A Profile

By Brian Gilliland

Even when the dining room is empty, the Marina Deck is bustling with activity. Usually, the name that activity answers to is "Dennis Kalchthaler" but two new mates have come on deck to help stem the tide of Dennis' responsibility.
Technically, they jumped aboard three years ago when they partnered with Kalchthaler, himself a 17-year veteran of the Ocean City restaurant business, to take over the Marina Deck. In January, Carole and Greg Spurrier retired from their previous careers, she from telecom sales, he from shipping and transportation, and decided to devote their full time to the restaurant.
"We wanted something we could do as a family," Carole recalls, "something we could share with our son and daughter."
"My great joy is cooking," Carole said, adding that the 30 years she spent preparing food for her family forced her to become well-versed in the art. Carole crafts all the sauces served at the Marina Deck, and her repertoire ranges from the spicy Mediterranean to the luxurious butter pecan sauce that tops the Marina Deck's famous bread pudding.
Greg's approach to the restaurant business is a little different, as he can be seen mulling over the daily prep work in anticipation of the dinner rush.
Dennis is buzzing around the kitchen and dining room, but he leaves little trace of his passing, forcing us to hypothesize and conjecture about his current location. It is left up to Carole to give the tour of the freshly-painted interior of Marina Deck. She started with a brief history of the building itself. "The restaurant started out as the Bunting's family home, and I think we're in an original section of the home right now."
As soon as these words escaped her lips, a red streak flashed by and we heard, "The original section of the house was farther back, in the bread room. Show him the bread room - it was part of the original house." The red streak evaporated, and after a double take, we decided that it must have been Dennis.
"Additions were made; the first was the deck and the second is in the back where we have most of our seating," she continued. As we approached an intersection in the halls between dining rooms, Carole looks, in the manner of a crossing guard, from right to left.
When she decides we were safe, she led the way toward the second addition deck to the back corner where a miniature playroom is located. Toys and blocks are scattered randomly about the enclosure, and on top of a bookshelf lined with kid-themed books sits a small television set and VCR. An extensive collection of videos can be found on another shelf.
"We put this in because, as I recall from when I had my youngsters, going out to dinner could sometimes be a trying experience," Carole said. She admits to having a great deal of faith in this little corner room, as it has saved the sanity and perhaps the very lives of diners past.
One such tale of horror: On the crowded Fourth of July weekend in Ocean City, when the 10-mile island was besieged by more than 342,000 visitors, an intrepid group of 30 made dinner reservations at the Marina Deck. Braving the traffic of the clogged Coastal Highway, it took the group more than an hour to arrive at the restaurant and another hour for the entire party to arrive. The first members of this group to show up included seven children. Seven children, having already sat through an hour of traffic, facing at least another hour before they can eat, is a daunting task. "The room was a lifesaver!" Carole exclaims through thinly-veiled relief.
From there, Carole ushers me into to the back kitchen, toward the bread room, but not before we catch a glimpse of Dennis zooming out of another door, tray in hand. The bread room is, like Dennis advised us earlier, part of the original Bunting house. This is the aptly-named room where the restaurant staff bakes breads for breakfast each morning. The low ceilings and boxy construction speak to the age of this room. It has a different feel from the rest of the restaurant we've been through up until this point. "You've got to be short in order to work in this room," Carole jokes.
Ovens and cooling racks line the walls, freshly baked loaves are steaming and the smell of blueberry muffins permeates the air. Almost as if she could hear the rumble forming in my stomach, Carole offers a blueberry muffin, which couldn't have been more welcome.
As we continue through the kitchen, an odd set of photographs near the employee notice board beckons for attention. Carole suppresses a laugh. She explains that the photos are one part of a little "game" Dennis likes to play with his wait staff. Later on, Kalchthaler himself tells the story behind the photos. It seems that recently, the Marina Deck had to replace all of the pagers they use during the course of business because so many employees were taking the devices with them when they clocked out for the evening. The photos are part of an effort to stem such activity.
Another example of Marina Deck's interesting management style has everything to do with the physical location of the restaurant and the type of work involved in running such an establishment. If tempers flare, as they are wont to do in the service industry, Kalchthaler treats the hotheaded employee to a refreshing swim in the bay by tossing them bodily into the water. A punishment Kalchthaler himself admits to being on the receiving end of, "but only on one or two occasions."
As the conversation with Carole shifted slowly to Dennis Kalchthaler, we were shocked to turn a corner to find him standing there. Not moving. However, he did divulge the secret to his perpetual motion without saying a word. Gripped tightly in his left hand was a gargantuan cup of coffee. He shifts from left to right foot as he stands there, smiles and says, "My second cup today; I was here real late last night doing payroll, 3:30 a.m. I was up at 6:30 a.m. with my boys and then I went to Salisbury to run an errand, then to the bank and then the post office. After you leave I'll just start running again." The clock on the wall reads 10:45 a.m.
Moving back into the dining room, we sit at an empty booth and begin chatting. When asked to relate his favorite story from the Marina Deck, Dennis starts in with a tale almost without hesitation.
"We had 16 golfers come in here for happy hour. They ordered steamed shrimp, clams, all kinds of appetizers. Now, they had reservations at another place in town, but when the time came, they asked me what the best place in town was to get a meal. Obviously, I told them it was here," he said. They didn't quite buy that coming from the manager. They wanted proof, so Kalchthaler offered it to them. "I said, 'Well, you eat here and if you don't like it, I'll take care of the check,' and they said they had reservations somewhere else," he continued. Dennis made them a deal. They could go out to the other restaurant and have dinner that night on the grounds that they would make a reservation at the Marina Deck the following evening, and if they didn't like the meal they got at Marina Deck better, Kalchthaler's offer to pick up the tab for the meal stood.
Luckily, the next night was a little on the slow side, Dennis said. He was able to set up a big table right in front of the water for the golfers. "When they just ordered appetizers and already the bill was at $300, I was sweating a little bit," he added. It didn't stop there. The crew of golfers made special orders, then ate and drank to their heart's content. By the time it was all over, the check had exceeded $1,500.
"They didn't want to admit it, but in the end they said that this was by far the better meal of the two and paid their bill," he beamed. He continued, smirking, "Over the July Fourth weekend, we had another party of 48 people in the back room over there, and they didn't get as much food as these golfers did."
The key to all of this is the staff. Kalchthaler says he hires mostly "friends of friends" who know what he expects or demands from his employees. At present, about 100 people are employed there. Everyone that the public sees has to go through Dennis Kalchthaler before they are hired. "I sit down with everyone and meet one-on-one, sometimes two-on-one, to let them know what is expected and how to act, then I put them with another waitress or hostess so they can learn," he said. Dennis believes everyone works better when they work as a team, but even the best team can have off-days.
"Sometimes there are slowdowns," he admits, "but it's then that I'll do something a little different or exotic," to try and snap his workers back into the groove. If the bottleneck happens to be a certain individual, well, Dennis has his solutions to those problems as well.
"Once I get everyone trained so they know the rules and regulations, I don't even watch over my staff that much, because they all know what to do and what's expected. Everyone does their work, and everyone wants to work, so I don't need to keep after them," he said.
One thing that keeps the Marina Deck ahead is that Dennis, knowing the Ocean City area as he does, tends to hire people with roots here on Delmarva. "If they're from here or go to Salisbury University, come September I still have a full staff, where other places can be understaffed and very busy at the same time," he adds.
As for the future of the Marina Deck, the trio has big plans and high hopes. Dennis explains the group's ambitions: "We want to make this a destination; people can come and spend a half-day before going to the boardwalk. I want people to come here, go fishing, come eat and just spend some time."