Michelin Stars: The Madness of Perfection
As Chef Marcus Wareing looks through the Michelin guide he sees two stars nailed next to his eponymous restaurant, and he can't help but wonder,
"Is that it?"
"All that? For this?"
Of course "all that" is an unworthy two-word summation of decades of training, years of slaving and screaming, commanding, toiling, pushing, grinding and never giving up in the heat of a kitchen. It symbolizes a man's life's work, all the tears, sweat and blood he has poured in to refining a meal. Just a meal, one of tens of thousands we will have in a lifetime, all in pursuit of an intangible idea, a simple yet devilishly deep craft, all out of some misguided passion tinted with nurturing and giving, generosity and integrity.
All that. For this. Two stars. Ordained by some occult and anonymous critics who seem to hold our life's work in the balance, who hold disproportionately great power over us.
Rewind the clock.
It's 2009. I have painfully simple ideas of what success means in the restaurant industry, and I have my eyes are set on one prize: three Michelin stars. The ultimate Holy Grail, the supposed apex of achievement in the restaurant world.
I study the lives of Michelin-star chefs. What it takes, who you have to work for, question how much depends on the kitchen and how much on the individual. And I am nothing short of zealous, firm in my belief that this is my true cause in life, that Michelin stars are the only stars worth reaching for.
Fast forward.
It's 2012. I'm working in a one-Michelin star restaurant and I am near dead on my feet. I'd do anything for a day off, but my partner's called in sick and it's time to slog it out to an 18-hour day in the face of a packed Saturday. I'm fucked. Down a double espresso and hope a cocktail of adrenaline and caffeine can drag my ass through this service without going down in flames. The familiar crank of a ticket printing signals my coming doom, "Order-fire!"
My perceptions of Michelin-starred cooking before and after working at Cafe are as different as Dante before and after the dark forest.
Whereas it seemed such a simple process in theory, now I realize it is not only a path fraught with danger and enough stress to guarantee a diminished lifespan, but perhaps one that isn't worth it.
I have nothing against fine-dining. And the Michelin guide is moving away from only giving credit to restaurants with priceless porcelain, leather-backed seats and endless changes of silverware. You can have a sushi joint in a subway station, or a homey pub with cafeteria forks and drinks in mason jars and still claim a star. But at the end of the day, is it worth it? If you have a packed house every night and people leave with smiles on their faces, does it really fucking matter if a bunch of European pricks want to stroke your dick with some stars? Bukkake your restaurant with macarons?
(The Michelin "stars" are actually called macarons, as in the light, egg-white based French cookie ... just in case you were getting the improper imagery of a Frenchman actually drizzling down the oft-mistaken coconut pastries in an orgasmic fashion, "Oui! OUI! OUI! Noix de coco!")
I'm not so sure. Now, I'm a pretentious and lucky jerk. I've eaten at six of New York's seven three-Michelin star restaurants. I can be a fancy girl. I like to enjoy a meal from a high-octane kitchen operating on a different plane of existence. And to be sure, all those meals have been incredibly enjoyable, some of them life-changing.
But does it matter? Is it worth it?
Sometimes I find myself getting near-equal enjoyment from a really fucking good hamburger. Or fresh-made pasta. Or a really bear-skin-rug-by-a-Canadian-fireplace-while-it's-snowing-out-kind-of-hearty stew. Or fried-fucking-chicken with Crystal hot sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy-from-a-packet.
My point is, I think I'm confident enough in myself and have experienced enough of the glory of Michelin stars to make a realization; I'm a simple guy. I'm a fat kid at heart, I like fat kid food. I like going out to dinner with friends, sharing a ton of different dishes, eating family style, eating with your hands, laughing, drinking and not having to worry you're making too much noise, or acting like too much of an ass. I'm boisterous, I'm loud, I'm casual, I'm sick of wearing suits and I like to have fun. I don't want to see first dates sit in a plush-ass banquette that I know is damn comfortable, but they look like they're halfway deep on a set of anal beads because it's so goddamn frigid in here, and they're afraid the food's smarter than they are, way over their heads.
Michelin-starred dining just isn't that fun anymore. Did Chef Ramirez serve me a fucking incredible meal at Brooklyn Fare? Shit yes, he did! But he stared at me in his silent dining room as I struggled with a fresh-from-the-fryer soft-shell crab that was causing holocaustal pain in my mouth, and all I could think of was "Jesus Christ, Chef Ramirez fucking hates me and if I don't swallow this bite of crab he is going to chop off my dick, deep-fry it in front of me and season it with a $40 case of Roland sea salt." I can only imagine how he would react if he had heard me say to Wilson that this was the most expensive man-date I've ever been on and I better be getting laid later by someone, some way. Or that the wine I brought to this somehow-B.Y.O.B., Michelin 3-star cost me $12 and I roulette-d it off a rack 20 minutes ago. It's from New Zealand, Chef! I'm sorry! I didn't know your sea bass is from Spain, please stop hitting me, oh god, my nuts, whyyyyy?!
To be sure, Michelin-starred restaurants are getting it. Our generation, this lost Generation Y, doesn't like sitting around in dinner jackets, sniffing wine with supposed know-how over a 4-hour dinner. Sure, it's fun once in a while, but no one's going to hit that up more than once or twice a year. Maybe for an anniversary to show the Mrs. you still give a shit, or for the Mistress to show that you still give a shit, and your youth and virility aren't circling the drain of Sunday football and High Life's. But it's just too much expectation, it gives an evening that's supposed to be rarely celebrated freedom; freedom from kids, from work, from a shitty home cooked meal, whatever, it gives that evening so much gravity.
Yes, you in the back, I hear you. Yeah, hit me, brotha...
"Um, how much of this realization is a result of you being a pussy and realizing that Michelin-star cooking is hard and soul-draining?"
Damn, I knew I shouldn't have called on you. You was supposed to be my brotha, man. Fine, I'll answer your stupid-ass question.
Yeah. I won't lie to you. It's hard. Maybe more than I bargained for. But I'm not quitting on that yet.
For all my criticisms, there is one thing that will always remain true about Michelin-starred cooking.
It is the best training you could ever ask for.
Yeah, they beat you in to the ground. They make you realize you are less than a peon sometimes, that a trained Rhesus monkey could pick herbs better and faster than you. And that, yes, this refrigerator is clean but does it shine? Yeah, they will teach you to ask those kinds of questions and do all the little things that everybody thinks doesn't matter, but holy shit does it matter a lot.
I have absolute respect and dedication to the religion of elite cookery. It is akin to being a Marine, a Navy SEAL, spec-motherfucking-ops, minus all the, you know, real world consequences, life and death situations and general importance to the world. Yeah, minus all that shit, the analogy stands.
But let me worry about how my kitchen runs. Let me make sure that I'm not only performing to high standards, carrying out our humble craft with integrity and that we're training people to be the best they can be not because it really actually matters if you're an excellent cook, but because you're the kind of person that when you do something, you do it the best you fucking can. Let me worry about that shit, I got that shit under control. You guys? Out there in the dining room? You guys have fun. Just because I take this shit too seriously doesn't mean you have to also.
And maybe we, in the back, your faithful culinary peons working for $10/hour in a city that charges about $2500/month for a studio, will have some fun too. There's no point in cooking if everyday you go home and you think "Man, I suck, I should quit" or "Holy shit, I'm going to have a heart attack if I hear another ticket printing." You have to take pride in what you do, and the work environment provided to you should give you the capacity to earn this pride. But maybe we don't give a shit what a bunch of Frenchmen say about us. Maybe we're New Yorkers, we'll let them decide if they think we're worth a damn. And if every weekend, you see lines, you hear phones ringing, you see reservation books stacked with notes and names, maybe that's all you need. Maybe fuck yourself. Fuck your guide. I've been doing this long enough to know that this tastes good, and I've been selling enough of them to know that this tastes good, and I've been cooking it long enough to know it's damned good. So let me push it, let me make it nice, and let me go have a beer afterwards that isn't the first step over the cliff of self-destruction, a night of partying multiplied by the factor of stress I endured this week already, that is probably going to have me palpating my liver in the morning. Let me have a beer that is a toast to the hard work of the crew, that is a nod to our craft and the camaraderie it inspires.
So the direction is still unclear, but the clouds are parting. Whereas once I blindly prayed to a book, believed in its holy message with unerring, unwavering piety, I now have seen the light. There are no miracles, only hard work, passion and integrity.
I haven't given up on you, you spare-tire-loading fat-fuck Book. I will pray to you for quite a bit longer, because my spirit is in need of you. I need you to discipline my life and my skills, make me the best I can be. But once I am free of that nest, I will cast you aside and set my own rules.
I used to wonder. It's so simple in theory. Go to a three-Michelin star restaurant, beg them to let you work, stay there and at that level for 10 years, and then boom. Three Michelin-stars! Right? And maybe that's the gist of it. And maybe that caused me a great deal of anxiety because I realized, I can't be the only asshole that's figured that out.
But it takes so much more than that. It takes so much, so much, SO MUCH sweat and tears. It takes destroying the balance of a normal life, it takes being a little fucked up in the head. If you're the kind of person who is obsessed with the work, needs only the friends he makes back-to-back at a stove, no time to think a little and gain some perspective on what really matters in life, then godspeed. You belong here, shit. You're hell of a lot tougher than me.
But there are other things in life. And call me lazy, call me a dog, but I think happiness and fun are a part of it. And I don't think they're mutually exclusive. To be sure, there still is a great deal of hard work before me. I'm not exactly talking about a regression to 40-hour weeks with smoke breaks. There's still a lot of brick to lay, and a lot of blood to bleed. But in the end, even after all this shit, after all the hate, stress and bullying I experienced, and the sights I saw first-hand about how hard it really is to have a successful restaurant, I still believe that it can be balanced. That there is such a thing as cooking excellent food while having fun and having a life.
It's not about three stars, it's about happiness. That's the goal now. That should have always been the goal. Food is happiness, it's making people happy, it's sharing a part of you with someone else because you hope they can understand what you see. So we shouldn't just serve happiness but also practice it.
Call me crazy. Maybe it can't be done. Maybe this time I really will go down in flames.
But I'll try to keep a smile while I smolder.
EP6
