Less Talk More Rock

"Here."

It's a simple command made simpler as Chef hands me a spoon.

Fuck. Chef doesn't give you a spoon because he wants you to share your earth-shattering-consomme-of-orgasms with him. He gives you a spoon because it's a nicer way of saying "Taste this. Because either you didn't taste it before or your palate went full retard today."

"Yes, Chef."

I dip a clean spoon in to a consomme that is a curious mahogany brown. I was a bit confused as to how that happened. Despite a deep understanding of the chemistry behind consomme, I've never fucking made one. It did seem a bit dark but it tasted all right. At least it did before...

"And?"

"It's a little bitter, Chef."

"Why would that be?"

"Because it's burned, Chef."

"Yes. It is most certainly burned. Please bring me your pot."

My heart drops. This is kind of like your girlfriend dumping you. Not because she's cheating on you, but because the girth you've gained in middle-age isn't as boisterous in the sack as it once was. Because you've gone lame and unable to produce. It hurts.

I obediently retrieve the pot I made my consomme in. A cute little gallon soup pot with the sad remains of a consomme raft jiggles around in the bottom.

A consomme, by the literal definition, is a refined French broth. Completely clear and devoid of fat, so clear that you should be able to read the date on a dime at the bottom of a gallon. It should, by all impossibilities, be clearer than water.

This is achieved with a "raft." A mixture of ground meat, egg whites, tomato and aromatic vegetables that is simmered in a flavorful broth. The albumen proteins in egg whites coagulate at 155 degrees Fahrenheit and form a raft at the top of the liquid. This protein mesh, with the assistance of a convection simmer, captures all the impurities in a broth rising to the top, thus making it clear. This also draws out some flavor though, hence why we add ground meat and vegetables to the mixture, to reintroduce some flavor in to the soup. Tomatoes are an acidic component that denature proteins, facilitating the coagulation process.

When your consomme is finished, you ever so carefully ladle it out of the pot through a coffee filter to really capture any invisible crud left in the broth. Finally, a dry paper towel is dragged over the surface to capture any stubborn fat that has remained. Then you serve it hot, piping fucking hot because the soup has very little garnish and fat and thus loses heat rapidly.

I knew all of this, even before we went over it in lecture. What I didn't know is that when you make consomme in such a small pot the "raft" is very much in contact with the bottom, vigorously interacting with the hottest part of the burner. It doesn't really do much floating. You counteract this by stirring constantly until the raft begins to form. Failure to do this will result in, you guessed it, a burnt raft. This was practical experience I didn't think to prepare for.

Chef takes a spoon and reveals the bottom of my raft to me. Black. Charred, burnt beyond repair.

Son of a bitch. In two years of professional cooking, I've never burnt something. I've had three dishes sent back to me ever. One was an underseasoned mushroom tagliatelle (guilty). Another was an undercooked ravioli (guilty, they were much more frozen than I had accounted for). And finally, the last was an undercooked salt-crusted sea bass (guilty, first time cooking with a salt crust). Other than that, in the hundreds of dishes I sent out, I was proud to say I only had three sent back and never because something was burnt.

But here was proof of my fallibility. A blackened consomme raft that produced a broth deep mahogany brown. I mistook this for a proper development of flavor. I was wrong.

Chef grimaces. He's not upset, he's disappointed. I was voted in as the group leader, the sous chef of our class, I am one of the oldest and most experienced cooks in the kitchen and here I've gone and made the most elementary of mistakes. He knows that I know better, knows that I can do better ... far better. The disappointment hurts more than any other sort of reproach. I'd prefer it if he hit me.

He scribbles down a 60. The worst grade I've gotten so far. By all respects, it should have been a zero. This would never go out to a customer. This would even be unworthy for a dishwasher to sip on as a snack during a Saturday crush. It was fucking garbage.

He sees how my face goes from somewhat hopeful to a mask of complete defeat. I was never very good at hiding my emotions, hence why I don't feel I belong in the front of the house.

"Now, Eric. It's not the end of the world. You guys still have a lot of work to do. Tomorrow's another day, and I can guarantee that you'll never make that mistake again."

"Yes, Chef."

It's the most commonly uttered phrase in the kitchen. Yes, Chef. Carry on, orders understood. Continue to perform adequately. Move on.

And he's right, there is a whole lot left to do.

When I signed up for the group leader position, I figured it was kind of a joke. Like being the class president of your high school. It's a resume padder, you don't really do much, it's a false title. I was very, very wrong.

A pin in the shape of a golden toque is adorned on my jacket collar. One in every 20-30 students wears this pin. Students are selected to group leader by popular vote. Such a whimsical process for a fairly serious position. I figured it was more a popularity contest. Wrong again.

I very much am at the helm. Chef, other than evaluations, demos and the occasional roaming instruction, will sit at his desk and watch me run the kitchen. He wants to see my feet put to the flame. He wants to see if the student who so boldly declared himself the most qualified candidate for leadership can actually fucking lead.

Have I ever run a kitchen? God no. I've never even "told" someone else to do something. I've been a minion, a slave for the past two years. What right do I have to command? Yeah sure, I ran the floor at my own restaurant but that's front-of-house. The back is a whole 'nother beast to tame.

But earn and believe in this right I must. Because it's 10:15, and if we want to eat lunch we've got to start cleaning now.

Two quick lessons in leadership I learned.

1) Leading by example is important, but you can't do everything yourself. What really makes a strong leader is making your team believe in your standards and carrying them out in unerring and passionate fashion.

2) If you want something done, you need to find someone and directly make the order, make them responsible. When you ask "Can somebody...?" or "Is anybody...?" that's effectively the same thing as asking "Can nobody...?"

So with those two lessons tucked away after Day One it's time to clean.

If there's one facet of leadership I've been blessed with, it's a battlefield voice. All those years of my housemates telling me they can hear my voice at all times, and that my normal speaking voice is uncomfortably loud ... now they pay off. So you'll have to imagine me yelling across the spanse of a 5-range kitchen.

I've divided our class of 20 in to five teams of four and assigned them to various tasks ranging from stock production, vegetable production to sanitation.

"Team One! Degrease and skim stocks, mirepoix goes on in 5!"
"Team Two! All burners off! Flat tops and burners in the soak!"
"Team Three! Compost bins and countertops wiped! Garbage in 10!"
"Team Four! You're on dish! Team Five! Bring all the boards and pots to dish!"
"The mark is 11:30! We have about an hour to make this place spotless, let's rock!"

A chorus of "Heard!" echoes back at me. It's the most succinct way to communicate that you've heard it, you've understood it and you are now in the process of executing it.

Same shit, different day. But yet the thrill of command is a pleasure, day in and day out.

I'm not addicted to the power. I don't get hard over telling other people what to do. I get adrenaline and energy from the reciprocation of command; pushing my team to go harder, seeing results and having them force me to be on top of my game and work harder. It's a feedback loop and it's more exhilarating than any of the various narcotics I've ingested in my sordid past. It's the kind of shit that drags you out of bed at 4:30 on a freezing, upstate New York day. It's better than sex and coffee ... combined.

Time flies in a kitchen. We've been here since 5:30 and other than my brief moment of self-reflection-leaning-on-suicide after I burnt my consomme, I haven't really had a thought that wasn't about cleaning something, cooking something or wiping something. I don't often settle down to one task because I have to roam around and supervise. I like to lead by example and thus my horrid obsessive cleanliness is something I force upon my team at all times. After they wipe a countertop, I follow them with another rag and get all the bits they missed. They see what I do, they know what's up, hopefully they won't do it again.

This system works decently so far, and for the amount of power I actually have it's fairly effective. But occasionally, the bad cop emerges.

We're 45 minutes in to cleaning and now on sweep. We call sweeps every 25 minutes, three cooks in one direction to maximize efficiency and minimize the amount of times we need to sweep and mop. All the crap that has accumulated on the floor is now in a neat pile by the trash .. only there are no trash bins.

"Who the fuck took out the trash without checking with me?!"

Chef raises an eyebrow and grimaces at me again. I'm not supposed to curse. I sheepishly grin. I don't usually slip, I know it's a classroom, but my natural vocabulary is saturated with profanities and crude analogies. When I get angry, it slips.

"I think Larry, Moe and Curly took it out."

Motherfuckers. Now I have trash piling up and being dispersed by everyone's movements. We've wasted time and all the efficiency we gained from a coordinated sweep. I'm pissed.

"All right, leave it here, I'll take care of it when it when they get back. Leave the sweep, start rubbing down the flat tops with oil!" (We use a lot of cast-iron... it rusts, hence it requires lube)

We are in what I like to call "full-tilt boogie-woogie." We had a whole lot of dishes to prepare today and consomme is a motherfucker of a preparation. Not only is it time and attention consuming, but it requires a motherfuck-load of pots and bowls. And any assholes that burned their rafts, like me, will have a pot crusted in sticky, burnt proteins. A nightmare to wash out, especially since we don't get any steel wool pads. Dish is behind and if we don't finish everything else and help them out, nobody's getting a lunch break.

Larry, Moe and Curly return with the trash. I am really pissed.

"Who told you to take out the trash!? Look at all this trash we still have to throw out, and what the hell took you so long?! Now you have to do it again, so do a complete sweep and mop and take out the trash again, it takes 5 minutes. Go!"

That's a fact, actually. I timed it. Even with precipitous weather and a line at the dump, it takes on average 5 min. and 27 seconds to dump out trash, compost and recycling, rinse out all the bins and bring them back. I know those assholes like to take out the trash because it gives them an excuse not to clean, one of them definitely sneaks a cigarette and they generally goof off for 12 minutes thinking I won't notice. Too bad for them, I noticed.

But the better question arises; when did I become such a dick?

At some point here I decided I no longer cared what people thought of me. What was of supreme importance was staying on schedule, having a spotless kitchen, and making sure everybody improved day to day. A great majority of the students in my class have very little hands-on cooking experience. They burn and cut themselves regularly, just as I did when I first started out. They don't finish their knife cuts that get graded every day, they simply can't do it all in 45 minutes. And their production items, whether it be consomme or cream of broccoli soup don't usually turn out very well either. This is all good and fine, that's why you're in school after all; to learn. The important thing is to get better everyday, to never regress. If we can do that and keep a good attitude, I'm all sunshine.

But when people act like shitbags looking to skirt out on work and generally find every excuse to sit down and talk, then I bubble over with Krakatoan rage.

Well, Krakatoan might be a bit hyperbolic. It's not nearly that bad. I'm still restrained by the confines of the classroom and the big German Certified Master Chef that sits at the desk. This is a good thing, it's forced practice for controlling my temper. But regardless I've developed a borderline chaotic/ruthless attitude. If you're going to work against me, then I'm going to throw you under the bus and make you feel like an asshole.

So a few of them probably hate me. That's fine. I welcome it. I don't want their adoration, I just need their respect. If they won't give me that, they can take a walk, I'd rather not have them in the kitchen.

A rather stark change from the neurotic creature who obsessed over his general likability for 24 years. Now I'm on the warpath and ready to claim heads.

But I'm not alone. The people who really want to learn, really want to work, they're with me and I know it. I have the solid loyalty of the people who matter and that's all I need to get through the day. With those 7-8 people, we could do the work of 20. Easily. And such will be the case in the classroom where you can't choose your coworkers.

But what we've got is pretty good, and I must say better than anything I've ever had.

What I kind of expected but didn't fully understand about culinary school was being immersed in an environment of passionate, passionate food obsession. Not everyone's on that page, there are a great deal of people here who aren't really sure why they're here. But the people who are on the bullet train to progress, working harder every day, thinking about the best marinade and brine for a pork chop as they go to sleep... those are the kids that are fun to work with.

It's just so much positive energy. After working with industry-lifers who were forced in to the restaurant world, it's nice just to be with people who actually want to be here. They love it. They love the food, they love talking about food, they jerk off to the new Eleven Madison Park cookbook, they like washing dishes because it's cathartic and they like getting slammed with prep because when they win you feel like an unstoppable machine.

In short, they're like me. And maybe it's weird to say I've been looking for someone like "me," but I'm glad to say that I've found a whole lot of "me's."

I do another cursory sweep of the kitchen to make sure things are getting done, no one's standing around like an asshole and then I see the predicament dish has gotten themselves into. There are simply too many pots and pans and cutting boards lining up and poor Ant over there is soaked in sanitizer and sweat. I pull up beside him and take off my horrendously awkward toque, a 15-inch monstrosity of a hat that towers above my head.

"Scooch. You good?"
"I'm good, baby. Let's go Man-Bear-Pig on these dishes, dawg."

Man-Bear-Pig, for those who don't know, is the mythical beast that Al Gore tried to prove the existence of in the South Park universe. Its appearance is legendary and utter destruction follows in its wake. It's our fun little way of saying, let's fucking rage on these dishes.

"Alright, I'll set up with you. Team 3! Make sure the kitchen is spotless, do last round checks and scrub the stock kettles! It is 11:05, the mark is 11:30, let's push!"

The water is steaming healthily and is painful to hold your hands in for longer than few seconds. I channel my best "fight-through-the-pain" mantra and convince myself that deadening my nerve endings is a good thing for cooking. It most certainly is.

Ant does his best Gordon Ramsay impression as our hands turn to angry red raisins. I definitely am sporting a wound from an errant sharp chicken bone when I dumped 120 lbs. of the stuff in the kettle. It stings like a motherfucker as the hot, soapy water makes a mess of my chef's coat.

But yet, I'm laughing. This is the most fun I'll have all day. I love it. Washing dishes with a crazy motherfucker who loves masochistic labor as much as you do, fighting the clock every day, trying to win... my heart races in the pursuit of victory, and if there's a meritocracy left in this world, if there's a place where everyday you are made aware of winning and losing, and the amount of blood and sweat you've poured in to the sand means something ... it's here. In the kitchen.

And today... it looks like we might just win.

EP6

The Truth Is Here

Over the course of my life most of my important decisions have been made rather whimsically and without consideration. I rarely took precautions to think more than a few moves ahead, I followed my heart and by some miracle, I'm not dead and I have a college education (whatever that's worth nowadays).

I chose to play the cello. Why? Because my mom put me through a few torturous violin lessons, and standing while playing required much more energy than my chubby boy-frame could handle. Admittedly, my large stature is much better-suited to the cello than the violin. And it remains true that being a cellist is far less competitive than being a violinist, there are just too many mass-produced Korean violin-robots, especially at Juilliard, and even an exceptionally talented child would have a hard time getting in. So as much as I hated that place it was the catalyst for any success I might enjoy now.

I chose Northwestern. Why? Because I liked the uniqueness of the color purple, the northwesterly direction seemed to connote a sense of adventure, and frankly it was the best school I could apply to that didn't require SAT II's (no longer the case). And most importantly it was approximately 760 miles away from home. Something felt right about applying there, I had a feeling I was going to get in, I couldn't tell you why. But I ended up in a great dorm where I met some great people who helped shape me in to a decent and somewhat responsible adult. Without Northwestern, without Willard, without ultimate, I shudder to think of the kind of person I would be today.

There have been plenty of other missteps and lucky escapes from ill-fated disaster, but the big decisions, huge life-changing moments have worked out in my favor. I should consider myself blessed. Though of course the last major decision has yet to fully play itself out...

The night I had an epiphany to cook was unlike all the other pivotal decisions I had made in my life. I was a very different person then, I had grown up, in short. I was much more cautious, more reserved, more aware of consequences and logical expectations. Whereas I would once leap before looking with both feet, I now knew to take a tentative look over the edge. It was conflicting, I felt so impassioned and convinced that this was the one true path for my life, but yet I felt it necessary to yank on the reins, knowing in the past that I had come uncomfortably close to ruin. I stayed up all night wanting to rush off to culinary school, say good-bye to Northwestern, but I knew there were many things to consider and I played it slow.

I gave myself the hard truth. I had to have realistic expectations of what such a life-changing decision would mean. I had to honestly embrace the realities of those decisions, and if a worst-case scenario still didn't frighten me, I would forge on ahead.

Life as a cook is not and would not be easy. You are going to be poor. Very poor, more poor than you've ever been in your life. If you're doing it right, you're most likely going to be paying to be a cook, working in some top European kitchen for beans and having exchange rates give it to you harder than Billy Bob gave it to Halle Berry in Monster's Ball (never watch that movie with your mom). Even if you land a good job in the States, you'll be working long, long hours with no 401k or health insurance to speak of. This could continue for 7-10 years. You sure you like it that much?

There is a very high rate of failure. Should you ever attain your dream of opening a restaurant, there are statistics (albeit inflated and largely out-of-context statistics) floating around that say 70-80% of restaurants fail within three years. You have personally experienced what can happen when a restaurant closes. There is little-to-no recouping. When it's over you file Chapter 11, and you hope your resume isn't so tarnished, and your family not so desperate that you can pull the pieces back together. Not scared yet?

It is a very difficult lifestyle in and of itself. There are no holidays, when the rest of society gets a long weekend you will be getting a longer work week. Personal relationships will be quite difficult to maintain as the rest of the world follows the beat of a different drummer. There are few women willing to stick around with someone who spends most of their life in a kitchen making $12/hour. You'll miss parties, weddings, movies and important dinners with only the pirate crew-like bond of your kitchen crew as solace. I hope you thoroughly enjoy the company of cats.

You are old for the game. The best, the famous, the rich, they all started out young. They not only grew up in the restaurant business, they embraced it from Day One. They found their passion early and were lucky enough to have a place to fulfill it. You were not so lucky, you figured it out pretty late, and compared to your competition, you are rather inexperienced. It's going to be a tough and endless game of catch-up; can you handle always being at a disadvantage?

These were the sorts of questions I asked myself. They were harsh questions, yes, but I felt that that was necessary. To strip bare any optimism or naivety and lay the raw flesh of the material before me. If every question was met with stubborn hope and bated excitement, I knew I was doing the right thing. And I was.

So here we stand. Exactly two weeks away from culinary school in the wake of a long year at home. I worked seven days a week, every week. Some weeks would see me working hellishly long hours, upwards of 80-90 with no day off, what with kitchen time and holidays. But even still I feel I could have worked harder. I could have learned more. But what's done is done and I must evaluate again. It's been about three years since you decided to embark on the path of food and service, how far have you come?

My pessimistic nature and generally hard-on-myself attitude would say ... not very far.

I really tried but learning Chinese food has eluded me. I spent 10 solid months going in to that kitchen six days a week, but cooking doesn't work like that. You can't just stop in for a lunch shift, cook a little here, cook a little there, wrap a few dumplings, slice a few onions. You don't get terribly far doing that. You have to really be thrown in the shit. It's like training for the Olympics, you do it as a job. Ten hours everyday, living it, breathing it, that's what makes you a real cook. Not just prepping thirty racks of lamb to perfection everyday, but then plating it for service in the middle of dinner rush, tickets bleeding out of the printer like an angry wound, a chef telling you to go faster when you've already hit the wall and only your wits and your reflexes there to save you. I miss that. The crush, the weeds, the very raw and physical nature of restaurants.

But it hasn't all been for naught. While I resentfully stood my post at the front I certainly can't say I didn't learn anything. I spent a solid six hours everyday just talking to people; taking their orders, making small talk, making sure they were happy, mollifying them when they were on the verge of hitting me and succoring them when they were having a good experience. I cleared tables, folded tablecloths, smiled and nodded and though I was far from perfect, I feel that my mother and I together made a good front-of-house team. Considering that by nature I am a shy and introverted person, this was a big step for me. I know my normal speaking voice is at an uncomfortably high volume and a few beers will have me clamoring for the center of attention like an oft-ignored only child, and these things may suggest that I am an extroverted individual. But that isn't actually the case and whenever I know I'm about to have a tough or awkward conversation with a customer I often have to tell myself, "Be brave."

I never picture myself at the front-of-the-house permanently. I can confidently say I want to spend most of my life in a kitchen (even though I know I look fucking awesome in a suit... yes, ladies). But it certainly can't hurt to have a deep understanding of what it's like to be out there. See, when you're crushed in the kitchen there is always something to do, tangible means to fix things, you feel at least somewhat empowered to remedy your situation. But when it's fucked out front, you can't do anything except tell people your sorry, offer them something so they don't walk out furious and cry on the inside. Some people love that kind of work; fixing the wrongs, using their charm to the utmost advantage, but I can't do it. Not for long at least. Seeing people upset destroys me inside. It makes me want to hide in the kitchen, too cowardly to go outside and face the sound & the fury. Cooks sometimes don't get that and see special requests or anything that makes their job harder as bullshit. But I will forever understand what it's like to be out there, the bulls-eye for everyone's frustration. So while I never plan to be out there again in a suit, I feel confident that I can empathize with the front staff when I'm wearing a chef's jacket.

Still, skin-toughening aside, perhaps the most important thing I learned was being at the helm and seeing the big picture. When you're a cook or a waiter, and I've been both for quite some time now, you are focused on just doing your job. Getting that plate to the window now, getting that plate to a customer now, giving that customer attention now. There's not much philosophizing and speculating you can do when you're in that role, you're a worker bee. But when you're at the top looking down, you realize it's a complex picture and pieces have to be moved carefully. As much as you want to deliver quality experiences to everyone, you have to realize you literally can not make everybody happy, and every restaurant has its limitations. Some will only do as good as 75%, and the best will be 99.9%. But no matter how "perfect" you may seem, some people will just never like your restaurant and will leave to vilify you on the Internet. Don't take it home with you, don't let it get you down, always strive for a 110% but know that it won't ever be perfect. Not for long anyway.

There are practical things to consider. Things break down, no restaurant flows perfectly, you have to go with it. It is often the busiest Tuesday of your life when your dishwasher decides to not show. Your ice machine picks the hottest day of the summer to stop working, your power goes out just as you're about to lay down a 200-cover Friday. These are all things that have happened to me, and while they were catastrophic-level disasters we are still here. Things go on, restaurants are Murphy's Law embodied, what's important, despite any artistic ideals you might hold dear, is that you continue to make money and make people happy without losing your integrity or your sanity.

Being in command of a restaurant has no set book of rules. Everything is situational and you need to have the awareness to meet the ever-changing flow of service. Shit will and does happen, you need to have the emotional fortitude to react with grace and assertiveness. I feel I've rambled for a year and more, 10-page diatribes about what it's like to be out there doing the same thing everyday and yet having it be different every night, but it still can't be broken down in to a neat list. You just have to know and if your heart is in it, you'll succeed. A life in restaurants certainly has its downsides, but if it is the life for you, you couldn't possibly see it any other way. You feel alive in the chaos and become fulfilled through taming it.

That's optimistic-Eric talking, a rarely seen creature. But truly, I feel it really becomes a matter of can you survive the downs long enough to enjoy the highs...

The rational side of me knows that I am quite prepared for school, especially in comparison to the armies of 18-year old Food Network zombies enrolling in culinary school, but in reality I feel a bit... divided. On the one hand, I am about to embark on a journey that is has been in the works for over three years. I have a pretty good idea of what's about to come, I'm excited. But on the other ... I am exhausted.

Working seven days a week didn't amount to a lot more hours than most people's workweeks, but it just drains on you. The boss/my mom said I could take a day off if I wanted to, but deep-seeded notions of filial piety and duty to one's parents left me too guilt-ridden to relax at home while my mother was out working. I haven't had a terrible amount of time to regain composure, it was one Saturday night crush immediately followed by an even worse Sunday night crush only to return to the battlefront on Monday, day after day after day.

I've come to duly respect the regenerative properties of a day off. Without any sense of guilt you have the freedom to spend 24 hours however you will. I miss that more than you can know, and a daily grind without respite leaves me in dark corners of thought that I fear to go back to.

When I get depressed, I get depressed. Misery seems to endlessly accelerate and ignore terminal velocity until I am left in a corner wondering for the fourth time why I am doing this.. this life. I usually snap out of it pretty quickly, but for the time I spend down there in my self-made dungeon of despondency, there is a sense I'm not going to climb back out. Everything comes crashing down and a real mishap in a restaurant suddenly seems beyond the scope of my control.

I admit I can be a bit ... emotional at times. Perhaps this blog is finally resembling more of a blog in that I am giving everyone an open avenue into my personal thoughts and feelings, but here I am to lay it bare. If my personality at its worst warranted a description, I might describe it as an "engine of self-hate and negativity that feeds on the souls of happy people everywhere" but that may be the School of Eric's Over-complicated and Ranting Writing's way of saying that I can be a severely angry and miserable human being sometimes. And it is, as with all matters of the heart, completely irrational in its judgment.

When I hear some girl order take-out over the phone asking me if we use MSG in that awful Long Island accent, I twinge and am overcome by bloodlust. I have to defeatedly admit "yes" even though there is absolutely no scientific evidence of "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" or negative effects from MSG consumption (source), and then get an audible scoff over the phone to have her say "I don't wuant any MSG in anything, okay?" Listen, bitch... those Apple-tinis you drink every weekend have a better chance of giving you heart failure than this steamed chicken and mixed vegetables, no sauce, no MSG dish you're ordering from me. How about you worry a little less about your waistline and a little more about giving a contribution to society that isn't your quickly-fading beauty? And here I've ranted again, but internally, and you can see the blood pressure rising, and my eyes go red and I'm physically restraining myself from slamming the phone in to the table, the urge to kill is ever rising...

Ugh and then more shit...

The worst habit our waiters have is serving soup without spoons. We run out of spoons quicker than anything because waiters use them to wrap Peking Duck, serve dishes, etc. So the busboy has to wait on them to get washed, and there may be a 10 minute window where the restaurant is simply out of clean spoons. But there's a very simple solution, you pluck a few spoons out of the soak, and you wash it by hand real quick. Then you serve it with the soup, it's that simple. But no, they drop down the soup without checking if there are spoons, and run to some other task and the customer has to helplessly watch as their soup grows tepid. And I hate soup that isn't at the proper temperature, that being hot with italics. I try to catch this as often as possible but something within stops me from berating and demanding discipline from the staff. I am no boss yet, it is not my place, I feel awkward telling grown men, fathers that they're making a cock-up of their job, so I must suffer inwardly as people do slipshod and careless work. It's preventable, it's lazy bullshit and it's a very quick way to make me hate you...

And then more things go wrong...

Cooking is a bit like athletics in the sense that there are good days when you're in the zone, and bad days when nothing is going for you. Man, all these sauces are breaking .. is it the heat? Ugh, this dough looks like shit, it's so tacky I can barely escape from it long enough to put it in a bag, what the hell? Fuck, I cut myself... fuck, these dumplings look like abused orphans, they're falling apart at the seams. It is those days I am left wondering... why am I even doing this? I'm never going to be any good, the cooks I want to be competing against have been doing this for years, they don't even think about dicing carrots, it just happens. And even if I can catch up with my mechanics apparently I'm such a headcase that I'll never make it past year five in this game... I should just give up...

And so that nagging voice continues. A voice of defeat strengthened by feelings of hopelessness in the face of hard times and trials... One voice says to give up already, and yet somewhere inside there is a beacon of hope and it waves a small flag that says "Carry on!"

It is mind-numbing and at the very least a bit psychotic to be seemingly talking to myself with two different voices. Rather than a unified whole, I am a man divided and at times it feels the balance between two entities is threatening to decide which Eric shows up today. And it is that exact quality that I seem to share with my father.

Not to creep too dangerously close to sob story territory, but I didn't know my father very well. What I do know, as my mother reminds me, is that we are quite similar. Passionate, volatile, unpredictable, loving at times, ferocious at others. I haven't seen myself in him in well over 13 years but in memory, I know it is true. My mother is the rock, my father the ocean. As I walk the floor of a dinner service in a bad mood she notices immediately, but won't confront me about it until we're closing. I get the same lecture,

"The whole dining room can tell you're in a bad mood. You can't show it, it makes us all look bad, it affects peoples' moods, most importantly, mine!" The same song and dance every time, how my sullen tendencies stress her out and affects the whole atmosphere of the restaurant, yada yada yada... Some customer was probably being a pain in the ass and I reacted most unprofessionally, my face was immediately a visage twisted by hate and a fish could sense the negative emotion, I get it, I messed up, I'm sorry...

But this time it hit me as we're getting to the part of the lecture how I'm just like my father. I am suddenly eleven again and thinking of the day I said goodbye for the last time. The school said I can take as much time as I like before coming back, it wasn't a problem, but the day after services my mom put me on the bus and sent me to school. I wouldn't have said I was in so much grief as to not be able to function, I was just ... confused, as most eleven-year old's are and would be when they are dealing with their father's death. I didn't really want to go because my head was in all sorts of different places. One moment I felt fine, the other I felt sad, then angry, then guilty, then nervous, then ahhh, get me the fuck outta here! Too bad, kiddo, your education is what's important.

The point never hit me, I just figured my mom was being unnecessarily stringent, acting tough to be tough, but now it made sense.

No matter how we feel we all have certain duties to uphold. Despite all notions of Western stoicism or Eastern filial responsibility, this is a fact. To succeed requires performing even when we want to do anything but. There are and will be many times when we are faced with difficult tasks, or tasks we feel unprepared for or just feel unwilling to commit to. But we must perform admirably all the same, because no matter what modern conceptions of child-rearing and coddling will tell you, there is very much such a thing as winning and losing in this life.

There have been a lot of rough patches through the past year. At times it felt I was running a nursing home rather than a restaurant, the vivacity and energy killed by the elderly slowly pushing their walkers and struggling in to their chairs. This may sound like an unfair and silly thing to upset me, but when reminded of my own mortality every day, seeing someone's wife die and yet have the widower return to eat alone... it is difficult. Perhaps my sense of empathy is too sensitive, but seeing, knowing that could be me every day ... it was tough.

There wasn't much in terms of a personal life. I'd run in to the city every Saturday to see my friends, but otherwise every day was more of isolation. I don't speak enough Chinese to converse in anything other than niceties, and I don't have a lot to talk about with a middle-aged mothers who grew up poor in China, didn't even graduate high school. And I hate the small talk between customers and restaurant staff, it's the same conversation every time, often literally as some old folk can't remember what they've discussed with you and what they haven't. I am left repeating conversations with parrot-like obediency, frustrated by a lack of any meaningful connections with anyone for days.

I struggled to learn a cuisine I couldn't master, left to be more useful sweeping floors and organizing dry goods than on the line. Instead I was left out front in my most uncomfortable and undesirable of positions, struggling to gain mastery over my own tempestuous emotions.

But I showed. I fucking showed up every day, no weekends, no holidays, every fucking day rain or shine. In over 400 days, I wasn't at the restaurant for maybe 15, and even when I hated it, really was wanting to quit, tired of my daily grind ... I went. I showed because I knew there was work to be done. I wasn't going to let down my mom who had worked so hard, supporting the restaurant by herself to put me through school. I wasn't going to quit because I want the dream to be alive even when it can seem so dim, and I still have love for the restaurant even during the times it felt like it was poisoning me.

I showed up.

Maybe I didn't learn all that I could have this year. Maybe I often let my emotions get the best of me, maybe I lost a few customers, maybe I could have tried harder. Kitchen work, especially good kitchen work, requires a hell of a lot more than just being there, it requires focus, dedication and aggressiveness for sure. But at the very least I was there every day, doing my job.

I showed up.

And I plan to continue to show up for the rest of my life.

EP6

Size Matters

I probably talk about penises at an alarming frequency for a heterosexual male, but the title is actually pertinent to restaurants as opposed to dongs.

For those of you who have experienced a real Chinatown dim sum restaurant, you probably already know what I'm talking about. Dim sum houses are typically mammoth enterprises, staffed by a veritable army of Chinese people making dumplings, pushing carts, yelling out orders and serving tea to feed a dining room pushing upwards of 120-150 tables. And big tables at that, often seating 10-12 people per.

Compare that to your typical sit-down Italian bistro and you are pretty much looking at two different creatures altogether.

But that doesn't mean they don't warrant comparison. They are, at their core, still restaurants. There are cooks, there are servers, there is food to be eaten and paid for. Fundamentally they are the same. But the operations and logistics require two separate states of mind, and in many cases two separate sets of skills.

If it isn't already apparent from my borderline-pathological need to control everything, I could never run a huge restaurant. There are more reasons than that I am a basket case of neuroses and compulsions but what it boils down to is that the actual management of a mega-restaurant, even just its kitchen, would probably have me in a corner, dissolving Xanax in a double of Jameson while chain-smoking 100s within 3 weeks. It is a nightmare of logistics, and I would only wish that sort of pain on my most dire of enemies.

That is, unless you don't really care.

Supplying, menu design, hiring, kitchen layout, those are all details that differ greatly between restaurants of various sizes. But the key factor that separates a small restaurant from a huge restaurant is details. There is simply no way to control details in a huge restaurant serving thousands of people a day. You hit a limit and you send food out or perform service that is less than perfect, not just because you accepted mediocrity, but because you are at the limits of human capacity.

If you're the kind of person who can accept that you are never striving for perfection, just okay. If you're the kind of person who likes to control details but only up to a certain degree, then fine. You can probably be at the helm of a mega-restaurant and not be on a steady diet of antidepressants and mood-stablizers within a year. But if you're anything like me, it's just never going to happen.

It is perhaps unfair to lambast a dim sum house. They are making no aspirations to be perfect just hoping for good. And if you can serve 2000 people a day "good" food, then that's more than an impressive accomplishment on its own. And me, of all people should empathize for the human element to restaurants in that there are mistakes and there are things out of one's control. And a dim sum house is on the far end of the extreme, a hyperbolic example. But I'm going to do it anyway just because I be sippin' on that haterade and it will be a useful mechanic for me to detail how I personally would envision running a restaurant.

I will detail the last trip I had to a dim sum house that was run by a chef who used to work at Pearl. He is a talented guy for sure, his carving and artistry are very impressive, anything from a block of ice to a butternut squash can be made in to beautiful sculptures. He even seems well-organized and motivated, something we rarely find in the cooks that come through Pearl, much to our dismay. But even still, having him influence the food in a positive way at such a large restaurant is like trying to shove a glacier off its route. It seems to have a mind of its own, and if its direction is not clearly set from the get-go it will continue on an implacable course towards mediocrity, or even doom.

We ride an escalator to the top floor of a Flushing mall. The whole top level is dedicated to this restaurant. I am not one to estimate square-footage, but I would put it somewhere between a metric fuck-ton and a number comparable to the population of Beijing. It is a big fucking restaurant and is designed, ever in Chinese fashion, in a clumsy merger of trite Western notions of classy decor and efficient methods of interior design. Think laced tablecloths and seat covers on a linoleum floor, mahogany pillars with gold trim and flashing neon lights, and a grand piano acting as throne on a marble and pink granite stage. Too many ideas, overstimulation, an architectural bout of epilepsy waiting to happen.

Two young, passably attractive girls dressed in qipaos lead us to a table. There are floor managers acting more like pit bosses dressed in cheap suits. They wander the floor with scowls on their faces and the kind of prepubescent five o'clock shadow that most Asian men suffer from. A huge cadre of Hispanic busboys and older Chinese women expedite the flow of service, and customers line up by the hundreds, huddled masses of hungry personified. It is a scene of utter chaos seemingly just held together by a constant rush of adrenaline and decisive action.

As soon as we sit down I notice the breakdown in details. The tablecloth isn't set so we sit there as a busboy lays a fresh one over the table cover, which is stained and seems to have gone without change for at least a few days. The teapot is covered in stray tea leaves and is too full, spilling out hot water at the merest tilt of an angle. And as we await the first few carts a stain left for us by the previous diners begins to seep through the new linens. Not a great start.

The gamble with dim sum is, did you get a fresh cart? Or has this one been milling around the dining room peddling the end of its wares before a refuel? It's basically a mobile steam table so as you reach the last few dishes in the cart, it begins to lose heat rapidly. (Much like the way a full cup of coffee will stay hot for quite a long time, but when you leave the last third of it for a few minutes it suddenly becomes uncomfortably cold. Such is my understanding of thermodynamics). There's no way to get hot and ready dim sum with every single cart, unless you come first thing in the morning. Most of it is just right, set on the table with steam wafting out in aromatic tendrils, but there are definitely a few items served under temp, and while they were in theory at one point very tasty, they now just sit there in tepid disappointment.

This is a problem for any cuisine. Timing hot food out of the window is a very difficult thing, but it is especially important in Chinese food. Why? Because we use so much goddamned corn starch to thicken sauces and corn starch does not do well once it goes under its optimal temperature.

A hot emulsified sauce like Hollandaise will become a bit gloopy before breaking. A butter-mounted sauce, like most pan-sauces, will begin to break and become grainy. And a roux-thickened sauce like bechamel will begin to seize up in to a cold, lumpy... thing. But corn starch-thickened sauces, like the ones Chinese people seem to be so fond of, will seem to combine all the worst attributes of under-temp sauces. They often require a last minute addition of hot fat in the pan to achieve a smooth mouth feel, or they can become tacky. They start to break almost immediately, the fat escaping from its brief and tenuous bonds with water, thus leading to greasiness. And then they go from tastefully sticky to regaining its original glue-like properties. It is not unlike what I imagine to have a horse jizz in your face. Unpleasant all around.

So while dumplings, steamed buns and vegetable cakes may not suffer terribly from getting to close to room temp, anything that has a sauce on it in a dim sum house (which is a lot of shit) will suffer tremendously. Thus I am left, this particular afternoon, prodding at a few dead clams sitting in a goo of ejaculate-like black bean sauce. It makes me sound horrifically pretentious (and not to mention raises a few question, what with all this talk of cumming on peoples' faces), but it was just ... inedible.

We order too much, as what always happens when going out to eat with my mom. It's not that we're severe gluttons it's just that we like to try everything and see what a restaurant has to offer. But even I am unable to channel my inner fat-boy long enough to eat everything before us. The mini bamboo steamers are piling up, the table becomes a cluttered mess and it's time to pack this shit up and go.

There isn't much to speak of in terms of service at a dim sum house. You flag down carts and maybe ask for some tea or chili oil, and that's the extent of your interactions with the floor staff. But still there are moments where they can rise to the occasion and here they stumble, as most Chinese people do when it comes to hospitality (more on that ... at some point, there is a thesis waiting to be written on Western concepts of hospitality and why Asian people can not embrace it).

We beckon over three different floor managers who all vanish trying to delegate packing our food up to some busboy. An older Chinese man, who must be some sort of backwaiter finally brings some boxes to start packing our things, but he is suddenly pulled away by a manager and we are left to pack our own food. No big deal. We leave a card out on the bill for someone to take it to be charged. No dice, no one shows. We don't want to leave cash out on a table in such a busy restaurant so we go wandering about until someone finally directs us to the cashier, which is located in a forgotten corner by the live fish tanks.

Now just from an experience stand point, the dim sum was decent and all the little details I ragged on aren't serial crimes, just things I notice because I'm a detail-oriented person and I have a deep understanding of how restaurants go about service. It certainly wasn't the best dim sum experience I've had, it ranks in the bottom 50% for sure, but for the price, which was about $20 a person and the cost-efficiency .. it is what it is. Dim sum is often more about the experience than the food, and it is one of the rare kinds of eating out scenarios where you can compile a whole big group of people and get in on a fast-paced lunch with incredible variety. It's generally fun, not a huge investment on the diners' part with regards to time or money, and hopefully good and plentiful eats.

So the details from a diner's perspective are obviously a bit lacking, but since we had a friend in a high place, we got a good look at the kitchen as well.

We greet the chef and he leads us back to the kitchen. We pass the obligatory live fish tanks because Chinese people love their live fish. I agree that freshness is integral to good fish, but when the fish has spent the last few days of its life essentially imprisoned, crammed in stressful quarters with a hundred bunk-mates... let's just say I prefer the fish that's dead and on ice for a day or two out of the ocean. Push-carts blast out of the gates, there is little sign that front and back staff recognize one another, and then we push through the doors to find the biggest kitchen I have ever seen.

The ceilings are vaulted, skyscraping really. On the right is a kitchen solely dedicated to the production of dim sum; a 4'x12' stainless steel table floured and prepped for maximum efficiency with looming combine steamers lining the walls. To the left is a long line of burners with 8-9 cooks manning just as many woks and there are a few empty spots (for reference we have 3 when running at max speed). One of them is clearly making an employee meal as he uses long-handled spoons to stir-fry a 40" pan's worth of vegetables. Opposite the hot line is a steel table with portable butane burners, the kind you make hot pot with, each worked by one cook preparing one specific dish be it braised snow pea leaves, or a ba-wan pancake or steamed cockles. And behind that is a massive convection oven and two menial prep boys making dan-ta, or egg custards in pastry by the hundreds. They serve each table a complimentary plate of these and they're quite tasty, but you have to be sort of in awe that this kitchen requires two people full-time to just make freebies for all its customers. Finally the kitchen snakes towards the back past the production side to reveal a colossal dry-goods and refrigeration area to store all their produce.

Besides the physical impressiveness of the kitchen what also strikes me is the amount of people, the hustle and bustle. There are so many cooks and staff one of them could not show up one day and I don't know how you'd notice. It's getting near 3 PM, that midday lull, and the kitchen is taking its time to receive shipments from their purveyors. The service elevator door is opening and closing at every available opportunity, and huge shipments of vegetables, frozen meat, and canned goods are stacked on dollies and wheeled about. There's no time and no persons available to check the quality of the deliveries, the chef trusts in his suppliers and signs off on invoices after a brief once-over as he continues a conversation with my mom.

My understanding of dim sum is is that it isn't a great moneymaker. The ingredients are cheap but you need a whole lot of staff, and this particular dim sum house makes things fresh every morning before they're sent out in carts. It's possible that this is a quality measure by the head chef, always fresh never frozen, like In-N-Out. But what is also possible is that it is impractical to freeze and store that much dim sum because space isn't free and they still have a whole dining room and banquet menu to wrestle with. It may just be easier and more cost-efficient to meet dim sum demands as they occur in real-time every morning. There's a decent amount of waste but it probably isn't outweighed by the manpower and physical space cost of storing and freezing dim sum all the time.

Hence they rely on dinner service and banquets to make money. Talking about banquets and the sheer amount of private rooms they have would take up several more paragraphs and I think there already is a sense of just how ambitious an endeavor this restaurant is. Surely it isn't run by just one owner or by just one chef, but even as a collaborative effort this restaurant is reaching an incredible scale. Though things fall through the cracks often and that is at least well-acknowledged, they are content on being B- students, just slightly better than average and raking in the cash.

This is what happens when you get some smart and motivated people together with the strict intention of making money. You get a group of investors, you pay a talented chef whole wheelbarrows of money to let him exercise his passion, and you market and advertise and market and advertise. The amount of cash that flows through that place is enough to launder the income of a whole drug cartel. And while there is respect to be had in such an endeavor, and they are certainly successful serving decent dim sum, it's just not something I could ever do.

If I've learned anything over my career it's that a restaurant experience can only hope to achieve greatness through an amalgamation of seemingly inane details. That's why chefs go nuclear when one little thing is botched or forgotten on a dish. Each diner represents a chain of service, actions, food and drink that is hundreds of links long. One weak or broken link can make all that work on everyone elses' part for naught because the diner is only ever going to remember that one mistake. No matter how gracious, understanding or appreciative that diner is they're always going to remember it as "It was great but..."

These details simply cannot all be attended to in a big restaurant. The chain spanning from just 20 diners can leave a house staff in a tangled mess of weeds so thick you can't see out of them. There are simply limits to human performance and you just have to make a decision. Did you get in to this to make a buttload of money? Or did you get in to this because you care about how your name becomes associated with quality? There is money to be had in both mindsets, but the latter ... well, it comes slower and more difficultly.

It starts at the reception desk. The person taking your reservation is the agent, not the gatekeeper. They don't rudely bar your way, they work with you to find the best way in and they do it with a fucking smile. Don't tell me you can't hear a genuine smile over the phone because you most certainly can.

Then when a diner shows up, the door is opened for them, there are a team of smiling but relaxed faces awaiting them. Diners are smart now, they can tell when professionalism and sycophancy are becoming uncomfortably close, they can sense sincerity. Uniforms are clean and crisp but not to such starched perfection as to become intimidating. Straight edges and hard corners are harsh, unwelcoming ... think rounded corners, warmth, open arms. They are lead to their table, but shouldn't be felt as if a dog being lead on a leash. The hostess walks at their pace even though she walks ahead, and she pulls an old-school maneuver in pulling out your table or your chair and making you feel comfortable with it even though most people aren't accustomed to that act of hospitality anymore.

From there it's touch and go, reliant upon a floor manager's ability to read the customer. Do they want to settle in, order a drink first before rushing to a menu? Are they scanning the dining room wanting some attention? Are they famished and would love nothing more than some bread and butter? Is this a first date? Is this a special occasion? Is this just an opportunity to eat something new, hopefully something exciting?

Tables are cleared nigh silently. Plates are never brought to a diner's eye level. As a server you are a ghost; invisible yet omnipresent when needed. But this is also variable. Some diners want a waiter who will take the time to talk to them, engage in a little bit of small talk, go through the whole menu with you to really figure out what you want to eat. Others want to be left alone and prefer you to be the shadow that you are trying to become. Some of them require a mixture of both, they want you never and yet they want you always. Be attentive, a minute to a busy backwaiter is less than heartbeat, but during an awkward lull at a table it can feel like an eternity. You have to know how to see it.

When you pour wine, you never splash it on itself. Wine is up there on the list of things that perhaps are too sacred, too pretentious, but you still must treat it as such. It is gentle, it is a woman, you pour it slowly and you never let it froth. Red wine is almost sanguinary, it should coat and drip down a glass at a noticeably slower pace than water. White wine varies greatly but it always connotes a sense of crispness to me, it should almost shine and "bounce" in to a glass.

And then comes food...

As I've detailed in my unnecessarily long ramble of thoughts, service cannot be broken down in to a to-do list of actions. It is an attitude that is unique to each restaurant. But when you're rockin' with the best it is at its core stringently professional. That's the only thing that doesn't change from customer to customer, you treat every single one with the execution that is expected of being the best. Otherwise it's highly variable, unique to every situation, always excruciatingly aware of details and choosing when and where to press the advantage. Food, though ... there's quite a bit more science to that and in my opinion that science is best executed in a small restaurant.

The way I see it there are three crucial ways in which a small kitchen outperforms a large one; ingredients, staff and timing.

There are many analogies I could use here, but what I'm going to go with is textiles and clothing. You can have two outfits that look identical but differ radically in composition. The stitching and seam-work can be poorly executed, and that will mean the clothing's durability and fit is compromised. And if you use inferior fabrics it just will never feel the same way as something cut from more luxurious cloth. They look the same, but perform completely differently. To some people it doesn't matter, if it looks good it looks good. But to others who care beyond superficial details, you only use the best.

Much the same can be said about chefs and ingredients. A chef is only as good as the ingredients he uses. This is a great part of the reason you're never going to have a fantastic steak at home. You don't have any equipment hot enough to give it a good fucking sear, and you don't have the beef that was raised on premium feed in humane quarters and slaughtered properly, and you don't have the means to dry-age it properly. You buying that discount T-bone from Kroger and trying to hold that up to the light of a 48-day, dry-aged porterhouse from Snake Farms is like trying to compare an on-sale suit from Men's Wearhouse to a real Armani, tailor fit. It's just not in the same ballpark and once you compare them side-by-side the differences becoming glaring.

Why a small restaurant excels in this manner is simply a matter of supply. Vegetables and fruit that are grown well simply cannot be grown in massive quantity. It goes against the whole point of raising them well. Relatively small plots of produce, tenderly cared for is what elevates a humble beet to something superlative. Even if it is organically grown and labeled (which is dubious I might add), if it originated on a massive plantation-like lot ... it just isn't going to be the same. I am reluctant to use the word "artisanal" but the word makes sense. It is especially noticeable in livestock. You could, and many have, written volumes on the subject but what it comes down to is happy, well-fed animals in an environment as close to their natural one as possible, living stress-free lives and slaughtered humanely taste better. I care less about the animal's happiness and more about the fact that it tastes good, and when you work with a product that incredible, it's just exciting.

When you roll back and think of the dollies of frozen industrialized meats being carted in by the caseload at the dim sum restaurant, you realize how impossible it is for them to source and cook quality ingredients. The budget can't handle it and neither can the purveyors.

The other issue is staffing. If a chef is only as good as his ingredients, a kitchen is only as good as its staff. When I was standing in that massive kitchen, clean and organized as it seemed, there was no sense of chemistry or teamwork. Maybe I'm amped up on too many feel-good, inspirational sports movies but I believe there is a definite quality of teamwork to having a good night of service day in and day out. When you have a kitchen requiring upwards of 30-40 hands on deck, how are you going to find that many quality cooks? Yeah sure, if you're Daniel Boulud there are an endless number of hopefuls waiting to be conscripted in to your army, but if you start out big as a no-name I think the best you can hope for is fresh culinary school graduates or washed-up veterans. Maybe one day you can play big, and maybe even if you're an exceptional leader of men you can make good out of a staff of mediocrity... but I don't put that much faith in myself. When the time comes, much as with my personal relationships, I plan to count on a handful of some really trustworthy motherfuckers who I can rely on in the shit.

The final factor that it really comes down to is service. You can have the best ingredients, the best cooks but if you can't make it happen on a Saturday night dinner rush then why the fuck are you here? Danny Meyer, in somewhat troll-like fashion, used to patrol the Union Square area restaurants on Saturday nights. Any place that wasn't busy he noted it as a property that was likely going up for sale soon enough. Saturday night is where you must thrive, it is the division playoffs every fucking weekend (the holiday season is the Super Bowl). Surviving that crush not only depends on a well-oiled front-of-house staff to put butts in seats at a reasonable pace, but rides on the backbone of the kitchen that must fight through the weeds.

Prepping lamb shanks for braise and pick-up is difficult enough. Doing that in a quantity for a hundred table restaurant, even with three minions on constant knife duty, is going to mean some inconsistent dishes. I believe in doing prep the way the best restaurants do it. One station, one cook. This gives the cook a sense of ownership and not an insignificant amount of pressure. You're prepping salad greens, mache and rocket for a salad ... if a customer sends back a wilted leaf ... the chef knows it's you. You got to take pride in your work and ensure that everything coming off your station is four-star quality.

And then there's timing. It's amazing how many steps go in to getting a roast chicken from cold and dead, to on your plate within 30 minutes of you ordering it. Big restaurants that do this kind of food, the clock-face plating (meat at 6 o'clock, veg at 2 o'clock, starch at 10 o'clock) at high volume are often called "turn and burn" joints. You don't think, there's very little finesse you just rock out at maximum speed and hope for the best. Sure, you don't want dishes sent back because that seriously fucks your rhythm, but for the most part... you just get it out there. If it's 93%, an A- dish ... that's good enough.

To me, unacceptable. They say at The French Laundry if a diner gets up to go to the bathroom while a plate is being finished, the dish is thrown out and the whole process starts over again (by thrown out they probably mean fed to some thankful staff member). It has to be sent out at optimal temperature, at the perfect time with perfect seasoning and flavor, a 100% every time, summa cum laude. If you're the chef, that's your name on every dish. Are you willing to stake your name on it? Are you willing to bet your reputation on that sauce that is beginning to break, or that green bean that is beginning to discolor? That's a question you'll have to ask yourself and many if not most cooks are going to be too stressed during service to care about the difference between a 97 and a 100.

But if you're ever going to be great, not just good, you go for nothin' but net every time.

EP6

Saying "No"

I have a fairly poor understanding of economics, (let alone any metrics on a global scale, my general philosophy is "Let's Robin Hood these muthafuckas") but it's hard not to realize that times are tough. Even though we've been busier than ever, more mouths in seats than we've ever fed, the money coming in is not as it once was. People may be going out more, escaping the headache of their dwindling investment options, but they're spending less. No more splurging on that bottle of wine because "fuck it, I make grown-up money" or ordering lobster just because you want to increase your percentage of getting laid by 15% (I view all sexual encounters in probabilities). You gotta pinch pennies where you can because the bottom of the well seems near.

The irony of it is is that our prices have gone up. You'd think our best hope of staying afloat would be to acknowledge the economic climate and lower prices, but every time gas prices inch up that invariably affects the cost of food. Food cost used to be steadily hammered in at around 35% with a decent amount of leeway when it comes to waste. No longer. The margin is now razor-thin and every wasted scrap, every botched filet mignon sent back too well-done is a big hit. So if Michelle Bachmann can really bring gas to $2 to a gallon, I'll convert to her Church of Crazy and suck whichever pederast priest's dick needs sucking. But until then I'll rely on what logical capacities I have and try to predict the direction of restaurants, and how they play in to the future of peoples' interests.

There was once a world where tuxedoed maitre'd's barred the door at the country's best restaurants with their shitty attitudes as crossed spears. It was said the dining room of Andre Soltner was ruled with an iron gauntlet covered in velvet. If they liked you, then they'd probably wipe your ass for you, but otherwise yeah, leave, s'il vous plait. People said "fuck you" a whole lot. You had to know someone to get in, a reservation was a Shroud of Turin; a whole lot of bullshit, but rare and coveted nonetheless. There were simply different classes of people, and you were either welcomed nobility or discarded plebeian filth. What did these restaurants care? They were packed to the gills with whales, every table booked solid for six months, fat cats dropping $10,000 on bottles of wine they had zero understanding of, and just as much on escorts who'd ride their burgeoning waistlines like a circle pony. It was the best of times for many, and restaurants enjoyed unprecedented success and freedom from any stress of worry. Culinary development didn't necessarily stagnate, but the environment was not nearly as competitive as it is now. People were happy, there was money, they all grew complacent.

Some would credit Alain Ducasse as being the harbinger of doom. His fall from the Tower of Isengard would mark the end of days for the decadence the restaurant world had enjoyed, and like Rome, it would burn.

It was the opening of ADNY. Not that I was even aware of what a brunoise was at this point, but it is well-documented in the annals of culinary history. It was seen as the biggest douchebag move to ever grace the New York dining world. The king of French restaurants was so kind as to dip his toe in the American swimming pool, and he was going to be opening an end-all, be-all grand dining room right in the heart of America's biggest city. Reservations would be nigh impossible to come by, only those who knew Ducasse from Monaco or Paris would really have a shot at a table and be given the honor to spend $500-600 a person for just the food. And mediocre food at that, dressed up in so much pretentiousness as to be unpalatable. Diners would have the opportunity to select their drinking water from a cart that showcased dozens of bottled sparklings and flats, probably tapped from the tit of the Swiss Alps themselves. Herbs were snipped over dishes tableside by waiters donning fresh, white cotton gloves. And finally, to sign the check, the diner was presented with a vast assortment of Montblanc fountain pens to choose from.

Yes, the French really know how to take douchebaggery to the next plane of existence.

It can't really be said conclusively, but Bourdain has branded Ducasse as the "villain." The villain who nearly ruined it for everyone and shut down any hopes of fine dining ever surviving in New York again. The public shitshow that was ADNY had convinced New Yorkers, proud in their own right, that they didn't need French chefs in tall toques to tell them how to eat. They didn't want foreigners pissing in their wine and asking them to praise the vintage. The pomposity nearly sunk the gilded boat.

As we now know, fine dining continued to succeed. It was more the tanking of the economy that was the catalyst for a massive shift in dining attitude and environment. It was just perhaps the flag of Ducasse that flew on the mast, as the ship began to go under.

Suddenly, i-bankers were without the means to drop obscene amounts of cash willy-nilly. I think it was less to do with an actual scarcity of resources, and more to do with not looking like a huge asshole. As everyone else suffers, you're eating caviar harvested from a centenarian Beluga sturgeon off a spoon carved from dodo bone. That's a quick way to sink a PR campaign. People shied from going out, sealed up their bank accounts, and started cooking at home. And they were doing it with pleasure as Food Network personalities suddenly made "good" cooking at home more accessible. And even when they did go out, as I mentioned before, the spending was not what it once was. People actually looked at menu prices, chefs couldn't use chateaubriand steaks and lobster to convince you any more. They couldn't overwhelm you with luxury. And thus the proud began to fall.

White tablecloth restaurants went down like buffalo; in horrid, nigh-irresponsible numbers. I know, I was a part of one such death. There simply wasn't enough liquidity to float the boat. So where once there were velvet ropes clipped sternly to brass bars, now restaurants adopted a firm policy of open arms. Reservation books cleared, the blank pages probably collectively shaving off thousands of years off America's restaurateurs and their longevity. People really had to think long and hard about how to pull in the customers, they wouldn't just come anymore (like buffalo). And it wasn't just high-end, fine dining but regular, everyday joints too. The weekday special was now a norm, rather than a quirky personality trait. But even that wouldn't keep the doors open for long. I know, I was part of one of those untimely deaths as well.

The attitude shift was to "yes, yes, yes." A trite way to describe a floor manager is that their job is to "always say yes." The customer is always right, still a broken adage, but now an empowered one in that frankly, there was desperation in our eyes. We would do anything to make you happy, and if you were so kind as to drive up to the door we wouldn't say no. We need you, don't leave me, baby, I don't know how to live without you! I miss the blush of your cheeks, the smell of your hair drafting on a windowed breeze, the curve of your hips, your...

Err, what, um...

We were put on our knees and ready to receive. It was time to start sucking for gold. And this was what I had learned to do. My formative training took place in a period of desperation. I started working at my mom's restaurant just as we had closed our other joint. We were in dire straits. I was a waiter at a failing sushi restaurant, and a cook at a slowly-dying Evanston landmark. I knew the importance of holding on to customers and making sure every experience was right. A repeat customer was greedily clung to and cherished.

But after a year in the trenches of Pearl, things have changed a bit.

It's not my misanthropy emerging again, damning the human race for all its failures in treating the service industry respectfully. I promise. It's just that, there really are times you have to say "no," and it's taken me quite a bit of time to learn that.

Listen, it's not that I don't want to give you what you want, it's just a simple equation. Does your worth outweigh the value of fucking over somebody else? In a small-town restaurant situation this is often what it comes down to. It's first come, first serve and we have a limited capacity to give 10 square miles worth of people their Chinese food. If you think about it, we have three woks, six burners and two ovens we keep firing at all times. You can have as many cooks as you want, but with a kitchen that small there's nothing you can do. There are limits and it would be wise on the part of any restaurateur to realize that. Smarter men would've realized long ago what the capacities of such a kitchen were, and how quickly they could be reached.

I fear Sunday. Sunday is where I learned that there are limits. I respect the nature of the beast that is Sunday, just as the Starks know that winter is coming, I will often wake up with my hangover to realize that Sunday is coming, once again. See, on Friday, Saturday, people stretch out their dining. Some want to get in early and just go home to do whatever it is the hell old people do. Others want to make a night of it, go out with friends, start dinner at 8:30, drink the night away and just have a good time. Things are spread out, we do 250 covers but it's over the course of 3 hours. It's very doable.

Sunday is a whole 'nother thing. People come in hard between 5:30 and 6:30 and there are a ton of takeout orders. It's a family day, you bring your kids, you bring big groups, you don't want to stay out late you've got work or school in the morning. And just as many people don't want to go out, they stay home, order take-out and just get ready for the next work week. And it all happens just as the sun starts to set.

The phones don't stop ringing; they want to know if they can get a table, they want to pick up some food, they want food delivered. There are only two phone lines so you know it's bad when someone shows up and they're like "I've been trying to get through for like 45 minutes and decided to just come over." Well, fuck, I understand there's a slight chance our lines were down but in all reality it's because the phones haven't stopped ringing since 5 PM. It means we're really fucking busy. Forty, fifty to-go orders in an hour, over a hundred people seated, fuck ... we're in over our heads.

I've had some awful nights of service and they almost always involve Sunday and a party. Someone booked half our party room, leaving me short our two biggest tables and two four-tops and whenever they have a course coming up for 25 people, the kitchen grinds to a fucking halt. There's no way to fix that, there's simply no way to cook 25 dishes without using the kitchen's full capacities. And stopping everything for ten minutes creates a ripple effect of disaster. Tables are waiting an extra 10 minutes for food, take-out and delivery orders as well, but the front staff aren't quick enough to realize the timing is off, and still tell people their take-out will be ready in 30 minutes anyway. Then we realize we're in the weeds and we start telling people an hour and a half just to pick up Chinese food. They still want to come. VIPs show up unannounced as they often do, and you just have to take them, you can't tell them no, and then fucking mayhem ensues.

I didn't want to tell people "no." What if because I don't give them what they want they'll talk shit about us and never come back? Every customer is valuable they could spread their unsatisfied opinions throughout the island. What if they go to our competition? People come in here all the time telling us how much better we are than X, and Y and Z. What if people go to other places and do the same about us? What if because this one time we fucked up they're never coming back? Angry customers love to tell everyone about a terrible experience, negative PR is like slowly seeping poison. Oh great, we lost this customer, we're done for, it's over, all this negativity is going to reach critical mass and it's all my fault, thus begins the slow descent in to failure.

The inner dialogue is not unlike that of a middle-aged mother wondering if her philandering husband is about to stick his fork in to fresher meat and ruin everything.

We need the business, right? But it wasn't that I was being greedy trying to max out our profits either. I'm well aware that profits are useless if people have a bad experience. It's just that disaster strikes so quickly you don't even have a moment to realize you're on the top of the hill, just a sneeze away from careening in to a fucking mess.

The first problems are the dine-in customers. Reservations are carefully planned out to see that diners seated at 5:30 are going to be up, the table is turned and set for the people coming at 7:00. Inevitably, people show up late, their food takes longer, all of a sudden their whole dinner is pushed back a half hour. This completely fucks up 7:00 PM appointments.

The second problem is the take-out. Usually a take-out order takes about 20 minutes from when the order goes in to be out in a bag for you to take home. We've told people as long as 2 hours to pick up, and yet they still want to come, it amazes me. But you can imagine how fucking pissed off someone is going to be when they come 2 hours later and it still isn't ready. Every time I've had my head chewed off and had someone's veins threatening to burst as they yelled me down, it's been this type of situation. I get it, we fucked you, but if you give me a second I'll try to make it better. This is when you start handing out freebies and 20% discounts on the next time. This is the kind of situation you want to avoid at all costs.

We're trying to do too many things at once, but if we don't, we're not going to make money. You can't tell a 25 count party at $55 a person "no," that's stupid. That's a lot of free advertising to be had, and a lot of money to be made. You can't tell VIPs that for some reason never make a fucking reservation "no." They're way too valuable and you can't afford to lose their money or their endorsement. And you want to do as much business as possible, but at some point you draw the line and hopefully it's well before the quality begins to suffer.

It's part of what makes our restaurant such a difficult place to run. It's a multi-headed beast, and people expect a lot of different things from you. Some just want cheap take-out, others want the works, some come for a good time, some come out of habit. You have to cater to those individual needs and prepare for the unpredictable. You simply tell people you aren't taking any more take-out orders right now, I'm sorry. You tell people how long the wait will be, you be honest about it and then there are no hard feelings. I don't know why I freak about it so much, every time I've gone to an Olive Garden those bastards tell me it's like an hour-long wait. That hasn't left me bitter or denouncing the Church of Mediocre Italian Food But OMG UNLIMITED BREADSTICKS. They'll come back. You tell people why their food isn't coming, you nut up and be honest about it, and you make it up to them. Losing the money on a free round of drinks or dessert is well worth someone not telling all their country club homies over a round of golf that you suck. When you take reservations, you say "no" sometimes, you just have to.

It was my aforementioned conditioning, my desperation. I was taught to never turn someone away. But what I really learned this year, is that they will come back, so long as the quality of the experience remains worthwhile.

The Smith's, they waited 45 minutes for their reservation because they're very picky about their table and I couldn't get them the one they wanted. We fucked up, but they were being pretty difficult. Matriarch Smith claimed they would never, ever come back and she cursed me and put a pox on my clan. Guess what, she came back. Many times over. And we just pretended like nothing happened.

Bill got stuck in the parking lot because the valets got screwed by a 40 person party coming all at the same time, traffic was backed up the ass for half a mile. He was furious, said his food got cold, he threw it at my feet and screamed in front of everyone he'd never come back. He came back, I think with a bit of shame.

Mrs. Green ordered a lobster for her party of five but didn't realize it was a large lobster. This is a major failure of common sense as a large lobster is hovering around 3 lbs., more than twice the weight of a small. The waiter assumed she wanted a large because you can't feed five people with a small lobster. It was wrong to assume, but it wasn't completely illogical. She was furious, yelled, demanded a refund, even though she ate the whole damn thing, and claimed she was never coming back, and not only that but she was telling everyone that we were crooks. First of all, who's the crook, you ate something and you didn't want to pay for it. In most places you break it, you buy it, too bad. But we gave it back to her anyway, swallowed our pride and told her forget it, don't come back. Guess what, she came back despite our objections.

My point is, people will come back. Maybe not in the city where the options are limitless, but here, they will come back. I'm not taking this for granted saying our business is endlessly resilient and we can just say "fuck it, you need us more than we need you." No, god no. But you can't panic when someone has a bad experience. You make it up to them, sometimes you reject them and get them the next time. What's most important is that the quality of your product never suffers. As a cook, once you send out a dish that wasn't perfect because you just wanted to get it out, you compromised. From that point on, your whole fucking career is a compromise. No, you do it right. As a waiter, you lie and spurn one customer because they're cheapskates and fucking annoying, you say "whatever, let them go." No, you make it right for them, you don't fuck up and make them right in criticizing your business, you do what is right and let them make the decision based on that. That's integrity; you put your best face out there, and if it wasn't good enough, fine, but at least you can sleep at night knowing you did your best.

We aren't always perfect, far from it. We often have to compromise just to get things out the door and make ends meet. Yeah, this delivery order was sitting way too long but there isn't enough time to get someone back to the restaurant, and back to your house. It just has to go out. Sometimes a fried rice isn't perfect, I know it. I can tell just by looking at it, the soy sauce wasn't evenly blended throughout, the rice is too wet, it won't have a nice texture to it. But it cost $7.95 and we've got 200 people knocking down the door. You just have to do it.

And that's why we are forever mired in the territory of just "pretty good." Sometimes we're great, sometimes we're very mediocre, but we usually hover around pretty good.

What I'm talking about is always, consistently being great. That's what I aspire to, and though I can't do much to change Pearl now, one day I will get my chance to start anew, and do it right from the beginning. And it starts with saying "no" to some things.

I envision a small restaurant. Fifteen to twenty tables, tops. No parties bigger than six. Big parties stammer kitchens, and although great staffs handle it just fine, you gotta start small and refine from there. You can control the quality much better in a small restaurant, the pace isn't as frantic, the variables not so numerous. Sure, the money ain't as great, but what's important is building your brand, making people associate you with a really great fucking dinner. You want to make more money? Grow from there.

No take-out. Nope, sorry. Ain't gonna happen, I don't care how well any dish I make will travel, it's just not leaving the restaurant unless it started on a table. Take-out is a great business; no waiters, no tablecloths or stemware, just someone to put it in a bag and someone to pay for the box it comes in. But sorry, just not worth it. Not only is it inevitably going to deteriorate in quality by the time it gets to your door, I'm not hassling my kitchen with a whole 'nother aspect of fuck to worry about.

No parties, no off-premise catering, one menu. Parties are great business too, but catering your whole restaurant to one group of people and putting the rest of the diners on second priority is unacceptable to me. I want egalitarian up in this bitch. You eat off the same menu as everyone else, no off-premise run-arounds, no private banquet menus, I'm sorry you don't want to hold your doctor's meeting here if I don't give you a room and a special drink menu, but I just don't want that business. Of course the best restaurants have two dining rooms, one for regular service and one for banquets. But it just doesn't interest me, even though there's quite literally millions to be made in it. One dining room, one kitchen, one focus.

And finally, the real crazy factor... no reservations. Ideally, I would avoid that system all together. Everybody waits, no special treatment, no need to freak out over who's coming when. If they come, they come. If not, oh well. Reservations are just an incredibly difficult variable. You're always trying to balance space for reservations vs. walk-ins, you're timing the whole restaurant to a group of people that aren't even here yet. I'd love for one day to be free of this bondage, to be servant only to those that are in the room right now. In Long Island, you just can't do it. Old people aren't going to wait for a table they don't know when they'll get, they won't even show up unless they know something's waiting for them. But in the city, I think you can do it and many have proven you can. You have a nice bar, a comfy place for people to wait, and they're more than happy to do so if the experience is worthwhile, if the food is worth waiting for.

My mom would roll her eyes and judge. Impossible she says, you'll never make any money. And that may be true. In handicapping my restaurant's capabilities so, I'm severely limiting my outlets of cash flow. But if it's that versus taming the multi-headed beast every night, trying to balance a billion different kinds of customers at once, then I choose limited. I choose saying no, this is how I'm doing it, and if you don't like it you can go elsewhere. I could do what my mom wants me to do, open up Pearl's across Long Island and laugh all the way to the bank. But as silly and idealistic as it sounds, I didn't do this for the money. I did this for me.

Perhaps I sound like an obnoxious artist. Perhaps my values will sink me, I'll be poor and forgotten. Perhaps I'm just an asshole. But when it comes to food, I strongly believe it's all about taking your time. You shouldn't worry about how to get customers in seats, or how to make money here or there, you should worry first about making food that's worth eating. Then the people will come and then you make sure your service is airtight. I'm not trying to be a jerk, if someone asked me down the line, "Hey, can I rent out your restaurant for a private event" I wouldn't reply with a "FUCK OFF, ASSHOLE I DON'T LIKE PEOPLE PLAYIN' ON MY RESTAURANT!" I'd just say, no, I'm sorry I only do regular dinner service. Nobody calls Doug Sohn an asshole because he's only open from 10:30 AM - 4 PM. That's how he chooses to run his business and there are lines out the door. At some point you have to stop being desperate for peoples' business, for their money and your own money, and just realize that if you're going to be in the restaurant industry ... there are going to be a whole lot of sacrifices. You're going to be spending most of your adult life working. Why not do it the way you want, the way that makes you happy, the way you believe is the most efficient way for you to express yourself and deliver quality food?

If all the personal fulfillment gets me nowhere then so be it. Perhaps I'll be broke, a failed culinary dreamer who jumped on the Food Network bandwagon like all those other assholes. Maybe. But know that I'd rather say "no thank you, I don't want your money, I want you to have a good experience based on the way I know how to deliver it." Maybe I'll never be good enough to run a restaurant like that; special events, banquet room, off-premise catering with lunch prix-fixe and dinner service well in to the night. That's a lot of money if you can ride that hydra. But I'm fine with that, and am choosing to do things slow, play small ball. It's not about pride, it's about integrity and quality, and once I leave here I never want to have to compromise again.

EP6

Focus

There will come times in a man's life when he is left in periods of deep introspection. He is shut out from any stimuli, his smartphone will be out of battery, and he will contemplate one of the many unanswered questions of our generation.

Does God exist? If so, why is the world in such disarray if it seems to have both creator and steward?

Why are we here? Am I an existential accident? Is my life curiously meaningless?

Is there such a thing as love? Is it a biochemical phenomenon or can souls find one another in simultaneously serendipitous and predestined fashion?

Why do all expensive electronics come in packaging that could thwart the Incredible Hulk? Is that much anti-theft deterrence necessary? How often does the Big Green pillage a Best Buy?

While these are all complex questions worthy of intense cogitation, I have spent much more time attempting to structure the reasoning behind why menus are designed the way they are.

Why does something have to be decidedly Italian, or Chinese or French?

What is authenticity and to what degree must we strive to achieve it?

Is a restaurant defined by its menu, or is the menu defined by its restaurant?

As many of you know, I am a fairly voracious reader. What many of you don't know is that all this "reading" I'm doing is of cookbooks, which might as well be big picture books with small words and basic sentence structure. My elementary reading comprehension aside, what I really like about reading these books is less often the recipes (which, excluding the most heavily professional-focused cookbooks, are always a little watered down for home cooks), and more often the short chef and restaurant biographies that precede the pretty pictures.

My career is just beginning and naturally I am curious as to how all these cookbook-author-level-chefs came to achieve their chef-dom and their eponymous restaurants (though, naming a restaurant after yourself is decidedly 1970s porn; stylistically bankrupt and masturbatory). To see how others did it, achieved greatness not only gives me a bit of a personal benchmark to measure up to but gives me greater insight as to how the whole thing happens.

The most reoccurring theme is a romanticized depiction of the chef in his childhood; hovering around his mom or grandmother, and smelling and tasting the food of their heritage for the first time. Though kitchens are often incredibly diverse workplaces in regards to nationalities and ethnicities, it still largely remains true that Italian guys grow up to cook Italian food, American guys grow up to cook American food, and Asian guys grow up to cook Asian food. Regardless of any reinterpretations or modifications, all of their cuisine is anchored in memory, in upbringing, in culture.

I have concluded that there are many reasons for this.

Firstly, a chef is obviously going to cook food that they feel deep emotional attachment to. They cook the kind of food that is not only delicious to them, but comforting as well. We all have certain dishes that can be categorized as "comfort food" to us. Things we eat when we're feeling a little vulnerable, homesick or indulgent, whatever it may be, it exists. Sure, the food may be dressed up to match the expensive linens in the dining room, but rest assured it begins with genuine soul in the kitchen. Chefs want to share this kind of cooking with their customers and hope they come to appreciate it as much as they do.

And then there are the practical reasons to consider. They feel most familiar with this kind of cuisine. They are more intimate with the flavors, ingredients and techniques and are able to expand upon them with respects to authenticity and know-how. And despite this lovely rose-tinted shade we like to pull over the world that we aren't racist creatures, as chefs become the faces of their restaurants we still, as customers, expect to see some fat Italian guy personally rolling out pasta, or some wizened Japanese sage expertly slicing sashimi off a Cretaceous-era-sized tuna. Though there are notable exceptions beginning to emerge, including Brooklyn Jewish guys elevating Japanese ramen (see: Ivan Orkin), and Asian-American chefs manning the helms at the world's best French restaurants (see: Alex Lee, Corey Lee), most everyone is going to be a little skeptical if they see some Hollister-catalog white boy opening up a Thai restaurant. It's not impossible, there are many examples of success, but I'm guessing there are many more examples of failure. Every time you put forward a winning dish people will applaud you out of surprise, and every time you put up a pop fly they will scorn you out of knowing contempt. Such is human nature.

So I feel there is a little bit of pressure as to what kind of food I should know about and cook. If you asked me right now what I felt most comfortable making it's definitely a Parisian roast chicken, or a bucatini alla amatriciana. I am still quite uncomfortable making shrimp dumplings or even a roast pork fried rice. Even though I grew up with this stuff I didn't ever handle it and I just ate it with the kind of fat-kid-loves-cake mindset; I didn't think about it, I just put it in my mouth and enjoyed it (that's what she said?).

Thus my problem emerges. When I look back and try to conjure up memories of my first gastronomic epiphanies, I come up short. I don't seem to have any significant culinary history even though my whole upbringing is deeply rooted in good Chinese food and the restaurant business as a whole. I'm afraid I don't have any kind of sepia-toned flashbacks to invoke for any cookbook I may inevitably write.

As an Asian-American, what exactly am I expected to cook? How can it be seen as authentic, unique in bearing my own signature yet paying homage to a greater culture that came before me? Even if I figure it out will I be forever bound by the first building I lease or the first menu I write?

Now I know I'm getting ahead of myself. There are many years of working as a kitchen slave, cooking other chefs' food to their exacting standards, and many if not all techniques to hone and master. But as a big picture person, someone who is seemingly incapable of existential myopia, I know that one day I will open a restaurant, I just know it. And when the time comes, when my dream is headed screaming for the plate, can I knock that son-of-a-bitch out of the park and feel good it hit the fucking rafters, not just eked by on a roided facade? Or worse, got lucky and some kid snatched it from the outfielder's leaping grasp? (See 1996 ALCS, Yankees vs. Orioles, Jeffrey Maier)

When I think back there have been three primary caregivers in my life in terms of keeping me well-fed.

Mom, grand-mom, and McDonald's.

If I had to detail the three favorite dishes of my childhood they'd each hold a spot. My mom's Sesame Chicken (well, the restaurant's; just think Chinese chicken nuggets with the sweet-and-sour sauce built in), my grandmother's tonkatsu pork chops with ketchup, and the good ole' #1, Big Mac with fries.

There's a theme there. Those are all fried foods with somewhat sweet components. I was a fat kid and there is little mystery as to why. I like crispy-anything paired with sweet-tangy-anything. There are few foods that I think cannot be improved with a little deep-fry and sauce. My inner fat boy is an easy creature to please and it craves processed chicken and chemical-laden sauces. So what the fuck kind of deep food-related emotions can I write about should I ever write a cookbook? What kind of picture can I paint when I never hovered around my grandmother's Sunday tomato sauce? (Okay, yeah, Asian people don't make tomato sauce I get it, bear with me for a second)

We need to go deeper.

I think it's important to assert my cultural identity. Minus my panda-like appearance, I very much consider myself American. I love American food, I generally have had an over-privileged life laden with first-world problems, I'm loud, larger than average and love the three-day weekend that I never, ever get anymore. So really, I'm an American who happens to be Asian. That means I honestly believe chopsticks are a more efficient utensil, my life will be forever burdened by parental guilt and the life they sacrificed to raise me, and the general female population finds me effeminate and/or unattractive.

I'm not so crass or simple as to be like "Herp derp Cantonese-style hamburgers, yeahhhhh! Great idea!" But I think its important to acknowledge the phenomenon that is the Asian-American upbringing. Though we grossly overpopulate your higher education (suck it, America, we're like intellectual locusts) there aren't all that many of us in the big picture. Our story is not yet written, and our food is not yet completely understood.

I've gone on and on about how Chinese-American food has become the way it is. It boils down to good business practice. You meet the demand of your consumers. Back in railroad-building days that meant the first Chinese immigrants selling steak & eggs and apple pie alongside their dried scallops, sea cucumbers and other funky shit. Slowly, as Americans became more adventurous, they delved in to the strangeness and it began to merge. Now we have General Tso's chicken. But the frugality and money-equals-success business model proved too effective, and like corporations, the food lost its soul. It lost all artistry and character, and along with it, its respect. Now, curious Asian-American cooks like myself, need to dig through the pieces and sift out the gold; to find meaning, to create anew.

I think the process is much more organic than one would originally believe. You don't sit there with a whiteboard and start listing American foods on one side, Chinese foods on the other and start criss-crossing to see what works. I think growing up here as a minority, knowing naturally what you've eaten your whole life and what makes sense goes a long way.

This is an obstacle my grandmother regularly hurdled. Being an annoyingly picky eater for a fat kid, she was constantly figuring out ways to get me to eat. Knowing that I would lap up any American food, like hot dogs, burgers, steaks, etc., she would often improvise "fusion" dishes to my liking. So really when I think about my childhood food I think about this strange combination of traditional Taiwanese food and American junk food. There'd be soy-braised pork riblets on one plate, and then next to it a potato hashbrown cakes with scallions and A1 sauce. There'd be miso-noodle soup sometimes along with pork braised in ketchup and onions. Steak and pork chops rubbed with Chinese five-spice served with a side of garlic bread. Ground beef seasoned with soy sauce before being turned in to spaghetti sauce. I loved all of this kind of stuff and obviously she wasn't trying to impress me, she was just trying to cook something tasty using the flavors and techniques she already felt comfortable with. Is it the kind of stuff you could serve in a restaurant? Maybe not, but it gets the ball rolling on the thought experiment...

Take for instance, chow-fun noodles. I've talked about them before, even mentioned some experimentation I've done with them (nothing naughty), but it's still not right. Chow-fun noodles are only exceptional when they're fresh, have never been frozen, and honestly, the kind we get are way too thin. Careless cooks vigorously toss them in a wok and they break in to ragged and uneven pieces. They're rice noodles, the chewy proteins and starchy amylose compounds make that springiness delectable, you have to respect and showcase that. The noodles need to be thicker, they need to be treated more delicately and they need to be fresh. This is something that is just far too much hassle for a restaurant that has about 80 other dishes on the menu and doesn't have enough discipline to treat the product properly. But with a well-trained French culinary brigade, with people who actually fucking care about cooking something with integrity, I think it can be done. Sure, it's a pain in the ass. But cooking anything right, treating it with real care is always a pain in the ass. Professional cooks are the only people who are crazy enough to do it every day.

But that's just the first step of natural observation. The next is pairing. In America, pasta has become somewhat bastardized but few people can deny the deliciousness of spaghetti and meatballs. If it's done right, it works, it's a simple combination. Protein, savory, sauce, acidity, starch, body, there's a lot of components that just boil down to three ingredients and make sense. So I suppose that's the next step...

Chinese sausages are mostly dried. They're delicious to be sure, but they lack that meatiness that Western sausages often have. Whereas Chinese sausages are thin and dry, Western sausages are fat and juicy. I think a properly cooked bratwurst or andouille sausage is an incredible thing. A thick, natural casing cooked on a griddle so that the skin cracks at 165 degrees and has its juices run all over mixed with mustard, it's quite sexual...

Wow, that got gay and suggestive real fast.

What I mean to say is that I think chow-fun noodles and their chewiness can benefit a lot from the meaty texture of a properly cooked sausage. Add an acidic yet flavorful sauce and you basically have the balance in flavor profile that spaghetti and meatballs does.

We can go deeper.

The sandwich. The ultimate food item. Chinese food culture has sandwiches for sure, they just don't enjoy the kind of distinction and reverence that Western sandwiches do. Not only do we love sandwiches in America, there are endless varieties of them to appreciate. The basics remain the same though; starch, protein, vegetables, sauce and very often cheese (more on dairy later).

My focus is on the sub or the hero or the hoagie, whatever you want to call it. A crusty white bread filled with cold cuts, mayo and American yellow-cheese. There isn't much in the way of crusty breads in Chinese food, but there are mantou, which are big, fluffy white buns. If you deep fry them (oh yes, I've gone there... though I'm not the first) and you bring 'em out quick, they do not retain greasiness and they have a delicate crispness to them. They are the perfect hot bread for which to make sandwiches with. I'm not saying slather mayo and dump dry turkey slices in there with Iceberg lettuce, but there is a lot of potential for experimentation right there. A way to retain the firm structure of the hero loaf but along with a means to expand the flavors in to another realm.

Of course there remain road blocks. Mainly with the aforementioned dairy products. That being, there are no dairy products in Asian food. And yet butter might as well be one of the most important things to have in a Western kitchen. How to negotiate this gulf? Butter has an assertive flavor on its own along with being an incredibly useful fat in the kitchen. How can you make a bridge out of butter when it doesn't belong in one place, but is heavily relied upon in the other?

This is a question I am not completely able to answer. You have to resort to using butter for its technical applications rather than its flavor, I suppose. Mounting butter in a sauce gives it thickness and lusciousness without asserting its pronounced flavor. A light brush of butter on a (rested) sliced steak gives it that extra note of luxury while still letting a well dry-aged beef do its thing. Butter-poached shallots and lobster give the respective ingredients a protective and delicious bath to cook in without becoming overly buttery, yet still bestowing incomparable texture and flavor on almost anything.

So these are just preliminary thoughts. Just some ideas perhaps as to how to bridge the gap. But in wondering we are lead to the inevitable question, is this authentic and does it matter?

What is authenticity? Well, it's hard to put that label on anything that is American. Food, culture, demographics, language, anything American is inherently an adaptation of, or mash-up of various influences from numerous backgrounds. That's why American food is so hard to classify, there wasn't really an extended period of time where we were confined to one geographic area and let the land, the ingredients sculpt our cuisine. We took European food, applied it to the incredibly diverse American landscape, and then included African, Caribbean, Asian and South American influences and ran with it. Ran with it all over the fucking place in a relatively short amount of time. I mean, the French spent hundreds of years in the same place figuring out what tasted good in their own country. How could we expect to have such a strong identity when we were so spread out, so diverse in an even shorter amount of time? The answer is we can't. So what does that mean for our question, what is authentic?

Well, there isn't really anything that is authentically American. And since Asian-American identity is an even more ambiguous and undefined thing, how could we even claim anything authentic for that? I think what it comes down to is that authenticity is a combination of taste, respect and execution.

Taste not as in flavor but as in class. You don't hate-fuck two things together just because you think you can. You do it with some serious thought and introspection. You gotta put a lot of effort in to it, be able to defend your reasoning and explain why you think it works. Any "fusion" dish you lob up there might as well be a fucking dissertation. You have to have really thought it out and be able to defend it to show that you gave the idea some serious effort, some respect...

So I suppose that's what it's all for then is respect. As much as we hate on those pansy Frenchmen, they have established a culinary identity that has changed the world. The same can be said for the millenia-old Chinese food culture. I mean these are dishes that have passed the test of centuries, you can't be that asshole that throws it up whimsically because you think it's cute or because it fits your restaurant's personality. You do it with intimate knowledge, with great care and appreciation for what came before you. And we all know that when you cook something with great care, what you are really doing is practicing good...

Execution. That's what good cooking is, taking an ingredient that someone painstakingly raised, and treating it right. You don't overcook it and say "Whoops" and throw it in the garbage. You realize all the manpower, careers, sweat and tears that went in to that one fucking heirloom tomato, or that one acorn-grazed pork belly, and you cook it right. You showcase it, you put that pretty girl on stage and you tell her the whole time you love her and she's the most beautiful girl in the room.

Okay, my analogy is spiraling out of control again, but I suppose that's what sums it up for me.

Taste, respect, execution.

I don't call it fusion because that name has been besmirched. No matter how many good things the Nazis did for Germany, they'll forever be fucking villains in the discourse of human history. Well, I feel almost as vehemently about the word "fusion." Yes, I am comparing bad fusion cooking to Nazism, get over it. It's caused too much pain and suffering to ever be redeemed.

I'll just call it cooking. Doing something right, cooking good food that I grew up with and thought to present as a representation of myself. An Asian-American boy who likes fried food and sweet-and-sour sauce. I realize this post wasn't terribly conclusive, more a loose organization of fleeting thoughts. But I feel like we're gaining ground. We're slowly starting to understand a bit more about why we cook and how we should cook. If there's a should at all.

But while I daydream and get hazy-eyed over the menus I may write I must first remember. There's a shitload of dishes to wash. Hurricane Irene has increased our weekday business by three-fold, and the old white Long Islanders aren't going to feed themselves. Mother Nature has handed us a golden goose egg, we must take care to handle it properly.

Back to work, Cindarella. Dream about your prince another time.

EP6

PS- Why do I keep referencing myself as a female character?!