'I'm doing a little bit of everything,' Paul Chell says of his new job at the White Dog Cafe. 'I work the line a few days a week and prep most of the other times. I clean up things.'
White Dog executive chef Andy Brown, sitting behind Chell, interrupts him.
'Like a good refugee,' Brown says.
Chell laughs and repeats the phrase: 'Like a good refugee.'
Chell worked at the White Dog from late 1999 to early 2001, when he left to work for star chef Susan Spicer at Cobalt, a restaurant she was opening at the Hotel Monaco New Orleans. About five months ago he went to work at Spicer's Bayona, a highly acclaimed Mediterranean, Asian and Indian restaurant in the French Quarter.
Chell said that as Hurricane Katrina approached, it seemed just like all the other ones he'd lived through since moving to the Big Easy: not all that bad.
'I heard about it,' he says. 'I saw the spiral on television. At first they were saying it was just going to hit Florida. But then it hit the Gulf, and after being down there five years, you learn that it's kinda bad.
'Everybody was calling each other: 'Are you staying? Are you leaving?' It's kind of a big thing every hurricane. Most people were like, 'Oh, we're going to stay.' The past five years the hurricanes we'd been through were not bad at all.'
But Chell heeded the warnings that Hurricane Katrina wasn't like any other hurricane New Orleans had faced in his lifetime. He kept listening to news reports and watching the weather coverage. Then he made a decision.
'I think we'd better go,' he told his fiancee Rachel Witwer, and he spent the next two days trying to convince his friends that they should go too. He made a few converts, and headed out of New Orleans at 5:15 a.m. on Sun., Aug. 28, a day before Katrina hit, heading toward Baton Rouge on gridlocked highways. After some trekking around Louisiana, he knew he wouldn't be returning to his job for a while, even though his restaurant is preparing to reopen in the next few weeks.
Chell, who's from York, Pa., was a line cook at the White Dog before moving to New Orleans. He still had friends in Philadelphia, including Brown, who was a line cook with Chell before becoming executive chef.
'I called Andy up and I asked if there was any way I could work here,' Chell says. 'And he said, Absolutely.''
White Dog Cafe owner Judy Wicks immediately approved the hire.
'I wanted to rehire him right away,' Wicks says. 'I was just hoping he'd stay longer.'
Chell thinks he'll return to New Orleans and Bayona sometime in December.
On Thurs., Oct. 13, the White Dog will host a five-course meal of New Orleans cuisine, with all the proceeds benefiting a drop-in center for homeless people run by Chell's fiancee Witwer.
Chell and Brown will be cooking all of the food at the $55 dinner, which will also feature live New Orleans music. That night the waitstaff will work for free, and they'll even donate their tips.
The White Dog will also match all monetary contributions people make to the restaurant (beyond the cost of their meals) dollar for dollar, with $1,000 already going to Community Labor United, a coalition of grassroots groups working in some of the hardest-hit areas.
Brown conceived the benefit, and the staff coordinated it. Wicks says she'll be 'just a guest' at the dinner.
'I love New Orleans,' Brown says. 'I love the cuisine. After talking to Paul and feeling so bad about what's happening, we wanted to do something. And I didn't want to mourn New Orleans, because New Orleans funerals are nothing like that. We wanted to celebrate what it is. We wanted to have as much fun as we could.'
For now, Chell is sleeping at a friend's house on 50th Street in West Philly, keeping in touch with his fiancee--who is finishing up her master's in public health from Tulane at George Washington University--and hoping New Orleans will be rebuilt to its former glory.
'New Orleans really catered to the tourist market, but there was a real New Orleans that was really, really cool,' Chell says. 'If, when they rebuild it, it's all touristy, it's not going to be the same. And I probably wouldn't want to stay. But I have a good feeling about it. I hope it will be restored to its former glory.'
Daniel McQuade (dmcquade@philadelphiaweekly.com) last wrote about street artists Frost and Bob Will Reign.
Article copyright Philadelphia Weekly.
Photograph (Putting on the Dog: Paul Chell and Andy Brown whip up a Katrina benefit this week.)
