Monica Hammersten woke up at 3 a.m. one night recently. She smelled beef cooking. “And I think, ‘Oh, now what is that?’ So I come running downstairs. I had a bunch of hamburgers pattied out for the next day, and Jack had them all in a frying pan. He was standing there in his P.J.s just flipping them, as happy as can be.”
As his mother told this tale on him at home in St. Louis Park, lanky 10-year-old Jack paced the floor with a puckish smile and a sound-muffling headset over his ears. He’s autistic, and doesn’t like the disorganized sounds of his little brothers Elijah and Benjamin at play. But he likes Alice Cooper, and he loves to cook. While many autistic people are overstimulated by tactile sensation as well as sound, Jack delights in the pebbly texture and sound of couscous in a pot.
As a class, cooks are eccentrics, as documented by Anthony Bourdain. And even by autistic standards, Jack is no exception. Neighbors who have left their doors unlocked have found Jack undertaking his craft in their kitchens, his frontside dusted with flour. And his many night-time wanderings have taken him to McDonald’s, where his parents once found him standing next to the drive-through speaker repeating a favorite selection from his limited verbal output: “Burger, burger, burger, burger.” It’s an incident that keeps Tom and Monica Hammersten amused when they imagine it from the cashier’s point of view.
While it’s hard to guess at Jack’s point of view, it has dawned on Tom and Monica that his need for lifetime care will continue past their ability to provide it. Some autistic people learn to function in relative independence, but Jack’s tendency to wander and his experimental use of knives and toasters are likely to make him a danger to himself 24/7 for the foreseeable future. The Hammerstens estimate Jack has generated at least four calls to 911 since they moved to Minnesota eight years ago.
Parents who can handle that kind of stress naturally end up in the restaurant business. Behold, the birth of À La Mode at the Mall of America. Should the fickle gods of food service smile on Monica and her business partner, Marilee McGraw, their dessert shop may someday fund a group home custom–built for Jack and other autistic people. “I dream,” said Monica, “of fall afternoons in a warm kitchen with Jack and others like him cooking up their favorites for our big family dinners. This is the home I will build for Jack so that I can feel secure that when Tom and I are gone, Jack is going to have a great place to live.”
For now, this dream is tucked into a 790 square–foot wedge on South Avenue near the Mall of America’s food court, a spot once occupied by a hemp shop. À La Mode offers over-the-counter American desserts. It’s a modest mission: Monica and Mariliee want to offer a small menu of traditional items made well.
Very well. The apple crisp sampled by The Rake achieved the rare ideal of tender apples and crisp oatmeal. Under two scoops of cinnamon ice cream from the Edina Creamery, it was nearly impossible to unhand for a stab at the fudge-drizzled cheesecake. A chocolate chip cookie the size of a dinner plate met with unqualified approval from our five-year-old guest. Adults who insisted on sharing detected the signature of real butter. “I just found out from our Sysco rep that we use more butter than any other restaurant in the mall,” said Monica. A white-chocolate raspberry scone went into storage against leaner times.
Leave a Reply