THENASTYBITS Read Free Page A

behind, running out of mise en place, losing his mind. Nothing is worse in a situation like this than that terrible moment when a line cook looks up at the board, scans the long line of fluttering dinner orders, and sees only incomprehensible cuneiform, Sanskrit-like chicken scratches that to his shriveled, dehydrated, poached, and abused brain mean nothing at all. He's "lost it" . . . he's dans la merde now . . . and because kitchen work requires a great deal of coordination and teamwork, he could take the whole line down with him.
    But if you're lucky enough to have a well-oiled machine working for you—a bunch of hardcore, ass-kicking, name-taking debrouillards on the payroll—the chances of catastrophe are slim in the extreme. Old-school cholos, assasinos, vato locos, veterans of many kitchens like my cooks, they know what to do when there's no space left on the stove for another saute pan. They know how to bump closed a broiler or shut a refrigerator door when their hands are full. They know when to step into another cook's station—and, more importantly, how to do it— without that station becoming a rugby match of crushed toes and sharp elbows. They know how to sling dirty pots twenty-five feet across the kitchen so that they drop neatly into the pot sink without disfiguring the dishwasher.
    It's when the orders are pouring in and the supplies are running low and the tempers are growing thin that one sees System D practiced at its highest level. Hot water heater explodes? No sweat. Just push the rillettes over and start boiling water, carnale. Run out of those nice square dinner plates for the lobster spring rolls? No problem. Dummy up a new presentation and serve on the round plates. We know what to do. Meat grinder broken? It's steak tartare cut by hand, papi. Few things are more beautiful to me than a bunch of thuggish, heavily-tattooed line cooks moving around each other like ballerinas on a busy Saturday night. Seeing two guys who'd just as soon cut each other's throats in their off hours moving in unison with grace and ease can be as uplifting as any chemical stimulant or organized religion.
    At times like these, under fire, in battlefield conditions, the kitchen reverts to what it has always been since Escoffier's time: a brigade, a paramilitary unit, in which everyone knows what they have to do, and how to do it. Officers make fast and necessarily irrevocable decisions, and damn the torpedoes if it isn't the best decision. There's no time to dither, to waffle, to ponder, to empathize when there's incoming fire threatening to bring the whole kitchen and dining room crashing down. Move forward! Take that hill! Forced out of expediency to lose that cute herbal garnish on the Saddle of Lamb en Crepinette? It's a shame—but we'll cry about it later, at the after-action reporting, when we're all comfortably sucking down late-night sushi together and drinking iced sake or vodka shots at some chef-friendly joint. Right now it's System D time, bro'—and there's no time for that bouquet of herbs. There's the fish to contend with, and one of the runners just fell down the stairs and broke his ankle, and they need forks on table number seven, and that twelve-top arrived late and is eating up half the dining room while they linger over cognacs, and the customers waiting by the bar and shivering in the street are starting to get that angry, haunted look you see in lynch mobs and Liberian militia who've spent too much time in the jungle. Running out of arugula? Substitute mache for Chrissakes! Fluff it out with spinach, watercress . . . anything green!
    At times like these, even one heroic practitioner of System D can save the day, step in and turn the tide. One guy can make the difference between another successful Saturday night and total chaos. We can go home laughing about all we endured, feeling good about ourselves, talking about the bus that didn't hit us instead of slinking out the door quietly, mulling over la