Mission: Cook! (29 page)

I called security and rang the police. I gave what I thought were cracking
good descriptions of the desperadoes, gave them my version of events, and that was that, or so I thought.

The next morning, whilst I was getting ready in my apartment in the hotel for my first official day on duty, I received a call from security. They wanted to meet me right away in the chef's office. I rushed to get ready. Perhaps the criminals had already been caught and justice was about to be done! Moments later, I entered the office and was confronted by five grim-looking local policemen and a frightened-looking security staff.

“Who's been shot?” I asked, with my most authentic, “00” agent dry wit. The atmosphere in the room became even colder.

One of the officers strode forward and told me that they were there on a report that I was keeping a firearm. This was a serious transgression, and suddenly I flushed with anger and a wave of fear. I had been on the island barely a week and I was already in a confrontation with the local constabulary. They had orders to search my room, and security called someone from management and housekeeping to open it up for them.

This was bad. My mind was racing. There was a hotel maid who had complete access to my room. She could have planted the Crown Jewels in my apartment and I'd have never known about it. In my imagination, betting was running ten to the dozen that she had stashed an Uzi under my mattress.

They didn't exactly toss the room. After a cursory look around, they seemed satisfied that I wasn't hiding an arsenal and let me off with a warning and a look that said, “Keep your nose clean and we won't have any more trouble, mon.”

Shaken, but not stirred, I made my way back to the kitchens. To make a long story a bit shorter, I soon found out through the grapevine that none other than Mr. Enormous had dropped the dime on me. Turns out he was the black market “Big Mack Daddy” of the hotel and was sending me a signal that nothing, but nothing, got done behind the scenes at the Grand without his say-so.

Over the course of my time in Jamaica, I learned to get along well enough with Mr. E, who always greeted me with the same warm smile. We eventually established a policy of mutual respect, based on the concept of laissez-faire, or live and let live, which lasted without incident as long as his extracurricular activities no longer ate into the proper operation of my kitchens. These kinds of situations are sometimes the price you have to pay just to get in the front door; I hadn't yet cooked so much as a piece of toast. Eventually I was able to team up with the food and beverage director, Anthony Corbin, and bring those great ideas of mine into reality. It just took a lot longer than either of us had imagined. Perseverance, my friends, always perseverance.

Place
the chicken in the water with the whole vegetables (celery, carrots, onion, and parsley) and simmer for 1 hour to make the broth.

Cook the barley until tender and set aside.

Remove the chicken to a utility platter or bowl to let it cool. Strain the broth into another pot, and retrieve any remaining chicken pieces and vegetable pieces from the strainer to reserve for the soup.

Heat the butter in a pan and sauté the diced celery, diced carrots, and diced onions gently to make a mirepoix. Add this mirepoix to the pot of broth and simmer for 30 minutes. Whilst this is simmering, pick the meat from the nowcool chicken. The chicken and the whole vegetables should be cut into bitesized pieces for the soup.

Add the bay leaves, chopped thyme, chopped parsley, chopped garlic, and sliced mushrooms to the pot of broth. Let simmer for 30 minutes more. Remove the bay leaves, add the cut-up chicken and vegetables and the precooked barley, and serve. Season with salt and pepper as needed.

M
Y ENORMOUS ADVENTURE” WAS ONE OF THE FIRST LESSONS I LEARNED
out in the real world in the fine art of survival skills that have little or nothing to do with cooking. The better acquainted you are with your own strengths and weaknesses, the more you can work to improve on them, to maximize the former and to minimize or eliminate the negative impact of the latter. When I first entered the service and began my early military training, I worked hard and excelled. I was physically active and mentally disciplined; I finished most of the tasks I was assigned easily and usually ahead of my fellow recruits; my bunk was neater and cleaner, my shoes were shinier. Anytime I felt that I was ahead of the curve, I would cruise to the finish line and somewhat arrogantly wait for my fellows to catch up. I was soon informed by my superiors that there was a good chance I wasn't going to make the cut and the likelihood that I would have
to repeat
the training.

I was stunned and angry. I thought that I was better than most of the men I was training with. What was the meaning of all this? The answer was as clear to them, if not readily to me, as if it had been printed in ink across my forehead: I was not a team player. Sure, you could bounce a satellite transmission off the reflective surface of my shoes, but, they wanted to know, how about the guys who might be falling behind? How was I going to get
them
up to that level?

My first response, which I was savvy enough to keep to myself, was “It's not my problem.” True enough maybe, but I could also see that calculation wasn't going to get me over in their eyes. My second response was to attack the problem by personally polishing every pair of shoes in the barracks to a high-gloss shine. That made me temporarily popular enough with my bunkmates, but my superiors just rolled their eyes. It took me a while, but eventually I saw what they were aiming at. They saw a potential in me, a leadership potential, and it was their job to nurture and develop it, so that it could be exploited in Her Majesty's service, but also to ensure my development, ideally, into an officer and a gentleman. I soon found it within my grasp to lead by example, by encouragement, and by inspiring discipline and respect in those with whom I served.

These lessons came in handy when I went to work for Donald Trump at the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. I worked at the Taj for four years, most of those as executive chef, and from the beginning to very near the end of my tenure there, going in to work every day was like going into Tombstone before Wyatt Earp came to town.

I will say this for Donald Trump: He does not spend a lot of time visiting you and having tea and looking over your shoulder to see if things are moving
along satisfactorily. In my time there, I believe we were in the same room only a handful of times. But he expects results, and in this case, results meant running a tight ship and improving the bottom line of the food-service units at the casino and hotel. I had been contacted by a headhunter whilst at the Jamaica Grand, and I had been thinking about working in the United States for a while. This was to be my first big job stateside, and I was determined to make a success of it.

Things had fallen to a low state in the food-service sector of the business, which encompassed all of the restaurants, buffets, banquets, special events, and room service, and management knew it. When I arrived, I was given a list of forty employees who were to be let go immediately. I made the determination that I would be the one to investigate who was fit to stay and who to go, according to my own discretion.

Before long it was evident that catastrophic problems with organization, discipline, supply lines, cleanliness, waste, out-and-out bad workers, thievery, and drugs taking were out of control and systemwide. I hit the ground running and instituted cost-and-inventory controls right away. I started tracking every delivery that came into the hotel, which often meant meeting a shipment at the loading dock, visually inspecting it, and personally walking it to its final stop. Prior to my arrival, deliveries would be just as likely to disappear as to reach their destinations. I began policing employees' time cards. More than once, I would come into the kitchen searching for an employee who had punched in at the time clock, only to be told he had “gone to the bathroom,” or was “out for a smoke.” There I stood at his station, waiting patiently for his return. After fortyfive minutes and a no-show I made sure he was gone forever.

The bathrooms were a drugs playground. I would surreptitiously enter a stall and just wait, taking notes on conversations and noting faces, matching them up with their drugs of choice, usually sniffables or injectibles, and as soon as possible, I found ways to relieve the offenders of their duties permanently. I kept up with my workout schedule religiously because I never knew when I might be embroiled in a physical confrontation. I was threatened with lawsuits, bodily harm, and early demise. My car was vandalized so often in the parking lot that I began leaving my real car at home and driving an ancient, lemon-yellow junkyard bomb in to work. Security was obliged to escort me in and out of the property on a daily basis.

Of the original 38 chefs who worked there when I first arrived, I kept on 5. Before I left, I had fired a total of 322 people. I was aptly nicknamed “the Terminator.”

In their places, I brought in chefs and cooks from all over the country. Word spread that change was in the air, and I was eventually able to build a team that I trusted. First and foremost, I wanted chefs who could
cook.
I brought in new blood, people who were young, energetic, and enthusiastic about the situation and about each other. I wanted them to know that I was interested in them and what they thought as well, and that I was open to their ideas.

Instead of being stuck in the mud with old institutionalized menus, I was constantly changing the bills of fare, using everybody's influences. I instituted a policy that enlisted everybody's creativity when we made a major menu change. First, I would decide on the elements of the dish. Say it started with an 8-ounce filet mignon with braised eggplant. That would be paired with Dauphinoise potatoes, roasted asparagus, and fried leeks; the sauce would be a port wine demi-glace; and let's say I wanted tobacco onions, very thinly sliced onions deep-fried with flour and paprika.

Five chefs would be nominated to assemble these elements into an integrated plate. Each one might start by searing the fillet and finishing it in butter, but the Dauphinoise potatoes, which are a layered dish, kind of like a potato lasagne in a cheesy custard, could be prepared and presented any number of ways. They could be piled, molded into a ring, served under the fillet or on the side. Same with the vegetables. Some chefs might like to highlight the green color of the asparagus; others might take it past the bright green for a different flavor element. Their placement of all of the ingredients on the plate would be different and individual. We would all dissect and discuss what we saw and tasted together, and then I would make a final determination as to whose was the best. Then everyone would learn it, and we would take pictures of it to hang up over the line for reference. Once this was all decided, you had consensus and team spirit prebuilt into the mix every time that dish was made.

For a while, overseeing the Taj Mahal was really fun. We elevated our cuisine to the point where we could host
Chaine de Rôtisseurs
dinners, events put on by a Parisian-based food and wine society that had the highest standards for service and creativity. We put on some really exciting events and started to get some great press, including a chef's dinner where we turned a ballroom into a tropical rain forest, with over three thousand live plants and a section of a real airplane fuselage.

I did a lot of learning on the job, but in the end I applied the same principles I had learned in the military. Honesty and hard work were rewarded; slacking
and dishonesty were ruthlessly cut off. This was a new era in my life in dealing with large numbers of staff and employees. Ultimately, 650 people reported to me. I would like to send out a word of thanks and regard to Rudy Prieto, president at the time, who supported me through it all (he was eventually fired by Donald Trump on Christmas Eve, 1999). Food service and culinary awards began to pile up as the negative trends reversed and we actually got down to the business of cooking. Before I left, we were doing group-wide revenues of more than $80 million per year.

The day I tendered my resignation and announced that I was leaving and taking a position across town at Caesar's, as their new executive chef, I was given exactly fifteen minutes to clear out my belongings and vacate the premises. Corporate policy, I'm sure. My guys helped me pack a few boxes, and that was that. It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it.

Well, on that note, let's finish with something sweet.