The City of Boca Raton invited the public to welcome the USA National Miss Scholarship Pageant contestants during a Parade of States at Mizner Park on July 12. More than 200 delegates competed for more than $300,000 in scholarships. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
By Thom Smith
To earn spending money in junior high, Bruce Feingold found an ideal job in a New Jersey bakery — $4 an hour and time off to wrestle. His experience around the ovens and on the mat still inspires him as executive chef at Dada in Delray Beach.
After 16 years at Dada, Feingold believes the teamwork he experienced years ago and still nourishes in his kitchen will help make the inaugural Dine Out Delray a success. A week (Aug. 1-7) of lunch and dinner deals and special events at many of the city’s top restaurants will benefit Healthy Bellies — a community program Feingold and his wife, Amanda, created with the Delray Beach Achievement Center to promote education and nutrition for underprivileged children and families.
The boy in the bakery has learned a lot.
“I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to do,” he confessed. “I liked the bakery, but I also liked music, took art classes, economics, marketing. I even thought about being an electrical engineer because my uncle was.”
But even though he showed scholarship potential on the mat, he decided to be the best chef possible… and to study at the best school. With two years left in high school, Feingold told his parents he wanted to apply to the Culinary Institute of America.
What if you’re turned down? I’ll apply again.
And if you’re turned down again? Then I won’t go to school.
“They went through the roof … but they came around.”
Their support and the discipline he developed as a champion wrestler helped him cope with the culinary institute’s military academy-style regimen — 12 hours a day in classes, not only in culinary arts but also management, people skills and economics, coupled with the constant pressure to be creative.
Invigorated, Feingold completed his first extern-ship at a Miami restaurant. The area was warmer than New Jersey and New York and bubbling with restaurant opportunities.
After graduation he returned, eventually landing at the Jupiter Island Club, winter home to Fords and duPonts, Roosevelts and Bushes.
It was a plum job but hardly challenging. Dada’s concept was, and Feingold jumped at the opportunity.
Despite working 12 hours, often seven days a week, he loves the job thanks to the camaraderie among his veteran staff and within the restaurant community.
“We’re all in it together,” he said. “We like to compete, but a lot of us have been around for quite a while and we like each other. A good restaurant benefits every other restaurant because it draws more customers to the area.
“Like I learned when I was wrestling, you only lose by beating yourself.”
For Restaurant Week details, go to www.downtowndelraybeach.com/restaurantweek.
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The agony of defeat. The Olympic trials in track and field are over; sisters Stephanie Schappert and Nicole Tully, the pride of Delray Beach, will not be going to Rio.
Stephanie’s 4:14.48 in the 1,500-meter semifinal was less than 5 seconds behind the winner but good for only 19th place.
Just past halfway in the 5,000-meter final, a trailing runner’s spikes caught Nicole’s heel. The 2015 national champion tumbled, striking her head on the track and bruising a knee. She couldn’t continue.
Both girls live and train in New Jersey. Stephanie, 23, is running in Europe while Nicole, 29 and married just two years, contemplates balancing top-level competition with family life.
“She’s having a tough time with it, but she’ll take it one year at a time,” said her dad, Ken Schappert, who competed in the trials in ’72 and ’76. “So many great runners I knew never made an Olympic team. You just keep working at it.”
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Another winner on the track is back in the news …
On Dec. 29, 1993, Pat C Rendezvous broke from the gate at Palm Beach Kennel Club and changed greyhound racing. Her 3 ½-length victory was the first of a world-record 36 in a row that made “Rhonda,” to her legions of fans, a celebrity. She eventually lost 18 months later but still won 52 races in 1994.
Pat C was retired in 1996 and spent her remaining days on the Colorado farm of her owner, Pat Collins. She bore one litter and died in 2000, but her legacy continued. In 2002, her male pup, Pat C Lookahere, won the James W. Paul Derby, and in October in Abilene, Kansas, she’ll be inducted into the Greyhound Hall of Fame.
“All of us who were part of this superstar we called Rhonda will never forget the excitement while she raced,” the Kennel Club’s Theresa Hume said. “Our track had record crowds and mutuel handles. She is beloved by many.”
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Nat King Cole’s voice was “unforgettable.” Fortunately for the contestants and the audience in the second annual Nat King Cole Generation Hope Lip Sync battle, voice quality won’t matter… style and attitude will.
Generation Hope was founded by Nat’s daughters, Casey and Timolin, to support music programs in underfunded schools. The syncing (6:30 p.m. Aug. 24 at Blue Martini in Boca Raton’s Town Center) will feature Junior Leaguer Karli Vazquez-Mendez, real estate broker Peg Anderson, Hollywood (Fla.) lawyer Brion Ross, Boca Chamber of Commerce VP Beth Johnston, Casey’s husband and former NFL player Julian Hooker, Boca City Councilman Bob Weinroth and Palm Beach Post entertainment writer Leslie Gray Streeter.
Tickets are $35 ($25 online in advance) and include a drink ticket, extended happy hour, prize drawings and some wild moves. Details at www.nkcgenhope.org.
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Lots happening at The Wick. With a $5 million mortgage inked in April, Marilyn Wick’s theater company enters its third season as owner of the former Caldwell Theatre Company building on North Federal in Boca. The Wick’s Costume Museum, stocked with $20 million in Broadway finery, reopens in September with a new display, “Where Runway Meets Broadway.”
On stage, five musicals are set: They’re Playing Our Song, beginning Oct. 13 with Andrea McArdle, followed by Sister Act Nov. 25, West Side Story Jan. 12, Guys and Dolls March 9 and Beehive April 20.
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The renovation goes on and up at the Norton Museum of Art. Donors already have committed $60 million to the project, but costs are now expected to reach $100 million. As the massive project proceeds, admission is free and the museum has added a new program marked by the return of an old friend.
Three decades ago, Lou Tyrrell arrived from New York, with innovative and provocative drama. Before establishing Theatre Club of the Palm Beaches, Florida Stage and Arts Garage’s theater, he mounted his first three productions at the Norton.
Now running Florida Atlantic University’s new Theatre Lab as “Visiting Eminent Scholar in the Arts,” Tyrrell is bringing three of its productions, in reading format followed by audience discussions with cast and crew, to the Norton’s long-standing Art After Dark program.
The first, 13 Things About Ed Carpolotti, was performed July 21. Next up is By and By, a drama about human cloning by Lanford Wilson Award winner Lauren Gunderson, Aug. 18. Love Is, a musical set for Sept. 15, features South Florida veterans Angie Radosh and Caryl Fantel. Shows at 7:30 p.m., and again — no charge.
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Will any venture ever succeed at 116 NE Sixth Ave. in Delray Beach? It just can’t seem to catch on as a restaurant. Originally a residence, built in 1925, it was bought by the Falcon family in 1941 to use in part as a pharmacy.
In 1992 Andrew Bennardo took the leap, with an Italian ristorante for nearly a decade. Karl Alterman opened Falcon House, a tapas bar, in 2006, then renamed it Triple Eight at Falcon House, with a tie to Triple Eight Vodka in Nantucket and small plates for $8.88. Next came Ceviche, a venture from Gulf Coast entrepreneurs, and then Dennis Max stepped in to blend high-tech libations with old-style architecture at Max’s SoHo, short for Social House.
It was social, but not enough to pay the bills. SoHo is no mo.
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More change in downtown Delray. ... Tryst is for sale? Even though the bistro just east of Swinton remains one of the most popular spots in Delray, its owners believe it is time to move on ... to a different concept at a larger, but as yet undisclosed, location farther east on Atlantic.
Tryst is a concept of The Sub Culture Group, whose principals include Rodney Mayo and Scott Frielich, who have steadily developed a multifaceted restaurant-nightclub empire from West Palm Beach to South Beach, including Dada in Delray and Dubliner in Boca.
Nevertheless, restaurant broker Christian Prakas said the partners wanted to pursue a different course. Asking price for the name is $350,000.
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A couple of blocks away, Max’s Harvest is jumping with a revamped menu for summer and its popular Chef Versus Chef competition every Wednesday. … 50 Ocean has introduced prix fixe offerings at lunch ($21 for two courses) and early-bird dinner ($35 for three courses) and a new chef. Joseph Bonavita Jr., a veteran of New York and South Beach who’s big on raw bars, replaces Blake Malatesta, who opened the kitchen in 2012. Malatesta has gone “MIA.” Not missing in action; he’ll chef at MIA — Modern Inventive Authentic — opening in November on West Atlantic just east of the turnpike.
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A nice feather in her toque. Manlee Siu, Chef de Cuisine at Angle at Eau Palm Beach, will pay a visit to the James Beard House in New York.
On Aug. 8, the Hong Kong native, in her second year at Angle, with assistance from pastry chef Robert Bellini, will prepare a Palm Beach dinner that will include Key West shrimp and Loxahatchee alligator.
Watch her work her magic on Beard House’s “chef cam,” at 6:15 p.m. (www.jamesbeard.org/kitchen-cam).
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Lynn Laurenti holds her framed proclamation at her retirement party. Photo provided
Lynn Laurenti really had no idea where she was headed.
“They just told me to take 441 to Glades Road and go east until I saw the airport,” Laurenti recalled of that day in 1964 when she made her first trip from Miami to Florida Atlantic University. “I knew that if I hit Federal Highway I had gone too far.”
Fortunately for Laurenti and for FAU, she found it, launching a longtime relationship that culminated June 17 with her retirement as special assistant to President John Kelly.
Laurenti was a model student for the first state university in South Florida: It began, for lack of a better term, as a “senior college” — a place for junior college and grad students to “finish up.”
After her freshman year at the University of Florida, Laurenti returned to Miami when her father died. Local options University of Miami and Barry University were expensive. She began working her way through what was then Dade County Junior College.
Prospects were bleak until a faculty adviser mentioned the new school opening in Boca Raton.
“I bought a map at a gas station to find it,” she said. (Population in 1960 was 6,961.)
FAU’s ambitious plans included a high-tech library where research documents would be stored on film, and TV cameras in classrooms so students could access lectures at any time, even from dorm rooms. The concept was so uncharacteristically progressive for a Florida university that the opening address was given by President Lyndon Johnson. FAU, he drawled on Oct. 25, 1964, symbolized “a new revolution in education” that could “vastly enrich life over the next 50 years.”
Laurenti, then Lynn Klein, applied, was accepted and received some financial aid, but she had to wait a week for her first class because Hurricane Cleo left $100,000 in damage and a bent flagpole.
Her arrival was hardly breathtaking. After driving two hours from Miami — no I-95 then — she found the airport, the long-abandoned Boca Raton Army Air Field, and a skeleton of a campus — two classroom buildings, a library and a TV center. “I made that trip three times a week. Gas was cheap.”
She graduated cum laude in English in 1966, wrote for newspapers, including the Sun-Sentinel and Miami Herald, then tried her hand at public relations.
In 1990 she returned to campus as media relations director and university spokesperson, becoming, as then-FAU President Frank Brogan described in 2003, “a walking encyclopedia of information about the university.”
Today the two-lane roads are memories. Campuses dot the landscape from Broward County to Fort Pierce. As FAU and Boca grew in size and prominence, presidents — from Tony Catanese in 1990 to Kelly today — relied on Laurenti’s knowledge and her way with words to craft their speeches.
Summing up Laurenti’s life as student, alumna and employee, Kelly called her an “indispensable asset to her colleagues, community associates, industry peers, and to the institution as a whole,” noted her “excelsior levels of achievement, dedication and professionalism at FAU,” and her “steady hand and abiding force of calm and humor during mercurial administrations” in proclaiming her an “FAU Owl forever.”
Kelly spoke at Laurenti’s retirement party in June.
Don’t be surprised if Laurenti answers the next time Kelly’s office calls or if someone needs an anecdote from half a century ago.
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Pokémon seemed harmless enough as a video game, but devotees of the new Pokémon GO extension are stressing more responsible behavior by players. In mid-July, three Baltimore police officers barely escaped serious injury when a young driver sideswiped a patrol car.
“That’s what I get for playing this dumb game,” the kid said as he showed the cops his phone.
A man and woman were arrested for trespassing after they broke into the tiger cage at the Toledo Zoo. “It was all fun and games until the cops showed up,” the clueless said.
Because Pokémon is a Japanese creation, the Morikami Museum and Gardens is attracting players who might never visit otherwise. Museum staff is, or was, thrilled until some players left white graffiti on trees and benches: “Team Instinct Rocks,” “Valor Is Trash” and “Mewtwo wuz here.”
The Pokémon GO Fan Club of Fort Lauderdale, 222 members strong, has announced a social event at the Morikami for 11 a.m. Aug. 21, and has already urged its members to “be extra courteous to (employees) and all the other people in the park.”
Thom Smith is a freelance writer. Reach him at thomsmith@ymail.com.
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