>>11365The fact is that most good kitchens are far less septic than your kitchen at home. I run a scrupulously clean, orderly restaurant
kitchen, where food is rotated and handled and stored very conscientiously. But if the city’s Department of Health or the E.P.A.
decided to enforce every aspect of its codes, most of us would be out on the street. Recently, there was a news report about
the practice of recycling bread. By means of a hidden camera in a restaurant, the reporter was horrified to see returned bread
being sent right back out to the floor. This, to me, wasn’t news: the reuse of bread has been an open secret—and a fairly
standard practice—in the industry for years. It makes more sense to worry about what happens to the leftover table butter—
many restaurants recycle it for hollandaise.
What do I like to eat after hours? Strange things. Oysters are my favorite, especially at three in the morning, in the company of
my crew. Focaccia pizza with robiola cheese and white truffle oil is good, especially at Le Madri on a summer afternoon in the
outdoor patio. Frozen vodka at Siberia Bar is also good, particularly if a cook from one of the big hotels shows up with beluga. At
Indigo, on Tenth Street, I love the mushroom strudel and the daube of beef. At my own place, I love a spicy boudin noir that
squirts blood in your mouth; the braised fennel the way my sous-chef makes it; scraps from duck confit; and fresh cockles
steamed with greasy Portuguese sausage.
I love the sheer weirdness of the kitchen life: the dreamers, the crackpots, the refugees, and the sociopaths with whom I
continue to work; the ever-present smells of roasting bones, searing fish, and simmering liquids; the noise and clatter, the hiss
and spray, the flames, the smoke, and the steam. Admittedly, it’s a life that grinds you down. Most of us who live and operate in
the culinary underworld are in some fundamental way dysfunctional. We’ve all chosen to turn our backs on the nine-to-five, on
ever having a Friday or Saturday night off, on ever having a normal relationship with a non-cook.
Being a chef is a lot like being an air-traffic controller: you are constantly dealing with the threat of disaster. You’ve got to be
Mom and Dad, drill sergeant, detective, psychiatrist, and priest to a crew of opportunistic, mercenary hooligans, whom you
must protect from the nefarious and often foolish strategies of owners. Year after year, cooks contend with bouncing
paychecks, irate purveyors, desperate owners looking for the masterstroke that will cure their restaurant’s ills: Live Cabaret!
Free Shrimp! New Orleans Brunch!
In America, the professional kitchen is the last refuge of the misfit. It’s a place for people with bad pasts to find a new family. It’s
a haven for foreigners—Ecuadorians, Mexicans, Chinese, Senegalese, Egyptians, Poles. In New York, the main linguistic spice is
Spanish. “Hey, maricón! chupa mis huevos” means, roughly, “How are you, valued comrade? I hope all is well.” And you hear
“Hey, baboso! Put some more brown jiz on the fire and check your meez before the sous comes back there and fucks you in
the culo!,” which means “Please reduce some additional demi-glace, brother, and reëxamine your mise en place, because the
sous-chef is concerned about your state of readiness.”
Since we work in close quarters, and so many blunt and sharp objects are at hand, you’d think that cooks would kill one another
with regularity. I’ve seen guys duking it out in the waiter station over who gets a table for six. I’ve seen a chef clamp his teeth on
a waiter’s nose. And I’ve seen plates thrown—I’ve even thrown a few myself—but I’ve never heard of one cook jamming a
boning knife into another cook’s rib cage or braining him with a meat mallet. Line cooking, done well, is a dance—a highspeed,
Balanchine collaboration.
I used to be a terror toward my floor staff, particularly in the final months of my last restaurant. But not anymore. Recently, my
career has taken an eerily appropriate turn: these days, I’m the chef de cuisine of a much loved, old-school French
brasserie/bistro where the customers eat their meat rare, vegetarians are scarce, and every part of the animal—hooves, snout,
cheeks, skin, and organs—is avidly and appreciatively prepared and consumed. Cassoulet, pigs’ feet, tripe, and charcuterie sell
like crazy. We thicken many sauces with foie gras and pork blood, and proudly hurl around spoonfuls of duck fat and butter, and
thick hunks of country bacon. I made a traditional French pot-au-feu a few weeks ago, and some of my French colleagues—
hardened veterans of the business all—came into my kitchen to watch the first order go out. As they gazed upon the
intimidating heap of short ribs, oxtail, beef shoulder, cabbage, turnips, carrots, and potatoes, the expressions on their faces
were those of religious supplicants. I have come home. ♦
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