Chef Quits While He’s Still Ahead of the Game : Business: On his last day in Anaheim Stadium dining room, Jack Britton recalls serving Presidents, athletes and actors.

It was easily one of the busiest evenings Jack Britton can remember as Gene Autry’s personal chef.

Autry’s California Angels were hosting Major League Baseball’s 1989 All-Star Game at Anaheim Stadium, and about 300 of baseball’s top-ranking executives, owners and players had been invited, along with former President Reagan, to a pregame meal.

Knowing Reagan would be there, Britton said, he and his staff worked for two days preparing a sumptuous buffet of roast beef, crab, lobster tail, scampi and salads of every kind.

But when Reagan and his entourage arrived, Britton watched dumbfounded as a Reagan aide went to the service line for his boss and returned with . . . a hot dog.

“And he (Reagan) didn’t put much of nothing on it,” Britton now laughingly recalls. “We made all that, and the President eats a hot dog. I’ll never forget it.”

Friday, on his last day as executive chef in the stadium’s three upper-level dining rooms, the 67-year-old Virginia native sat across the room from the exact spot where, 25 years ago, he made a “lifetime” commitment to his friend, Gene Autry.

“We made an agreement that day,” Britton said, pointing to the empty table in the darkened dining room just off the kitchen. “I sat there with Gene and Ina (Autry’s deceased first wife), and we joined hands and said we would always stay together.”

It has been a career, Britton said, he would never trade and one that earned him prized kitchen positions in the executive dining rooms at New York’s Shea Stadium, Belmont Park, Costello’s Restaurant in New York City and others before finally moving to Orange County just after the opening of Anaheim Stadium.

But more than the stops listed on his resume, Britton said, his culinary works have pleased the palates and opened the door to longstanding friendships with some of America’s best-known people, from opera singers to heavyweight boxing champions.

Some of his favorite memories are captured in photographs in which he is pictured with Reagan, former President Richard M. Nixon, actor James Earl Jones, boxing legend Muhammad Ali and baseball’s all-time home run king, Henry Aaron.

“I’ve been around high-class people all my life,” the plain-spoken chef said, a fat cigar stuffed between his fingers. “I just like to see smiles on their faces. Then, I really know they are enjoying themselves.”

Of the unknown thousands of people he has served in Anaheim, Britton said he particularly enjoyed Nixon’s visits to the stadium.

“The guy was always talking,” Britton said. “He never stopped. He talked to everybody, he didn’t care who you were or what it was about.”

A detail of Secret Service agents always accompanied Nixon on his visits, and Britton said the officers learned quickly that they could not control his kitchen.

On Nixon’s first visit, Britton said, the agents tried to seal one of the dining rooms, cutting the kitchen’s access to the two other rooms where crowds of people were also awaiting dinner.

“This guy was closing all the doors,” the chef said, “and I told him, ‘You don’t run this place, I do!’ After that, everything was fine. But you would have cracked up laughing at the sight.”

Over the years, there have been many moments and sights that tickled the heavy-set chef, including the peculiar game-night eating habits of former Angel general manager Harry Dalton, who worked for the club in the 1970s.

“He would eat roast beef--pounds of it,” Britton said. “He was always walking back and forth. I think it was nervousness or something. He would never get any vegetables, just roast beef.”

There is one dish, though, that is hardly ever excluded from game-night menus: navy bean soup. It is Autry’s favorite, and Britton said his boss particularly enjoys the fresh ham skin, added to enhance the flavor.

While Britton is leaving Anaheim Stadium, he is not hanging up his apron.

Britton said he will devote his retirement to tend to his food business: Chef Jack’s Gourmet Sausage. The business, started in 1984, now supplies to hot dog franchises throughout Southern California.

“That’s the future,” Britton said.