Kitchen Confidential (19 page)

The last cook to arrive is our French fry guy. This is a full-time job at Les HaIles, where we are justifiably famous for our frites. Miguel, who looks like a direct descendant of some Aztec king, spends his entire day doing nothing but peeling potatoes, cutting potatoes, blanching potatoes, and then, during service, dropping them into 375-degree peanut oil, tossing them with salt, and stacking the sizzling hot spuds onto plates with his bare hands. I've had to do this a few times, and it requires serious calluses.

I hold the waiters' meeting and tasting at eleven-thirty. The new waiter doesn't know what prosciutto is, and my heart sinks. I run down the specials, speaking slowly and enunciating each syllable as best I can for the slower, stupider ones. The soup is soupe de poisson with rouille-that's a garlic pepper mayonnaise garnish, for the newbies. Pasta is linguine with roasted vegetables, garlic, baby artichokes, basil and extra virgin olive oil. The whole roasted fish of the day is black sea bass-that's not striped bass, for our slower students-and crusted with sel de Bretagne. The fish of the day is grilled tuna livornaise, asparagus and roasted potatoes. Does anyone need 'livornaise' explained . again? The meat special is roast pheasant with port wine sauce and braised red cabbage. There are faux filets for two available (that's the big, hip-end piece off the sirloin, strip-carved tableside for fifty bucks) . Dessert special is tarte Tatin. It's not too bad a line-up on the floor today: Doogie Howser, 'Morgan the part-time underwear model,' Ken the veteran (who has a maniacal laugh you can hear out on the street; he's everyone's first choice for Waiter Most Likely to Snap, Shave His Head, Climb a Tower and Start Shooting Strangers); and some new waiter, the one who doesn't know what prosciutto is. I haven't bothered to learn his name, as I suspect he will not remain with us for long. There are two busboys, a taciturn workaholic from Portugal and a lazy-ass Bengali; they should balance out, as usual.

My runner today is the awesome Mohammed, nicknamed Cachundo by the kitchen-the best we have. I'm lucky to have him, as it looks like it's going to be busy, and the other runner, let's call him Osman, tends to lose it when things get hectic and has an annoyingly sibilant way of pronouncing the letter's', making his calls for 'musssselss' 'meat sspesssiall' and 'Calvesss' leever particularly painful to hear when you're under fire. Cachundo immediately begins picking chervil tops, arranging garnishes, filling small crocks with grated Parmesan, harissa sauce, rosemary and thyme, gaufrette potato chips, and picking out my favorite saucing spoons from the silver bins.

At various times during my labors, I manage to conduct two clandestine meetings out on the street: agent reports on the activities of the previous night (after my departure). I'm investigating the grill man incident from the manager's log. Nothing earth-shaking. I have another brief encounter near the liquor room with someone who gives me the latest gossip from our Miami store and a rundown of latest developments at Le Marais, our sister restaurant on 47th Street, as well as some speculation about imminent moves by upper management and ownership. Again, nothing I don't know or assume already. I like my bosses-and think they like me-so it's really only curiosity, not paranoia, that keeps me collecting and analyzing information from our distant outposts and conference rooms. Also, I like to hear different accounts of the same incident from different sources. It adds perspective and reveals, sometimes, what a particular source is leaving out, or skewing to leave a particular impression, making me wonder: Why? I like to tell selected people things in supposed confidence a few times a week, for fun. Later, when it comes back to me it provides an interesting road map of data transfer, a barium meal, revealing who squeals and to whom. There are a number of interesting variations on this practice-feeding false information to a known loudmouth, for instance, with a particular target in mind. A lot of what I hear is utterly useless, untrue and uninteresting. But I like to keep myself informed. You never know what might prove useful later.

Twelve noon and already customers are pouring in. I get a quick kick in the crotch right away: an order for porc mignon, two boudins, a liver and a pheasant all on one table. The boudins take the longest, so they have to go in the oven right away. First, I prick their skins with a cocktail fork so they don't explode, grab a fistful of caramelized apple sections and throw them in a saute pan with some whole butter for finishing later. I heat a pan with butter and oil for the pork, fling a thick slab of calves' liver into a pan of flour after salting and peppering it, heat another saute pan with butter and oil for that. While the pans are heating, I take half a pheasant off the bone and lay it on a sizzle-platter for the oven, spinning around to fill a small saucepan with the port sauce to reduce. Pans ready, I sear the pork, saute the liver-the pork goes straight into the oven on another sizzler-the hot pan I degrease, deglaze with wine and stock, add pork sauce, a few garlic confit, then put aside to finish reducing and mounting later. The liver half-cooked, I put aside on another sizzler. I saute some chopped shallots, deglaze the pan with red wine vinegar, give it a shot of demi-glace, season it and put that aside too. An order for mussels comes in, with a breast of duck order right after. I throw on another pan for the duck, load a cold pan with mussels, tomato coulis, garlic, shallots, white wine and seasoning. The mussels will get cooked a la minute and finished with butter and parsley.

More orders come in. It's getting to be full-tilt boogie time: another pheasant, more pork, another liver, and ouch! a navarin-a one-pot wonder but requiring a lot of digging around in my 192 low-boy for all the garnishes. The key to staying ahead on a busy station is moving on a dish as soon as its name is out of Cachundo's mouth-setting up the pan, doing the pre-searing, getting it into the oven quickly, making the initial moves-so that later, when the whole board is fluttering with dupes, I can still tell what I have working and what I have waiting without having to read the actual tickets again.

'Ready on twelve!' says Carlos, who's already got a load of steaks and chops and a few tunas coming up. He wants to know if I'm close on my end. 'Let's go on twelve!' I say. Miguel starts dunking spuds. I call for mashed potatoes for the boudins from Omar, give the apples a few tosses over flame, heat and mount my liver sauce, pull the pork mignons from the oven and clip off the strings that hold them together, heat potatoes and veg for the pheasant, squeeze the sauce for the pheasant between pots on to a back burner, move the mussels off the heat and into a ready bowl, calling, 'Papas fritas para conchas negras' to Miguel as I spin and bend to check my duck breasts. Sauce pot with duck sauce and quince, I'll heat those right in the sauce, no room now, the orders are really coming in, the printer chattering away nonstop. I'm sneaking peeks at the dupes while they're still coming off the printer, trying to pick out what I'll be needing, like a base runner stealing signals. The intercom buzzes and I pick up, annoyed.

'Line one for the chef,' says the hostess.

I push the blinking green light. It's a salesman, wanting to sell me smoked fish. I answer all sweetness and light, lulling him into the bear trap in the Bigfoot style: 'So let me get this straight,' I say, after he's jabbered away about his full line of delicacies, me trying to sound a little slow and confused, 'you want to sell me food, right?' 'Yes!' comes the reply, the salesman sounding encouraged by my interest and apparent stupidity. 'And in general, you'd say,' I continue, 'you have like, a lot of restaurant accounts-in fact, you'd probably say that, like, you are in the business of servicing . and chefs in particular?' 'Oh, yes! says the witless salesman, litany of the usual prestigious accounts, the names of other chefs fine smoked sturgeon, salmon, trout and fish eggs. I have had enough off cold. 'So. . WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING CALLING ME IN THE restaurants beginning a who buy his and cut him MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING LUNCH RUSH?!' I scream into the phone, smashing it abruptly into the cradle.

I catch the duck just in time, roll it over skin-side down again and pull it out of the oven. I've got a filet poivre on order-not on the regular lunch menu-but it's a steady customer, says Cachundo, and I'm set up for it anyway, so I start searing one off. Another pasta. I pour extra virgin into a pan and saute some paper-thin garlic slices with some crushed red pepper, add the artichoke hearts, roasted vegetables, some olives. I don't know why, but I always start humming Tony Bennett or Dino-today it's 'Ain't That a Kick in the Head'-when I'm cooking pasta. I like cooking pasta. Maybe it's that I always wanted to be Italian American in some dark part of my soul; maybe I get off on that final squirt of emulsifying extra virgin, just after the basil goes in, I don't know. More porc mignons, the runner calls down to Janine, who's making clafoutis batter at her work station in the cellar, and she comes running up to plate desserts .

We're doing well, so far. I'm keeping up with the grill, which is a faster station (unless a table orders a cote du boeuf or a faux filet for two or a whole roasted fish, which slows the order down). Omar is up to date with the appetizers, and I'm actually feeling pretty good, right in the zone. No matter what comes in, or how much of it, my hands are landing in the right places, my moves are still sharp and my station still looks clean and organized. I'm feeling fine, putting a little English on the plates when I spin them into the window, exchanging cracks with Carlos, finding time to chide Doogie Howser for slipping that filet poivre by me without checking first.

'Doogie, you syphilitic, whitebread, mayonnaise-eating, Jimmy Sear-ass wannabe-next time you slip a special order in without checking with me first? Me and Carlos gonna punch two holes in your neck and bump dicks in the middle!' Doogie cringes, laughs nervously and scurries out on to the floor, trailing muttered apologies.

'Chef,' says Omar, looking guilty, 'no mas tomates . My jaw drops, and I see white. I ordered tomatoes. I had thought that tomatoes had arrived-then remember I broke up the order between three companies. I call Segundo on the intercom, tell him to come up horita. I'm also furious with Omar for waiting until we're out of tomatoes to tell me there are no more.

'What the fuck is going on?' I ask Segundo, who slouches in the doorway like a convict in the exercise yard. 'No Baldor,' he says, causing me to erupt in a blind, smoking rage. Baldor, though a superb produce purveyor, has been late twice in recent weeks, prompting me to make some very uncivil telephone calls to their people-and worse, forcing me to do business with another, lesser company until they got the message and began delivering earlier. Now, with no tomatoes, and no delivery, and the rush building, I'm furious. I call Baldor and start screaming right away: 'What kind of glue-sniffing, crackhead mesomorphs you got working for you? You don't have an order for me? What?! I called the shit in myself. . I spoke to a human! I didn't even leave it on the tape! And you're telling me you don't have my order? I got three fucking produce companies!

THREE! AND IT'S ALWAYS YOU THAT FUCKS ME IN THE ASS!' I hang up, pull a few pans off the flame, load up some more mussels, sauce a duck, arrange a few pheasants, and check my clipboard. I'm in the middle of telling Cachundo to run across the street to Park Bistro and ask the chef there if we can borrow some tomatoes when I see, from my neat columns of checked-off items on my clipboard, that in fact I ordered the tomatoes from another company, that I didn't order anything from Baldor. I have no time to feel bad about my mistake-that'll come later. After screaming at the blameless Baldor, my anger is gone, so when I call the guilty company, I can barely summon a serious tone. It turns out that my order has been routed to another restaurant-Layla, instead of Les HaIles. I make a mental note to refer to my restaurant as 'Less Halluss' in the future. The dispatcher at the guilty company apologizes for the mix-up, promises my order within the hour and gives me a hundred dollars in credit.

More ducks, more pheasant, lots of mussels, the relentless tidal wave of pork mignons . finally lunch begins to wind down. I enjoy a cigarette in the stairwell while Carlos continues drilling out steaks, chops and paillards, nothing for my station. D'Artagnan arrives, my specialty purveyor, bearing foie gras, duck legs, and an unexpected treat-a 200-pound free-range pig, whole, which Jose, one of my masters, has ordered for use in pates and tete du pore by the charcutier. Now, I can lift a 200-pound, living breathing human-for a few seconds anyway-but dragging 200 pounds of ungainly dead weight by the legs through the restaurant and down the stairs to the boucherie requires four strong men. The boucher, charcutier, dishwasher and I wrestle the beast down the stairs, its head bouncing gruesomely on each step. I now know what it must be like to dispose of a body, I mutter. I do not envy the Gambino crime family-this is work!

The general manager sits down to lunch with the hostess. Two calamari, no oil, no garlic, a fish special no sauce, a celeri remoulade. Frank, my new French sous-chef, arrives. I have a list for him: dinner specials, mise-en-place, things to do, things to look out for. When he takes over the saute station later, relieving me, I am grateful. . my knees are hurting and the familiar pain in my feet is worse than usual.

Jose, my boss, stops by, wanting to take me to the Green-market. I quickly tie up a few loose ends, make sure Frank is briefed, and walk down to the market-about eleven blocks. We fondle, sniff, squeeze and rummage through produce for a while, returning to the restaurant an hour later with pears, lemon verbena, some baby fennel, fingerling potatoes and some turnips with greens, for all of which I'll have to come up with specials. The joke around Les HaIles is that every time Jose walks in the door, the food cost climbs 2 percent. The man would have me mount all my sauces with Normandy butter and foie gras, garnish everything with fresh truffles if I didn't squawk-but he loves food, a good thing in an owner. Jose gets a dreamy look on his face when he hears about black truffles coming into season, or the first softshell crabs of the season, even at sixty dollars (!) a dozen, or anything seasonal, high-quality, classic French, gamey, or difficult to find. He wants to be the first to sell it, whatever it costs. It's a strategy that seems to be working. The backbone of the business may be steak-frites but our regulars are often pleasantly surprised to find 15 dollars-worth of exotic food on a plate they're only paying 20 for, and little extras like that help develop a loyal clientele. Life with Jose means frequent surprise deliveries of very perishable and very expensive items, which I have to scramble to find outlets for, but what chef doesn't enjoy a load of Dover sole, still dripping with channel water and twisted with rigor, falling into his clutches? Okay, my grill man won't be too thrilled-he's the guy who'll have to skin and bone and reassemble them to order-but that's just tough.