Cooking Up a Storm

"Do you know how many things I've had to hide in my life?" he shouts. "I couldn't write and read English. I had to manage a $10 million operation. How can you do this without writing and reading? How can you read your memos? How can you write your memos? So the pressure was not only cooking."

Despite these challenges, Samuel's performance at the Mansion impressed Rosewood executives. In 1985 they chose him to organize and lead the kitchen at Rosewood's newest property, the Hotel Crescent Court.

He was fired before the hotel ever opened.
Controversy surrounds his ouster. Samuel says that he has never been given a satisfactory explanation. De Toth says it was due to a personality clash between Samuel and Rosewood President Robert Zimmer. Others say he flunked a crucial menu tasting with Zimmer. But Samuel insists their relationship was never contentious.

Instead, he believes he was undermined by then-Crescent Managing Director Jan Mastriner, with whom he once worked in Israel. Samuel says Mastriner, who is currently living in South Africa and could not be reached for comment, was incensed that this "little boy from Israel, with no education, became who he became."

Upon returning from an international culinary research trip, Samuel received word from Mastriner that under no circumstances would he be admitted on the hotel's executive committee, a position Samuel says he was promised before he accepted the position. An argument ensued, and shortly thereafter Samuel was let go.

"[Mastriner] is a guy that, if I saw him today, I would spit in his face," Samuel says. "Because that really changed the rest of my life when it comes to this profession. I lost my enthusiasm...I started drinking, and I never drank in my entire life. Ever.

"From that day, I never recovered."

If Samuel's departure from Rosewood didn't begin a downward trend, the experience seemed to fuel and sustain Samuel's now-infamous volatility, propelling his professional life through a wild ride of instability spanning more than a dozen restaurants in as many years.

At this juncture, it was not only Samuel's professional life that was in turmoil. His personal life was in a shambles as well. Within months of his break with the Crescent, his marriage to his first wife, Catherine, ended after almost 10 years. Some who worked with him at the Mansion believe the personal problems leading to the collapse of his marriage had as much to do with his abrasiveness as job pressures.

But Samuel seemed to recover quickly. In November 1985, Senior Vice President Helmut Knipp appointed him executive chef of the Lincoln Hotel (now the Doubletree) and charged him with reorganizing the hotel's restaurants, which included the Spinnaker and the Terrace Cafe. He was also asked to develop the menu for a new showpiece restaurant, Crockett's. Then, abruptly in April 1986, just before Crockett's was to open, Samuel was gone.

One chef who worked with him at the Lincoln says he was fired after he traveled to Paris with his girlfriend, ostensibly on business, and racked up huge expenses. But Samuel insists the Lincoln blindsided him by bringing in a chef consultant to evaluate his menu just before Crockett's opening, and he quit in anger. Knipp, who now lives in Hong Kong, says he doesn't recall the reason for the split.

At any rate, Samuel regrets his hasty departure from the Lincoln. "They gave me everything I wanted," he recalls. "I had a free hand. But I didn't know how to appreciate it because I was so angry inside." Crockett's opened with Samuel's menu, but not his cooking.

In late spring 1986, Samuel teamed with former Mansion cocktail lounge manager Wayne Broadwell--who was fired this month from his job as maitre d' at the Mansion--to launch the Plaza Cafe on Oak Lawn. His tenure there was tumultuous, marked by a volatile personal relationship with co-chef Juanita King, to whom Samuel later became engaged. By the fall, Samuel was forced out of the Plaza, and he left Dallas for Houston and Europe. His relationship with King later fizzled.

In spring 1987, Samuel resurfaced in Dallas as chef of the Fairmont's Pyramid Room, where he revamped the menu, incorporating Southwest influences into the Pyramid's classic French cuisine.

By most accounts, Samuel's tenure at the Fairmont was relatively tranquil, and in 1989, he was appointed executive chef of the hotel. "But I was not satisfied, because in my mind, I was chef of one of the top 10 hotels [The Mansion] in the world," he says. "And even though the Fairmont was great...it's still not it."

A short time after he was appointed Fairmont's executive chef, Samuel got a call from a headhunter representing a hotel in London that was looking to hire a Rosewood chef. The hotel was the Churchill, and Samuel was appointed executive chef of the then-21-year-old property. He resigned his position and moved to London with his new wife, Amy, whom he met at the Fairmont.

Samuel Americanized Churchill's menu and, overseeing a kitchen staff hailing from India, Bangladesh, and Egypt, speckled it with Asian and African touches. "I took the city by storm," he boasts. "CNN came to interview the GM and said, 'Who is this guy?' And he said, 'Well, we brought this guy in from America. He came and threw three grenades in the kitchen and picked up the survivors.' It was such a high."