Cooking Up a Storm

Samuel provokes a certain schizophrenia from some of his harshest detractors as well. They excoriate his character with damning anecdotes. Then they invariably finish the conversation declaring how much they like Samuel personally, what a great guy he is once you get to know him.

"Avner gets a really bad rap," says Travis Fancher, a waiter at Star Canyon who worked with Samuel at the Fairmont. "You say 'Avner Samuel,' people really don't respond to that in a positive way."

Contradiction also seems a constant in Samuel's life. He says he detests Dallas for what it has done to him, but he can't seem to tear himself away. Certainly his family ties have much to do with this: He has a wife, two ex-wives, and three children (one from each marriage) living in the area.

Yet some other force seems to hold him here. Perhaps it is an intense need to regain the renown he once held at the Mansion; to prove to this city that his success wasn't a fluke.

"I'm bitter over what happened over the last few years...I always hooked up with these people that were very wrong," bristles Samuel. "They promised me the whole world, and nothing came out of it. They always wanted to feed off my name."

But if Samuel feels others burned him, a crowd of partners, investors, and restaurant personnel who worked under him feel stung by him as well. (Some of Samuel's harshest critics, not surprisingly, are those who invested in his failed ventures.) There are also lawsuits and allegations of wrongdoing dangerously flirting with the criminal. Some even question his long-celebrated talent, saying that most of his menu creations over the last few years are little more than cleverly repackaged reruns of his successes at restaurants such as Avner's (on McKinney) and Yellow.

What drives this complicated man who simultaneously seduces, confuses, and infuriates those who cross his path? "There's a lot of pain," muses Fancher. "I don't know the source of the pain, why there's pain. But the guy has had a really painful life. He's very sensitive about certain things, about his childhood. The way he came up."

Samuel's account of his youth may be a calculated play for sympathy, but it is genuinely compelling nonetheless. He was born in Jerusalem in 1956, the oldest in a family that would eventually include six brothers and one sister.

In the late 1940s, his father, an Iraqi Jew, fled Baghdad after the Iraqi government declared martial law and initiated a systematic persecution of Jews following the establishment of the state of Israel. The Jewish movement located him in Tehran, Iran, and urged him to come to Israel to help lay the groundwork for the new Jewish state. At age 18, he reluctantly moved to Jerusalem and began a new life.

Samuel's mother, a Kurdish Jew, was often left to fend for the family on her own as her husband abandoned them for long periods. She sometimes held down three jobs to support her children. He says that when his father was around, he was routinely subjected to physical abuse.

Samuel had barely completed the third grade when he was forced to quit school to help run the household. He began working outside the home at age 11, and his long career in commercial kitchens began at 13.

"I had no choice. I was a hungry boy," says Samuel. "I also realized working there that no matter where I'd go, I'd never be hungry again. I was absolutely tired of being hungry. And I remember when we had no food. For days."

Not only would he always have something to eat, but he could move around and easily obtain work despite his lack of education. "It looked like a pretty good deal to me," he says.

He also realized that sharply honed culinary skills could be his ticket out of Israel to a better life in Europe or America. A stint in the Israeli army, where Samuel says he felt ostracized because of his Iraqi heritage and his mixed feelings concerning the plight of the Palestinians, confirmed his desire to leave Israel.

He attended culinary school in Jerusalem while he worked and saved money. In 1975, he purchased a one-way ticket to London. Unable to speak English and with only 200 pounds in his pocket, he eventually found work as a cook for a Jewish family that hosted dinners for potential benefactors of Israel.

From there he traveled to Paris, again without the corresponding language skills, and enrolled in a one-year program at La Varenne, a private culinary school.

After graduation, he stayed in Paris for a few years working in small restaurants and living with his wife (whom he married in Jerusalem in 1976) and young daughter. In 1979, he received a letter from a woman with whom he had once worked in a Jerusalem wedding hall, urging him to come to Deerfield Beach, Florida, to help her and her husband open a small hotel.

"So I said sure," he says. "Stupid me. Jump on a plane, one-way ticket with no money. And I left a wife and a kid behind in Paris." He showed up at Miami International Airport without a return ticket or immigration papers and was immediately thrown in jail. The next morning, as officials were preparing to deport him, the woman convinced a judge to issue Samuel a two-week visa so he could complete an application for a work visa.