THENASTYBITS (35 page)

As it turned out, they needn't have worried. Roland Schutz liked to own the things he admired. Even more, he liked to own the things other people admired. And when, after the four rounds of Louis Treize and a chocolate souffle dusted with a few grains of sea salt and the petit-fours and a single spoonful of Meyer lemon sorbet, Rob emerged from the kitchen to dazzle the girls (who were now so drunk as to be nearly unable to speak) and receive sincere thanks from Cleveland, Roland Schutz sat Rob Holland down and did what
be
did so well. He made a multiunit, multiyear, multimillion-dollar deal, acquiring (after the lawyers and accountants had looked things over and cleared the way of any obstacles) a 65-percent share in the soon-to-be-formed Rob Holland Group International.

The Boston and Philly partners would be bought out and the restaurants closed. The airport operations would be sold (at a tidy profit) to Wolfgang Puck, who needed more locations to sell pizzas. New Rob Holland restaurants would open in Schutz-owned casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, and in hotels in Miami, London, and Dubai. Trusted Holland associates Paul, Kevin, and Michelle would each head up a unit. Other loyalists would be similarly rewarded with positions suiting their skills. Even Thierry scored a position as chief of operations at the retail baking and pastry wing in the soon-to-be-erected Schutz Plaza in midtown Manhattan. Marvin accepted a very generous offer of two million five for his stake in Saint Germain, which would allow him to return to the more secure prospects of the auto body business. (Which, he had to admit these days, he'd always loved and never should have left. He'd be able to quickly open up five new stores across Long Island and become wealthier than his wildest dreams—a rare survivor of the New York restaurant industry. There was the added perk that Marvin would still be able to eat and entertain for free at Saint Germain whenever he wished.)

Saint Germain, as the flagship of the new Schutz-Holland Axis, was allowed to retain its 60-percent food cost and to run even higher labor percentages as it was the showcase (and loss leader) for the whole empire. Schutz and eventually the repugnant Hitchcock were favored with regular tables of their choosing. Hitchcock was additionally favored with the offering of a free renovation of his kitchens in Bucks County, South Hampton, and Manhattan (supposedly from Rob but actually from a Schutz-controlled contractor). The restaurant was saved. The Puebla Posse soon ran the kitchen—even hiring additional friends and family members from their hometown of Atlixco. Though Rob continued to retain the title of chef, Manuel was given the day-to-day responsibility of running the kitchen and the title of chef de cuisine and a sizable raise to go with it.

Needless to say, everyone got a generous Christmas bonus. No one got kicked out of their apartment. Credit card payments were made. Thousands of miles away, new satellite dishes appeared on rooftops in tiny Mexican towns.

Best of all, Rob continued to cook now and again. On slow Sunday or Monday nights, his black Town Car would pull up outside and he'd walk briskly through the dining room as voices hushed and people pointed out that "the chef is here." He no longer ventured into the dining room. He never schmoozed. With his future secure, he gave up his dreams of television. Though he worked relatively little at Saint Germain—or anywhere else for that matter—content to golf and read and dream much of the time, to settle things with old wives and current girlfriends, he did drop by now and again. He'd put on a snap-front dishwasher shirt, some faded checks, his old clogs, and an apron. He'd tell Segundo, or whoever was working saute that night, to knock off early and he'd cook. He'd cook every order off his station, and off others besides. He'd stay till the very end, until the last order was gone. Then he'd dutifully clean and wipe down his station like he'd done when he'd been young and coming up. Afterward, he'd sit at the bar with his crew, who were now allowed to drink at Saint Germain, and they'd review the evening and tell stories and bust each other's balls.

They'd tell stories, like the night of the Christmas Miracle, when the restaurant was saved. When they'd stayed, the whole crew, to drink the remainders of all those magnificent wines left over from their new benefactor's table and to congratulate themselves on their good fortune.

A few days or weeks later, he'd return. And do it again. He'd cook.

He'd cook like an angel.

COMMENTARY

SYSTEM D

I wrote this piece shortly after
Kitchen Confidential
came out and was clearly feeling nostalgic for my kitchen and my cooks. I still felt like a punk, guilty even, for not working as a chef anymore, for doing something as relatively easy as writing about myself and talking about myself—and getting paid for it. And I think the piece reflects that feeling of homesickness. Leaving day-to-day operations at Les Halles, I felt like a traitor; and by celebrating my old friends, my old life—and some of the less lovely practices of that life—I was revisiting it in my mind, seeking some kind of vicarious absolution. Non-cooks might not understand that when describing a steak caught "on the bounce" or finishing sliced gigot under a salamander, for instance, I was never "exposing" or looking to shock or inform. I recall all that nonsense now with warmth and affection. It makes me kind of sad rereading this piece. The yearning for something that even then I suspected I'd never get back, coupled with the growing realization that I would probably have a very hard time hacking it at this point, make me feel a million years older and many lifetimes removed from the person who put this on paper.

THE EVILDOERS

Damn, was I angry! This is one mean-spirited rant. I was spitting mad, having just endured a four-hour flight, economy class, on American Airlines where I'd found myself seated between two gigantic specimens of humanity. One of them, a woman of Jabba the Hutt proportions, literally took up half my seat in addition to her own, leaving me balanced on one butt cheek, leaning forward and against the seat back in front of me. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't sit back. I couldn't do anything but fume silently. Neither she nor the flight attendants ever acknowledged my obvious distress. For the duration of the flight, I tried to lull myself into a state of calm by focusing on the in-flight telephone against which my face was mashed, imagining what would happen if I wrapped the cord around my neck, leaned forward with my full body weight, and ended my life. That thought was what got me through.

The notion that eating yourself up to five-hundred-pound weight class, requiring assistance to even drag yourself out of bed, is an "alternate lifestyle choice" deserving of respect and accommodation always struck me as disingenuous. And in the uncertain times during which the piece was written, it even seemed "wrong" to be so unapologetically huge, when (it appeared at the time) we might at any moment be called upon to flee a building or make our way quickly to an exit.

Equating morbid obesity with a lack of patriotism was, I grant you, a bit of a stretch. But I'd just (along with Eric Schlosser) debated a duo of professional apologists for the fast-food industry—in front of the Multi-unit Foodservice Operators Association in Houston, no less—and when statistics and good sense failed to make an impression, the low-blow argument that "you bastards are hurting the war against terror" landed squarely in the groin.

A COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS NOBODY ASKED FOR

I actually used the substance of this overtestosteroned primal scream as the basis for a later commencement address to a graduating class at the Culinary Institute of America. The tone, I think, reflects my general sense of growing wussification after deserting my old job at Les Halles. Like an aging guy worried about his penis who suddenly and uncharacteristically buys a too-fast-for-him sports car, I think I was overcompensating. The piece was written for a British magazine—I was pondering the subject of Gordon Ramsay, annoyed at the bad press he was getting for being a "bully." I knew well of his loyalty to his chefs, and had recently seen a lot of his interacting with cooks after hours. The way some journalists were "shocked" by his bad language and "harsh" treatment of staff seemed fundamentally ignorant and dishonest—as anyone who knows Gordon knows him to be a complete cupcake.

FOOD AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS

This is what happens when a major food magazine is foolish enough to assign me to write about Las Vegas. I'd never been there, but I hated the place in principle. And I was scheduled to do a television show about that tortured relationship. All I really wanted to do was rent a big red classic Cadillac like Hunter Thompson and pretty much reenact
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
And have somebody else pay for it.

At the end of the day, it was a pretty hard place to hate. Unsurprisingly, I had a lot of fun (most of it not described in the article). And despite serious doubts and suspicions, I was encouraged by what some of the chefs I admired were doing there. The first draft/original version appears here, with my friend Michael Ruhlman mentioned by name. My editors at
Gourmet
—sensibly—gutted much of the piece for publication. The shameless duping of Thompson's masterwork is, of course, no accident.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
changed my life when

2
-73

it first appeared in serial form in the pages of
Rolling Stone,
and here I was, at forty-nine, finally able to live it. Homage or cheesy imitation? You decide. I had a helluva time.

And if you've never jumped out of an airplane with a flying Elvis? I highly recommend it.

ARE
YOU
A
CRIP
OR
A
BLOOD?

More and more frequently in my travels, I find out that everything I know is wrong, or at least very much in question. After sneering relentlessly at "fusion"—having experienced so much of the worst of it—I'd started coming across some more interesting and virtuous expressions. In Sydney, I'd been dazzled by Tetsuya Wakuda's Australian/Japanese. In Miami, Norman Van Aken had astonished me with a menu consisting of ingredients that were almost entirely unfamiliar. I recognized the dogma in my own relentless sneering about the evils of fusion, and didn't like the feeling of repeatedly finding myself in rooms filled with people who agreed with me. As much as I admired and appreciated the slow-food movement and the increased interest in better, more seasonal ingredients, there was a whiff of orthodoxy about it all that I felt contradicted the chef's basic mission: to give pleasure. I'd met a lot of very hungry people in recent years, and I doubted very much whether they cared if their next meal came from the next village over or a greenhouse in Tacoma. The notion of "terroir" and "organic" started to seem like the kind of thinking you'd expect of the privileged—or isolationist. The very discussion of "organic" vs. "nonorganic," I knew, was a luxury. I've since come to believe that any overriding philosophy or worldview is the enemy of good eating. This was an early slap back at a perfectly respectable point of view.

VIVA
MEXICO!
VTVA
ECUADOR!

I'd regrettably agreed to be a presenter at the annual James Beard Foundation Awards ceremony just a few weeks before writing

this piece. There I was, at the Oscars of the food world. I stood up on that stage, reading from the teleprompter and looking out at a huge audience of America's foodie and restaurant-industry elite. I'd never seen so many white people assembled in one room in my life. It looked like a rally for George Wallace or David Duke. Hundreds and hundreds of smug, self-satisfied white people in tuxedos and evening wear, waiting around to congratulate each other before hitting the buffet. And I felt sickened by the experience. Here we all were at an event celebrating cooking—and presumably the people who do the job of cooking—and barely a Latino in sight. This when as much as 65 percent of the workforce in our industry is, in fact, Mexican, Ecuadoran, and otherwise of Spanish-speaking origin. Where the hell were they? How come they weren't here? Who honors them? While we were all swanning around patting ourselves on the back, the people who keep us in business were still hiding out from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, paying dodgy lawyers for services barely, if ever, actually rendered, and sending money home to families they rarely saw.

The awfulness of that moment made me very angry, and as unattractive as it might be to admit, I can tell you that when it was finally revealed how little money raised by the Beard House was actually going to "scholarships"—and when the foundation's president found himself facing jail time and its board of schnorrers, grifters, and marginal dipshits had to step down, I was overjoyed.

After the scandal broke, a journalist asked me what I thought should be done with the Beard House, the author's former West Village home, restored and maintained as a shrine to a man who, by many accounts, was a complete (if talented and important) bastard. I suggested they convert the property into something useful, like a methadone clinic. I wasn't entirely kidding.

COUNTER CULTURE

I remember reading a food critic's complaint about all the fancy meals he'd had to "endure" over the years, his sense of burnout—and felt no sympathy whatsoever at the time. How could anyone be expected to feel sorry for a person who was regularly fed the finest wines, the best ingredients, in the most expensive places? This is a fairly recent piece, illustrating, I think, my own growing sense of "fine dining fatigue." On book tours and on trips to promote the shows, and back in New York, again and again, I'd found myself eating much better—and fancier—than I would have liked. Though I usually craved nothing more extravagant than a simple bowl of noodles, or a meatloaf sandwich, my proud and generous hosts of the moment would insis on bringing me to the "best restaurant in town." And whether this was Chicago, Reykjavik, Frankfurt, or Stockholm, there was a growing sameness to the offerings. Quality was up everywhere as the ambitions and abilities of chefs rose, but so was the sense of seriousness and self-importance. I turned some kind of corner when, at Alain Ducasse New York, I was offered a painfully extensive discourse on the water selections—a lengthy distraction which bled out any possibility of joy from what was already a dark, stiff, and humorless exercise in pomposity. My meal at Joel Robuchon's new concept operation in Paris, L'Atelier, was a welcome relief, and seemed to light the way for other chefs to serve high-style food in more comfortable, less stuffy surroundings. And Martin Picard's outrageously over the top Au Pied de Cochon in Montreal was an answered prayer, a loud, defiant, and joyous "fuck you!" to convention for which I was (obviously) very grateful. When I find a chef or a restaurant I love, I tend to make a cause of it—to get hyperbolic. But I feel a real sense of relief, a return to sanity and reason, when I eat at St. John in London, or at Martin's Au Pied, or at Avec in Chicago. When it's finally and only about the food, and all the nonsense and artifice are stripped away. When I can be certain the words "truffle oil" will never issue from a waiter's mouth, and no sauce shall be foamed, and nothing will be served in a shot glass except tequila.

A
LIFE
OF
CRIME

Writing incessantly about food is like writing porn. How many adjectives can there be before you repeat yourself? How many times can you write variations on the tale of the lonely housewife, temporarily short of funds, and the horny but hunky delivery boy who's not averse to negotiating for that pizza? How many times can you describe a fucking salad without using the word "crisp"? So it's always a pleasure when I'm given the opportunity to write about something that doesn't involve food or chefs. I do have other interests. Crime is one of them.

ADVANCED
COURSES

I think all the international travel began to make it easier for me to see and appreciate my own country, and I stopped sneering and started looking at the flyover and the red states not as the enemy but as strange and potentially wonderful foreign lands. It certainly helps that it's usually the chefs and cooks I meet first, but after sitting down to eat with ex-Khmer Rouge, for instance, or being hosted with incredible generosity by former VC cadre leaders—and a lot of other Very Nice People who've done some Very Bad Things—I began to be (I like to think) less judgmental about my own country. I mean, if I can get drunk with a bunch of probably murderous Russian gangsters and have a good time, why can't I get along with an Evangelical Republican from Texas? This was an early grope at being comfortable with that vast space between the coasts, a coming to terms with my own snobbery.

NAME
DROPPING
DOWN
UNDER

Written for a British magazine, and dripping with Britishisms. I'd spent so much time in the UK by this point, I was starting to sound like Madonna. "Where's the loo?" "I have to stop and buy some fags." "Brilliant!" "I have to go have a slash . . ."

MY
MANHATTAN

Years later, this piece still stands as a decent visitor's guide to New York. I'd add the restaurants Masa and Per Se in the Time Warner Center on the high end, and maybe Corner Bistro for burgers on the low. Siberia still reigns supreme among dives, though some weekend nights lately are reserved for an all-male leather crowd. Better phone ahead.

HARD-CORE

This is an unabashed blow job of an article. Like everybody I've introduced to her, I'm hopelessly, gushily a fan of Gabrielle Hamilton. I neglected to mention in this article exactly how good a writer she is. Two subsequent pieces she wrote for the
New Yorker
and for the
New York Times Magazine
were genius. Not too long after this article was written, she got a monster-size advance from a major publishing house to write what will presumably be a memoir. It will no doubt be better and more interesting than
Kitchen Confidential.
Every day that Gabrielle Hamilton likes me? It's reason to live.

WHEN
THE
COOKING'S
OVER

I'm sure Ruth Reichl got a lot of angry mail from
Gourmet
readers about this piece. It's something of a departure from their once traditional territory of bundt cake recipes and restaurant roundups. There's a dark, perverse streak to Ms. Reichl I'm very grateful for. I mean, the scuzzball strip club, the Clermont Lounge, in the pages of
Gourmet}
I think that's a first.

THE
COOK'S
COMPANIONS

Some of my favorite books on The Life. To which I'd now add Ludwig Bemelmans's
Hotel Bemelmans.
When I finally became aware of it, it was both delightful and dismaying to discover that

I'd done nothing new when I wrote
Kitchen Confidential
—that Bemelmans had been there before me, and done it better and with more authority.

CHINA
SYNDROME

China is great. China is BIG. China is FUN. And it's hugely frustrating to know that even if I dedicated the rest of my life to the project, I'd never see all of it. There's little question in my mind that as China continues to emerge as an economic superpower, and as we find ourselves increasingly dependent on its manufacturing—and its credit line—that it will eventually pretty much rule the world. To which I say, "Welcome to our future masters!" With China as our landlord, we will, at least, be eating a hell of a lot better.

NO
SHOES

Also written for a Brit magazine, hence the reference to the loathsome and inexplicably popular Michael Winner—a shit film director turned shiftier food columnist—and the Gordon Ramsay references and the egregious use of Britspeak. I stand by my Sans Footwear Theory, though. Food indeed does taste better with sand between your toes.

THE
LOVE
BOAT

Happier times . . . Written a while back, this was my first assignment for
Gourmet.
They send me on the coolest jobs. This one was a real punisher.

IS
CELEBRITY
KILLING
THE
GREAT
CHEFS?

I think I was perhaps being a little disingenuous in this piece. I'd myself, by this point, become quite accustomed to nice hotels and flying business class. And I was a little harsh on poor Rocco,