Kitchen Confidential (25 page)

Adam is not a stupid guy, though I sometimes think he aspires to be. His anecdotes are wildly exaggerated, unspeakably crude and graphic adventures-usually involving his penis-but without the earnest and self-deprecating charm of his friend Steven's accounts. Adam's comedy material runs along pretty predictable lines: referring to his dill bread starter, for instance, as 'dildo', accompanied by a maniacal laugh. He has an unusual and frankly terrifying tic; when he eats, one eye rolls up into its socket. I'm told he makes funny faces when he has sex, too, but I try very hard not to picture that. He's a sentimental guy who can take real pride in his work: I've seen him weep when his tiramisu didn't come out as planned, and when a cassata cake he'd made began to slide in the heat. He sulks, wheedles, whines, and bullies when he wants something-which is always-and you can pretty much tell what frame of mind he's in from his appearance. If he hasn't shaved, it's not a good time to be around him.

At Sullivan's I'd schedule his baking shifts at night, after the kitchen closed.

I did not want him interacting with the other cooks. His faux-macho banter with the Ecuadorian and Mexican line cooks invariably caused offense, and he was an incurable slob.

'You will arrive in my kitchen promptly at one A.M. You will bake my bread, and you will be gone by the time my first cook arrives in the morning,' were my instructions. I did not want him telling my garde-manger guy that he was going to 'make him his woman', or bragging about some imaginary or real adventure at the 'casa de putas' or singing witlessly obscene and unfunny Christmas carols to the dishwashers, who saw him as a near-Satanic apparition. Allowing Adam to work unsupervised at night, however, meant that he would lift my reach-in doors off the hinges to help himself to midnight snacks of T-bone steaks, white truffle risotto and tomato salad-washed down, no doubt, with a bottle of pilfered Dom Perignon now and again. But that was to be expected. The bread. It was soooo good.

The first few months of Adam's employment were always the honeymoon. He showed up pretty much on time, producing, one way or the other, what was required. Then, when things were going well-the customers commenting favorably on the product, his masters happy-he'd start to enter a fugue state-'martyr mode'-where he'd begin sulking, feeling put-upon, sorry for himself. All that work he was doing by himself, all that fine Adam bread, was under-appreciated by his cruel and insensitive overlords. He would begin trying to jack me up for more money, demanding restitution for 'expenses', taxis and 'research'. He'd want new equipment, massive amounts of specialty baking goods, the authorization to phone up companies and spend money autonomously. In short, he'd become insufferable. When his demands weren't met, he'd start slacking and not showing up for work. The 'feed the bitch' calls would become more frequent.

That's usually when I began buying bread out.

And that's when Adam, not eligible for unemployment benefits, would go back to making sandwiches at the Yankee Doodle Deli, brunch-cooking at West Side saloons, consulting to some crack-brained pizzeria owner or novice restaurateur,

freelancing for deadbeat caterers or just lying around his apartment. He'd print up another resume, another tissue of lies, invariably with another last name, and he'd start allover. And sooner or later, I'd call him again. . or Sears would, and Adam Real-Last-Name-Unknown would be back in the saddle again.

Adam can surprise you. He gets along well with my wife. He's actually polite in stretches. For the last few years (something of a record for Adam), he's been working for a very fine caterer and apparently doing good work there. I turned on public access cable one night to see Adam, in chef's whites, exchanging witty banter with a late-night cable host and guests, holding his own very nicely. He was delightful and funny and fast on his feet, and he had an impressive display of baked goods laid out on a table to sample. He's still making bread and pizzas for Jimmy Sears. For some time, I have heard no tales of violent assaults or thirteen-dollar whorehouses or near overdoses. So maybe he really has cleaned up his act.

God knows, a man who can make those perfect rough-slashed boules of sourdough and Tuscan country bread deserves his place in the sun. Somewhere. He's the best at what he does, after all. The finest bread I've ever had. And the most expensive: in human cost, aggravation and worry. Hiring Adam Real-Last-Name-Unknown was always a trade-off-with God or Satan, I don't know-but it was usually worth it. Bread is the staff of life. And Adam, the unlikely source.

Something else God has to answer for.

A GOOD FRIEND OF mine, about a year into his first chef's job, had a problem with one of his cooks. This particularly rotten bastard had been giving my friend a ride for quite a while: showing up late, not showing up, getting high at work, behaving insolently and fomenting dissent among his co-workers. Convinced that the whole kitchen revolved around his station, his mood swings and his toil, he felt free to become a raving, snarling, angry lunatic-a dangerously loose cannon rolling around on deck, just daring his chef and his co-workers to press the wrong button.

After a no-show and a late arrival and yet another ugly, histrionic incident of insubordination, my friend had no choice but to fire his cocaine-stoked and deranged employee, telling him, in classic style, to 'Clean out your locker and get the fuck out!'

The cook went home, made a few phone calls, and then hanged himself. It's a measure of what we do for a living that this kind of a thing could happen-and that my friend, on his next visit to my kitchen, was greeted with gestures of mimed strangulation, cooks and waiters holding a hand over their heads, sticking their tongues out and rolling their eyes up, tagging my friend, to his face, as 'serial killer' and remorselessly teasing him. My friend had worked for me for years, and had, at various times, caused me much grief and frustration. Since becoming a chef in his own right, however, he'd taken to calling me at intervals-to apologize for his past bad acts, telling me that when faced with managerial problems of his own involving personnel, or 'human resource difficulties', he'd seriously regretted all the pain and worry he'd caused me.

Now he knew, you see. He knew what it was like to be a leader of cooks, a wrangler of psychopaths, the captain of his own pirate ship, and he wasn't liking that part of the job very much. Now somebody was dead and there was, inarguably, a causal relationship between the event of the troublesome cook's firing and his death by his own hand.

'The guy was fucked up anyway, it's not your fault,' was the standard conciliatory remark. It was about as sympathetic as any of us could get.

'Guy would have done it sooner or later, man. If not with you, some other chef.' That didn't quite cut it either.

'The guy had to go,' is what I said, the kind of cold-blooded statement not unusual for me when in chef-mode. 'What? Are you gonna keep the guy on? Let him talk shit to you in front of your crew? Let him show up late, fuck up service .

. because you're afraid he's gonna off himself! Fuck him. We're on a lifeboat, baby. The weak? The dangerous? The infirm? They go over the side.'

Typically, I was overstating the case. I've coddled plenty of dangerously unstable characters over the years; I've kept on plenty of people who I knew in the end would make me look bad and become more trouble than they were worth. I'm not saying I'm Mister Rogers, a softie-okay, maybe I am saying that. . a little bit. I appreciate people who show up every day and do the best they can, in spite of borderline personalities, substance abuse problems and anti-social tendencies; and I am often inclined to give them every opportunity to change their trajectories, to help them to arrive at a different outcome than the predictable one when they begin visibly to unravel. But once gone-quit, fired or dead-I move on to the next problem. There always is one.

There have been a lot of success stories out of my kitchens over the last two decades. Mostly Mexicans and Ecuadorians who now own homes, have careers, enjoy the respect of their peers and their neighbors. They support families, drive their own cars, speak English fluently-all things I can barely do. I care about my crew and their problems.

I go home Saturday night with a sulking cook getting crispy around the edges on my mind? Someone in my kitchen talking about going AWOL, exhibiting symptoms of the dreaded martyr mode? My weekend is ruined. All I'm going to be thinking about for every waking moment is that cook and what I can do to fix the situation. I'll lie there on the bed, staring into space, paying scant attention to the TV, or what my wife is talking about, or the everyday tasks of bill paying, maintaining a home, behaving like a normal person.

I don't know, you see, how a normal person acts. I don't know how to behave outside my kitchen. I don't know the rules. I'm aware of them, sure, but I don't care to observe them anymore-because I haven't had to for so many years. Okay, I can put on a jacket, go out for dinner and a movie, and I can eat with a knife and fork without embarrassing my hosts. But can I really behave? I don't know.

I have responsibilities, I tell myself and my wife. I've got things on my mind. I'm in charge of people's lives . and it can weigh heavily on me. In my world, you see, my friend is a killer. No, he's not, you say. How could he have predicted what this drug-addled maniac was going to do? How can what some cokehead cook has done to himself and to his family be laid at his door?

Because it can. Because when you look somebody in the eyes and can them, there's no telling what terrible result might ensue. He might come at you with a meat cleaver or a boning knife. He might, like Adam Real-Last-Name-Unknown, drag you into court, on whatever specious yet embarrassing grounds. He might turn tail and simply leave the business, move to Arizona and sell insurance-as one talented cook of my acquaintance did. On the other hand, he could simply suck it up, move on to the next kitchen and make a smashing success of himself; ten years in the future, you might find yourself standing next to him at the James Beard Awards dinner, where he's just picked up his award for Best New Chef, and resplendent in his tux he turns and pees smilingly on your pants leg. These are all considerations when peering down the line at some troubled and troubling employee and pondering his fate.

Survival has its costs.

I took a fateful cab ride many years ago. Rolling back from the Lower East Side with a bunch of close friends, all of us fresh from scoring dope, I jokingly remarked on an article I'd seen, detailing the statistical likelihood of successfully detoxing.

'Only one in four has a chance at making it. Ha, ha, ha,' I said, my words ringing immediately painful and hollow as soon as I'd said them. I counted our number in the back of that rattling Checker Marathon. Four. And right there, I knew that if one of us was getting off dope, and staying off dope, it was going to be me. I wasn't going to let these guys drag me down. I didn't care what it took, how long I'd known them, what we'd been through together or how close we'd been. I was going to live. I was the guy. I made it. They didn't. I don't feel guilty about that.

'We're in a lifeboat. .' begins one of my standard inspirationals to new sous-chefs. 'We're four days out to sea, with no rescue in sight. There are two Snickers bars and a tiny hunk of salt pork left in our stores, and that fat bastard by the stern is getting crazier with every hour, becoming more and more irrational and demanding, giving that Snickers bar long, lingering looks-even though he's too weak to help with the rowing or the bailing any more. He presents a clear and present danger to the rest of us, what with his leering at the food and his recently acquired conviction that we're plotting against him. What do we do?'

We kick fat boy over the side, I say. Maybe we even carve a nice chunk of rumpsteak off his thigh before letting him go. Is that wrong? Yah, yah, yah, tough guy. Sure you'd do that. To which I'd say, 'You don't know me very well.' Insurrection? A direct challenge to my authority? Treasonous dereliction of duty? The time will come, my friend, when it's gonna be you going over the side. I will-and I tell my cooks this ahead of time-contrive, conspire, manipulate, maneuver and betray in order to get you out of my kitchen, whatever the outcome to you personally. If an unexpected period of unemployment inspires you to leap off a bridge, hang yourself from a tree or chug-a-lug a quart of drain cleaner, that's too bad.

The absolutes first attracted me to this business (along with that food thing) The black and white of it. The knowledge that there are some things you must do-and some things you absolutely must not. What little order there has been in my life is directly related to this belief in clear right and clear wrong: maybe not moral distinctions, but practical ones.

Another cook has to cover for you? Wrong. Chef spending too much time kissing your boo-boos, stroking your ego, solving your conflicts with co-workers? Wrong. Talking back to your leader? Wrong. You will soon become dead to me.

My friend the novice 'killer', feeling truly awful about what happened, said, 'Tony. I'm different than you-'I have a heart!' I laughed and took that for a compliment-which it kind of was-if a backhanded one.

I do have heart, you see. I've got plenty of heart. I'm a fucking sentimental guy-once you get to know me. Show me a hurt puppy, or a long-distance telephone service commercial, or a film retrospective of Ali fights or Lou Gehrig's last speech and I'll weep real tears. I am a bastard when crossed, though, no question. I bully my waiters but at least I comfort myself afterward, when I wonder if maybe I went a little too far-at least I don't bite them on the nose, as one chef I know did. I don't throw plates. . much. I don't blame others for my mistakes. I am attentive to the weak but willing, if merciless to the strong who are not so eager to please. Though slothful to a fault in my off-hours, I am not lazy at work, and I am fiercely protective of my crew, of my chain of command, of my turf. I have perjured myself on a cook's behalf. I will cut my nose off to spite my face-if a favored cook's well-being is at stake-meaning I will quit a job rather than let management, ownership or anybody else toy with any member of my crew. I will walk out of a perfectly good situation if someone insists on squeezing my cooks for unreasonable amounts of extra work at no additional recompense. I'm not bluffing when I threaten to quit over principle. My loyalty, such as it is, is to my restaurant-if that loyalty is not to the detriment of dedicated underlings. The ones who've hung with me, endured what I think should be reasonably endured, have done the right thing. Everything else is just noise. Isn't it?