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SALT LAKE CITY — Chef Tom Call never planned to open a restaurant at Grant Smith’s house for one night only, but Smith is glad Call did.
“It’s much more intimate, more fun (than a regular restaurant because) you’re with friends, you’re not in a public place,” he said.
A small gust of wind shook oak leaves down upon guests on his balcony.
“We have leaves raining from the sky,” he said. “I mean, you can’t get this in a restaurant.”
Call worked at Michelin-starred establishments in San Francisco, like One Market and Coi. He moved to Salt Lake City and eventually landed a position chef de cuisine for the Grand America Hotel.
“That was the high point of my career,” he said.
His career plans changed one night when, after a long day at the hotel, he came home to his wife, also a working parent, and his two small children.
“I came home. My wife was stressed out. The baby was crying. She was freaking out. Everyone was freaking out,” he said. “So I held my daughter and she started freaking out even more becasue she doesn’t know who I am. 'Who’s this guy?' And that’s what made it clear to me — maybe I’ll stay home for a little while.”
He left the hotel and became a stay-at-home dad, but didn’t hang up his chef’s hat for good.
“I started having dinner parties at different locations. I’d invite the public, I’d invite friends, I’d invite anyone,” he said. “We’d sit down, we’d eat family-style, hang out, have fun.”
The dinner parties eventually became Food Made By Tom, a catering and pop-up restaurant business.
One night's pop-up was at the home of a friend of a friend, Grant Smith. Guests, invited through social media, were seated at three long tables on his balcony overlooking the Salt Lake Valley. The five-course menu featured smoked parmesan risotto, seared Maine scallops and caramelized apple hand-pies with parsnip gelato.
“So it’s a reason to hang out with people and it’s a reason to make food and it’s a reason to eat,” he said. “So it’s the three best things.”
Now Call has two jobs. He devotes his days to his children, 3-year-old August and 10-month-old Alice, and nights and weekends to his pop-up restaurants.
”I work from 7 in the morning to 1 a.m. every single day,” he said.
But he has no regrets.
“It’s been great spending time with my family because I don’t want to have regrets later,” he said. “I want my kids complaining to their therapist that they spent too much time with their dad and not not enough time.”
Call said his father was older and disabled and his mother worked all the time and because he was their fifth child he didn’t get a lot of their attention.
“I feel like I’m giving my family something that I didn’t have,” he said. “I’m not, like, ancient, but I’m thirty and it’s the point in my life where I transition from taking from society to giving back. I think the one thing that I can do that’s most productive is raise two kids that are gonna be valuable members of society.”
