PALACE HOTEL
Sir Joel, an `old man' remembers
When asked if he would sit for an interview about his time at the Palace Bar and Grill, Joel Clark said, “Sure…if an old man can remember what a young man experienced.”
In the mid-1970s Joel had been part owner of Mendocino's Café Beaujolais, and some time after left for New York in hot pursuit of a gorgeous young South American with whom he had fallen in love.
He returned to Ukiah in mid-1981, desperately seeking work, and accepted a job at the Palace as a lunchtime waiter.
Pat Kuleto and company had declared bankruptcy and were on their way out of town, never to return again, and Grosvenor had taken over with Mike Murray as the new manager.
Joel ascended from a lowly lunchtime waiter to a dinner waiter, a wine buyer and the dining room manager.
“Early on as the wine buyer, the first phone call I got was from one of our wine suppliers, bitching me out because of the bankruptcy, about a bill that never got paid, like I had been part of the bankruptcy.
“I told her I didn't even know those people. `We're under new management. Would you like to sell us some wine?' She said yes, of course but it had to be on her terms, cash on the case.”
Hired by Louise Boas and trained by Karen Record, during his first lunch shift, Karen brought him to the front station and told him not to look under the oak woodwork counter above where the glassware and plates were kept. He looked…and… saw the cockroaches…just dropping down.
“They totally ruled the place. Nobody told them they didn't live there.”
Every Tuesday and Thursday the buses came, two of them, back-to-back, 50 per.
Guests were able to order off the menu so the wait staff and cooks developed an approach that would make the operation manageable.
As guests walked in and were welcomed to the best place they'd ever eat in their lives, specific items were recommended.
“We limited them; they were steered away from the more difficult items to prepare and we trayed up the easier-tomake-foods: Shrimp cocktail; French onion soup quickly
placed under the broiler to melt the cheese; French dip sandwiches. We'd have a whole tray of desserts lined up before they got off the bus.”
The bus folks were served at two long tables in the back dining room, the Black Bart Room, on the Smith Street side with access to it through the back waiter station.
“(Chef) Samantha (Christ) would bitch us out if we did anything wrong. She would stop us in our tracks and say, `you go back out there and you tell them,' you know, whatever. We were in this nexus between keeping the kitchen staff working with us and making the best personal tips.”
Primarily dinner waiters, Joel and Karen and Katie would happily attend to the lunchtime bus guests where they made double what they would make in three days in tips from the regular notso-generous-locals.
Joel became the wine buyer because, “it had been a mess.”
Former wine buyers hadn't been keeping up with the new offerings, had not developed relationships with the wineries. As a buyer for Café Beaujolais, he had rapport, knew how it was done. “Working as a waiter was a very cool experience because I met everybody in the wine business.”
John Parducci was one of his favorites. “He was known as a curmudgeon, but I liked him; you just had to learn to talk back to him.”
One day he told Joel there was no place for him to park. Joel explained there was lots of parking — a parking lot, side street parking, etc.
“No, he insisted, expected, that he be able to park at the front door, anytime he showed up.
“What I really liked about him — he made it clear to me that only he was ever to be billed for dinner, no matter what went on at the table side.
“He wanted to pay for his retailers and wholesalers. They wined and dined him when he was on their territory and he was going to take care of his guests when they were on his turf.
“Karen and I were of a certain stripe when it came to serving. We knew how to work the guests. There was nothing about being disagreeable or unpleasant to anybody because that would've been stupid.
“We took on the ones who were difficult because we could see how to please them.”
He had a schtick to endear people to him.
“I would make blatant, obvious mistakes — a thumb in a soup bowl, a couple of vegetables off the top of the salad into a lap. It was ridiculous and people couldn't help but laugh.”
He stayed a number of years, moved on to work for Milano, then Zola's in Cloverdale.
He opened Joel's in Hopland at the end of 1984 and, on Valentine's Day/ President's Day weekend, 1986, he was ready to go full throttle with both walkins filled to the brim to the tune of about $10,000 and every table booked for the entire weekend. However, that was the weekend of the devastating floods that inundated Hopland, his restaurant and Hopland Elementary School.
That pretty much ended it for him; he struggled and managed to stay afloat until the end of the year.
“We had the most amazing combination of customers at the Palace: the worst prosecutors from the courthouse, city attorneys, the best pot growers, the country hillbilly hippies, the timber guys and those who ran the anti-pot campaign for the sheriff's department. It was that kind of a time.
“It was a neutral, safe space where the food and drinks were great and the laughs were good and everyone got along.
“We worked really hard in the restaurant and even though we were exhausted, it was a great feeling and that's what made our customers like us. They could see we were sincerely working our asses off, trying to make it as good as we could because it was the best place around; and we all knew it.
He, too, remembers Stella Sandelin Douglas who lived there full time and would come down to the bar every evening, to her little corner table, to have one little drink “just to be a part of the world.”