A portion of proceeds benefit a cause close to his heart: The Heroes Project, supporting wounded veterans. Caliendo spent six years in the Marine Corps as a CH-53 plane captain and martial arts instructor, with three active duty deployments.<\/p>\n
After the military, he went to Bridgewater State University to study business but preferred the restaurant industry to corporate life at a retail banking job. He worked in management at the Atlantic Beer Garden, Whiskey Priest, Pasta Beach, Nebo, and Stephi\u2019s in Southie before joining Grill 23. <\/p>\n
Now, he reflects on his encounters with a pre-Oscars slap Will Smith, a martini mishap, his years in the Marine Corps, and his first job as a teenage dishwasher growing up in Easton.<\/p>\n
Why do you like your job?<\/p>\n
The people I work with are experienced. They\u2019re mature. The hours are great. The schedule, for me, is very flexible. I work five nights a week there, but if I do need to take some time off for the business, enough people can fill the void.<\/p>\n
The restaurant takes great care of us in every aspect: quality of life, benefits, stuff like that. And the money is good. They match our 401(k), health, dental. <\/p>\n
Tell me about your military experience.<\/p>\n
I joined the Marine Corps in 1999. I was joining to get money, and a little bit more discipline, for college \u2014 I wasn\u2019t ready, right after high school. I went in to be a helicopter mechanic.<\/p>\n
After September 11 happened, they were in need of more crew chiefs. I decided to laterally move over to a job as a crew chief on CH-53 helicopters and a plane captain, and I also became a marksmanship instructor for my unit and a martial arts instructor for my unit. I was in the Marine Corps for [six] years with a handful of deployments. We did a lot of equipment transport and troop transport. When I was discharged, I came home and went to Bridgewater State.<\/p>\n
How does your military experience play into your life now?<\/p>\n
Empathy and understanding \u2014 mainly understanding a lot of different cultures and where people come from. It really helps me communicate and understand the different people who come into the restaurant.<\/p>\n
Was it jarring to be so young and far from home?<\/p>\n
Of course. You miss home a lot. You miss your friends. But it\u2019s also a very exciting experience. A lot of people would think that, if you\u2019re going halfway across the world to a dangerous area, that it might be scary. And it is scary. But it\u2019s also exciting. You\u2019re doing something for your country, and there are a mix of emotions.<\/p>\n
And now you hold veterans\u2019 fundraisers through Grill 23, right?<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve done a lot of work with a foundation called The Heroes Project out in California.<\/p>\n
They take veterans who have some pretty catastrophic wounds, train them in world-class facilities for a year, and then they bring them up the tallest seven summits of the world: Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Everest, Alborz.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re building a veteran retreat center on Ice House Canyon, which is on Mount Baldy, and they\u2019re raising funds for that. The first year, we raised $25,000, and this year, we raised $58,000.<\/p>\n
We took over the entire second floor of [Grill 23 sibling] The Banks. I did a silent auction raffle with an open bar and food.<\/p>\n
Tell me about your other side hustle.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s called Corpsman\u2019s, and I started it as a way to give back to The Heroes Project. I went to college for business management, and I wanted to see what it was like to start a business. We give 5 percent of our profits to The Heroes Project. It\u2019s been a great experience, and the company is successful. <\/p>\n
We have six different types of hair pomade. We do beard oil, beard balm, mustache wax, a sea salt texture spray, texture powder, and I\u2019m currently looking into making a shampoo and conditioner as well.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s your sales pitch?<\/p>\n
The market is extremely crowded, more so than when I started, which makes things a little bit difficult. But what makes mine a little bit different is, first, it\u2019s all-natural. Two, we give back to wounded veterans. Three, it was very local at first, and the barber shops and salons in our area wanted to support a local company. <\/p>\n
They wanted to support a small business, they wanted to support something good for their clients and give back to wounded veterans. It gives a lot of these wholesalers, the barber shops and the salons, something to talk to their clients about while they\u2019re in the chair \u2014 something their clients can feel good about buying and something that they can feel good about selling.<\/p>\n
What was your first food job? <\/p>\n
I was a dishwasher at Tally Ho restaurant in Easton.<\/p>\n
The worst part about that job is they served chicken parmesan on these metal dishes that they would actually put in the oven. I probably have arthritis in my shoulder and elbow from having to try to scrub the cheese off the metal tin. It was the worst part of my job. I remember it to this day. It was awful, absolutely awful.<\/p>\n
OK, back to Grill 23: Give us a public service announcement. What should customers never do?<\/p>\n
This is an easy one. Let\u2019s say it\u2019s an eight-person table, and I come to the table and say, \u2018Can I get anybody anything at all?\u2019 <\/p>\n
I look around the table, and five people have empty drinks, and then three people go, \u2018Yeah, I\u2019ll take a refill.\u2019 And I go to the other two people and say, \u2018Can I get you two anything? You look like you need a refill,\u2019 and they say, \u2018No.\u2019<\/p>\n
I get the other three people their drinks, and the other two go, \u2018Hey, you know what? Yeah, I\u2019ll take one.\u2019 It\u2019s called one-timing. Now you\u2019re going to send me back to the bar and back again. Then, when I come back with those two drinks, another person at the table needs something. <\/p>\n
Just stop for a moment, take a breath, and look around: What does everybody need? It really bogs you down when you\u2019re making multiple trips to the same table.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the weirdest request you\u2019ve ever gotten from a guest?<\/p>\n
I had a young woman who came in because we\u2019re so known for icy martinis, but she had no experience with martinis.<\/p>\n
I was trying to tell her, \u2018Listen. It doesn\u2019t have to be a dirty vodka or gin martini. It\u2019s anything in a martini glass that\u2019s icy. It can be a cosmo. It can be a sidecar. It can be whatever you want. As long as it\u2019s in a martini glass, it\u2019s going to look icy, and you can take the picture you came in here to take.\u2019<\/p>\n
She said, \u2018You know what? I think what I want is a gin martini. But I want it to be sweet. Maybe add some St-Germain?\u2019 <\/p>\n
I said, \u2018You\u2019re building something that I don\u2019t think you\u2019re going to like.\u2019 And she\u2019s like: \u2018No, no, it\u2019ll be good.\u2019 So we built her a gin martini that had lime juice and St-Germain, and she wanted me to add a bit of pineapple juice.<\/p>\n
I was really trying to talk her off that ledge. I was trying to talk her into maybe a porn star martini, or a pomegranate martini, or something that we all know works. But she really just wanted this. I brought it to her. The whole time she was eating dinner, I could tell she was embarrassed, but she stomached it.<\/p>\n
Did you charge her for a typical martini? <\/p>\n
It was just a gin martini with a St-Germain add-on. I didn\u2019t make her feel bad. I said, \u2018You still enjoying your martini?\u2019 I asked her a couple times, and after that, I just left it alone. That was a tough one for me to watch.<\/p>\n
Where does the Boston food scene succeed, and where do you think we have room to grow?<\/p>\n
I think we\u2019re getting to be a little bit more diverse in the types of restaurants that we offer now. For a little bit there, we were opening up steakhouse after steakhouse after steakhouse after steakhouse. For a while there, I just thought we\u2019re just going to be a city of just nothing but steakhouses.<\/p>\n
Especially seeing as I work in steakhouses, I don\u2019t want to make it sound like steakhouses are awful; they\u2019re everywhere. But, you know, Grill 23 has been there for 42 years, right? It\u2019s a flagship location of a steakhouse in Boston. Then you have Abe and Louie\u2019s and The Capital Grille, which are all great places.<\/p>\n
Everybody likes a great steak, right? But we do want to experience other cultures. We want to experience other types of food. I don\u2019t think Anthony Bourdain would have wanted a city of nothing but steakhouses. R.I.P., Anthony. I think we\u2019re becoming a lot more diverse. <\/p>\n
Where do you like to eat when you\u2019re not working?<\/p>\n
This is going to be so contradictory. I like steak, so I pop into steakhouses. A couple of my favorites are Mooo\u2026 in the Seaport; I think the Columbus Hospitality Group does a great job. And I think Maple & Ash is doing a great job.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a new fan of Zuma. Their atmosphere is amazing. I think their music is awesome. They did a great job with the architecture of their restaurant. The atmosphere and the attitude is great. And I like Contessa.<\/p>\n
Anywhere close to home?<\/p>\n
Novara and Antonio\u2019s Bacaro.<\/p>\n
Who\u2019s been your most memorable customer?<\/p>\n
I do have a memorable customer, but it wasn\u2019t at Grill 23. I served Will Smith at Nebo.<\/p>\n
I grew up with Will Smith, with \u201cThe Fresh Prince of Bel Air\u201d and having him rap and everything else. I was very excited to have him there, but I think he was a little bit more wrapped up in his current company and not so much who was serving him food. He was very explicit: no pork. <\/p>\n
I also served Larry David at Nebo.<\/p>\n
Was he awkward? <\/p>\n
He\u2019s just like he is on his show. It\u2019s like he\u2019s not even acting.<\/p>\n
Was he a good tipper?<\/p>\n
He was.<\/p>\n
This interview has been edited and condensed.<\/p>\n
Kara Baskin can be reached at kara.baskin@globe.com. Follow her @kcbaskin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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