THENASTYBITS Read Free

requires a certain level of plausible deniability.
    I am always pleased to find historical precedent for my darker urges. And in the restaurant business, where one's moods tend to swing from near euphoria to crushing misery and back again at least ten times a night, it's always useful to remember that my crew and I are part of a vast and well-documented continuum going back centuries. Why did this particular reference hold such magic for me, though? I had to think about that. Why this perverse pride in finding that my lowest, sleaziest moments of mid-rush hackwork were firmly rooted in tradition, going back to the French masters?
    It all comes down to the old dichotomy, the razor's edge of volume versus quality. God knows, all chefs want to make perfect food. We'd like to make sixty-five to seventy-five absolutely flawless meals per night, every plate a reflection of our best efforts, all our training and experience, only the finest, most expensive, most seasonal ingredients available— and we'd like to make a lot of money for our masters while we do it. But this is the real world. Most restaurants can't charge a hundred fifty bucks a customer for food alone. Sixty-five meals a night (at least in my place) means we'll all be out of work— and fast. Two hundred fifty to three hundred meals a night is more like it when you're talking about a successful New York City restaurant and job security for your posse of well-paid culinarians in the same breath. When I was the executive chef, a few years ago, of a stadium-size nightclub/supper club near Times Square, it often meant six and seven hundred meals a night—a logistical challenge that called for skills closer to those of an air-traffic controller or a military ordnance officer than to those of a classically trained chef. When you're cranking out that kind of volume, especially during the pretheater rush, when everybody in the room expects to wolf down three courses and dessert and still be out the door in time to make curtain for Cats, you'd better be fast. They want that food. They want it hot, cooked the way they asked, and they want it soon. It may feel wonderfully fulfilling, putting one's best foot forward, sweating and fiddling and wiping and sculpting impeccable little spires of a-la-minute food for an adoring dining public, but there is another kind of satisfaction: the grim pride of the journeyman professional, the cook who's got moves, who can kick ass on the line, who can do serious numbers, and "get through."
    "How many'd we do?" is the question frequently asked at the end of the shift, when the cooks collapse onto flour sacks and milk crates and piles of dirty linen, smoking their cigarettes, drinking their shift cocktails, and contemplating what kind of felonious activity they will soon take part in during their after-work leisure hours. If the number is high (say three hundred fifty dinners), and there have been few returns or customer complaints, if only happy diners waddled satiated out the crowded doorway to the restaurant, squeezing painfully past the incoming mob—well, that's a statistic we can all appreciate and understand. Drinks and congratulations are in order. We made it through! We didn't fall into the weeds! We ran out of nothing! What could be better? We not only served a monstrous number of meals without a glitch, but we served them on time and in good order. We avoided disaster. We brought honor and riches to our clan.
    And if it was a particularly brutal night, if the specter of meltdown loomed near, if we just narrowly avoided the kind of horror that occurs when the kitchen "loses it," if we managed to just squeak through without taking major casualties—then all the better. Picture the worst-case scenario: The saucier is getting hit all night long. Everything ordered is coming off his station instead of being spread around between broiler, middle, and appetizer stations. The poor bastard is being pounded, constantly in danger of falling