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Amazing
week:
There's nothing like the eagerness and "can do"
attitude if one has just opened a business...shortly
after we opened a young Englishman walked into
Rick's. "Eccentric parents" was his explanation
for his first name - Maximillion. He was in the
business of recreating each year an international
car rally along the lines of the film "Cannonball
Run". He calls it "Gumball 3000." This year's
rally was passing through Morocco and the logical
checkpoint in Casablanca was Rick's Cafe. His
advance visit had been delayed a month and he
was surprised to hear that Rick's had just opened
- I explained that I too had been occupied with
making a myth into reality. Well Maximillion had
a proposal for me - as the Casablanca checkpoint
would Rick's be prepared to serve 300 people and
park 150 cars in a 4 hour time span on May 7.
It seemed so far in the future on that March day...Our
chef, Abdellah, responded positively and I said
I could work with the local authorities to arrange
the parking. Reality hit home as I found myself
Wednesday at the local Metro shopping in quantity
- 5 kilo bags of fusili really took my breath
away and I had to get 7 of them! Three hundred
chicken breasts were ordered through our poultry
supplier. The normal order for dinner rolls -
40 each of three kinds - became 150 each of the
three varieties, and we finally found out the
quantity we needed to reach to get the bakery
to deliver. The back door dead-end was curtained
off and became "kitchen B" for 24 hours. Preparations
for Friday's event were interrupted on Thursday
when the CNN piece was featured on and off during
the day on CNN International and on Headline News
in the US.
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Very exciting, but back to the Gumball preparations
with the arrival of an advance team and final
ok from the authorities for parking and crowd
control. It was seeming all too real and I thought...how
was it going to work? What about the food I asked
myself as I saw huge basins to hold the pasta
and heard the night guardian was going to start
squeezing orange juice at 6am Friday. Fortunately
these days with closing at 1:30am and rising at
7 to call in the market orders I have no trouble
sleeping and no time for bad dreams! Friday came
and the first glitch - the ferry from Spain to
Tangier was late...no doubt because of the Gumballers.
Instead of arriving at 12:30 the first car roared
up at 3:15. What followed was a bizarre and zany
4 hours of wild cars, crazy costumes and what
must have been 50 calls on my mobile phone from
drivers who were lost. But it worked...people
received their food and drink promptly, enjoyed
the ambience of Rick's and roared off again to
Marrakech. The only hitch was that their departure
shortly preceded our dinner service - the staff
miraculously restored order and after 300 lunches
we welcomed guests for the evening. Following
the CNN story, and one posted on the CNN website,
I had back to back interviews Friday night with
the Daily Telegraph and Associated Press, followed
by an 11:30 radio interview with BBC. The story
went out on the AP wire Saturday, with an additional
AP radio interview that evening. By Sunday morning
I was getting e-mails from all over the world.
It was a wild and crazy week - with Rick's Cafe,
who needs reality TV?????
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