Idol winner sparks Memorial Day memories

By Matt Haley
Special to the Coastal Point

I honestly can’t believe how much commotion that show has created. I have no opinion — if it makes people happy, great. I saw mothers and daughters pinned to the tube at FO, having a blast, arguing about who their favorite singer was. It was great. Hey, anything that bonds is cool.

I am still trying to figure out how the show even ended up on our TV, since I have said nothing but sports can ever be on our TVs except for, of course, my TV show. (I don’t like the show on when I am there, though, because I want people to think I am cool and casual about it.)

Anyway, I do believe I have something in common with Taylor Hicks. See, he has a group called The Soul Patrol, and I was a member of The Soul Brothers when I was 11.

Our group was cool. To be initiated you had to be able to sing a grouping of Temptations and Four Tops songs, in line-dance form, and then be able to roll a stolen bicycle down a hill. Then you where accepted to the group. Our club house was the Soul Shack and its theme song, of course, was “Psychedelic Shack.”

I guess what I am getting at is that I was asked last week, while I was doing a catering job in Bethany Beach (at a killer place in Cotton Patch, just south of the Indian River Inlet bridge), how I got into the restaurant business.

I had remembered because of Taylor Hicks that I was a member of The Soul Brothers and, as kids, we had met in the club house on weekend nights. And as a way to raise money we would take Twinkies, HoHo’s and assorted candy bars from our houses and sell them back to ourselves with money we had borrowed from our mothers without telling them.

I could have given a simple answer to the question, but I threw that at them in true and honest form, and the reception was great.

Today was also the end of Memorial Day weekend, and I was thinking about how lucky I was to be involved with so many people that are a part of what we do. Not just the great people I work with, but the customers and vendors, too.

I am not trying to get too deep here, but I am definitely one of those who has to think twice before I can stop and smell the roses. Heck, before the weekend started, I was complaining about all the work I had to do to get through the weekend and how I should sell my business and move to the Islands and finally learn how to surf and do nothing. That, I won’t be doing anytime soon. The fact is, I really enjoy the business I am in most of the time. I could not imagine doing anything else.

I was told the other night at Northeast Seafood Kitchen by a man I do not know that his sister just passed away and that one of her best nights with him last year was when I sang “Happy Birthday” Marilyn Monroe-style to her at Bluecoast.

I guess I am grateful that I was told I look like a older, fatter Taylor Hicks. Because that has reminded me of my first experience as a restaurateur and why I do this and will continue to.

Matthew Haley is a chef and a co-owner of restaurants BlueCoast in North Bethany, NorthEast Seafood Kitchen in Ocean View and Fish On! in Lewes, all part of the SoDel Concepts group, which he co-founded. Haley hosts a monthly food chat at Booksandcoffee in Dewey Beach on the third Tuesday of every month, at 7 p.m. His new television show, “Food Chat with Matt Haley,” airs on the Resort Video Guide channel from Comcast Cable.