Kitchen Confidential (26 page)

THE LIFE OF BRYAN THERE ARE BETTER CHEFS in the world. One comes reluctantly, yet undeniably, to that conclusion early in one's career. There's always some old master or new hotshot who's doing things with food you never would have thought of-if they hadn't done it first. And of course, in the thin air at the peak of the culinary Mount Olympus, where the three- and four-star demi-gods dwell-guys like Eric Ripert, Grey Kunz, Bouley, Palladin, Keller, you know the names, I don't have to tell you-they have the added advantage of not only being geniuses or near-geniuses, but they tend to command crews that are larger, better trained, and more single-minded in their zeal. This didn't just happen, mind you. These guys don't get hundreds of hungry young culinarians banging on their kitchen doors, begging for the privilege of mopping their brows and peeling their shallots just because they have their names stitched on their jackets. Nobody is building million-dollar kitchen facilities around their chef, shelling out for combi-steamers, induction burners, fine china, Jade ranges, crystal snifters and fistfuls of white truffles because the guy can sling steaks faster than the other guy, or because he has a cute accent. Cream rises. Excellence does have its rewards. For every schlockmeister with a catch-phrase and his own line of prepared seasonings who manages to hold American television audiences enthralled, there are scores more who manage to show up at work every day in a real kitchen and produce brilliantly executed, innovatively presented, top-quality food. I am, naturally, pissed off by the former, and hugely impressed by the latter.

But for my money, the guy I know who embodies the culinary ideal? A no-bullshit, no muss, no fuss, old-school ass-kicking cook of the first order? That would have to be Scott Bryan, down the street at Veritas. I'd been hearing about this guy for years-significantly, from other chefs and cooks.

'Scott says this. .' and 'Scott says that. .' and 'Scott doesn't make veal stock; he's roasting chicken bones! Buys fresh killed. . in, like, Chinatown! '

Someone would mention his name in passing, and other chefs would get this curious expression on their faces, like the runner of Satchel Paige's admonition: 'Don't look back-someone might be gaining on you.' They'd look worried, as if, examining their own hearts and souls and abilities, they were aware that not only couldn't they do what Scott does, but they wouldn't.

He was a cult figure, it seemed, among cooks of my acquaintance. Over time, I developed an idea of him as some sort of hair-shirt ascetic, a mad monk, a publicity-shy perfectionist who'd rather do no business at all-die in obscurity-than ever serve a bad meal.

The whole world of cooking is not my world, contrary to what impression I might have given you in the preceding pages. Truth be told, I bring a lot of it with me. Hang out in the Veritas kitchen, take a hard look at Scott Bryan's operation, and you will find that everything I've told you so far is wrong, that all my sweeping generalities, rules of thumb, preconceptions and general principles are utter bullshit.

In my kitchens, I'm in charge, it's always my ship, and the tenor, tone and hierarchy-even the background music-are largely my doing. A chef who plays old Sex Pistols songs while he breaks down chickens for coq au vin is sending a message to his crew, regardless of his adherence to any Escoffier era merit system.

A guy who employs, year after year, a sous-chef like Steven Tempel is clearly not Robuchon-or likely to emulate his successes. It is no coincidence that all my kitchens over time come to resemble one another and are reminiscent of the kitchens I grew up in: noisy, debauched and overloaded with faux testosterone-an effective kitchen, but a family affair, and a dysfunctional one, at that. I coddle my hooligans when I'm not bullying them. I'm visibly charmed by their extra-curricular excesses and their anti-social tendencies. My love for chaos, conspiracy and the dark side of human nature colors the behavior of my charges, most of whom are already living near the fringes of acceptable conduct.

So, there are different kinds of kitchens than the kinds I run. Not all kitchens are the press-gang-crewed pressure cookers I'm used to. There are islands of reason and calm, where the pace is steady, where quality always takes precedence over the demands of volume, and where it's not always about dick dick dick.

As we close in on hotel-motel time, let's compare and contrast. Let's take a look at a three-star chef who runs a very different kind of kitchen than mine, who makes food at a higher level, has had a nearly unblemished track record of working with the best in the business, a guy who has always kept his eye on the ball-which is to say, the food. If I suffer by comparison, so be it. I think I said earlier that I was going to tell you the truth. This is part of it.

Scott Bryan, like me, happily refers to himself as a 'marginal' character. When he says 'marginal', you can hear his hometown of Brookline, Massachusetts, in his voice, the same accent you hear in body shops and Irish bars in 'Woostah',

'New Bedfahd,' 'Glahsta,' and Framingham. Scott uses the term 'dude' a lot, though, which leads one to believe there might be surf in Boston. When I dropped by to see him recently, passing first through his stylishly sparse sixty-five-seat dining room, past his four sommeliers-count them, four-through a kitchen staffed by serious-looking young Americans in buttoned-up Bragard jackets with the Veritas logo stitched on their breasts and chefwear MC Hammer pants, down a flight of stairs, I found him wrapping a howitzer-sized log of foie gras in cheesecloth. He was wearing a short-sleeved dishwasher shirt, snaps done up to the collar, Alice In Chains blaring in the background. I took inordinate comfort from this, thinking, 'I do that! Maybe we're not so different!' But, of course, we are very different, as you shall see.

Scott grew up in what he calls a 'housing development-a project, really', unlike me, who grew up in a leafy green wonderland of brick colonial homes, distant lawn-mowers, backyard croquet games, gurgling goldfish ponds and Cheeveresque cocktail parties. Scott went to Brookline High, a public school where the emphasis seems to have been on technical skills; they had a culinary program and a restaurant open to the public. I went to private school, a tweedy institution where kids wore Brooks Brothers jackets with the school seal and Latin motto (Veritas fortissimo) on the breast pocket. Scott learned early that he might have to actually work for a living, whereas I, a product of the New Frontier and Great Society, honestly believed that the world pretty much owed me a living-all I had to do was wait around in order to live better than my parents. At an age when I was helping to rack up my friends' parents' expensive automobiles and puking up Boone's Farm on Persian carpets, Scott was already working-for Henry Kinison at the Brookline High restaurant. He was doing it for money. Junior year, he took a job in a 'Hungarian Continental' joint, and as a fishmonger at Boston's Legal Seafood. One worked, and that was it. Scott, though still unmoved by the glories of food, found that he preferred cooking to his other imagined career option: electrical engineer or electrician. His early mentor, Kinison, urged him to attend Johnson and Wales' culinary program in Providence, and along the lines of 'Why not?' he went along.

He hated it.

While studying, he began working for Bob Kinkaid at the much-vaunted Harvest restaurant in Cambridge, and if there is a single epiphany in Scott Bryan's life, a single moment when he decided what it was he was going to do for the rest of his life, it was there-when he first tasted Kinkaid's lobster salad with foie gras and truffle vinaigrette. His reaction was immediate. He decided to leave Johnson and W ales.

'I'm not going back,' he said, abandoning culinary school for life in the real world.

He was good. He had to be. Kinkaid clearly knew he was on to something. With Scott barely out of high school, Kinkaid packed him off to France with the one-word instruction: 'Eat!'

Like me, Scott is conflicted on the issue of the French. We like to minimize their importance, make fun of their idiosyncrasies. 'It's a different system over there,' he said, talking about the work habits of the surrender-monkey.

'You start young. For the first ten years of your career, you get your ass kicked. They work you like a dog. So, when you finally get to be a sous-chef, or a chef, your working life is pretty much over. You walk around and point. ' Putting a last twist on his foie gras torpedo, he shrugged. 'Socialism, man. It's not good for cooks.'

But when he sees bad technique, technique that's not French, it's torture. As Scott well knows-and would be the first to admit-as soon as you pick up a chef's knife and approach food, you're already in debt to the French. Talking about one of the lowest points in his career, a kitchen in California, he described going home every night 'ashamed, and a little bit angry', because 'the technique was bad. . it wasn't French!' They may owe us a big one for Omaha Beach, but let's face it, without my stinky ancestors we'd still be eating ham steak with pineapple ring. Scott knows this better than anybody.

Back from France, he rejoined Kinkaid, opening 21 Federal with him on Nantucket. Now here, exactly, is where our career paths divide. Scott had some chops now. He was good on the line. He had a resume, some notable names and recommendations, working experience, exposure to France and French food.

So did I, at that point in my career. I was good! I'd been to France. I had a CIA diploma-at a time when that was a pretty rare and impressive credential. So, what the hell happened? How come I'm not a three-star chef? Why don't I have four sommeliers?

Well, there are lots of reasons, but one reason is that I went for the money. The first chef's job that came along I grabbed. And the one after that and the one after that. Used to a certain quality of life-as divorcees like to call it, living in the style to which I'd grown accustomed-I was unwilling to take a step back and maybe learn a thing or two.

Scott was smarter and more serious. He was more single-minded about what he wanted to do, and how well he wanted to do it. He began a sort of wandering apprenticeship, sensibly designed to build experience over a bank account. He came to New York and went to work for Brendan Walsh.

Brendan Walsh and Arizona 206 are names that seem to pop up in the resumes of almost every '80s-era American chef. John Tesar, Kerry Heffernan, Pat Williams, Jeff Kent, Maurice Rodriguez, Herb Wilson, Donnie Masterton-everyone, it seemed passed through those kitchen doors at some point in their early careers. And for Scott, it was his version of 'the happy time', a period where 'everyone knew what we were doing was important. It was a team of cooks.' From this early petri-dish of culinary talent, Scott moved onwards and upwards, parlaying one once-in-a-lifetime gig into another, racking up a box score of famous chefs and heavyweight talents that would make any ambitious young cookie jerk to attention just at the mention of their names.

The Gotham with Alfred Portale. Back with Kinkaid at 21 Federal in DC. Square One in California. Back to New York with David Bouley. A Hamptons interlude with Jimmy Sears. (Pause for breath here.) Sous-chef for Eric Ripert at Le Bernardin ( !)

As if his career wasn't going swimmingly enough for a guy who only a few years earlier had been considering a life installing light sockets and fuse-boxes, he then opened Lespinasse with Grey Kunz.

And if this isn't rich enough meal for you, to round out his skills and ensure his usefulness as an all-around major league player, he crossed the line from a la carte cuisine to pastry-a nearly unthinkable act-and went to work with the awesome tiberpatissier, Richard Leach, at Mondrian.

See what I mean? I would never have done that.

If I had a well-disposed Eric Ripert and Grey Kunz in my background, I'd be endorsing blenders, committing unnatural acts in the pool near the Vegas outpost of my not-very-good-anymore restaurant chain, and pickling my liver in Louis Treize. At that point in my career, I wouldn't be shutting down the whole gravy train so I could learn pastry! I'd be mugging it up on the Food Network, schmoozing at the Beard Awards dinner, and contemplating a future where I'd never have to get out of my pajamas! Just goes to show you.

Scott hates all that stuff. His partner, Gino Diaferia, says, 'I have to drag him kicking and screaming,' to do a guest shot on Letterman, appear on the Food Network, or do the dog and pony act at Beard House. 'I told him, he could get four stars someday' he says. 'He doesn't want it!' Gino shakes his head and smiles. 'He says he won't play with his food that much.'

Is it all about the food with this guy? I don't know. Scott likes to refer to himself as a cook, and when he says, about another chef, 'He's a good cook,' it's the highest praise he can offer.

Sopping up free martinis at the Veritas bar, I asked Gino whether he thought Scott was in it for the food or for the lifestyle. It gave him pause.

'I don't know.' He seemed clearly troubled by the question. 'I mean, I think he likes the lifestyle. A guy who comes in and hangs around on his day off, you know he's got to like the lifestyle. And he loves going out after work with cooks and chefs for drinks. . you know.' He paused and thought about the question again. 'But.

Gino is another example of 'everything I just told you is wrong'. Here's a guy who was in the home fuel oil business, with zero restaurant experience, who became partners with a couple of guys for a lark at the then vegetarian Chelsea bistro, Luma. When things began to lose their charm, he bought out the partners and began spending all his time at the restaurant, learning the business from the ground up. 'I was supposed to be a silent partner!' Looking around for a chef, a waiter who had worked for fishmongers-to-the-stars, Wild Edibles, told him, Scott Bryan is available.'

'I met with him at a coffee shop. He looked at the menu and said, “No vegetarian. That's gotta go.” I said, “Fine!” Scott said maybe he'd consult.'

'He came in, started working, changing things, months go by. . six months! I look at my wife and she looks at me: “Is he consulting? Is he staying?” I kept asking him: “Scott, can we make a deal?” Finally, one day he says, “Well . I think I will stay.'”