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Rolling grill is fine with chef Photo by Drew Flemming Chef Kyle Merrick flips flapjacks at the Y2 Kitchen, a trailer parked at A1 Storage and Swap Meet, 3558 S. Pacific Highway. Merrick was a chef at fine restaurants in Las Vegas before kidney disease and a transplant slowed him down. But now he's doing what he loves: cooking. Illness took Chef Kyle away from cooking, but now he's back and happy By JONEL ALECCIA It's a long way from the swanky kitchens of Las Vegas hotels to an 18-foot trailer in a Phoenix flea market parking lot, but Kyle Merrick is glad just to have survived the trip. The 52-year-old former chef for celebrities and high-rollers had to give up cooking when he was sidelined by kidney disease, including an organ transplant on Christmas Day 1997. Now Merrick is dishing chili and frying eggs at the Y2K Kitchen, a weekend grill on wheels at A1 Storage and Swap Meet, 3558 S. Pacific Highway. And he couldn't be happier. "Frankly, it was either this or die," says Merrick, who cooked at Maxim's, the Barbary Coast and the Green Shack restaurants in Las Vegas. After the transplant, Merrick spent two years struggling with the aftermath of surgery and the effects of anti-rejection drugs. Worse than the pain, Merrick says, was the prospect of never cooking again. "I've cooked my whole life," Merrick says."I was so depressed." So when housemate Margory Overling, 65, went to the swap meet to sell a few things and encountered a man with a hot dog cart for lease, Merrick volunteered. At first he contented himself with plain franks, but soon Merrick was whipping up homemade chili and Italian beef sandwiches. "Kyle wanted to do souffles in the hot dog cart," Overling says, laughing. The cart drew a wide following, mostly from the flea market vendors and nearby businesses. When the cart's owner decided to change locations, no one was happy, Merrick says. "The day he took it away, we damn near had a riot," he says. But fate has a way of providing, and within a few weeks, Merrick and Overling were offered the chance to buy an existing food service trailer for $2,000. "When I heard it had a full kitchen, with a full grill and a full oven, that was it," Merrick says. Three months ago, the pair started cooking in the tiny kitchen, serving full breakfasts, lunches and snacks from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Fridays through Sundays. It's not your standard lunch-truck fare. Merrick mixes biscuits from a recipe by Julia Child and gets entree ideas from Bon Appetit magazine. He serves white-chocolate biscotti along with the glazed doughnuts; his soups and chilis are made from scratch. So far, the food has been a hit with folks such as Al Green, 63, who sells books at the swap meet every weekend. "This guy's got an artist's hand for this," says Green, who favors BLTs. "Now people are coming just for the food." Jack Fuller, 75, takes a break from selling Indian- and Western-themed knick-knacks to order a cup of vegetable-beef soup. "I eat breakfast, lunch and sometimes take food home from here," Fuller says. "It's good and it's cheap." Indeed, prices at the Y2K Kitchen put fast-food meal deals to shame. A cup of soup is $1.50; a hamburger's $2. Homemade biscuits and gravy go for $1.50. A full breakfast of two eggs, hash browns, bacon or sausage and toast goes for $2.75. And that's when Merrick remembers to charge people. When 7-year-old Gabriela Chavez comes to the window for a 75-cent doughnut, she leaves with two cranberry biscotti for her mother to try. Overling admits they sometimes enlist homeless men as taste-testers, hoping to offer hot meals with a helping of dignity. "If I see see somebody who looks like they need a cookie, I give them a cookie," says Merrick. The pair acknowledge that low prices and expansive menus cut into profits. But Merrick and Overling say the reward they most wanted is the one they've received. "He needs this," says Overling, a retired dry cleaner who has known Merrick for 30 years. "This is something that we can do three days a week so that he can still be creative and still get accolades from the public." For his part, Merrick says he is doubly grateful, first to the family of the Portland woman who donated the kidney for his transplant and also for the chance to cook again. "You can lock me in a kitchen for 18 hours," Merrick says. "That's where I'm most happy." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA