Dining With the Stars: Part I

Celebrities are people, too, and they need to eat. Sometimes celebrities go to restaurants. I’ve had the pleasure of waiting on a few. Perhaps you don’t consider some (most?) of them to be “celebrities,” but it’s pretty awesome when someone even semi-recognizable walks into your restaurant, so I thought it might be fun to talk about some of these people.

Here's some background music.



Gene Hackman



Back when I was a young waiter slash college dropout in New Mexico, Gene Hackman used to come into my restaurant all the time. He was the first celebrity that I ever had any sort of real contact with and he remains the absolute coolest of them all. Though his far-younger wife was somewhat rude, Gene was always incredibly friendly and appreciative. He was incredibly social and always wanted to talk. He couldn’t eat the Tacos Satanicos on account of his lactose intolerance.

My biggest regret with Gene is that I never got to pitch him my awesome idea for Superman V, which involved experimental drugs causing Christopher Reeve to believe that he truly was Superman and that Gene truly was Lex Luthor. Would've been huge.

Judge Reinhold



Again, this was back in New Mexico. Our kitchen closed at 10 and I got a phonecall at 9:50:



Thank you for calling the Blue Corn Cafe, this is Anthony, how can I help you?

Hi, I was wondering what time you closed?

Kitchen closes at 10.

Okay, we’re on our way right now -

Well, you better hurry up!

I hung up the phone, all pissed off that I had another table coming in. Even though I still get upset about that sort of thing, I would never be so explicitly rude about it. I was still developing my sense of hospitality, I suppose. Five minutes go by and in walks a tall man and his pretty blonde wife.

Holy shit.



Judge Reinhold.



Kids these days probably don’t have much appreciation for the man, but growing up a child of the 80’s, I was pretty floored when I saw him walk in. He approached the host desk, all timid..



Uh, we called...



Holy shit.
That was Judge Reinhold on the phone.
I told Judge Reinhold that he needed to “hurry up.”



I brought him to his table and happily took care of him. He had a very genuine quality to him and was as gracious as just about anyone I’ve ever waited on, let alone a celebrity. He asked for extra pickles. Apparently, Judge Reinhold loves pickles. I brought him a whole bowl.

T’was the least I could do.



Matt Cassell



Matty (as we came to call him) and his tall, athletic wife are really down-to-earth, awesome people. The first time he came into my restaurant was during the 2008 pre-season. He was the back-up quarterback at the time and no one recognized him when he first came in. He sat at the bar and ordered a MacCallan 18 on the rocks.



More like a MacCallan 18 and 1...

The Pats had infamously gone 18-1 in the previous season, you see. I didn’t actually say that to Matt, though he might have found it humorous. Maybe not.



The next time we saw him was after the season opener against Kansas City. T. Brady had gone down with a knee injury early in the game, giving Matty his first starting job since high school. While most of Patriot Nation thought we were “all done,” all of us at the restaurant were psyched for the guy. Sure, we figured we weren't going to win the Super Bowl, but we felt like we needed to root for Matt. After the game we joked around about how cool it would be if he came into the restaurant to celebrate his big win.

And then he did.



This time, everyone recognized him. Chef prepared them all kinds of mid-courses and spent a lot of time chatting with him at the table. I can confidently say that it was the first time Matt was treated like the star he would soon become. Chef got a little excited and tried to give him hats from the restaurant so that he could wear on television. We were all relieved when he couldn’t find any.



Matt continued to come into the restaurant with some frequency, always personally thanking and shaking hands with everyone in the building on his way out. He also had a very underrated season for the Patriots, leading them to the same record that Brady did upon his return in 2009.

I remember there was one time when he was having dinner and Wes Welker kept texting him. Welker kept asking him what he was up to and Matty lied because he didn’t want to hang out with him.



The last time we saw him was when someone asked to take a picture with him. That’s probably not why he stopped coming in, but we always thought that it might have tainted what he considered a fairly low-key little restaurant in the ‘burbs.

Bill Richardson


Governor of New Mexico, former presidential candidate and ambassador to North Korea. He ate very loudly, which is a huge pet peeve of mine. 




These are the more exciting ones, but we'll delve into the lower and more local levels of celebrity next time.