Not Exactly What I Had in Mind Read Free

M sushi bar in Queens. Then at a place — whose location Ferrell refuses to disclose because he doesn’t want to “bring it one dime’s worth of patronage more than, may God cease to avert his eyes, it attracts already” — where he was forced to prepare baby-seal sashimi.
    Even when, at last, he got through the portals of Le Haut Falutin’s kitchen, it was not as chef. Oh no. It was not even as sous -chef. At the age of forty-seven, Ferrell was expected to perform as saucier.
    Part of the job was congenial to him, although debilitating. It is well known that chefs — like all creative people — can get to hitting the sauce so hard that they turn bright red and scuttle sluggishly around on the floor like nearly done lobsters making a break for it. It is the saucier’s job to do roughly two-thirds of the chef’s tippling — which, depending on the size and intensity of the chef, can be fatal and nearly always causes disorientation, even in Chinese places. Still, Ferrell did not mind.
    It was the other half of the saucier’s role that Ferrell never warmed to: walking past the tables in a mauve-and-magenta uniform, making snippy remarks to the customers and tossing his head. Intellectually, he knew this was essential in such a fancy place. But in his heart he craved customerhood for himself so fondly that he derived no pleasure from making it unpleasant for the favored few who were able to attain it.
    Then one day the chef keeled over permanently, and as it happened he landed on the sous-chefs, although they had been warned repeatedly not to hover. And poof: Ferrell was entitled to a big white hat and imperious ways.
    Now he was cooking. But not yet dining. He would race through his duties, hop into evening wear, and dash round to the front entrance, only to be told, “Je regrette, mais la kitchen is closed.” Catch-22.
    To make matters worse, the maître d’ would come back to the kitchen and taunt him: “Eh, Chef Ferrell, how come you nevair take a table, eh? Oo-ha-ha. You no like le coo-keeng, eh? Heh-heh-hehhhh.”
    Then one evening, as Ferrell was stirring just the right amounts of cockle-muscle extract, minced mussel cocks, and les petites choses inquiétantes et maladroites de la mer into the bouillabaisse polonaise, he paused, inhaled the bouquet, gazed fondly into the vat, and realized he didn’t need a table. He could eat all the bouillabaisse he wanted. So he did. The whole vat.
    And he left Le Haut Falutin, adopted his saucier (whom he allowed to wear Levi’s and required to be fresh but civil), and opened his own place that is all kitchen: patrons are charged prix fixe (eighty-five dollars, lunch; whatever Ferrell feels like charging, dinner) to wander from pot to pot stirring, inhaling, and tasting.
    Dressing Up Like Michael Jackson
    The bad news: headwaiters are catching on to this one. You’ll have to field a stiff battery of questions to prove that you can talk the way Michael Jackson actually does when he is out with his high-life crowd:
    “Why do you wear that glove?”
    “I got this from Mickey Mouse. Only he has to wear two of them because nobody wants to see mouse fingers.”
    “Are you, in fact, Diana Ross?”
    “No, you’re thinking of Carl Lewis, who is Grace Jones.”
    “Were you just born knowing how to move like that?”
    “No. It’s from high-school football. I was at an inside linebacker slot, see, and this pulling guard came at me, about two hundred thirty pounds and going hunhf- uffa, hunhf-uffa, and I thought to myself, How’m I going to show him I’m bad? So, I did this little spin, you know, um ch’coot’n — wooo — ch’ch’ch’ch’cootn’- pah: unh! And he missed me. And he still does.”
    Lowering Your Expectations
    What is so wrong, really, about a table situated so that the bartender has to be constantly reminded not to forget himself and dry his hands on your dinner companion’s hair? In some parts of the world, people eat bugs.
    Sponge Baths on the