THENASTYBITS (13 page)

Of those chefs who claim music as an inspiration, Rick Tramonto of Chicago's Tru uses music to inspire not just his cooking but his spirit. Though he likes, on occasion, to go out to listen to blues at Buddy Guy's or House of Blues, and says that, when cooking at home he listens to "Frank Sinatra when cooking Italian, rock and roll—like Van Halen and Eric

Clapton—when making Asian food," most of the time after work he says he listens to "contemporary Christian or gospel music."

It should be pointed out that chefs' hours are similar to musicians'. Marcus Samuelsson of New York's Aquavit says that not only is music "definitely an inspiration and helps [his] creativity on many levels" but that he listens to music "all the time. I go to listen to friends who play in bands. It's part of my social scene as well as my professional life."

There are those chefs who are inspired by music and claim their after-work hours as a time conducive to a fertile imagination, and then there are those (like me) who seek only escape and distraction.

Tom Colicchio of Craft says that after work he goes out to New York's Alphabet Lounge when Toke Squealy, the band of his guitar teacher, Alan Cohen, plays, or to Arlene's Grocery "to check out [his] friend Becca's band, Thin Wild Mercury." But, he adds, "I don't think it has any effect on what or how I cook. But it does provide time away from thinking about food or my restaurants."

The more you're chained to the stove, the less likely you are, it seems, to claim music as an inspiration. WD-50's wildly creative chef-owner, Wylie Dufresne, who is still in nearly constant attendance at his sole operation, does allow music in his kitchen. "All day long," he says. The playlist is determined by "whoever gets to the radio or CD player first. It's a democracy in the kitchen. It can be anything from hip-hop, the Grateful Dead, Wilco, reggae, lots of mixes made by those in the kitchen and friends." But after work, he confesses, "I don't get out to see live music as I once did. But we do enjoy the jukebox at Doc Holliday's [a neighborhood saloon] after a long day."

Maybe Norman Van Aken of Norman's in Coral Gables best captures the enduring spirit of what music, and after-hours music-related activity, mean to chefs. Though he too plays in a band (with fellow chefs Dean Fearing and Robert Del Grande) when he can, in his hours away from his restaurant he says he likes to "go down to Key West and look around for stuff that happens off Duval Street, back in the alleys. I love jukeboxes, roadhouses, or dives. Doesn't matter." He sums things up simply.

"After family, two things saved my life. And cooking was one of them."

THE
COOK'S
COMPANIONS

cooking professionally hurts, i'm
not just talking about the aching feet, the tormented back muscles, the burns and cuts; I mean also the spiritual pain, the disappointment and self-doubt that comes with being a cog in a large and ever-whirring machine, the crushing sense of futility one feels when working in an operation that is clearly doomed, or the feelings of isolation and frustration one experiences after a seventeen-hour day peeling shrimp and tourneeing vegetables in a less than hygienic cellar prep kitchen.

I'm not complaining, mind you. We've all been there, those of us who've chosen this life. We knew, or had a pretty good idea, what was expected—and chances are, the professionals who are reading this have spent plenty of time at one point or another in their careers hunched over a fifty-pound load of fresh squid, yanking quills and pulling out ink-sacs, or enduring the tirades of a despotic and unhinged chef. We've got the scars to show for it: grill marks on our wrists, pink and faded lines where knives nicked flesh, the telltale hump of yellowing callous at the base of the index finger of our knife-hands. We know what it's like to work all day and all night, finally tumbling exhausted into bed, still reeking of salmon and garlic. We have, all of us, made careful observation of the hierarchy around us, wondered, in moments of extremis, why, for instance, the boss just bought himself a new Porsche Turbo when yesterday he said that checks would be late this week—and sorry, but we need to cut overtime.

We've all, at some terrible moment, peered through sweat and pain, and the constant noise and clatter of the kitchen, and wondered how come that lazy chef got to swan around the dining room in a spotless new Bragard jacket while we toiled and cursed and broke ourselves on the wheel of commerce.

At moments like this, I have always taken refuge in some old friends—in this case, four books whose simple existence has always given me comfort, books that every time I read them remind me that I'm not alone, that even with all the stupidity and occasional squalor one encounters in the span of a long career in the food-service industry, one is part of a grand tradition. It is nice, so nice, to find that one's labors, even one's early moments of abject misery as an overworked
commis
or prep drone, are part of a continuum. And it is pleasantly surprising, even reassuring, to discover how little has changed since the early part of the century. After revisiting one or more of these old friends, I can again feel proud of what I do. I am reminded of what it took to get here, of what I have endured, and can breath the thick, steamy kitchen air again with assurance, even defiance, because I've survived. Because I'm still here.

Down and Out in Paris and London
by George Orwell was a revelation to me when I first turned its pages and encountered Orwell's descriptions of his life as a
plongeur
(dishwasher) and prep cook at the pseudonymous Hotel "X" in 1920s Paris, and of his later misadventures at an undercapitalized and slightly shady bistro. "I
know
these people!" was my first impression, drawing an immediate parallel between the gargantuan cellars of the Hotel X and the hangar-size kitchen of the 1970s Rainbow Room, where I was then working as a
tournant,
buffet cook, prep flunky, and general dogsbody. Here's Orwell, describing after-work drinks with his crew.

We threw
off
our aprons and put on our coats, hurried out the doors, and when we had money, dived into the nearest bistro. . . . The air seemed blindingly clear and cold, like arctic summer, and how sweet the petrol did smell, after the stenches

of
sweat and food! Sometimes we met some
of
our cooks and waiters in the bistros, and they were friendly and stood us drinks. Indoors we were their slaves, but it is an etiquette in hotel life that between hours everyone is equal, and the engueulades [put-downs] do not count.

Sound familiar? Orwell goes on to describe, painstakingly, the elaborate and time-honored pecking order, which rang true to me even in 1978. The language and worldview of Orwell's cooks matched perfectly with my experience of the time.

Undoubtedly the most workmanlike class, and the least servile, are the cooks. They do not earn quite so much as waiters, but their prestige is higher and their employment steadier. The cook does not look upon himself as a servant, but as a skilled workman; he is generally called "un ouvrier" [a workingman] which a waiter never is . . . He despises the whole noncooking staff, and makes it a point
of
honor to insult everyone below head waiter.

Orwell's later adventures in a
faux-Normande
bistro, a filthy, corner-cutting, ill-equipped cesspit, make for hilarious reading for anyone who's worked in a failing Mom and Pop operation where sanitation and quality were not premium considerations; and his portraits of foul-mouthed cooks, nearly insolvent owners, opportunistic waiters, and oblivious customers strike a chillingly familiar chord.

Nicolas Freeling's
The Kitchen
takes place in the late 1940s Grand Hotels in France. Describing his rise from lowly
commis
to chef, the author creates lovingly detailed portraits of chefs, sauciers, grillardins, entremetiers, patissiers, and
commis.
For its enduring relevance and accuracy to the world of cooks, Free-ling's entertaining, near-perfect recreation might just as well have been written today.

The king-hell, jumbo foodie bible, however, the Talmud and Dead Sea Scrolls combined, has to be Emile Zola's gargantuan masterwork,
The Belly
of
Paris,
a work of fiction set in the then spanking new central market of nineteenth-century Paris, Les Halles. Our hero is an escapee from Devil's Island, a starving, desperate ideologue and socialist who finds himself, improbably, a food inspector. Zola describes an entire universe of food, traveling through the bowels of the marketplace, describing, beautifully at times, the live poultry markets, the fishmongers, the produce vendors, butchers, charcutiers, and market gardeners of that time. Once again, the reader will be surprised by how little has changed. Anyone who has spent time preparing old-school bistro and/or brasserie classics will recognize, in a glance, the preparation of
boudin noir
or the marketing of trimmings, hooves, snouts, and offal as pates and galantines; and anyone who loves food for its own sake will find much enjoyment in Zola's loving descriptions of meat, fish, and produce as they wend their way from source to market, from market to vendor, from vendor to customer. At times, it's nearly food porn, as Zola's hero gazes longingly at unattainable heaps of perfect vegetables glistening in the early morning sunlight, plump sausages in the pork butcher's window, the play of color and light on a still-living trout in the hands of an attractive fishwife.

Finally, there's David Blum's painfully hilarious
Flash in the Pan,
a savage and painstakingly documented account of the life and death of an American restaurant. Owners Bruce Goldstein and Terry Quinn, rather inadvisably, allowed the author to sit in on the planning, staffing, equipping, and opening of their fashionable restaurant, The Falls, at one time situated on Varick and Vandam streets in Manhattan. Blum describes every step from empty construction site to jam-packed model and celebrity hangout to floundering failure. It's an invaluable book for anyone who's ever opened a restaurant, or worked on opening a restaurant, and a cautionary tale, filled with the kind of hubris, stupidity, vanity, and desperation many of us may have seen, at one time or another, in our own checkered careers. Agonize over the menu with an in-over-his head chef and a capricious but determined owner! Watch as floor staff are hired and fired!

Commiserate with unpaid vendors as they get the word—after everybody else—that they won't ever be getting paid! Dig in for hectic, overbooked dinner rushes, computer meltdowns, psychotic episodes, internecine squabbles, petty feuds, bizarre and obsessive behavior. This book actually saved a friend's life. He was about to go to work for one of the principals in
Flash in the Pan,
long after The Falls had closed, and I said, "Maybe you'd better read this book first."

As is so often the case, the real joy is in the details. Here we have:

A packed restaurant every night . . . a catastrophic service situation . . . a French laissez-faire personality managing the floor on busy nights . . . and an owner who is happiest ignoring both and fiddling with the dials on his stereo system . . .

Or,

. . . they've been giving too much food away. "Comping" your friends is one guaranteed way to keep food revenues to a minimum . . . It is a practice that is widely discouraged in the industry. It is not, however, a practice that has been discouraged at The Falls. And yet, in the opening days
of
the restaurant, no doubt feeling generous and expansive, [the owners] have frequently given away food and drink. How much? Difficult to say, in that no one particularly wants to keep a close count
of
the giveaways. One night in the first week, Henry guesses that [the owners] gave away half the meals served.

And maybe some of you chefs have been here:

[The chef] diligently follows Bruce and eagerly awaits his boss's latest brainstorm. Bruce gets straight to the point. "I've got a great new dessert idea," he says. "Banana cream tart!"

"Banana cream tart?" [the chef] asks. "What exactly is that, Bruce?"

"It would be like a banana cream pie," Bruce explains, allowing his hands to form an imaginary tart-like circle, "which is everybody's favorite dessert . . . only we'd make it into a tart, so it'd be smaller and healthier."

[The chef] has no response except to roll his eyes, which he can do subtly yet with precision.

After a long pause, he finally mutters, "I guess I can make that."

Having worked in a few knuckleheaded operations like this in my time, I can tell you, it's fun reading Blum's account in the cold, clear light of years later. I may come home after a particularly hellish night feeling like a whipped animal, but
hey,
at least we're busy! My current bosses may take an unusual and annoying interest at times in unpleasantly gamey wild hare and less-than-universally-popular organ meats, but at least they love food. They know what the hell they're talking about! The vodka we're pouring at
my
restaurant is what it says on the bottle.

The function of all four of these old friends, tattered and broken-spined as they may be, is ultimately to make me feel better about myself and the way things are going. And to make me laugh. In our business, you'd
better
have a sense of humor. We flirt with disaster every day—particularly during busy dinner rushes, when one screw-up, one mistake, one broken piece of equipment or ill-prepared cook can send the whole night's service careening into nightmare. We chefs take pride in our work, both in whatever degree of artistry or craft we bring to our product and also in the grim business of cranking out table after table of hot, properly prepared food. We know the sheer terror of running out of food, of being short-handed, and if we can't laugh about it when it happens—afterward—we eat ourselves alive. The torment of seeing a witless customer destroy a cherished fish special with bizarre dietary requirements, or with

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a misguided urge to design their own meal, can cut like a knife. A waiter who describes that lovely pheasant as tasting "kinda like chicken" can cause a chef's brain to boil, pushing his pulse rate into that red zone where all humanity seems aligned against him—every customer, every owner, every coworker an emissary of pure evil. A good laugh, a little context, they go a long way to bringing one back from the urge to shave one's head, climb a tower, and start shooting at pedestrians.

We should know. As citizens of the world, we should know what came before. How we got here. Why we do things the way we do them. Where our food comes from. We should know what it was like for our humble predecessors, sweating and struggling in unrefrigerated larders, unventilated kitchens, the septic madhouse and twisting, low-ceilinged subcellars of restaurants past. We should remember the way it felt, scraping potatoes onto a garbage-strewn floor, scrubbing grease-caked pots with cold water, bending to the will of crazed and increasingly parsimonious masters. And we should understand not just how much has changed, but how much has stayed the same: the
character
of the business we have chosen as a lifestyle—the way people who do what we do have endured, have learned, have risen and learned to love this thing of ours.

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