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Opryland - Part 3
Written by: Dominick A. Miserandino
Photography by: Margherita Miserandino
True, 'down home,' southern hospitality at its finest can be found in one of Country Music's oldest living legends, Opryland. Just don't ask them for Iced Tea, or expect to have the last word. But they do it with a smile, so you may get used to it!
Day 2
We got up early and went to Rachel's for breakfast, which is basically a buffet. I ate yogurt and felt it a shame that I didn’t use more of my stomach room for other fattening food.
"Why just yogurt?" Margherita asked.
"I had my steak, half of your steak, and three artichokes before even looking at dessert last night. Do you think I have the room for anything else? My stomach is still bloated.
"I feel three months pregnant as we speak." I said this as the waitress walked by feeling quite confused about us "northerners."
We ate a quick breakfast and ran to catch the "Grand Ole Nashville Tour." Seeing Nashville in the snow is like... damn, I can't think of a really good metaphor, but it's not a city that's made for the snow, so it was a treat to see Nashville in this different light.
The tour was an overview of Nashville focusing on some highlights, but from the view of the bus, which was all the better considering the frigid cold. Here's the Parthenon, here's the state capital building, and here’s a snowman. It's a good overview of what's going on and what is there to do and see in Nashville all in three hours. If you're not familiar with the town, such a tour is a good idea to give you an overview.
After the tour, we went to Rusty's Sports Bar for a quick bite to eat before we met Chef D'Andrea for a tour of the kitchens. Rusty's Sports Bar is Opryland's burger joint, which is a good place for such things.
Chef D'Andrea is the type of man who is made for Opryland and Opryland made for him. It’s a symbiotic relationship akin to those birds that eat the bugs off of Rhinos. The birds don't want to admit they like it and just say, "It's my job; I gotta do it;" and the Rhinos don’t admit how much they need the bird, but one couldn't live without the other. Unlike the birds, Chef D'Andrea doesn't eat bugs, and he's far more intelligent, but he does fly around the backhalls from kitchen to kitchen eating the bugs (metaphor for fixing problems) pretty quickly.
[Editors Note: Margherita felt I should add that although I did describe Chef D’Andrea as a bird, it isn't the case at all. "He was a very kind man, and the metaphor doesn’t show that. He took time out of one of the busiest weekends of the year just to talk to us."]
Anyway, the number of kitchens and kitchen workers at Opryland is so intense that to simply count them all, you'd need to use a very powerful calculator. There's some complex formula to determine how many kitchens there are and how many kitchen workers, but it would hurt your brain to even count it all, which had a total of 20,000 people in the building. Each ballroom had a different menu...
And Chef D'Andrea kept this all in his head.
"Do you really know what's going on in each kitchen?" I asked.
"I walk the entire complex two times a day... that's 16 miles. I taste an item in each kitchen."
"Which is another benefit to walking the 16 miles. You have to burn off all those little tastings from each kitchen," I responded.
This was a man who loved his job. He was the poster child for employee satisfaction. I expected him to stand on a soapbox and, a la Hamlet, declare this kingdom was his own to love. "I have kitchens, bakeries, a chocolate room, a man who carves ice, employees on top of employees."
It was then that he slapped me for insolence and walked away.
Only kidding! He actually said it all with a kind and gentle nature, but I was worried that all of the technical stuff might lose your attention.
Just picture that symbiotic rhino bird being very nice, but yet very detail-oriented and aware of his job, and you got the essence of Chef D’Andrea.
With Chef D'Andrea’s tour done, we went to the mall to go shopping. Unbeknownst to me, Margherita would now find this rather traumatizing. Normally, Margherita shops so well, she could give classes on shopping.
Read Part 1 | Read Part 2 | Read Part 3 | Read Part 4 | Read Part 5
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