American beauty
Cattlemen's dressing about to lose its Rosie disposition
Ask the folks at Cattle men' s Steak house who makes the salad dressing, and they' ll tell you — Rosie. If you ask the pintsized powder keg her name, she' ll tell you it' s Rosita Parker. But Dick Stubbs, her employer for a half-century and No. 1 fan, calls her Rose.
After Thursday, the laugh- ready Parker won't be making salad dressing for anyone but her family as she enters retirement at the age of 81, closing a career that began in 1958 and toured several iconic local kitchens.
“She always came to work with a smile on her f ace. Always positive,” Stubbs said. “But more than anything, Rose always wants to get things right. Always looking forth equality, wanting it to be consistent.”
For Parker, friendship has driven her half-century of loyalty to Stubbs.
“He's my friend first and my boss second,” she said.
Under the pig
Parker arrived in Oklahoma from Panama in 1944 at the age of 5. She married young and began her first career, mother to six. But times were tough and her first marriage even tougher. After birthing two children in the same year as a teen wife, Parker took a job at legendary Hollie's Drive-in, under the famous pig sign, at the corner of Western and Sheridan avenues.
When Stubbs arrived in 1970, Rosie had been carhopping 12 years. His company entered a lease agreement to assume operations of Hollie's from founder Edmond Hollie, whose wife and partner Evonne was in the midst of a losing battle with cancer. Rose caught Stubbs' attention for more than the off-color jokes she used to make him blush.
“She was a supercharged carhop,” Stubbs said. “She was handling 28 cars a night by herself and carrying out 300 to 400 tickets.”
Hollie's, which sold beer, had a tough reputation since it opened after World War II. Evonne Hollie was famous for using a rolled-up newspaper like a truncheon to keep the peace.
“You had to watch out for fake IDs, and people getting out of their car. That's when trouble started.” Parker said. “If somebody got out of the car, you told `em to get back in, if they wouldn't do that we called the cops.”
Stubbs left the company to open his own spectacular new restaurant on the city's west side called Applewoods. After Hollie's closed for good in 1980, Parker went to work full time at Apple woods but helped out at Muffin's, Buster T. Brown's and the short-lived, high-end Velvet Dove.
“She made the duck for us there,” Stubbs recalled.
When Stubbs sold Applewoods to a Tennessee company in 2003, the deal included a unique clause.
“We had a contract that was an inch and a half thick, and Rose's name was the only one in it,” Stubbs said. “I'd made a promise to Rose that she would always have a job with me. So, we included a clause that made her the only employee that had the option to come with me, everyone else had to stay at Applewoods.”
The dressing room
For the past 17 years, Parker's office has been a tidy, white nook hidden deep in the labyrinthine kitchen at Cattlemen's. The dressing is made two to three times a week depending on t he time of year. It's a difficult, time-consuming process she' s had to teach to coworkers in preparation for her departure.
“I know the recipe by heart,” she declared amid making a fresh batch on Monday.
“You're not supposed to,” Stubbs reminded her.
How Stubbs came to own Cattlemen's Cafe was nearly by force.
“Gene Wade and I were friends, and we shared a banker,” Stubbs said. “The banker calls me one day and says, ` You're going to partner with Gene Wade.' I told him I didn't think so, and he says ,` Well then, Cattlemen's is going to close, and it'll be your fault when it does.”
By 1990, Stubbs had purchased the restaurant out right from the Wade family, changed the name to Cattlemen's Steakhouse and served a sitting United States president.
Among the first things Stubbs had perfect was the secret recipe for the garlic-cream house dressing.
“Gene had a lady who was working here making it ,” Stubbs explained. “We first worked with her to get the recipe in print, and it was different every time. So I went to Gene and asked for the recipe, and he pulled out his billfold.”
Wade pulled a folded piece of paper out and handed over the original hand written version.
“We made it to that, and all we got were complaints the next day,” Stubbs said.
He said it took weeks of testing to document the recipe. Three decades later, it sells shoulder to shoulder with steak and lamb fri es, and Parker has been in charge of the process since 2003.
When Food Network host Guy Fieri and his hair showed up in the Cattle men' s kitchen for a salad dressing tutorial, Parker delivered it with aplomb.
“When he asked Rose what would happen if t hat machine broke, Rose said, ` We'd fix it,” Stubbs laughed.
With retirement nigh, Parker said she doesn't have any immediate plans other than to relax. Even her 13 grandkids and 12 great-grandkids will have to be patient.
“It's going to be my time!” she exclaimed.
Parker said she's not sure she'll even cook too much because her husband handles it.
“When I get home, I'm the queen,” she said.
The only firm plans she has have to do with her native Panama. Parker hasn't been back since she left in 1944 but has plans for one final trip.
“After I pass, I'm going to have my ashes spread over there,” she said.
After a pregnant pause, Parker's f ace broke i nto a big smile, “Maybe a few at Cattlemen's, too.”