Anyone have any Danny Mitchell Stories ?

Whatever! I have been hardworking in the industry for 20 years now, and a good restaurant owner is a rare thing. Since moving to Seattle , I have worked for some great bosses and fun chefs, but only 2 owners I have worked for have commanded my respect - The owners of the Sunflour being the standouts. hell, the owner of the Brown Bag restaurants f#&*ed over all his long time employees as he turned into a drunk coke sniffing gambling bastard- when you work for someone for years and money starts being funneled out of your paychecks…not good. And its not just Seattle- the east coast is just as bad.

I am just happy that now I have some great new jobs working for folks that really seem to appreciate me. I know there are quite a few problematic employees in this line of work, but it doesn’t excuse restaurant owners acting like complete freaks.

But, the man has quite a rep. I’d never heard about the cocaine, though. I’d only heard that he yells all the time. He used to own something like 6 restaurants, and now he barely owns one–Mitchell’s in Pioneer Square.

You know what cracks me up, the theory that every high strung restaurant owner in this city is a “coke junky”. If I owned a restaurant in this city and had to put up with the riff raff that makes up the average industry worker, I would also be a junky. Maybe since 75% of the workers here are drunks or pot-heads moving at the speed of stupid, it could be their own laziness that makes the passionate ones seem like ,wow only a coke head could move that fast.Try putting the bong down for awhile and let that t.h.c. induced haze clear up and maybe, just maybe you will see that not all these guys are so bad, just passionate and trying to make money.

What cracks me up is I have been waiting for this topic to actually start since the first day I saw this site (while still working for Dany) that I can’t narrow it down to the one best story. There are sooooooooooooo many. But I will say as in my previous statement that I was waiting for this because I feared him knowing that I may have been the first to post. Not that he is computer savvy beyond checking his e-mail but I did have a true fear of him inside and out of work. I have since realized I am a grown woman who really needed a place to work but he did not own me. Now, some of you might be thinking “who is this weak ass bitch”? Not quite. The contrary I have been a bartender/server/,manager for over 10 years and landed at Mitchelli’s out of desperation. I stayed because I thought I could make a difference, and I did.Long of the short is no matter what you do or say or accomplish he has the final say and it depends on if he has taken his meds or found a great deal at bargreens. It doesnt matter if you have been there 20 days or 20 years you still are an idiot. He has no loyalty to people who have held his hand in the hardest of times. So my advice to anyone looking for work in Seattle and you do not already know DON’T go to mitchelli’s. Unless you like verbal abuse from a man who’s own children won’t work with him.

Sure “BOO”. Let me guess, you’re one of those PASSIONATE about cooking types. Great, good for you. Some people are just trying to make a living as a line cook, for shit pay while being barked at by you self-important PASSIONATE types. Mistreating people does not make you more important and it doesn’t make the food taste better or get it to the table faster. Really.

I work for Mitchelli’s right now, and in my almost 20 years of working in the food service industry I have NEVER worked for someone as horrible as Dany Mitchell.
I guarantee you that “Sue” and “BOO” have never worked for Dany, or they would not even THINK of standing up for him!
He is rude, degrading, condescending, misogynistic, conniving, paranoid and downright nasty.
He is truly the most horrible person that I have ever worked for in my life.
And every single person that works for him right now absolutely HATES him with a fierce passion.
He is a wretched human being that deserves nothing but bad things to happen to him.
May he rot in hell.

By the way…in additon to being a mean, spiteful and truly horrible person that outragously mistreats his staff, here are a few other clever things I’ve seen Dany Mitchell do….
~He makes the waitstaff re-use the bread that has already been served to other people. (I had a table with a 2 year old that was slobbering all over a piece of bread and then put it back in the basket. After those people left, Dany had me re-serve the same bread to someone else.)
~I’ve seen him go to a bus tub full of leftover food and pull an uneaten scone out of the slop inside, wipe it off, and put it on a customers plate to be served.
~He CONSTANTLY is pulling dirty paper towels out of the trash in the kitchen and forces the cooks to re-use these dirty paper towels so that he can save a few pennies.
~He refuses to turn the heat on in the winter, even though both the employees and the guests are FREEZING and instead apologizes to the customers by saying that “The furnace just broke”, even though it’s a bald face lie.
~He has the cooks use old outdated food to make a “pasta special”, even though he knows damn well that the food is borderline inedible.
~He forces the servers and bartenders to underpour beers, wines, and cocktails. If he catches us not underpouring we get in trouble.
~When he finds that some of his expensive wine has gone bad he as special “Wine Parties” at his restaurant for his richer friends and business contacts, knowing full well ahead of time that the wine he is serving has already gone bad due to improper storage on his part. Most people have too much class to complain about the wine, but when someone finally does tell him that the wine is bad, he acts shocked and replaces it with some cheap crap, even though the whole point of the party was this “expensive” wine.
He also uses spoiled wine for “special” sauces for the pasta.
~The last thing I heard him talk about doing was to recycle the half used butter pats from the dirty tables.
His idea is to collect the leftover butter pats, put them into a pot and boil them down and use the butter in the kitchen for other dishes. Keep in mind that I have seen people open their butter pat, use a little butter, LICK THE KNIFE, and then use a little more butter.
So keep in mind that this tainted butter may soon be on the food line at Mitchelli’s.
Fair Warning.

i worked at mitchellis for 2 days and quit because danny asked me to take a half a loaf of bread out the slop bucket where all the old wet food goes.i just dumped it and he said “i dont know what world you live in honey,but this is still good and thats waisting money”he wiped off the nasty shit on it and put it under a heat lamp to be reserved!!what a gross fuck!!that was the last day i worked there!i was totally grossed out!!

Danny Mitchell is completely insane. He behaves as if he is better than everyone around him, and that all of the rest of us are mere peasants. He mistreats his employees, his wife, his children, and anyone else that he can’t make a buck off of.
He has no concept of constructive criticism. If he wants you to do something differently, he sneers at you and says some rude, condescending remark instead of just saying, “Here is the way I would like you to do it.”
He treats everyone as if they are a complete and total idiot. To add insult to injury, after making some insulting, derogatory remark to you, he will talk shit about you to the other employees as you walk away.
He is petty and mean spirited and completely unworthy of the slightest bit of respect.
Long time customers, and other People in the Seattle community think that he is one of the nicest, most gracious men that they have ever met. I hear it all the time.
But it’s a total con.
Trust me when I say that he is just as contemptuous of all of you as he of us.

Danny Mitchell schedules us for ten and eleven hour shifts and then flatly REFUSES to allow us to take a break!
He says, “That’s what the shift is, and if you can’t handle it I’ll hire someone else.”
He knows it’s illegal to refuse someone a break on a long shift life that.
He just doesn’t care.

I’ve worked with the Mitchell FAMILY in West Seattle @ Angelina’s in 1987, Stellas as a fill-in bartender, and in Pioneer Square at Trattoria Mitchelli in 2001.

Dany Mitchell was always fair with me, and NEVER once yelled at me in public or anywhere else. In 1987, I broke a large, heavy vase as I was washing it. Dany came into Angelina’s later that same day, found out about the vase…and simply asked me about it. I was a new hire, and this was our first meeting. The vase was unique and irreplaceable, but he just asked me about what had happened. About a week later, after unsuccessfully searching for a replacement, I sent a note, a fifty dollar bill, and an artwork –an abstract pastel chalk in blues and grays I had drawn. It was mounted on foamcore for framing and it was wrapped in plain brown paper. Dany gave the fifty back the next time I saw him, and kept artwork in his office downtown on the wall across from his desk. Anyone who knows Dany, knows he commissioned amazing art from outstanding local artists. The Tratt may be closed, but the mural on the wall in the alley across from the old bar in the former Trattoria was one such commission.

Dany had no patience for idiots, thieves, liars, gossips and slackers. I have no knowledge of his personal life during the 80’s, though I have heard a few slackers telling tall tales and trading 3rd-hand liable when they should have been having a life or doing their sidework. Never bite the hand that feeds you, even an idiot knows that.

My manager, Dana @ the Tratt was funny, organized and easy to work with. I worked with Mitchel’s wife, sons and daughter at the Tratt.

When the twin towers collapsed in 2001, so did the tourist business in Seattle, and especially in Pioneer Square. I left Mitchelli’s in search of a busier restaurant, as did many employees at that time. We just couldn’t make a living in the Square. I received great references from the Mitchell family and continued to eat at Angelina’s, the Tratt, and Stella’s over the years.

We had lunch at the Trat a few times in 2009. Yesler Street in front of the restaurant was torn up with “underground Seattle” seismic reinforcement and the tourist trade was still down. at the time, Dany was planning a well-earned retirement in the South of France. We enjoyed seeing Dany every time we stopped in for lunch.

I miss the made-from-scratch tiramisu and amazing NY style chopped salad. The fettuccine alfredo or carbonara was second to none.

I encourage anyone with liable to “share” about the Mitchel family to use their full legal name.

Unconditional blessings to all who see this post!

Kate McMillan

A little rambling on the topic of Dany Mitchell.
I had been a longtime customer and wanted to work at the “Trat”. I got hired to work at Stellas and was there 4 years 11 months, 1988 - 1993, during this time period I also worked at Bella Luna. Sometime later a short stint at the “Trat” where Dana Mitchell hired me even though I had been fired from Stellas (A new manager went through a faze of firing long term servers). I had worked with Dana when she was still in high school and a hostess at Stellas.
I saw a lot of changes in the time I was there.
When I was a regular “Trat” customer from the early to late 80s it was a popular, trendy, and kind of classy place. The servers were 5 star career professional servers. By the time I left they were all gone, replaced by less than professional servers like me.
Starting as a customer and then as an employee, I saw a fair bit of Dany, he was always very decent. He was familiar with the staff and knew by name those that were there for any significant amount of time. I don’t remember any negative interactions with him. And there were several times when I waited on a large table of Dany and his family. They were always gracious and Dany would always tip his server well.

In all the time I was there I was never told to re-serve anything. For the most part food quality was very good. The level of cleanliness not perfect but was high.
Was it a great place to work? No, but was a good place to work and through working there I did a lot of living, met a lot of great people, and learned a lot about life.

The managment had some problems, they made some really good choices and some really bad choices. The good, they would hire from within to be new assistant managers, and for the most part treated the staff well, etc.
The bad, Dany gave his Managers a lot of control. Because he trusted them to make good decisions. This is were at least in a short period of time during 1993 a new manager fired several servers who were getting close to 5 years of service. I never thought or felt it was an order from Dany.

I like Kate McMillan, think very little of anybody who would write such crap and not have the courage to sign it with their real name.