All or Nothing (23 page)

It went on like this for hours: course after course just kept coming out. I realized that the little plates of food were timed to keep the diners satisfied but also hungry for more. Per Se wasn't a place to go looking for a quick bite. These diners spent hundreds of dollars on one meal and stretched the experience over four or five hours. Sometimes they even took a tour of the kitchen before leaving. I could see that a meal at Per Se wasn't only about the food. It was an experience, a total immersion of the senses.

Other days I staged at Jean Georges, where I worked the grill. Just like at Ramsay, I studied, watched, and listened. One day Jean Georges walked in wearing his pristine white jacket, long white apron, and Prada shoes. He shook my hand, and as he moved on to greet the other cooks I couldn't stop staring at him, thinking,
He's got what I want.
Jean Georges owned the kitchen, commanded the room, and demanded his staff's respect. The food was different than at Ramsay or Per Se. It was simpler and cleaner. They used Asian ingredients I had never seen in a fine dining restaurant. One of the best dishes I tasted there was Trout Tartar with Horseradish Yuzu Draped in Trout Roe.

Once we started talking about it, Christina and I couldn't get the idea of a side business out of our minds. We scoped out the competition and started taking turns cooking for each other at Savoy, getting a sense of how our separate visions could work together. The great thing about Savoy was that it was only open until 5:00
P.M
., and then it sat empty all night long. I already had one foot out the door at Gordon Ramsay, and I felt emboldened by my experiences at Per Se and Jean Georges. Working for another chef, even a great chef, wasn't enough for me. I wanted to strike out on my own and become an entrepreneur.

Before I did anything, I sought my dad's advice. I had always looked up to him as a smart businessman, and I told my dad about what I'd learned at Ramsay, Per Se, and Jean Georges, laying out my idea for him. Right away he recognized my entrepreneurial spirit and nurtured it, reminding me not to get too excited and to carefully review the downside of starting my own business. “You remind me of myself,” he told me before adding, “I think you should go for it.”

This was the vote of confidence I needed to approach Brian and Christina with an idea to open an after-hours supper club at Savoy. They said yes right away, and we each chipped in $1,000 to turn this dream into a reality. We dove in headfirst, forming an LLC, creating a website, and going to Costco, Restaurant Depot, and IKEA to pick out linens, glassware, flatware, and dishes. Once we had our equipment, we needed a name. My friend Andre from Parkland was living in New York, and one night we went out to dinner and I described my plans for a supper club with French-influenced food and techniques. Andre had spent a lot of time in France, and I told him that I needed one word that perfectly summed up my vision. He didn't hesitate. “Recette,” he said immediately. “It means ‘recipe.'”

Two weeks later Recette Private Dining held its first event, a ten-course tasting for eight people. After Savoy closed shop for the day, Brian, Christina, and I swooped in and transformed the place from a bakery into a fine dining venue with candles and flowers on the tables and even a sommelier we hired to help select wines. Among the ten courses we served were Hamachi Toro with Porcini Gelée and Baby Artichoke Tortellini with Diver Scallops and Sweet Peas.

One of the diners that night worked at
Daily Candy,
and the next day she wrote a rave review of our meal, comparing it to a great kiss that had passion, skill, and intrigue. That was all it took for the floodgates to open. We all still had other jobs and had planned on doing only one event per week, but already emails and calls were pouring in with many more requests than we could possibly accommodate.

The staff at Ramsay caught wind of my extracurricular activities and started giving me shit. I tried not to let it faze me, but I could feel myself being pulled in too many directions and my anxiety level starting to rise. Then Josh called me into his office. “Do you work for Recette?” he asked me. “I need to know if you work for them or me.”

“There is no ‘them,'” I told him. “I work for me.”

I gave my notice the next day. It felt surreal to walk away from the job I had once wanted more than anything in the world, but I couldn't let that same job slow me down now.

Of course my last two weeks at Ramsay were a living hell. The staff made sure I knew where I stood, and Josh even relegated me to making family meals in the basement canteen instead of cooking for the restaurant's diners. I didn't care. If my years on the streets and in recovery had taught me anything, it was not to sweat the small stuff. Down in the canteen I made the best fucking family meals those guys had ever eaten. I wasn't going to let their resentment dampen my fire.

It was right around this time that I got an email from Lindsay, whom I'd first met back in eighth grade. There was always something special about her—her sparkling green eyes, porcelain skin, and sweet, soothing voice. Lindsay had shown up at a few of my house parties back in the day, and we had even hooked up a couple of times in high school, but she was an honors student with strict parents and never could have kept up with my partying back then. It's a good thing too. She was smart and popular, and had a lot going for her. If we'd gotten together back then, I probably would have ruined everything.

But Lindsay never completely left the picture. While attending the University of Florida, she stayed in touch with Andre and Charnam, who sometimes told me that she asked about me. Then drugs got my undivided attention, but when I heard from her this time things were completely different. Her email simply stated that Andre had sent her the link to Recette Private Dining, and she was happy to see that I was doing what I loved. I was so excited to hear from her that I immediately wrote a long response apologizing for all the ways I'd possibly mistreated her in the past and telling her how beautiful I thought she was.

Over the course of just a few subsequent emails I could tell that Lindsay totally got me. She not only respected everything I had gone through and overcome, but understood it on a very deep level. Lindsay's problems were very different from mine, but her life hadn't been easy either, and we clearly spoke the same language of struggle and survival.

Even though Lindsay was living in California and our first conversations were by phone, they were incredibly intimate as we shared our journeys and travels, holding nothing back. I wanted her, and it made me feel giddy with excitement. Despite the fact that we were living on opposite sides of the country, we have been together ever since that first phone call. Lindsay flew to New York to see me just a few weeks later and then continued to do so every two weeks until she finally packed up her things and moved in with me only six months after sending that first email.

By that time, Recette Private Dining was in full swing. Because The Savoy Bakery was a fully operational business, it took a lot of time to set up for private parties once it closed at the end of the day. It was like creating an entire restaurant from scratch each day and then breaking it down afterward. I didn't mind. This was my focus now, and I threw myself into work more fully than I ever had before. I'd gotten my first taste of success, and I was already hooked.

Every day after the bakery staff left we polished the countertops, emptied the wastebaskets, mopped the floors, and cleaned the toilet. Then we put up the long white table we kept in the bakery's dry storage room. Out came the white linens, which Brian, Christina, and I took turns washing and ironing in between events. We covered the windows with curtains to create privacy. Christina and I prepared the plates, glassware, and silverware, making sure everything was polished. Then it was finally time to prepare the food.

Savoy had big stack ovens for baking bread and convection ovens that were connected to a proofer. Between the ovens were two burners that sat one in front of the other, with a single flame underneath each. Christina turned the convection oven into a French top to keep the pots warm. The back burner always had a pot of boiling water on it for the pasta course, so we were left with one burner to cook with. The stainless steel table turned into our pass. While I cooked, Christina would lay out the plates. I'd pass the puree to her and then come behind her with the garnishes. Or I'd hand a fish tray to her and she'd plate the fish as I came behind her with a sauce. Then we'd add beautiful micro-herbs to enhance the presentation.

Following Thomas Keller's French Laundry model, we just kept the food coming, small, rich plates that we timed out like a ballet. Our goal was for diners to take two or three bites of something and think it was the most delicious thing they'd ever tasted. Then, every time we took a plate away, we had another one ready to go.

This was our show, and we let our creativity run wild. We made gougères, baked pastries that are traditionally filled with cheese, and stuffed them with foie gras mousse. We made Swiss meringue with the consistency of marshmallow creme, folded in pureed foie gras, smeared it across the plate, and then torched it to caramelize it. Then we served it with a perfectly cooked piece of pressed duck breast, Bing cherries, mustard seeds, and a reduction of sherry vinaigrette.

We just kept the plates coming: prosciutto, fresh mozzarella, olives, roasted peppers, cornichons, and grain mustard served with perfectly toasted baguettes; a seafood salad with lightly poached calamari, prawns, fennel, mildly flavored Napa cabbage, and tarragon, dressed with a thinned lemon garlic aioli. Next were roasted forest mushrooms served with thrice-cooked pork belly and goat cheese and lightly seasoned with fresh thyme; peekytoe crab, crispy polenta, and tomato confit mixed with a delicate avocado cream; and asparagus panna cotta and picked fennel laced with grapefruit caviar. We worked tirelessly to make sure that each flavor on the plate was memorable but not so intense that it drowned out the other ingredients.

Soon our calendar was packed with dinner parties, sometimes months in advance. Christina and Brian seemed a little overwhelmed. After all, Brian was still consumed by the bakery, and by then Christina had moved from Per Se to Caffe Falai, an Italian café and pastry shop on the Lower East Side. But Recette Private Dining was my whole world, and I wasn't satisfied with “only” cooking one ten-course dinner party a night.

Lindsay jokes that she should have been on the payroll from the moment she came back into my life, and it's absolutely true. Even though she had a day job at a publishing house, Lindsay worked to make my dreams come true from the very beginning, writing emails, preparing recipe sheets, writing marketing materials, and even serving, busing tables, or playing coat-check girl when needed. She did whatever I asked and seemed happy to do it. She saw that I had a vision and needed someone to lay the bricks, and she laid every single one.

The calls and emails kept pouring in. It was raining, but we didn't have enough buckets to collect all the water. I wasn't going to let that stop me. The same determination that once drove me to score drugs every day and later pushed me through eighty-hour workweeks at Ramsay was now going to put Recette Private Dining on the fucking map. When I wasn't at Savoy, I was scouring Craigslist for people who were looking for a private chef. Soon I was cooking for the owner of one of the city's biggest event production management companies. Through Brian, I met Daniel, who was a wealthy friend of Brian's father's who lived in New Jersey and was looking for a personal chef. Daniel wasn't a gourmet, but he was very specific and knew what he wanted—egg-white frittatas, mushroom soup, baked salmon, chicken potpie, and turkey meatballs, all made to his exact specifications.

As his private chef, I had to prepare all of Daniel's lunches and dinners for the week. Every day, I got to the bakery at 8:00
A.M.
and sidestepped the bakery chefs as I cleaned off a fresh chicken, removed the legs and wings, and dried them thoroughly before seasoning them with salt, fresh oregano, and fresh ground pepper. I stuffed the cavity with fresh orange slices, thyme leaves, garlic, and half an onion. Then I put the chicken in the convection oven and roasted it three-quarters of the way through. I didn't want to cook it all the way or it would dry out when Daniel heated it up later. Then I tossed in some roasted broccoli mixed with fresh herbs and olive oil and wrapped it in foil. If Daniel wanted a sandwich, I prepared fresh sliced turkey with avocado or made chicken salad with poached chicken, apples, and walnuts and mixed it together with lemon and olive oil instead of mayonnaise. I packed all the food in Tupperware containers and loaded it into my rental car for the forty-five-minute drive to Alpine, New Jersey. After driving back to the city, I started prepping for the next party.

This schedule left little time for meetings or even reflection. I hardly had time to sleep. But I was still connected to other addicts, and once in a while one of them would remind me to come to a meeting. Then months would pass before they tracked me down and reminded me to come again. I was on a tear like the one Gibson and I had been on in Orlando, but instead of crack I was bingeing on work.

One wintry night I was driving down Route 9 on my way to Daniel's. The roads were covered in ice, and I felt myself losing control of the rental car as it began to slide and slip. I let go of the wheel and just prayed for the best: the car completely spun around two times before smashing into the guardrail. The back window was covered in chicken potpie, and I had bits of chicken salad in my hair. The entire driver's side door was smashed in, and the front rim and bumper were bent inward so much that the car was nearly impossible to drive.

I tried to keep driving up Route 9 in my wrecked car. I was sore and my shoulder was definitely dislocated, but I was determined to get Daniel what was left of his food. After I'd been trudging along at a tedious pace for a few minutes, a police car pulled up behind me. “Turn off your engine and step out of your car with your hands up,” the cop announced through his speaker.