All or Nothing (27 page)

The rest of Lindsay's pregnancy flew by in the blink of an eye. At least, that's how it felt for me. I'm sure it felt a lot longer to her as she worked around the clock at Recette and at home, setting up the nursery and planning for the baby almost completely alone. I was too consumed with work to really notice. Business was booming at Recette, and soon awards started tumbling in. That December,
Forbes
included me as one of its “30 Under 30,” an annual list of movers and shakers in the food and wine business who were under thirty years of age.

As I stood in the room with the other honorees, a group of incredibly talented people, it hit me for the first time that my career was truly taking off. Eight years earlier I was just another junkie shooting heroin in a filthy alley behind an abandoned building, and now
Forbes
magazine was recognizing my work. Thank God my desire to use was long gone, but the addictive behavior was still there. Now I was addicted to work, success, and getting the next creative high.

About a month later my mom asked me to meet her for breakfast at the Bus Stop Café, a hole in the wall near Recette. I had been so consumed with work that I had barely spoken to my mother in weeks. The further I got from the center I'd reached in treatment the more I felt old resentments toward my mother creeping in again. It was easier to just shut her out of my life or make backhanded comments under my breath than to actually work on our relationship, but she had requested this meeting, so I agreed to see her.

I woke up that morning feeling anxious, like something wasn't right. I sat down across from my mother at the cafe and listened as she told me how disconnected she felt from me and how sad this made her, but I could barely concentrate. My mind wasn't there. I was thinking about Recette, the second restaurant, and the impending birth of our first child.

In the middle of our breakfast my phone rang. It was my dad, and as soon as I heard his voice I knew something was wrong. He had been trying to reach my mother, who wasn't answering her phone. It was Grandpa Laz. He'd been having chest pains and had been rushed to the hospital. My mom hurried off to be with my dad, and I went to Lindsay at Recette. Despite my years away from the family, Laz and I were still close, and I'd never forgotten the letters he wrote to me in jail when almost everyone else had forsaken me.

I distracted myself by drowning myself in business. At one time drugs had been my only escape from my feelings, but now I had work, and I stormed around the restaurant demanding to know why we were going through so much dish soap and why the waitstaff kept breaking so many glasses. A few hours later we went to my parents' rented studio apartment and listened to my father talking on the phone to his brother, telling him that Laz didn't want to be resuscitated. Before I knew it my grandfather was gone. Sitting on my parents' couch, I started to cry. It was the first time I had shed a tear in years, and the first time Lindsay had ever seen me cry, but she held me as I cried in her arms.

My entire family flew down to Florida the next day for the funeral, but Lindsay was too far along in her pregnancy to fly and there was no way I was going to leave her. I felt awful and wrote a letter that my sister read at Laz's funeral. This wasn't the first time I'd tasted death, but Laz's passing hit me much harder than any other loss I'd experienced. When I was using, I'd fallen out enough times to have an idea of what it must be like to die. Addicts live with thoughts of their own mortality every day. But this was different. I was about to become a father, and life itself held new meaning to me. I didn't want to accept Laz's death. I didn't want to accept the fact that people do, in fact, just die. My uncle Bruce's death and my parents' health issues had scared me in the past, but nothing had scared me quite like this.

When my parents returned to New York after the funeral, my mom came to my apartment and tried to continue the conversation we'd started at the Bus Stop Café. By then I was so wound up with anxiety about work, about the baby on the way, and about Laz's death that I exploded on her. “I think you're shallow, manipulative, and selfish,” I told her, holding nothing back. “You may be the most giving person in the world, but it's all about you, and I can't stand it!”

The funny thing was, I didn't really believe those things in the moment; I was merely saying the things I had thought about her when I was a kid. But somehow saying them out loud was incredibly liberating. My mother just listened, and then she hugged me and told me that she was willing to change. And suddenly all the old feelings and resentments melted away and I was able to see my mother for who she really is—an incredibly loving and giving woman who is ultimately human. It struck me that the only thing my mother has ever done to me is love me more than anyone or anything else in the world. She would cut off her arm for me if I asked, and as my childish resentments melted away I realized how much I really do love her.

Just a few days later it was a freezing cold and snowy night when Lindsay and I hailed a cab to go to the Langone Medical Center. She was in labor. Once we checked in and the doctor told us that we probably had several more hours before the baby appeared, I switched into work mode, answering texts and returning calls. Back in the grips of addiction, I was oblivious as Lindsay labored away in the bed next to me. I could only think about work.

Three hours later I got a call from my publicist. “The James Beard Awards are nominating you in two categories,” she told me. “Outstanding Restaurant and Rising Star Chef.” I hung up the phone in shock. The James Beard Awards are like the Oscars of the culinary world, and they normally go to much older, more established chefs. As Lindsay's labor progressed I couldn't stop thinking about this latest accolade and what it would mean for my career.

I wish I had been there for Lindsay. That day should have been about her hard work, her accomplishment, and the miracle of life we created together. But I couldn't take my eyes off the fucking prize. Every award, every honor, every compliment from a diner, they were all just another version of the same old high, and I was still nothing more than a fucking junkie.

Eddie Harris Schenker was born at 3:49
P.M.,
and for just a moment the noise quieted as I held him, taking in his small, blue eyes that were wide open and alert. I stood bewildered by my latest creation, swaddled in a blue-and-white-striped hospital blanket. Would we connect as father and son? What would his life be like? Would he be happy and carefree or tormented by some unseen demon like I was? Of course I was worried about what path he would take and whether I would be able to make room in my life and in my heart for this tiny, defenseless human.

As Eddie cried out for his first meal and I handed him to Lindsay I realized that I wanted to be there for him in a way I'd never been there for anyone else. Addicts generally don't do empathy, but I finally knew what it meant to care about someone else more than I cared about myself. For just a moment I felt like there was nothing left to push for or win. Hadn't I just been handed all I could ever ask for?

But for me old habits die hard, and as soon as we brought Eddie home I jumped back into work with the same vengeance as before. Now, while Lindsay stayed at home breast-feeding, changing diapers, and staying up half the night caring for a newborn, I was pounding the pavement with Art looking for a space for the second restaurant, meeting with restaurateurs, and cooking for private parties while working late into the night at Recette. Instead of greeting the day by kissing Eddie and Lindsay in the morning, I'd grab my BlackBerry and disappear into the other room. All I could think about was growing the business.

In the midst of all this my father noticed a strange mole on my mother's backside that turned out to be melanoma. She bravely faced surgery yet again, even though she was still undergoing chemo for the breast cancer. The health issues just kept coming, making me feel even more like my life was snowballing completely out of control. I was a nervous wreck as I pushed in every aspect of my life with all my might and every day waited for the phone to ring with news of some new health crisis.

Six months passed like this before I returned to Florida with Lindsay and Eddie to visit Laz's grave. The day was clear and hot, and as I stared down at the marble headstone bearing his name I thought about happier times in the past when Laz had come to stay with Joee and me when our parents went away. He had always been such a present, patient, loving grandfather. He would have loved Eddie, his thirteenth great-grandchild.

Lindsay, Eddie, and I got back in the car and drove away. After a minute I turned to look at Eddie, who was already half asleep in his car seat. Then I turned to Lindsay. “Let's love each other like Laz and Rosie,” she said sweetly. Her words were beautiful, but I didn't think I was capable of living up to them.

Au Jus

Au jus
: A dish of roasted meat served with its own cooking juices.

W
hen the call came in asking me to appear on
Iron Chef America,
I was incredibly psyched. I'd always loved cooking competition shows like
Iron Chef
Japan,
which I watched obsessively as a kid. On
Iron Chef,
I'd be competing against one of four Iron Chefs to make the best five dishes in one hour based on one secret ingredient that wouldn't be revealed until the day of the taping. This meant that I could practice and prepare all I wanted, but I wouldn't know what ingredient needed to be featured until it was showtime.

I dove into the preparations. The first step was to choose two sous chefs to work with me. Right away I knew I wanted Christina Lee so she could help with all the pastry. Jeff Haskell, my former boss at City Cellar, was now in New York working as the executive chef at City Winery. Back when we worked together, Jeff always said, “One day you're going to be on
Iron Chef,
” and I told him, “When I am, I'm taking you with me.” It felt good to be able to keep my word.

Christina, Jeff, and I began preparing for the battle day after day, night after night. Of course, I didn't know what the secret ingredient would be, but that didn't stop us. I wrote out four different tasting menus leaving the main ingredient blank so we could fill it in at the last minute with the secret ingredient. Some of these menus worked better with a protein, some with a fruit or vegetable, and others with a grain. I wanted to do five dishes that showed completely different techniques rather than five different versions of the same dish. Each dish would have to show off the secret ingredient in a unique way. For four weeks leading up to the taping, I closed Recette on Sunday evenings so we could practice.

We did three full dry runs to prepare for the battle and spent a lot of time in between watching old episodes of
Iron Chef
and analyzing what gave certain chefs an edge and what the judges looked for. It was clear that creativity, technique, and plating were not enough. In order to win, the food had to taste good; that's what the judges ultimately cared about. I went back and tweaked our menus to make sure they were impressive on a technique level while also tasting as good as possible.

I was a nervous wreck for days leading up to the filming. As Lindsay slept beside me I tossed and turned, ruminating over the menus and wondering if they could possibly be good enough for us to win. “What, are you meeting Art in the morning?” Lindsay asked, reminding me of those sleepless nights before that first meeting with Art, which now felt so long ago. It seemed like there was always something for me to obsessively worry and fret about.

On the day of the filming the Food Network sent a car for me at 5:00
A.M.
I was long awake, pacing outside my apartment building, when the car came. The studio, just a few blocks from Recette in Chelsea Market, was much smaller than it looked on TV; it was filled with dozens of crew members, cameras were positioned at every angle, and spotlights covered the ceiling. As I took it all in my eyes fixed on two identical kitchen sets, one for each contestant, with range tops, convection ovens, food processors, blenders, refrigerators, shitloads of kitchenware, and just about every type of food and ingredient imaginable.

My opponent was Geoffrey Zakarian, an older and much more experienced chef. I was definitely intimidated. Zakarian has been around the New York culinary world forever and is a master technician. When we came face-to-face while picking out our plates, he nodded at me and said, “Hi, Chef.” It was surreal seeing him in person after watching him so many times on TV. “Hi, Chef,” I said, nodding back. But now I was even more intimidated by how calm and well manicured he was. I was a big sweaty mess in comparison.

Soon after we began filming the host lifted the cover on the secret ingredient to reveal . . . plantains. Great. I had exactly one hour to create five courses around an ingredient I didn't like to cook with or even eat. But there wasn't a moment to mourn the secret ingredient. Christina, Jeff, and I did a brief huddle, quickly coming up with a game plan, but we already knew the gist of what we wanted to make. Now we just had to fill in the blanks with plantains. I knew we had to do five completely different things with the plantains, so we made pasta out of it for the first course (Plantain Cannelloni Stuffed with Sweet Shrimp), a terrine for the next (Ripe Plantain Terrine with Jalapeño, Caviar, and Bacon), a play on mashed potatoes for another (Plantain-Crusted Grouper, Plantain Mash, Lobster, and Lobster Emulsion), a takeoff on crème brûlée (Duck Breast with Speck Plantain Brûlée and Plantain Chips), and a sweet mousse for dessert (Sweet Plantain Mousse with Pineapple and Coconut Sorbet).