The Gentleman from Liverpool Will be your Server This Evening

LONDON (1982) – Richard Slater, anecdotist, adventurer, and future server at San Ysidro Ranch’s legendary Stonehouse Restaurant, hoisted his backpack in a gesture of fortitude. A wall of glass gave onto the gigantic, riveted machine that would presently loft him out of Heathrow Airport and deposit him at JFK in New York City. Slater stared at it uneasily. “It was the first long haul flight I’d ever done in those days. Once in the air, all the English and Australians would be at the back end of the plane smoking and drinking. The plane must’ve been heavy at the rear. It was crazy.” 

Slater and his pal, Robert Shacklady – “Robbie Shack” – had hitchhiked the three-plus hours down to London from Liverpool. Now as the two parted – a road momentously forking in a way neither understood – Robbie handed him a paperback, some sort of guidebook for the road. Slater jammed it into his backpack. “To be honest with you, I was a nervous wreck.” His jitters belied his experience of the open road. 

The restless Slater had only just returned from a six-month sojourn through the capitals and byways of a gorgeous and hospitable Europe, working a summer job in the flatlands to put a bow on the adventure. “I’d been traveling in Europe for about six months,” Slater says in the Liverpudlian singsong every Beatles fan knows cold. “I ended with a summer job in Holland, in a place called Wieringermeer – a Dutch polder. By the time I got back home I’d missed the enrollment for school.” Slater had a year to cool his heels before he could re-up for community college. “So I thought ‘I’ll go to America until my money runs out.’ We never called it the United States,” he adds. “We called it America.” That was in 1982. Slater’s money has yet to run out. 

Richard Slater – Richie to friends – is a longtime server with the Stonehouse Restaurant at San Ysidro Ranch, a Ty Warner property. Mr. Warner’s instincts and attention to detail are renowned, and have helped make Stonehouse a globally celebrated epicurean supernova, throwing light into the deeply-felt minutiae that transfigure a merely exemplary guest experience into an unforgettable sensory immersion. For nearly 17 years, Slater is the dapper gentleman in black necktie flambéing your Classic Steak Diane tableside, and otherwise guiding you through the realms of culinary reverie that are the Stonehouse Restaurant’s stock in trade. Slater’s Liverpool accent is both exotic and familiar, his culinary command impeccable, his presentation as approachable and rarefied as the summit that is the Stonehouse Restaurant itself. 

The Richard Slater who stepped off the Boeing 767 at JFK in ‘82 was … a different guy. A first timer in the States and a hapless argonaut here, his desire to fit in with the Yanks had driven him to pack more than enough denim. Crossing  America’s sprawl to its fabled West Coast – his thumb stuck out and his heart in his throat – Slater’s introductory adventures in the New World would stand his then-luxurious hair on end. 

NYC. Landfall.

“I took the subway out of JFK, then took a short bus ride, got to see Queens.” The bus was packed and Slater had to stand. He spent his time staring out the windows with a pilgrim’s unblinking goggle-eyes, the Manhattan skyline a jaw-dropping special effect across the East River. He got off in Queens and took the subway into Manhattan. “86th Street, West Side. I got off the subway, saw the stairs goin’ up. I was petrified.” At the top of the stairs, the City That Never Sleeps nearly knocked Slater unconscious. “It was just like in a dream, just walking up Manhattan, Central Park on my right…” He found the backpackers’ hostel, checked in, dropped his pack and walked the city. “I was thinking I was on this giant movie set. I’d only ever seen the place on TV and in the movies.” 

In his several days in the city he would make it down to Greenwich Village, a place whose praises his father had sung to him when Slater was a kid. “My dad was in New York City every few weeks in the mid-fifties, early sixties. He was a waiter on the Cunard line. The Cunard was very posh and exotic. It was quite something in those days.” Slater grins. “Liverpool fellas in the Cunard line used to go to New York and they’d come back all dressed like Americans with their suits and ties. ‘Cunard Yanks’ they called them in Liverpool.” 

He would also intersect with a couple of tall Dutch guys on their way home after some months in California – walking the streets of Manhattan in board shorts, tees and tans. The three took in a movie; Fast Times at Ridgemont High. “I thought it was hilarious, and the Dutch lads were telling me, ‘You’ll love it, Rich. California is just like that!’” The three decided to toddle up to Harlem. “I remember walking up and I had a Levi’s jacket and jeans. The Dutch lads are in shorts and t-shirts, all tan.” On the way, they stopped a lady for directions. Slater did the talking. “Excuse me, ma’am. How far away are we from Harlem?” The lady looked them up and down. “Two big white boys from Holland just in from the beach, and a little English guy in head-to-toe denim,” Slater says. “Fellas,” the woman sighed, “if I were you, I’d turn around and walk the other way.” That they did.

His first hours walking the city, though, is where Slater’s American education began. Stopping in at a diner for breakfast, the jet lagged Liverpudlian perched himself on a stool amid the bedlam. The place was jamming, businessmen in their long coats glaring at the newspaper and slamming coffee before rushing out to their various mysterious posts around the city – all the while, the guy behind the counter barking with a bored expression. The deafening whirlwind put Slater on edge. “I think the man got a bit annoyed with me,” he says. “I wasn’t ordering fast enough.” Slater ordered bacon and eggs. “HOW YA WANT YOUR EGGS?” “Fried, please,” Slater said. “WHAT KINDA TOAST?” “White,” Slater answered, thinking ‘what else is there?’ “YOU WANT HASH BROWNS?” the guy yelled. Slater hesitated. The guy leaned in, resting his forearm on the counter. “DO. YOU. WANT. HASH. BROWNS?!” Slater had no clue what hash browns were. “Yes, please,” he answered.  

Next week: surrealism in the panhandle, a hulking nightmare by desert moonlight, and other American terrors as Slater crosses the interior…