We’ve heard them all: “The customer is #1 concern.” “We care about the customer.” “The customer comes first.” they have all become clichés; they have become all but meaningless words. “Thank you” more often than not means, “sign on the dotted line and move along so I can go do my next task.” “Care” is handed out about as casually as are sugar packets, with as much concern and attention. The words have lost their meaning.

In 1974, with my new B.A. degree in hand, the only job that I could land was driving a trash truck for a private contractor under municipal contract. This was during an economic time very similar to one we are currently experiencing. Richard Nixon was President, gasoline prices had recently tripled, and jobs were few and far between. My “class 2” trucker’s license was more valuable than my B.A., and not very valuable at that. I picked trash by day, waited tables at night. I usually had time for quick nap in-between jobs.

Ines de Costa was the restaurant boss. Her husband Manny held the title, but Ines was the boss. She talked a tough game at first: only smoke in the wait-staff area, no smoking in the dining room, only one drink per shift, we could order a sandwich for ourselves when our last table had been served.

In reality we ordered whatever we felt like eating whenever we wanted to eat, had 2-4 drinks a night, and smoked wherever we felt like smoking. Once in a while Ines would make noise, but she loved her crew, especially the men, and we could do no wrong. She cared for her staff, she cared for her customers, and was passionate about them all being well-fed.

There will always be a few independent restaurants, delis, food places that break all the rules, do many things wrong, yet they manage to succeed over long periods of time. These are inevitably special places, always run by special people. There is always a certain passion present in these places: their followers are cult-like.

Ines’s mission, her passion was to feed people until they were stuffed, then get them to eat some more. Not all her dishes were great, some were just okay. But two of her dishes were without peer, won her fame. Her baccala, Portuguese style dried cod smothered with onions and whatever else she magically put into that concoction. Her caldo verde, they called it “soupish caldene” and we called it Portuguese soup, it was Emil Lagasse’s choice for the best thing he ever ate on the show of the same name.

Yes, Emeril had her on his show a few times, filmed his last show partly from her place. Ines was his first kitchen boss and his “second mother.” So, maybe he is biased on the soup. I don’t think so.

Ines could have written the book on how not to run a restaurant. Portion control was a joke. There was no discipline, yet work got done, everybody pitched in, one person slacked, somebody else picked it up, it worked. Every vendor wanted to sell to Ines, she paid her bills – early. She’d beat the salesperson for 10 cents a case, then feed them a meal and give them a doggy bag large enough to feed their family when they got home. If a priest or a cop came into the restaurant, the portions grew even larger. Ditto politicians and morticians. She liked being connected to the higher powers.

Well into her seventies Ines worked six days a week, donated her time to a soup kitchen on the seventh. Her body was bent and frail from the long hours on her feet in the kitchen: her mind was strong, her will was strong, her passion to feed more people never wavered. She didn’t say she cared, she didn’t throw around meaningless thank-you’s: her actions outperformed her words.

I attended her funeral mass last Friday. The church was packed like a busy Saturday nite. Eight chubby priests co-celebrated the mass. Her daughter, also Ines, beautifully eulogized her. At the end of the ceremony the congregation gave Ines her a last standing ovation, a loud boisterous one, a seemingly unending one, then went for one last time to eat soupish caldene – though not as good as hers. When it’s all over, and it will be for all of us, what more could we ask for?

You know all about this stuff, you’re in the industry. Now get back into the kitchen and cook some more frigg’n calde verde.