Kitchen Confidential (9 page)

I FIRST MET BIGFOOT while still at CIA. He was then, and remains, a West Village legend, either loved or despised (and frequently both) by generations of bar customers, waiters, bartenders, cooks, chefs and restaurant lifers. I won't give his name, though everyone below 14th Street who reads this will know who I'm talking about. He'll certainly know. He'll call me.

'Hey, Flaco,' he'll say. He calls me Flaco to this day. There was already a Tony working for him when he took me on, and as Bigfoot likes an organized operation, he needed a distinct name for me. 'Flaco, I read your book.

'Yess. .' I'll respond, waiting for the shoe to drop.

'There's a typo on page seventy-seven,' he'll say. 'I don't know a lot about publishing, but . it seems to me that. . maybe someone over there should know how to spell Now, the first thing I heard about Bigfoot when I worked for him weekends back in the '70s was that 'he killed a guy'! Whether this is true or not, I have no idea. Though I like to consider him a friend and mentor, we have never discussed it-and I have heard, over the years, so many versions from so many unreliable people that I can't vouch for the veracity of even that simple statement. But the point is that this was the first thing I heard about him. That he had killed a guy with his bare hands. And Bigfoot, as you might imagine, is big. As he likes to describe himself, 'a big, fat, balding, red-faced Jewboy', which is typically a less than completely fair description. Bigfoot is not an unattractive guy-he looks like an elongated Bruce Willis-but he is over 6 foot 4, an ex-college basketball player, with enormous hands, strong shoulders and arms and deceptively quizzical eyes. He likes to play dumb-loves to play dumb-and like a sunbathing crocodile, when he makes his move, it's way too late.

'You know. 'he'd say, 'I'm not a chef . and I don't know a lot about food, or cooking . so I don't know how to make, say. . guacamole.' Then he'd shred my recipe and any illusions I might have about him not knowing anything about food, breaking down that preparation ingredient by ingredient, gram by gram, and showing how it could be done faster, better, cheaper. Of course he knew how to make guacamole! He knows to the atom how much of each ingredient goes in for how much eventual yield. He knows, where to get the best avocados cheapest, how to ripen them, store them, sell them, merchandize them. He also knows how much fillet you get off every fish that swims, keeps a book on every cook who works for him with their individual yield averages for each and every fish they ever cut for him-so he knows, when Tony puts a knife to, say, a striped bass, exactly how many portions Tony is likely to get compared to the other cooks. Tony averages 62.5 percent usable yield on red snapper, and Mike averages 62.7. . so maybe Mike should cut that fish. As an ex-jock, Bigfoot likes scrupulous stats.

Cunning, manipulative, brilliant, mercurial, physically intimidating-even terrifying-a bully, a yenta, a sadist and a mensch: Bigfoot is all those things. He's also the most stand-up guy I ever worked for. He inspires a strange and consuming loyalty. I try, in my kitchen, to be just like him. I want my cooks to have me inside their heads just like Bigfoot remains in mine. I want them to think that, like Bigfoot, when I look into their eyes, I see right into their very souls.

My first night working for Bigfoot-a man I knew nothing of other than the rumor, and the fact that everyone appeared terrified of him-I knocked a few hundred meals out of his cramped kitchen, finished the evening feeling discouraged, exhausted and resigned never to work in his claustrophobic galley again. But the intercom at the bar rang as I was preparing to slink away, and the bartender gave me a curious look and told me, 'Bigfoot wants you downstairs in the office.' Downstairs, in Bigfoot's lair, the big man looked up at me, complimented me on a fine job, and picking up the phone, summoned a waiter with two snifters of brandy. 'We are pleased with the job you did for us this evening,' he began (Bigfoot loves to use 'we' when talking about the management of his restaurants, though in his domain there is never any 'we'). 'And we'd like you to stay on with us-if that's agreeable. Saturday nights. and Sunday brunches.' I can't adequately describe the gratification I felt at having pleased the imposing Bigfoot. Though we quickly agreed that he'd be paying me only 40 bucks a shift, I felt, going home that night, like a million. Bigfoot, you see, had purchased my soul for a snifter of Spanish brandy. I was not alone in handing over my soul to the man. He retained, among other deeply flawed outcasts who'd inexplicably sworn loyalty oaths and joined up for the duration, a Presidential Guard of blue-uniformed porters whom he had personally trained in the manly arts of refrigeration repair, plumbing, basic metal work, glazing, electrical repair and maintenance. In addition to the usual tasks of cleaning, mopping, toilet-plunging and porter work, Bigfoot porters could lay tile, dig out a foundation, build you a lovely armoire or restore a used reach-in refrigerator to factory specs. Nothing pissed off Bigfoot more than having to pay some high-priced specialist for a job he thought he should be able to do himself.

One day I was sitting at the bar, enjoying an after-work drink, when Bigfoot approached and began giving me an uncharacteristic shoulder massage. I thought this a remarkably kind gesture until he told me that his Presidential Guard was at that moment downstairs tackling the difficult problem of repairing a city-owned sewage pipe. The problem had occurred directly below our walk-in. In typical fashion, Bigfoot had induced his Mexican disciples to hammer straight down through 2 feet of concrete, then, like Colditz escapees, tunnel 25 feet through waste-sodden earth beneath the walk-in, and make a hard-left turn to the site of the break. The big hands gently squeezing my shoulders were trying to determine whether I was thin enough to wriggle around the tight corner-through mud and shit-to help the porters, apparently too well fed to fit.

I couldn't hold it against him for trying. 'That's not my job' was not in the Bigfoot phrase book. Toilet overflows while the chef is at hand? He's going right in with a plunger, and fast. No waiting for the toilet guy-he is the toilet guy now. In Bigfoot's army, you fight for the cause, anywhere you are needed. If it's slow in the kitchen, you pick an old saute pan and scrub the carbon off the bottom. Genteel sensibilities are unwelcome. Lead, follow or get out of the way.

I worked for Bigfoot part-time while I attended CIA, and years later-over ten years later-I washed up on his shores again. It was a low point in my career. I was burnt out from my five-year run in the restaurant netherworld as a not very good chef-in rehab for heroin, still doing cocaine, broke-and reduced to working brunches at a ridiculous mom and pop restaurant in SoHo where they served lion, tiger, hippopotamus braciole and other dead zoo animals. I was determined never to be a chef again, sickened by my last gargantuan operation: a three-kitchen Italian place in the South Street Seaport, where I seemed to have spent most of my time as a convenient hatchet man, waking up every morning with the certain knowledge that today I'd be firing someone again. . I was spent, desperate, unhappy, with a negligible-to-bad rep, in general a Person Not To Be Hired Or Trusted, when Bigfoot called looking for someone to cook lunches at his new saloon/bistro on 10th Street.

We met, and I must have looked like a rhesus monkey-the one in the perils-of-freebase commercial, cornered up a tree, shunned by his monkey pals, exhibiting erratic, paranoid and hostile behavior. I was rail-thin, shaky, and the first thing I did was ask myoId pal Bigfoot if he could lend me 25 bucks until payday. Without hesitation, he reached in his pocket and lent me 200-a tremendous leap of faith on his part. Bigfoot hadn't laid eyes on me in over a decade. Looking at me, and hearing the edited-for-television version of what I'd been up to in recent years, he must have had every reason to believe I'd disappear with the two bills, spend it on crack, and never show up for my first shift. And if he'd given me the 25 instead of 200, that might well have happened. But as so often happens with Bigfoot, his trust was rewarded. I was so shaken by his baseless trust in me-that such a cynical bastard as Bigfoot would make such a gesture-that I determined I'd sooner gnaw my own fingers off, gouge my eyes out with a shellfish fork, rub shit in my hair and run naked down Seventh Avenue than ever betray that trust.

There was order in my life again. In Bigfootland you showed up for work fifteen minutes before your shift. Period. Two minutes late? You lose the shift and are sent home. If you're on the train and it looks like it's running late? You get off the train at the next stop, inform Bigfoot of your pending lateness, and then get back on the next train. It's okay to call Bigfoot and say, 'Bigfoot, I was up all night smoking crack, sticking up liquor stores, drinking blood and worshipping Satan. . I'm going to be a little late.' That's acceptable-once in a very great while. But after showing up late, try saying (even if true), 'Uh . Bigfoot, I was on the way to work and the President's limo crashed right next to me . and I had to pull him out of the car, give him mouth-to-mouth . and like I saved the leader of the free world, man!' You, my friend, are fired.

I fondly recall how once, after a long-time waitress arrived back late from vacation, claiming her flight arrived fifteen minutes after scheduled time, Bigfoot called the airport to check her story and then fired her for lying. Treating Bigfoot like an idiot was always a big mistake. He lived for that. In the man's three or so decades in the life, he'd seen and heard every scam, every bullshit story, every trick, deception, ploy and gag that ever existed or that a human mind could conceive-and was always happy to prove that to anyone foolish enough to try. If Bigfoot asked you a question, and you didn't know the answer, he always preferred an 'I dunno' to a long-winded series of qualified statements, speculation and half-truths. You kept Big-foot informed of your movements. He would never allow himself to fall victim to 'manager's syndrome'-constantly watching the clock, wondering if and when his employees were going to show up. Where Bigfoot ruled, he knew when they were showing up:

fifteen minutes before start of shift. That's when.

Bigfoot understood-as I came to understand-that character is far more important than skills or employment history. And he recognized character-good and bad-brilliantly. He understood, and taught me, that a guy who shows up every day on time, never calls in sick, and does what he said he was going to do, is less likely to fuck you in the end than a guy who has an incredible resume but is less than reliable about arrival time. Skills can be taught. Character you either have or don't have. Bigfoot understood that there are two types of people in the world: those who do what they say they're going to do-and everyone else. He'd lift ex-junkie sleazeballs out of the gutter and turn them into trusted managers, guys who'd kill themselves rather than misuse one thin dime of Bigfoot receipts. He'd get Mexicans right off the boat, turn them into solid citizens with immigration lawyers, nice incomes and steady employment. But if Bigfoot calls them at four in the morning, wanting them to put in a rooftop patio, they'd better be prepared to rollout of bed and get busy quarrying limestone. Purveyors hated his guts. They'd peel the labels off the cartons they delivered, out of fear that Bigfoot would simply cut out the middleman and order directly from the source. He was an expert in equipment. I recall him getting a leasing company to guarantee a certain number of cubic feet of ice production from a machine he was contracting for. Two minutes after signing, he had his Presidential Guard measuring and weighing ice. When it turned out that the machine fell short by a few pounds or cubic feet, Bigfoot found himself with two new ice machines for the price of one. He loved playing purveyors against each other, driving the price down. Every once in a while, if a meat company, say, promised him the lowest price they could give, he'd have someone call them up, pretending to be their largest account-a 300-seat steakhouse, for instance-and ask for a copy of their last invoice, as theirs had gone missing; could they please fax another one? God help the poor meat guys if Peter Luger was paying two cents less a pound than Bigfoot was.

Nothing made him happier than discovering fraud or deception or even a simple white lie. Once, after years of ordering frozen BeeGee shrimp from a reputable seafood purveyor, Big-foot discovered a hastily applied label indicating net weight. When it peeled off, he realized the company had, for years, been printing their own fake labels, heat-sealing them over the actual weight printed on the box, and cheating him out of a few ounces of shrimp every 5 pounds. Next time the company sent Bigfoot a bill, he simply sent them a Polaroid photo of the incriminating box, label peeling off to reveal actual weight. And the next time too. And for almost a year after, Bigfoot didn't pay for fish. He never discussed it with the company-and they never said a word. They just kept sending him free fish until they figured all that retroactive skim was paid back. When Bigfoot finally stopped ordering altogether they didn't wonder why.

Bigfoot paid his purveyors on time-religiously-a very unusual thing to do in a business where a restaurateur's real partners, more often than not, are the suppliers who send him food and material on credit. Given this, pity the poor soul who sent Bigfoot a second-best piece of swordfish.

'What is it?' he'd tell them on the phone, playing the confused dumbo for a while before the metal jaws clamped shut. 'I don't pay quickly enough to get the good stuff? Is there something wrong with my business that you want to send me garbage? Or is it that I'm stupid? Maybe my stupidity makes you figure, well . that I want the kind of shit you send me. Or maybe . I am stupid. maybe I can't recognize fresh fish . maybe this smelly piece of shit is really fresh. . and I just. . can't recognize it. Maybe I've encouraged you somehow . to inconvenience me and my customers. Maybe you could explain to me . because I'm having a problem. . you know figuring it out .

. because I'm so stupid. Or maybe . maybe you're just really really rich guys and you don't need my business at all. Things are going so well for you .