Each morning at 7, Marcelino Martinez arrives at the Hamburger Hamlet in Sherman Oaks.
Wearing a thick white chef's coat, he inspects the fryers first — for the purity of the cooking oil and height of the flame.
This has been his routine for 43 years.
In this kitchen and many like it, the restaurant manager has trained hundreds of fellow Zapotec Indians from the highlands of Oaxaca, Mexico, to cook patty melts, onion rings and lobster bisque at El Hamlet.
Most have moved on, preparing German, Italian, French and California cuisine at various restaurants throughout Los Angeles.
But Martinez, a stocky 61-year-old with curly hair and large glasses, remains loyal to the job that changed his life.
"It's what I've always done," he said, peering into the fryer to spot its pilot light.
Martinez was 18 when he first entered the darkened dining room of a Hamburger Hamlet on Sunset Boulevard. His roommates had sent him to see Asael Gonzalez, who sent him to the Hamlet.
Gonzalez was the first of the Zapotecs to be hired by Marilyn and Harry Lewis, who started the chain restaurant in 1950. Impressed with his work ethic, the Lewises urged Gonzalez to find "mas amigos." Martinez was one of them.
As he walked through the dining room that first day, Martinez recalled, he'd never seen so many black people in one place.
The first Westside restaurant to break the color barrier, Hamburger Hamlet was about to become a bellwether of another Southern California workforce shift: from black to Latino.
Martinez traded the 60 cents a day he'd earned working in the mountains of Oaxaca for 60 cents an hour at the Hamlet. "They paid you little, but it was stable," he said. "You have money to be able to buy a nice shirt like anyone else. In Mexico, you have to work for months to get something like that."
As blacks moved on to jobs in other industries, Martinez rose from dishwasher to cook. He didn't mind that this was considered women's work back in Oaxaca. He came early and stayed late, often working six days a week.
A caravan of young men beat a trail from isolated Sierra Juarez villages, without paved roads or electricity, to Los Angeles. They arrived knowing to look up Gonzalez. Like Martinez, they lived six or eight in one-bedroom apartments. They too showed up early and left late.
Soon, Hamburger Hamlet's cheeseburgers and chicken salad were produced almost entirely by Zapotecs from villages such as Xochixtepec, Yalalag and Zoogocho.
"We took no breaks," Martinez said. "We never asked for overtime, sick days. We were happy because they gave us jobs." Zapotecs from other parts of Oaxaca learned the restaurant trade as well, working at smaller eateries in Santa Monica and Venice. But no restaurant in Los Angeles trained so many for so long as Hamburger Hamlet.
By the time he was 24, Martinez was director of the chain's kitchens, hiring the young Oaxacans whom Gonzalez had brought in as dishwashers.
He had an expense account and drove around Southern California training aspiring Zapotec chefs, standing beside the fryers with men who hadn't cooked a thing in their lives. Hot oil splattered as he taught them to tend French fries. He showed them how to use a knife "without cutting off their fingers."
In the Hamlet's heyday, Martinez said, the Zapotecs "felt good working as a team."
Martinez also traveled to such places as Chicago and Atlanta to help open restaurants and train staffs. On one trip to Washington, D.C., he visited the White House.
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