All or Nothing (22 page)

I returned to Miami and told Jeff that I'd been offered a position at Gordon Ramsay. He didn't waste one second trying to stop me. He was sad to see me go, but he knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Before I left, they threw a big party for me at City Cellar. It seemed that everyone was happy for me. More important, I was happy for me. I felt confident and ready, like my life was finally starting.

Seth made it clear that there were no stars at Gordon
Ramsay. Everyone started at the bottom and worked their way up, with no exceptions. At City Cellar I was a boss, the second in command. I ordered the food, hired and fired staff, and delegated work as I saw fit. But at Gordon Ramsay I started at the larder station, picking frisée lettuce. I knew I was in for a transition.

Frisée is a curly, bushy looking lettuce with leaves that shift in color from pale-green to yellow. I had to clean the frisée in an ice bath, making sure to remove every speck of dirt, dry it in a salad spinner, and cut down the core, making sure to remove the green and yellow leaves. Only the white ones in the center were used for the salad. This was my entire job, but I soon moved up to herbs. Chervil resembles parsley, but its leaves are delicate and curly. I needed the top leaves, and they had to be perfectly stemless, without a hint of yellow or a trace of dirt. Finally I moved to pine nuts. I toasted them in a pan, carefully clipping off the tops with a paring knife before cutting them in half. This was a shitty job, even more tedious than the lettuce detail. But I hung in, gradually working my way up through the station.

Two separate dining rooms—Gordon Ramsay (fine dining) and Maze (the more casual dining room)—shared the same kitchen. Competition was encouraged among the chefs, and the atmosphere was often tense. One day a cook was basting fish with butter in a cast-iron pot when the cook standing next to him told him to fuck off. Apparently the butter he was using to baste the fish was burned. The first chef took his basting spoon, which was filled with scalding hot butter, and splashed it on the other cook's arm, leaving him with third-degree burns.

I had been working the larder station for a week before Gordon Ramsay finally came through. He didn't disappoint. Gordon was tall and intimidating, a strong presence to say the least. He walked over to each station and tasted what each of us was making. Then he paused and just stared at each of us with hollow, expressionless eyes.

That night I watched Gordon Ramsay expedite the fine dining pass. He called checks, speaking so quickly that I couldn't understand him. When one dish came out, Gordon was upset because the cook had mistimed the meat. “Fucking donkey,” he screamed at him before ordering him off the line. The cook ran down the stairs, crying. Gordon was a perfectionist—I've never met a great chef who wasn't—and demanded only the best. The good cooks were smart and came up with ways to make sure he was always happy. If he asked for a piece of lamb loin, they brought him several. This way he could choose which one he wanted to plate and didn't get angry if one of them was imperfectly cooked.

Part of my job was to clean the walk-in refrigerators. Pulling back every rack, scrubbing them by hand, and washing the floors felt like being back in jail. But I didn't just clean. I made sure everything was labeled, I sorted through the herbs, and then I rolled bunches of chives in wet paper towels to keep them fresh. Even the most menial tasks required my utmost focus and attention to detail. There was no room for error.

One night I was getting pounded. I had five salads, tuna, BLTs, smoked trout, and a million other dishes thrown at me at the same time. The smoked trout had to be timed with the scallops from the hot station, which was tricky because scallops are a food that cannot be overcooked. But I got so backed up that I fucked up. The scallops were ready before I was ready with the trout, and Seth grabbed the tray, bringing it down with the full force of his body, screaming, “Jesse, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

That was it. I'd had enough. I had been working my ass off, and I finally answered back. “Fuck you. You think you fucking intimidate me?”

“Get the fuck out of the kitchen,” Seth yelled back.

I grabbed my gear and threw it off the line, stormed downstairs, and packed up my stuff. I was done.

The next day I got a text message from Seth that read, “Let's talk.”

I knew I had overreacted, and I took ownership of that. Seth was gracious but stern. “You can't ever do that again,” he told me. “I'm your superior. You've got to respect my authority.”

I put my head down and got back to work, and after a few weeks I moved to the fish side, making risotto and working the fryer. I was assigned the cauliflower beignets, little bits of curry-seasoned, deep-fried cauliflower that were part of the scallop dish. The fish cook dusted the scallops lightly with curry powder, sliced them in half, pan-fried them in oil, placed them on a tray, and handed them to the pass. Meanwhile, I cooked the cauliflower beignets and brought them to the pass, where they were placed on top of a silky cauliflower puree. Like everything else in the Ramsay kitchen, it was a well-oiled operation that relied on precise timing. We all dreaded the thought of being late with our food. When that happened, it was time to duck.

“Jesse, what the fuck are you doing?” The unimaginable had happened—my cauliflower beignets were timed imperfectly and the scallops had been left waiting. A temporary head chef on the fine dining side picked up my tray of beignets and hurled it right at me. The tray smacked me hard in the chest before spilling to the floor. Part of me wanted to haul off on him, but I knew that would have been it for me, so I took a breath and got it together. My heart was still beating a mile a minute as I grabbed a broom and a dustpan. I was demoralized but also determined. I just pushed on.

After I'd crashed for a few months on Joee's couch, she'd had enough of me. I rented a cramped studio apartment above a McDonald's in East Harlem, which was still a somewhat rough neighborhood with groups of guys hanging out on every corner. I found places in Harlem to attend meetings, but I didn't have a local meeting that I attended regularly. Still, I made sure that I adhered to all of the principles of recovery by buying food for the homeless guys on my block and getting to work early to set up the other cooks' stations. This was how I stayed sober.

In recovery I had been happy to hand the reins of my life over to a higher power, but the excitement I felt from the food at Gordon Ramsay sparked something in me. Little by little, I took my will back and started making my own plans for the future. Walking around the West Village one day, I called my father and told him, “This is where we have to be.” I started thinking about opening my own restaurant, and before long it was all I could think about. My ambition started bubbling over, gradually pulling me to the extremes I'd worked so hard to avoid.

In the meantime I wanted to learn everything I could from Ramsay's kitchen, so I worked as much as possible. On my days off, Seth often called to ask if I wanted to pick up an extra shift. He knew I'd be game. If I was scheduled to work lunch, I stayed through dinner. I worked seven doubles in a week without batting an eye. Some weeks I walked out with a $2,000 paycheck. I could see Seth holding back. He didn't want to hand me a check that was bigger than his, but I earned it. I was so consumed with work that after a couple of months I started going to meetings once a week instead of twice a week. Still, I kept my armor of recovery close around me.

Finally I made it to the meat side of the kitchen. My favorite dish was Beef Tongue 'n' Cheek. I braised beef cheek with a mixture of chopped celery, onions, and carrots, and then I let the cheek cool before shredding it and adding sherry vinegar and parsley. I flattened the cheek in a Cryovac bag, then took cured veal tongue, sliced it thin, and laid it on plastic wrap. I placed the beef cheek in the middle and rolled it into a cylinder so it resembled a pinwheel of tongue wrapped with cheek. Then I sliced it into round pucks, put a little flour on one side, and pan-fried the whole thing. We served it with a generous piece of veal loin, sweet potato purée, and fried spaetzle with crispy veal sweetbreads. It was the most delicious thing I'd tasted at Gordon Ramsay.

Since Ramsay had an empire in the U.K., there were always new chefs coming through the restaurant. One of those chefs, Ian, was working the pass one day. He was screaming at me, calling for times. “Three minutes,” I yelled back, but three minutes later the fish was ready and I still didn't have the sweetbreads crispy enough. He threw the sizzle tray with the sweetbreads on it right at me. Again, they hit me in the chest and spilled everywhere. Another cook named Ed, who's now my sous chef, was working at the fish station. He saw in my eyes how pissed off I was. As I rushed right at Ian, Ed quickly moved in front of me, grabbed my arm, and pushed me back to my station. “Chill the fuck out,” he told me. “Do you want to get fired?”

Ian was always on my back about something. I don't know if he didn't like me or if he was just out to prove a point, but I became his personal whipping boy. I respected Ian. He was a great fucking cook, and I learned a lot from him, but the competition at Ramsay got the best of us.

On New Year's Eve I was working alongside a guy named Lanning. He was cooking the meat as I worked the garnish. I stepped away to grab some herbs when I heard Ian yelling, “Get rid of all this!” He made Lanning throw out his entire mise en place—everything he needed to cook with—right in the middle of service. That kind of shit happened all the time.

I knew I'd have to walk a fine line as long as I was working for someone else. I had learned what I needed from Ramsay—the precision, organization, and finesse—and I knew I'd make good use of this experience in another kitchen. It was time for me to start making other plans. But this time I wouldn't settle for some other chef's kitchen. There was a fire inside of me, I was back in the driver's seat, and it was time to act. I wanted more, and this was my chance to grab it—all or nothing.

Marinate

Marinate
: To immerse foods in an acidic liquid to tenderize and flavor them.

T
he Savoy Bakery sat at 110th Street and Third Avenue, right in the heart of East Harlem. Only a half-block from my apartment, Savoy stood out like a sore thumb amid the filthy Chinese takeouts, Dominos, dollar stores, and a run-down branch of the New York Public Library. Most mornings I lined up outside the door with a dozen or so other people who stopped at the bakery to grab a cup of coffee on their way to work. Savoy's exposed-brick interior was neat and clean, and the service was quick and courteous. Brian Ghaw, the owner, had an easygoing manner that suggested he always had time to talk.

One day as Brian handed me my coffee his eyes stopped at the tattoo on my left forearm: it's a Japanese slicer, my favorite knife to cook with.

“Where do you work?” he asked me.

“Gordon Ramsay at the London.”

Brian told me it was one of his favorite restaurants. Soon we started shooting the shit every morning when I got my coffee and eventually began spending time together, going out to dinner, and trading kitchen stories. Brian introduced me to Christina Lee, who was working in the pastry department at Per Se, one of New York's best restaurants. The three of us started hanging out together and having fun sharing our passion for and experiences with food.

One night when we were out at dinner Christina and I started talking about how much fun it would be to cook together. We seemed to share a lot of the same ideas about food and were definitely both sick of the daily grind of working for someone else, busting our asses to execute another chef's vision instead of our own. Neither of us had the experience or capital to open a restaurant, but we wanted to do something on the side to have fun and earn a little extra income.

I didn't really care about the money. My expenses were low, and I was doing fine working at Gordon Ramsay. But I was motivated by my constant need to create and wanted to find a better outlet for my extra energy than spending my week working doubles in another chef's kitchen.

On my rare days off from Ramsay, I started staging at other restaurants, always looking to learn something new. This is something a lot of chefs do to gain experience in different kitchens. Sometimes I staged where Christina worked at Per Se, a three-star, Michelin-rated restaurant across the street from Central Park. The kitchen was under the command of Jonathan Benno, a chef renowned for his craft and no-nonsense approach to food preparation. Like Ramsay, Per Se was equal parts culinary artistry and first-rate service.

Per Se's signature appetizer was Oysters and Pearls, a dish created by Thomas Keller at French Laundry. It was a sabayon (a French version of the Italian dessert zabaglione, which is made with egg yolks, sugar, and a sweet wine) of pearl tapioca, Island Creek oysters, and a spoonful of sturgeon caviar plated in a porcelain bowl. Next out of the kitchen was a torchon of duck foie gras served with a crystallized apple chip, some celery-branch batons, Granny Smith apple marmalade, candied walnuts, frisée, and juniper-balsamic vinegar. I looked into the dining room and saw the hungry diners spreading it on perfectly crisped pieces of brioche toast that the waitstaff replaced every minute like clockwork.