History of the Restaurant Pan
I have a pan in my kitchen; it is known as the restaurant pan and anyone referring to it uses its name. While some of the phases of the pan’s history may be murky most of the
history has been passed down from person to person for around 40 years.
It is not a refined pan, it is all stainless steel, beaten, weathered, and an absolute work horse. It would be shunned by some for its slightly wonky bottom which causes some hot spots but it holds everything, feels so good in your hand, cleans up like a dream, and most importantly holds so many spirits, stories, and shared meals that it is literally how the Love gets in.
A PAN WITH A PAST
It started its time with us at my father’s restaurant in San Anselmo. I like to think it was around for the original Spanish restaurant, El Greco, but it may have arrived during one of the other iterations. No matter when it started its service to my family’s string of restaurants it would have been at least 40 years ago.
At some point when I was in high school, say somewhere 1984, the restaurant had to close unexpectedly without an idea of when it would reopen. It is a very tough business! My father instructed my mother and I to come to the restaurant and gather any food or sundries that we could use at home. I took a group of friends, and a bit of a raiding mentality took hold. Along with some things from the bar we definitely should not have had and some very useful groceries, I grabbed this pan. I have a newspaper clipping my father, in his chef whites and hat, at the stove working “this” pan, or one just like it anyway. It was such a core memory, and I just needed to have it even though at the time my father lived nearby and saw him regularly.
A MEMORY, A TEACHER, A TALISMAN
What I did not know then was that just a few years later I would not be able to see my father as easily and we would spend many years that way. The pan was a memory, a teacher, and a solid force of my growing passion for cooking.
It traveled with me when I moved across the country to live with my soon to be husband and he instinctively felt its power as a talisman. It cooked paella, big batches of spicy red sauce, a recipe my husband learned from Italian special forces soldiers while on a joint deployment to Bosnia. It suffered all my meager attempts at stir fries and curries. Then it traveled back across the country with us when my husband retired from the military. At some point it became a bit too warped and my husband pounded out the bottom a bit, giving it a mostly stable bottom.
THE NEXT GENERATION TAKES THE HANDLE
As our children grew, they also learned its stories and began learning their own favorite things to cook in it, risotto, chicken and dumplings, or as my youngest called it soup and goop. It is in charge of the base of Thanksgiving stuffing, and then later in the day the ginger carrots we always make. It’s the only pan that can hold the insane looking number of onions we caramelize for Christmas ham as well countless everyday meals.
As I became more involved in writing and styling cookbooks it became the center and or backdrop of many a photo. Do we want this to have an old-world vibe? Check! A bit industrial or professional? Check! Homey? Check!
At some point before my father’s death, he got to see some of the work I had been doing. On my website there is a photo of the pan with puttanesca sauce in it, gorgeous ingredients nearby, gorgeous light (thank you Ted Thomas) but my father only sees the pan, “nice pan, that one is very good, from the restaurant?”. Yes, I tell him, I get the feeling he thinks of asking for it back. I love it I tell him and so does Tad. “Good, good, don’t get rid of it.” I never will.
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