Who Are Those Guys?

by Marcia Peck

The Real Cooks and Waiters

To keep Corinthian members well fed and happy, the Catering Company employs a kitchen staff that has a combined total of 107 years of cooking experience! Together, they develop our menus and pick the best produce available, to serve up scrumptious dishes at the club.

The group is led by chef Ian Morrison, a certified executive chef who has the final say on all kitchen matters. Ian was Chef of the year in 1998 for the Pacific Coast Chef Association. Recently, his son Brian, a sophomore at San Marin high school, joined his dad and is helping out at Corinthian. The rest of the staff have very interesting backgrounds. Jeff Gregory is studying law and plays in a rock band with fellow cook, Joe Simpson. His specialty is eastern Mediterranean cooking. Clyde Sorda loves southwest cooking and was past-president of the Pacific Coast Chef’s Association. Roland Bitterer is the son of a very famous San Francisco restaurant chef, Pierre Bitterer. The Pierre Room in the Mark Hopkins Hotel was named for him. Roland, although French, favors German cuisine, and cooks half the year at a famous Idaho fly-fishing lodge. Eric, alias Rick, Rumf, was a training chef for the Hungry Hunter and cooked at Lake Tahoe for many years. He also is an accomplished oil painter and owns the Intergalactic Art Gallery in Benicia.

Joe Simpson, who plays in the rock band with Jeff, was also the executive chef at Sage Catering. Zack Larsen's mom was the catering manager at San Francisco Yacht Club for many years. And last, but not least Jerry Roberts, is a furniture designer and expert woodworker. He started cooking in junior high to help his family out financially, and did nine years for Hewlett Packard as a grill cook. Now he enjoys doing our varied grilled items.

The whole cooking team reports that a lot of good-natured ribbing and ridicule goes on backstage in the kitchen. Occasionally, they get a good laugh out of the comment cards. When one came in saying, "how dare you serve chicken and call it pate de fois gras", it was! Thanks guys, for a job well done!

Happy Birthday, Corinthian Yacht Club!

How many of you know that March 16th marks the 116th birthday of the Corinthian Yacht Club? On that day in 1886, a committee of sailors from the bay "mosquito fleet", met in a beer hall named the Arion Hall, in San Francisco. They felt the rich guys with the big boats all belonged to the two big yacht clubs of the time. This committee, headed by T. R. (Joe) Tracey, Jr., was determined to form a yacht club of their own for sailors who sailed and worked on their own boats. This committee met again on April I to draw up a set of bylaws and named the new yacht club the Corinthian because it meant amateur. This was the start of our club.

[next page]