Kitchen Confidential (23 page)

And this. . this, dear reader, is my closest and most trusted friend and associate.

THERE WAS A LULL in service the other night, one of those all-too-brief periods of about ten minutes when the floor staff is busy trying to turn tables, and even though the bar is packed three deep with waiting customers and there's a line out the door, the kitchen is quiet. While busboys stripped and reset tables outside the kitchen door, the cooks, runners and sous-chef swilled bottled water, wiped down their stations and bullshitted.

I stood in the doorway to the cellar prep kitchen and smoked a cigarette nervously. We were in that eerie, eye-of-the-hurricane calm. In ten minutes, when the next wave of hungry public had been seated and breaded and watered, there'd be a punishing rush-the slide filling up with orders all at once, the action swinging from station to station, boiling up the line like a Drano enema. First, the salad guy would get hit, then the saute station and finally the grill, until everything came down at once-the whole bunch of us in the cramped kitchen struggling and sweating and cursing to move orders out without falling in the weeds. We had only a few moments of peace to go, and I smoked and fidgeted and half-listened to what my crew was talking about.

The tone of the repartee was familiar, as was the subject matter, a strangely comfortable background music to most of my waking hours over the last two decades or so-and I realized that, my God. . I've been listening to the same conversation for twenty-five years!

Who's the bigger homo? Who takes it in the ass? Who, exactly, at this particular moment, is a pede, a maric6n, a fanocchio, a puta a pato? It's all about dick, you see. It's chupa mis huevos time, time for mama la ping, take it in your culo time, motherfucker, you pinche baboso, crying little woman. And your vierga? It looks like a fucking half-order of merguez-muy, muy, muy chica. . like an insecto.

This is the real international language of cuisine, I realized, watching my French sous-chef, American patissier, Mexican grill, salad and fry guy exchange playful insults with the Bengali runner and the Dominican dishwasher. It's been, for twenty-five years, one long, never-ending game of the dozens, played out in four or five languages.

As an art form, cooktalk is, like haiku or kabuki, defined by established rules, with a rigid, traditional framework in which one may operate. All comments must, out of historical necessity, concern involuntary rectal penetration, penis size, physical flaws or annoying mannerisms or defects.

The rules can be confusing. Cabrone, for instance, which translates roughly to 'Your wife/girlfriend is getting fucked by another guy right now-and you're too much of a pussy to do anything about it' can also mean 'my brother', depending on inflection and tone. The word 'fuck' is used principally as a comma. 'Suck my dick' means 'Hang on a second' or 'Could you please wait a moment?' And 'Get your shit together with your fucking meez, or I come back there and fuck you in the culo' means 'Pardon me, comrade, but I am concerned with your state of readiness for the coming rush. Is your mise-en-place properly restocked, my brother?'

Pinche wey means 'fucking guy', but can also mean 'you adorable scamp' or 'pal'. But if you use the word 'pal'-or worse, 'my friend' in my kitchen, it'll make people paranoid. 'My friend' famously means 'asshole' in the worst and most sincere sense of that word. And start being too nice to a cook on the line and he might think he's getting canned tomorrow. My vato locos are, like most line cooks, practitioners of that centuries-old oral tradition in which we-all of us-try to find new and amusing ways to talk about dick.

Homophobic, you say? Sub-mental? Insensitive to gender preference, and the gorgeous mosaic of an ethnically diverse work force? Gee. . you might be right. Does a locker-room environment like this make it tougher for women, for instance? Yep. Most women, sadly. But what the system seeks, what it requires, is someone, anyone, who can hold up their station, play the game without getting bent out of shape and taking things personally. If you are easily offended by direct aspersions on your lineage, the circumstances of your birth, your sexuality, your appearance, the mention of your parents possibly commingling with livestock, then the world of professional cooking is not for you.

But let's say you do suck dick, you do 'take it in the twins', it's no impediment to survival. No one really cares about that. We're too busy, and too close, and we spend too much time together as an extended, dysfunctional family to care about sex, gender preference, race or national origin. After level of skills, it's how sensitive you are to criticism and perceived insult-and how well you can give it right back-that determines your place in the food chain. You can cover your ears all you want, pretend they're not calling you chino or morena or indio or gordo or cachundo. . but they are. Like it or not, that's your name, your street tag, whether you chose it or not. I've been flaco and cadavro, probably borracho. That's just the way it is. I call down to my prep kitchen on the intercom-calling for butter or more sauce-and that little gangster who keeps my stock rotated and makes that lovely chiffonaded parsley for me is going to reply (after I'm out of hearing), 'Fuuck YOUU!!' before giving me exactly what I asked for. Better I say it first: 'Gimme my fucking mantequilla and sauce, motherfucker. Horita . and. fuuuck YOU!' And I love that little thug, too-the headband-sporting, baggy-pantsed, top button-buttoned, bottom button open, moon boot-shod, half Puerto Rican, half cholo vato loco, with his crude prison-style tats and his butterfly knife tucked in his wristband. I have, on many occasions, pondered adopting him. He's everything I'd want in a son.

Why do I, a fairly educated sort of a swine, take such unseemly pleasure in the guttural utterances of my largely uneducated, foul-mouthed crews? Why, over the years, have my own language skills become so crude and offensive that at family Christmas I have to struggle to not say, 'Pass the fuckin' turkey, cocksucker'? I dunno.

But I do love it.

I wallow in it. Just like all the other sounds in my life: the hiss and clatter and spray of the dishwasher, the sizzle as a fillet of fish hits a hot pan, the loud, yelping noise-almost a shriek-as a glowing sizzle-platter is dropped into a full pot sink, the pounding of the meat mallet on a cote du boeuf, the smack as finished plates hit the 'window'. The goads, curses, insults and taunts of my wildly profane crew are like poetry to me, beautiful at times, each tiny variation on a classic theme like some Beat era jazz riff: Coltrane doing 'My Favorite Things' over and over again, but making it new and different each time. There are, it turns out, a million ways to say 'suck my dick'. Most of the people in my kitchen can do it in Spanish, French, Italian, Arabic, Bengali and English. Like all great performances, it's about timing, tone and delivery-kind of like cooking.

There are also the terms of the trade, the jargon. Every trade has one. You already know some of our terms. '86' is the best known. A dish is 86'ed when there's no more. But you can use the term for someone who's just been fired, or about to be fired, or for a bar customer who's no longer welcome.

One doesn't refer to a table of six or a table of eight; it's a six-top or an eight-top. Two customers at a table are simply a deuce. 'Weeded' means 'in the weeds', 'behind', 'in the shit' or 'dans la merde'-a close cousin and possible outcome of being 'slammed', 'buried' or 'hit'.

A waitron or waitron unit is an old-school '70s, term-gender non-specific-for floor personnel, who are also, at staff mealtime, referred to as the floor or the family or simply scum. And the meal itself becomes-particularly if it's the usual trinity of chicken, pasta and salad-the shaft meal or the gruel. Then there's the equipment. Since the introduction of the Cuisinart, any food processor can be referred to as the Queez; the square and oblong metal sauce containers are six-pans or eight-pans depending on size, and the long, shallow ones hotels. The cook's spoons with holes or slots are, unsurprisingly, female, and the unslotted ones, male.

Meez is mise-en-place: your set up, your station prep, your assembled ingredients and, to some extent, your state of mind. A la minute is made-to-order from start to finish. Order!, when yelled at a cook means 'Make initial preparations' such as searing, half-cooking, setting up for finishing. Fire! means 'Finish cooking' and get ready for 'pick up'. Food ready to be picked up is put in the window or en la ventana-also called the pass, the slide or the shelf. The 'slide' refers to the slotted rack where dupes or tickets containing orders hang. So one could say, 'What orders do I have hanging?' and the reply could be, 'You got two steak' on order for the deuce on five, three soles are fired.' A cook might ask for an all-day, a total number of a particular item both ordered and fired, with temperatures, meaning degrees of doneness. And on the fly means Rush!

A wipe means just what it sounds like: a last-minute plate-cleaning. Marijuana or mota or chronic is chopped parsley. Jiz is any reduced liquid, like demi-glace. When one adds whole butter to jiz, one is mounting, as in monter-au-beurre. Cook well-done translates to 'Burn it!' or 'Murder it!' or 'Kill it!' When one finds oneself waiting too long for a well-done steak to finish cooking, and it's holding up the rest of the order, one can suggest throwing it in the jukebox, or giving it a little radar love in the micro or microwave.

The latex surgical gloves we rarely wear are anal research gloves, and one usually puts them on with some theatrical flourish, snapping and grinning menacingly, accompanied by suggestions to 'Turn left and cough' or 'Grab your ankles, 'cause here comes papi chulo'. Those paper toques are coffee filters or clown hats, the checked pants we all wear, simply checks, our jackets and aprons, whites.

When the boss arrives, it's 'Elvis is in the building' or 'Pssst, desastre es aqui! And the usual nicknames apply to any and all: cooks, waiters, busboys and runners alike. Crude irony abounds. Cachundo, meaning 'piece of ass', might be applied to a particularly homely runner. Caliman, meaning 'strong man', is reserved for a weak cook, Rayo, or 'flash' to a slowpoke; Baboso, or 'drooling idiot' to, well, any drooling idiot. Any blond, well-scrubbed waiter can become 'Opie', 'Richie Cunningham' or 'Doogie Howser Motherfucker'. Stocky bus-boy? Sounds like Burro to me. When referring to themselves collectively, my Mexican carnales like La Raza or La M (pronounced la emaayy), or La Mafia. Externs from culinary school, working for free as a 'learning experience'-which by itself translates to 'lots of work and no money'-are quickly tagged as FNG (Fucking New GUy), or Mel for mal carne (bad meat). Army, short for 'army cook', or the classic but elegant shoe, short for 'shoemaker', are the perennial insults for a lousy or 'slophouse' cook.

There are the usual terms of endearment, all perfectly acceptable in casual conversation between cooks: motherfucker (a compliment), cocksucker, sunofbeech, dipshit, scumbag, scum-sucker, dumb-fuck, rat-bastard, slackjaw, idiota, bruto, animale, asesino, mentiroso, whining little bed-wetter, turd, tortuga, strunze,

salaud, salaupard, chocha podrida, pendejo, silly cunt, seso de polIo, spazz, goofball, bucket-head, chucha, papi-chulo, sweet-cheeks, cupcakes, love-chunks, culero, shit-stain, cum-gargler, and so on. Asshole, strangely, is serious, to be used only when genuinely angry, and any expression involving a person's wife/mother/girlfriend/boyfriend or family member directly (with the notable exception of motherfucker) is strictly off-limits. You may well have seen your grill man's wife jacking off motorists for spare change on West Street-but you don't talk about it. Ever.

A lot of cook talk is transplanted from the fringes of military jargon. One doesn't carry, one humps. To be set up is to be squared away. He sucks it up and endures, digs in for the rush, takes a bad hit if one station is disproportionately busy-is simply fucked or fucked in the ass when things go badly. at which point, one's buddy hopefully steps in and bails you out, covers your ass, saves your bacon.

Aspirins are called crunchies because we eat them like candy. Finger cots are condoms, pronounced with Spanish inflection. The nail on which completed orders are spindled is the spike. Any round metal container placed in a water bath is a bain (pronounced bayn) from bain-marie pronounced baahn maree), or simply a crock. The life we live is la puta vida, 'this bitch of a life', and one might well bemoan a sorry state of affairs with a cry of Porca miseria! (Pig of misery!) or Que dolore!, 'What pain!'

The slide, when full of dupes, is called the board, as in, 'The board is full'. Food currently being loaded by a runner or waiter is My hand, as in 'Where's that fucking steak?' Reply: 'My hand, Chef!' A hot nut is used when an expeditor wants something now: 'I gotta hot nut for that sole on table six'. This is often for a VIP, or 'Very Important Pendejo' or PPX, or soigneee muthafucka-meaning friend of the owner, or the man himself. So make sure to move that food out rush or STAT.

Applying what we've learned to a battlefield situation, one might find oneself saying: 'I gotta hot nut for that six-top on seven, Cabrone! It's been fired for ten fucking minutos, pinche tortuga. What? You don't got yer meez together, asesino? Get that shit in the window, you seso de polIo pinche grill man-throw it in the fucking jukebox if you have to. The rest of the order my hand! And don't forget to give it a wipe and some mota and a squirt of that red jiz on the way out, I got shit hanging here and you're falling in the fucking weeds!'

'Working,' might come the reply. 'I getting buried here. How come the saute no getting slammed like me? I take it in the ass all night! How' bout table ocho? Fire? I can go on eight?' Which might inspire this: 'Eight my hand, baboso! Eight fucking gone! Eight fucking dying en la ventana waiting for Doogie Howser Motherfucker to pick up! You got dead dupes back there, idiota-what the fuck are you doing? You are in the shit! Hey, Rayo! Step in and bail the culero out!'

RUNNERS ARE THE CHEF'S Imperial Guard: half-breeds who dress like waiters, are paid out of front-of-the-house payroll, but whose loyalties lie (ideally) with the chef and the kitchen. Usually ex-busboys or exiled waiters, they must choose sides early, especially as they will be called upon to perform tasks that might be interpreted as contrary to the aims of their former comrades.

I like wide-bodied, highly motivated runners. My runners, particularly in busy pre-theater operations, where the entire dining room has to be served during a thirty-to-forty-minute period, are generally whipped into such a frenzy of enthusiasm, fear and naked aggression that I am constantly being asked to tell them to refrain from bowling over the waiters on their missile-like progress to and from the kitchen. It takes unusual skills to be a runner. Language skills are not important. I want dedication, speed, the ability to gauge quickly what the hell is going on in a busy and hectic situation, pick out the next order from a busy array of outgoing orders, carry multiple plates at one time without dropping them, remember position numbers and donenesses at the table, and prioritize sensibly. Runners usually get a full cut of waiters' tips-with the advantage that they don't have to deal with the general public in order to get paid. Their job is to shuttle food, in the proper order, out of the kitchen and to the customer, and to get back to the kitchen quickly. Their job is also to do the chef's bidding-whatever that might entail. Other, more nebulous tasks might include intelligence gathering, like a forward artillery observer, reporting back to the chef/expeditor such cogent bits of data like the answer to 'What's going on on table one? Are they ready for their food? How's the special going over?' and so on. Fetching drinks for the chef might be a regular duty as well, or taking his jacket to the cleaner's, running to the store for emergency supplies, maintaining a clean 'window' and service area, arranging garnishes, even occasional expediting duties. Most of my runners may not know how to speak English, but they know every dish on my menu, and how to pronounce it.

A runner should be able to pick out a medium-rare steak from a group of other donenesses, read a 'board' as well as the chef, and maintain that rabid, pregame, caged-animal mentality one looks for in a professional fullback. I want my runners hyperventilating like Marines about to take a hill before the rush comes. As far as I'm concerned, I am General Patton when it comes to questions of judgment or strategy. Their mission? Get that food out there and get back here fast. I have my beautiful food dying under the heat lamps? I don't want my runner stopping off to decrumb a table or empty an ashtray.

And it's useful if my wide-bodied runners can be utilized as enforcers, dealing subtly, if forcefully, with interlopers who would invade my domain and impede the serious business of cooking and serving my food. Some 'friend' of the owner, salesman or chatty waiter is blocking the lane in my kitchen? He's gonna get an elbow in the kidney every time one of my chunky runners passes him by. After a few of these 'inadvertent' bumps and elbow-checks, people usually get the message that they're in the way.

A really good runner is a rare and beautiful find. In the best cases, there is a near-telepathic relationship between chef and runner, requiring only a glance or a facial expression to communicate scads of information. A really good runner will read the dupes over the shoulder of his master, between orders, immediately identifying what will likely come next and where it's going. Some diplomatic skills are nice, too, as my cooks are likely to take umbrage if asked to refire a steak or rush an order in a tone of voice they find grating.

A runner who's willing to snitch on his old pals out on the floor is useful as well. I always like to know if there's some pocket of dissidence welling up there. If some jumped-up maitre d' is bad-mouthing me or my specials I'll probably have to deal with it somewhere down the road, so I'd rather know sooner than later. Early warning is always a good thing. Did a busload of tourists just pull up outside the restaurant, all of them planning on jamming a quick three-course meal into their maws before curtain goes up for Miss Saigon? If my runner doesn't tell me, who will? The waiters and hosts will be too busy shoving tables together and arguing about whether to tack 18 or 20 percent on their bill.

Though nominally floor staff, in time, as runners become comfortable with the customs and practices of the kitchen, they begin to acquire the same unique world-view: that xenophobic, slightly paranoid perspective of everything that exists outside the kitchen doors, the same ghoulish sense of humor and suspicion of non-kitchen personnel. I like to encourage this, making sure my runners are fed better, flattering them on occasion, taking an interest in their personal lives and finances. I will, when necessary, put the full weight of my strange and terrible power behind them should they need it. Those part-time actors on the floor are holding out on one of my runners, shorting him on his cut? God help them.

The Night Porter I wish I didn't need a night porter. But I do. Somebody has to clean the restaurant after service, take out the garbage, clean and scrub the insides of the ovens, toss out the dead mice, kill the dying ones, empty the grease traps, hose down the kitchen-all the tasks that no one else in his right mind would do for love or money. The problem is, you have the sort of person who is willing to do this kind of work alone and unsupervised in your restaurant all night long. It's thankless, dirty work-dragging leaking, smelly garbage bags out to the dumpster-and as the night porter is all by himself, he might well feel justified in taking full advantage of certain fringe benefits. He could call his family in Mexico on the house phone. He could eat whatever he finds available and not likely to be missed. He could, perhaps, take a drink from those bottles he's dusting. And best yet, he can keep whatever he finds in the dining room. Let's face it, the guy who sweeps and mops a busy restaurant's dining room after a packed Saturday night is going to find some interesting stuff: wallets, jewelry, credit cards, cellphones, handbags, umbrellas, drugs, cash-these kinds of things are regularly left behind by customers. The night porter is probably coming up with some interesting goodies in the employee locker-room as well, fallen from hastily removed uniforms, so an enterprising fellow can supplement his income in all sorts of ways.

As no one else wants the job, or even wants to stay up all night watching him do the job, or wants to train someone else to do the job, he's got a pretty secure position-even if suspected of occasional petty thievery. Even a known sneak-thief porter is a valued employee, as long as he knows what he can steal and what he can't. There are, I'm sure, many apartments in the outer reaches of Queens that are fully furnished with the glassware, utensils and kitchen equipment of many a restaurant. And a guy who knows where to buy a Green Card and a Social Security number for thirty bucks probably knows what to do with a hot credit card or where to fence a used Burberry raincoat. Nobody minds-much. Besides, the guy is probably stealing less than the bartender.

The Bartender: The Chef's Friend There has long been a happy symbiotic relationship between kitchen and bar. Simply put, the kitchen wants booze, and the bartender wants food. The bartender, seeing himself (rightly) as a more exalted creature than the waiters, would like to eat a little better than the employee gruel hardening under the heat lamps between four and five. By the end of his shift, he's hungry, and chicken legs and day-old pasta don't fit with the bartender's image of himself as raconteur, showman and personality. He wants to be treated as special. And he usually is. The chef wants to drink anything he desires, anytime he wants it, without upper management being fully informed of the extent of his alcoholism or his taste for premium liquors. And the bartender is usually happy to help-if handled correctly.

The bartender, being the guy every employee gripes to at one point or another, is also useful for gathering interesting tidbits of intelligence. He is also privy, at times, to the high-level maneuverings of upper management and ownership. He knows-in dollars-how well or how poorly the place did on a given night, who is getting petty cash payouts, and for what purpose. And he's heard plenty. Everyone, sooner or later, forgets that the bartender is not really like a doctor or a priest and obliged to keep confidences. They forget that yes, he is listening while you bitch about the boss to a friend at the far end of his bar. Hopefully, he's going to tell the chef all about it.

Earlier, I rashly implied that all bartenders are thieves. This is not entirely accurate, though of all restaurant workers, it's the bartender who has the greatest and most varied opportunities for chicanery. The bartenders control the register. They can collude with waiters on dinner checks, they can sell drinks out of their own bottles-I've even heard of a bartender who brought in his own register, ringing a third of the drinks there and simply carrying the whole thing home at night. But the most common bartender hustle is simply the 'buy-back', when he gives out free drinks every second or third round to an appreciative customer. If you're drinking single malt all night long, and only paying for half of them, that's a significant saving. An extra ten-or twenty-dollar tip to the generous barkeep is still a bargain. This kind of freewheeling with the house liquor is also personally inspires that most valued phenomenon in a regular bar folks who will actually follow you wherever you work.

Chefs, naturally, love this kind of bartender, and as anywhere where there isn't this kind of 'trade discount'. After work, posses of chefs and cooks will bounce from bar to bar, on a loose, rotating basis, taking full advantage of the liberal pouring policies of bartenders they know from working with them before. They're careful not to 'burn' their favorites-hitting their bar too hard or too often-which is why they tend to move from place to place. The bartender is repaid when he swings by their restaurants with a dinner date and gets treated like a pasha: free snackies, maybe some free desserts, a visit from the chef, fawning, personal service-in short, the kind of warm welcome and name recognition all of us beaten-down, working-class slobs crave when going out to dinner.