Cangemi Foods was first created in 1983, doing business as Gourmet Delights.
Gourmet Delights was a hot truck.
A mobile kitchen on wheels. We were a New York Delicatessen on wheels.
We were also a catering company, serving breakfast, lunches, and dinners to the Las Vegas Metropolitan city.
We were the first of its kind. We also had one of the first mobile/radio cell phones.
We served companies such as The Las Vegas Sun newspaper, Fletcher Jones auto dealerships and the courts in downtown Las Vegas.
We did this for three years.
In December of 1985, Cangemi Foods bought a failing restaurant on a half-acre on West Sahara Blvd, up the block from The Palace Station Hotel and Casino.
Its name; Vinces Supper Club. This restaurant was decorated with black horseshoe booths divided by panels of etched glass. Above each booth was a numbered lithograph painting of the San Francisco Mountain waterscapes. The ceiling of the restaurant was looped with a thick bonded fishing net. It was hot. Gorgeous. Sexy.
The kitchen was fitted with three Wolf ovens with twelve hot top burners. A double fryer and a convection oven. We were ready to do business.
Chef Jerry handling Gourmet Delights, was easy compared to a 4000sq. foot monster. He had no idea about debt service that all business’ use as their guide.
Within three months Jerry was going broke.
Chef Jerry heard about a Colorado restaurant that as the customer sat down, they were served a complimentary bowl of iced peel and eat shrimp. Wycliff wines were making their mark in Las Vegas, and the price of five gallons of box wine was 7 bucks. Along with the complimentary shrimp appetizer, Chef decided to give away a half carafe of white rose or red wine.
We hired a professional artist, and he drew out a fantastic drawing of the appetizer and the carafe of wine with two glasses.
We contracted the Las Vegas Sun and the Las Vegas Review Journal newspapers and put the ad in the paper.
We went from the red into the black within two weeks. The rock n Roll show had begun. Friday and Saturday nights were so busy, we could hardly keep up with the orders. Killer business!
However, the weekdays were relatively calm compared to the weekends.
Chef asked himself; Why?
Gourmet restaurants are reserved for weekends and special occasions. Weekdays are slower because folks work and are not subject to the partying of weekends.
However, chef Jerry did not understand this until much later in the journey.
Chef felt that at this time, an outside remodel of the building and signs were in order.
We contracted expensive sign and building contractors to revamp the joint.
Within a month all the sweetness and lighting were in place.
Seeing my name in lights was a thrill beyond words.
But people did not know this new name.
Cangemi.
They were still looking for Vinces. That year chef Jerry lost 300,000.00 dollars in gross revenue. Disaster!
Now what?
Aggressive advertising.
Chef Jerry was approached by the largest ad firm in Las Vegas. The firm said that it would cost no money out of pocket. They wanted all their employees and clients to trade out dinners for ad costs.
Chef Jerry wrote his own radio commercials and was on every popular station in Las Vegas. The turnaround came!
Money!
Now it came about that chef found out that the property and liquor license were grandfathered in for a slot machine casino. Wowzah!
Applying for a gaming license and waiting to be approved Chef Jerry was on edge. You see when applying for a gaming license you must go through a major investigation by the gaming control board. One does not know if they will approve you. The investigation takes three months. Then you get summoned in front of the city council consisting of 7 Counselman. Above their seats are red and green lights. They vote, and you are praying to God to see green lights.
After a short period, the lights lit up green. (Sweat.)
In come the fifteen video poker machines. Electronic cocaine.
We now opened twenty-four hours, Seven days per week. Exhausting.
Opening a casino has evils attached to it that no one can fathom until a person starts one. Drugs, prostitutes, thefts, every immorality under the sun is the prompt of a casino.
Chef hated it. Cangemi went into the restaurant industry to create foods that no one else dared to do.
Now chef Jerry was in the gaming industry. HORRIBLE.
Casinos run on greed. Greed brings in the worst of humanity.
Within Two years, Cangemi contracted Atrial Fibrillation, a deadly heart disease.
On July 5th, 1992, Cangemi’s supper club was done. Over. Seven long years of ups and downs finally did Jerry in.
Chef goes to work for the Sands Hotel and Casino as a table games dealer.
In 1995, Jerry the dealer, is asked to be a chef at a gourmet jelly and jam company called;
Running Deer Ranch. It is at this establishment that chef is sent to Chapman University to get certified in Microbiology.
This is a huge turning point for Cangemi. He is now not only a world-renowned chef but has the technical and licensing ability to package and preserve foods. Yes!
From 1995 -1998 chef Jerry is contracted by men who want to build bars, food establishments and casinos.
Here is where our journey gets super exciting.
Chef Jerry lost everything as we have stated. He is working as a gaming dealer in the Sands Hotel And Casino. One night, he notices that one of the girls he is working with;
Is Gorgeous. Not just gorgeous, but unbelievable beauty. Her name is Vanessa.
Jerry asks her for a date, but she says not just yet. Not just yet? Chef was not used to women turning him down.
Chef is building a casino restaurant bar at the same time as he is a dealer. Jerry quits the Sands and concentrates on this bar named, The Gold Mine.
One day while sitting on his bed talking with his closest friend, Joel Aronstein, the phone rings. Who is it? It’s Vanessa. Vanessa has this wonderful high pitched girly voice. Jerry asks her.
So, what’s going on?
Vanessa replies; Cocktails!
Jerry and Vanessa become an item, and the most popular couple in Las Vegas Nevada.
Jerry asks Vanessa to get married and start the 911 diet Plan.
Vanessa becomes Jerry’s model.
Vanessa shape is 38/28/32, 132lbs.
She thinks she could lose about 7 lbs.
Chef, creating the powdered fat free sauces, tests them out on Vanessa. Delicious. Vanessa and chef go full throttle on the 911 Diet Plan.
No fats, No sugar. But Vanessa loved her Coors light. Vanessa goes from 142 lbs. down to 118 lbs. Oh boy. Chef sees her and notices her boobs are getting small. Chef Jerry brings back the sugar in her diet, switches her beers to regular Coors. In one month, Vanessa goes up to 128 lb., and she looks fantastic. She is 67 years old as we write this article and looks sexier than ever.
Okay. After you lose weight and hit your burn number, you will have to introduce fats back into your diet. This means that the chocolate cakes you’ve been craving can come back to you. This is called maintenance on the 911 Plan.
A person who is fat and loses all their weight
must stay on the scale until they go home. Up or down.
All this information is in the 911 Diet Plan book which you can purchase online.
I’m also available at all of the world’s digital resources. No ChatGPT. No machine talking. Personal weight loss consulting.
Cangemi foods comes to life during this period and chef opens a gourmet cannery creating Italian and Caesars dressings, Brandy flavored jams and makes a killing. In business the playing field changes. Nothing lasts forever. The a-fib gets worse. Jerry realizes his diet is part of the problem with his heart issues.
What to do. What to do.
Chef Jerry remembers the words of his favorite aunt.
Aunt Joanie. She was fat like all his family. Aunt Joan flies into Vegas to see Jerry’s mom, her sister. Jerry says;
Gee Aunt Joan you look terrific. How did you lose all that weight?
Aunt Joan responds.
I ate pasta with tomato sauce and drank lots of water. No fat.
No fat?! Okay.
The wheels start spinning in Chefs head he starts to package powdered sauce and dressings. He had a hit but what would the name of this incredible way to lose weight be. From Chefs point of view, it was an emergency due to his health. Hence.
The 911 Diet Plan. The emergency diet plan.
The 911 Diet Plan took root in Las Vegas in 1998.
Clients from chef Jerry’s casino work were coming in droves.
A family problem arose, and chef had to move his operation to Orlando Florida.
In Florida, Chef Jerry opened a food facility and 911 office. Putting a full-page ad in the Orlando Centinel news publication, clients were coming to the facility in huge numbers. Chef Jerry’s most valued clients were associated with a missionary organization named, New Tribes Mission. In the evening Cangemi became sous chef at a world-renowned Italian restaurant named, La Scala.
La Scala was owned by a class act Italian man from Manhattan. His name was Josepie.
He trusted only Cangemi and hence was able to leave the restaurant at 8pm every evening. Speaking with an Italian accent, Guiseppe would pull down his lower eye lid and give everyone the evil eye, suggesting that all of us cooks watch each other. To squeal. Guipe was famous. He had all the media and the employees and patrons of Disneyworld in his back pocket.
In the intermediate times of La Scala and the 911 Diet Plan office, chef Jerry and his gorgeous wife from California, opened up a restaurant inside of a UCF Florida college. The name was Jerry’s Kitchen.
Jerry and his wife Vanessa served 250 students per day, three times a day.
Jerry states;
“Our bodies were busted. We could barely walk through the main offices in the campus.”
The money between the 911 office and college was enough. Chef Jerry states:” I thanked God everyday that the Florida beaches were waiting for us.”
Then;
The World Trade Towers blew up. Florida went into a stand-still. The state of Florida went into mourning. Businesses were dead. We closed the office and didn’t renew our contract with the College.
Two certified master chefs Erik Eriksen from Iceland, and “Snowy” (no one could pronounce his name) from Switzerland, had a restaurant going on in downtown Orlando named;
I’m going to be your pantry man and make Caesars salad and Grava lox. (Grava lox is the Icelandic version of cured Salmon. The difference is it has dill weed firmly patted down on the surface of the Salmon fillet.
The night goes by without a hitch.
A few days later when payroll was due, chef Jerry heard the bookkeeper say;
“Well, we made payroll this week.”
Jerry thinks to himself.” Okay, this joint is going bankrupt in 1-3 months. And it did.
Vanessa, chef’s wife says;
“We got to get out of Florida.”
Vanessa calls her folks in Palm Springs California and asks if the bombing of the Twin Towers affected business’ in California.”
Her parents responded saying;
“Towers? Oh, right the world Trade center. No Vanessa, It’s busier than ever.”
Ha. California in 2002. Not a clue.
The Cangemi’s pack up a semi moving truck towing a white 1979 cherried out Buick Riviera and headed to California. Wowzah! Talk about excitement.
The dual chef team Jerry and Vanessa Cangemi make their way to the Desert Princess Hotel and Country Club.
Vanessa becomes assistant manager in the bar/restaurant, and chef Jerry becomes the sous chef. UNGODLY amount of work. Again! (The restaurant bar restaurant casino jobs are always an ungodly amount of work.)
As in all cases the Cangemi’s wind up running the facilities they work at.
Vanessa brings back her casino skills and gets working at the Augustine Casino in Coachella Valley CA.
Chef Jerry, well chef he becomes chef manager at;
The Betty Ford Rehabilitation Center.
Nothing is easy. 300 patients and employees per day with no food budget. Meaning we bought the world’s provisions.
At the end of three years, Chef Jerry even though had lost 50+lbs, desperately needed a heart operation. It is known as heart ablation. Still in the experimental stage, a team of doctors sit up in a glass booth while robotics go up your groin on either side with a microscope, a laser and a squirt gun. Very Fucked up.
After one month of re-hab, team Cangemi had enough of the food industry.
Hearing through the grapevine, the Cangemi’s are told of a hotel casino opening on the Oklahoma Texas border. The Windstar. Here they go off again to another joint venture.
The Windstar was a terribly run casino. Indians have no idea how to run a casino. For that matter neither do anybody else except for the old-world mobsters. When the Mafia had to sell out its holding in Las Vegas to dull corporations, they had no clue what they were doing. Buffets went from 2.99 to 9.99 to 29.99. They now charge for valet and garage parking. Pretty soon they will charge for the number of times a person inhales and exhales.
The Cangemi food industrialists decided to go back to the restaurant business.
Vanessa gets a manager’s position at a restaurant grocery ice cream shop named Brahms.
Master chef Jerry goes to work for a Culinary Academy, Aims Culinary academy. There he receives his certification as chef instructor.
“I remember my first day at school. The headmaster said;
Chef, these next three months I want you to teach restaurant management. He brings chef Jerry into a classroom and sits him at a desk in front of a blackboard.
Chef looks around and thinks to himself;
“You’re joking right? A desk. A blackboard, this is a cakewalk!
No prepping, no line cooking. Write books, test and teach. Heaven was at that school.”
Truth be known;
Heaven is nowhere on earth. Three months after the baking and pastry chef quits, headmaster says to chef Jerry;
“Now son, you know how to bake.
Yes sir replies Cangemi.”
“Okay, I need you to take over baking and pastries.”
“Here’s the thing. Cooking everything besides baking and pastries is called Savory cooking methodology.
Teaching baking and pastries to a bunch of green kids is like teaching nuclear physics to autistic children.
Going from a desk and blackboard to a bakery is palpitating.
As I was teaching in the school, I opened a home invasion of the 911 Diet Plan in Dallas Texas.
In Dallas we started our first website, selling hard copy books, DVD’, and our Burst Seasoning Salt. I wrote my 911 Diet Plan Cookbook from Texas.
Folks in Dallas were very trusting. I had ten clients per week, and driving down to Dallas to cook for people was a magnificent joy. Some clients who worked at night gave me the key to their homes so I could go in and prepare their meals in the evening.
Chef Jerry was again working 12-hour days, but on his timeline.
Aims culinary academy graduated many young folks who got jobs at The W hotel, Perdue Poultry, restaurants all over the United States notwithstanding the U.S. Caribbean Islands.
As chef states in his book, once you are overweight, you will always have the tendency to backslide into obese eating habits.
The 911 diet Plan Cookbook reminds us of all that old habits can easily come back. Therefore, it is necessary to have a personal chef one can count on until you go home. (Home? Yes. Up or down).
After the baking and pastry module, (classes are called modules), Chef Jerry came back with A-fib.
Chef Jerry had to leave school, and the home 911 diet planned cooking.
Surgery again.
Recovering from the second surgery, the Cangemi’s decided to move back to Palm Springs. Not an easy decision. Vanessa went back to the Augustine casino as a shift boss, and the chef opened a 911 food manufacturing facility. Cangemi foods doing business as The 911 Diet Plan was back.
Three years in Southern California, and Jerry was on a roll.
In sunny California, chef Jerry contracted Meniere’s disease.
Meniere’s disease is a feeling of fullness in the ears, with a LOUD ringing buzzing sound that keeps a person debilitated. It is as painful as cancer.
The year is 2011.
California has gone astray; gas goes up to 4.95 per gallon. There is a drought. Life is not good for everyone. What to do. What to do…
Once again Vanessa has the plan.
“Jer.” We should move back to Las Vegas where we met, and I’ll get my old job back working for the Boyd group at The Fremont Hotel and casino.
Are you serious?”
“It is our last shot Jerry.”
Chef Jerry rents his final U-Haul and proceeds to move all his household and restaurant equipment up to Las Vegas Nevada.
Chef Jerry’s final job working for others is at The Alibi Casino.
Working with Meniere s disease and herniated discs, Chef Jerome John Cangemi takes over the 35-slot casino bar restaurant. ALONE. No assistants. Taking the customers’ orders, cooking, serving, dish washing, taking money and closing shop, the small casino was going to go out of business.
Art Coury, the owner of the casino, has an idea.
Arty thinks;
“I’ll get in touch with Jon Taffer, The Bar Rescue guy, and see if he is interested in taking over my restaurant/bar. Jon takes Arty’s offer, and in comes the infamous Bar Rescue Team.
Chef Jerry has words with Taffer. Bad words. Jon does a shit job of a remodel, and the joint closed in two months.
Chef Jerry and his wife Vanessa retire up the hill in Boulder city Nevada, where this episode is being written.
Chef Jerry, in retirement, and going through many years of intense health issues, receives healing. A miracle.
Jesus Christ heals chef Jerry.
In 2025, after Thanksgiving, by happenstance chef Jerry receives a text message from a web designer.
Mark cooper. Mark, with his excellent customer communication skills, convinces Cangemi that his 2007 website could use a new look. A lift. A makeup.
Master chef weight loss consultant Jerry Cangemi comes out of retirement and revamps his website, updating it to the 2025 version of the 911 Diet Plan.
Cangemi foods doing business as The 911 Diet Plan is now ready to take on people who are in desperate need of help.
“The Gourmet Flavors stay while the Fat Burns Away.”
God bless us all;
Everyone.
