po-boy loaves, several cases of wine-come through the door as the customers get their instructions from Uglesich. "Take a menu and find a table," he
says with a somewhat distracted smile. "We'll be over to help you in a second."

He shakes his head slowly. "The forecast says we got cold drizzle all day. The
weather's gonna be bad for the fishermen and it's gonna be bad for business
today."

After signing for the wine and bread, Uglesich grabs his pad and edges past
Rogers, still shucking at the oyster bar. He moves a little hesitantly, with a limp
that comes from fifty years of walking on the room's unforgiving concrete
floors. "I stay on my feet too much, and it's given me bad knee problems," he
says. "The only two days of work I missed in forty-five years were because of
my knees. I had them 'scoped on Friday, and I was back on the Monday. But
they've been getting worse lately."

Add to that a history of arthritis and bone spurs in his feet, and you've got
a snapshot of the classic restaurant lifer. His ailments match those of his longtime colleagues such as Susan Spicer. "When I go in, we talk about travel, new
ingredients and flavors, but just as often swap stories about the restaurant
business and compare our battle scars," she says. "Bad knees, bad feet. We got
it all."

The first customers sit at separate tables, and Uglesich limps over to lead
them one by one through the menu's two-dozen appetizers and thirty entries.
He poses a series of questions that borders on interrogation. "What are you in
the mood for today?" is a common opener, along with "You like spicy food?"
and "Tell me what seafood you like and whether you want a sandwich or a
plate." Whether delivered tableside or from behind the counter, Uglesich's
voice carries a distinctly serious tone-as if there's a single right answer that
the customer could give in a lunch order.