Bourdain's So-Called "Ranks of the Damned"

This right here, is a very, very important chapter in a book otherwise devoid of advice. Advice, real and brutally honest, that a whole bunch of people sorely need and won't get anywhere else.

It's a phenomenon I've been slowly observing for three years, since the day I realized I wanted to be a cook. At first, I was only focused on myself, slowly learning how I could make this a real career. I was learning day by day that my initial expectations were being shattered at an alarming rate. But even as my preconceptions evaporated around me, I still felt compelled and driven, only further enticed by "The Life." So I kept going.

Then I began to notice those around me a bit more.

The phenomenon is growing, gaining mass, snowballing to dangerous sizes and it not only concerns me, but straight up pisses me off.

It seems like everyone and their fucking mother wants to be a chef.

Everyone I know has a friend somewhere either attending culinary school, or is working as a kitchen grunt, or has desires to be a cook, or (god forbid) watches a lot of Food Network and has been inspired. When I hear about what they're doing, I can assess immediately how serious they are in relation to me, and what kind of threat they represent.

Yes, assessing threats, assessing competition. "Hold your fire, there's no life forms on that escape pod." Well one mistake can cost you a lot apparently, as Grand Moff Tarkin learned the hard way.

Alright, to be honest, I'm not sure why it bothers me so much. It's not like the idea belongs to me. I'm not the only college grad allowed to veer off the beaten path to become a cook. And I didn't do this to be original anyway, I did this because I think it's the only way I won't end up drinking a bottle of bleach 20 years from now as I futilely pump the fumes from my 2030 hybrid through the driver's side window. Maybe it's just that, in some future retrospect, I don't want to be seen as part of a few hipster, free thinking years that saw a huge increase in culinary school enrollment. I don't wanna be seen as a reactionary statistic to the cultural impact of Food Network. I don't want to be lumped in with these tatted up, pierced up young guns who got in to cooking for the wrong reasons.

Granted, it's not that you can't be a serious cook if you happen to be an independent, "free-spirit" or whatever the fuck that means. If you "think outside the box, man" or if conforming to society is unacceptable to you (even though most of you "rebels" are directly conforming to a subculture, hence making you tiptoe a line between authenticity and hypocrisy), but you can still rock a Saturday night service like a boss, then fine. Your presence won't irritate me much. And if you're a cool person to boot, then yes we can get along.

But the problem is, there's another thin line. A thin line between just happening to be someone who is a bit quirkier than the majority of society (and consequently someone very fit for the life of a restaurant professional), and someone using this career as an outlet for their societal angst.

Here's what I expect to see.

Many years from now, some sociology major is going to write a thesis on the growing popularity of Food Network and how it has affected Millenials. They are going to find that four hours of Bobby Flay programming a day can brainwash any young boy in to thinking professional cooking is where it's at! Iron Chef and the adrenaline bomb it is, is what I gonna get to do every night!

No.

One hour of lightning fast prep, and a race to the finish to plate your hermaphroditic salmon, or whatever they like to use as main ingredients on that show, is not what professional cooking is about.

It's about slaving over a cantaloupe with a #12 melon baller, trying to extract a perfect sphere of fruit for a customer paying $25 a head in your party room.

It's about butchering forty chickens and treating every single one with respect. It's about carefully cleaning their bones, blanching them, roasting and simmering them ever so slowly for perfect stock, something ninety percent of this world couldn't identify anyway.

It's about looking at your food cost sheet and wondering if your chef of 18 years is worth the 3% increase in waste, because this recession hurts. Because things are getting tight, and though you've known him forever, he's been incapable of changing his habits.

It's about wondering where your kids are going to be safe because school is closed due to a freak tornado hitting Queens last weekend, and deciding between watching your kids and risking your job is an impossible choice to make.

It's not a pretty life. It's not over-saturated with colors, with smiling perfect mothers and witty male chefs like Food Network would have you believe. The previous generation of restaurant professionals did it mainly because they had no choice. They didn't have the education or skills to cut it in the 9-5 world.

But now that we can do this by choice, we run the risk of making a very poor one.

If you decided you wanted to do this because you love to cook at home, Warning: Professional cooking is absolutely nothing like home cooking. Be very wary. I would say you are more welcome in a restaurant kitchen if you like hauling garbage and sweeping floors (like me).

I think I already made my case for food on TV, but if you decided you wanted to do this because of anything you saw on TV, Warning: Big. Fucking. Warning sign. Really stop to reevaluate where you are with your life, and make sure it's not the lack of a dog or girlfriend that's making you bored or something. As legitimate as Top Chef is, don't let the glamor fool you. They are only 18 chefs out of hundreds of thousands, and they are just as much selected for their TV faces and propensity to yell at each other, as for their culinary prowess.

If you decided you wanted to do this because Bourdain made it sound like you can do drugs, drink whenever you want, get laid, be tatted up and nonconforming to all the suit-and-tie stiffs around the world, Warning: You may just be a 17-year-old who doesn't like learning anything in high school and can't get girls. You know, something really uncommon. In the words of Ruhlman, "I can't think of a worse role model for young cooks."

If you are doing it anyway, and you are working at a restaurant like Bottega, or Jean-Georges, or you're just slaving away at two stages while getting a business degree, then mad props. I'll see you on the battlefield.

If you decided you wanted to do this for any reason other than passion, passion so strong that it doesn't bother you you're never going to be rich or have a 401k, or any reason other than the fact that nowhere else in society would have you, then maybe you're on the money. But know that it's going to be a long, merciless path to the top, and the price of failure is greater than most industries. For every chef with an eponymous cookbook at Barnes & Noble, there are ten who lost their fortunes and dreams putting everything in to one restaurant that failed. That number will only increase as the competition grows. And having closed the doors on a few restaurants in my life, I know how devastating that can be.

I speak so menacingly about being a cook, and where you draw your influences from, because I myself have a deep, dark secret. I am most likely, a Food Network baby.

Yes, I admit it. It hurts my soul to admit it, but it's true.

Months of watching Giada and her freakishly large head, and lavishly accentuated cleavage slice parsley, entranced me. Tyler Florence and his "Ultimate" renditions of dishes had me watching and recording every day. Alton Brown and his quirky food science helps me to understand how we cook more and more even now.

I no longer watch, and I don't deserve a perch above you to judge, but I do give words of caution.

So when I say I'm angry, and I deter you, I'm being honest, but only because I know how dangerous it is.

My first few weeks at Oceanique were hard. I wasn't expecting to have to communicate with my remedial Spanish, clean organic dandelion greens one by one, and vaccum pack cobia filets all day in a basement. I had this image of a smiling, fat, white chef (which Mark kind of is) standing over my shoulder and instructing me on how to properly clean a roasted beet.

Not the case. And the entirety of this blog will show you how long it's taken me to get here, and frankly, I'm still nowhere. I've learned a lot, and it's only because I grew up in restaurants that I didn't fall off the wagon. I had a childhood molded by the industry to ground me in a sense of reality when TV and celebrity threatened to pull me off course.

So I welcome the competition.

I imagine it will soon become much like any professional sport. Millions of passionate, hard-working people vying for very few spots to rise to the top. Some, of undeniable talent and genius will get there almost regardless, few as they are. And most others will have to fight, claw and work their asses off to reach the higher echelons of professional cookery. You may have to suck a few dicks and lose a few girlfriends in the process (funny how those go together), and you'll definitely need a healthy dosage of luck.

But not quite yet. I'm still suspecting many of these Food Network babies will wash out. Someone who didn't grow up knowing the sacrifice and complete fuck-job restaurants do to your personal life may not be able to handle it. The idea of 80 hour weeks, no weekends to get together with your friends to watch Eat.Pray.Love (or some bullshit like that), and living at your restaurant while the whole world ticks away without you is not appealing to most.

So for those of you thinking this is a good idea, well best of luck to you. If you find out cleaning grease traps isn't your cup of tea, then alright, see ya. We don't want you here anyway, amongst Bourdain's so called "ranks of the damned," if you're not willing to get a little dirty. And as for the rest of you, like me, who are going to doggedly pursue greatness, well... I'll need a sous chef at some point.

EP6








KIDDING! Remembering my own rules, #4: be humble, and don't be that guy.

Oh and PS - I'll take a hipster over a bro, any day.

The Chinese Kitchen

So I'm sorry I've been absent, but frankly ... I've been busy as all hell.

It feels good to be back in the kitchen though, after a long hiatus from professional cooking. It's good once again to be getting my hands dirty, hearing the familiar clang of a dishwasher slamming shut, rediscovering my lost knife callous (painfully, I might add), and thinking about restaurants, food and pleasing customers for most of my waking day. Exhausting though it is, it is a comforting reaffirmation that I have chosen the right path in life.

Thankfully the highs have been much more numerable than the lows. The exciting developments of a foreign kitchen and a busy, busy restaurant are giving me welcome obstacles to surmount. There are oh so many things I wish to tell you, and I can only hope my schedule and my quickly-loosening grip on the English language will allow me to relate them to you.

But let's discuss the most important thing dear to my heart already. The new kitchen.

For my loyal readers (of whom I am eternally thankful ... and yes you can point out if I used "whom" incorrectly there, because I'm quite sure that's likely) who can remember, I moved back to New York with a sense of trepidation. What would this kitchen be like? What strange things will I find, and how will they upend my expectations of a good kitchen?

Well, I was relieved to find that a Chinese kitchen is very similar to a Western kitchen. I'm not sure if that's the case in China, but here in Ah-murr-ica our kitchen feels very familiar to the old French brigade based systems I worked through in Chicago. There are subtle differences but they are more curiosities than actual exotics serving to redefine my conceptions of a kitchen. Things are just a ... bit different.

In Western kitchens, we use the traditional chef's knife. A typically 6"-8" blade, curved with the weight centered just above the hilt. It is very adept at slicing, precision cuts and damned near anything quite frankly. It relies on the presence of a solid cutting board; hard and resilient enough to allow for speed and efficiency, but soft enough so as to not dull the blade, as the primary cutting motion requires the blade to be in contact with the board at all times.

This is not the case with the Chinese cleaver. Whereas a Western chef's knife can run you hundreds of dollars for the finest high carbon steel, to ensure durability and sharpness for a lifetime, the Chinese cleaver is a rough hewn instrument, expecting replacement often at a cost of maybe $20 a knife. The best kind of cleaver is heaviest along the tang, has a slight curve to the blade, is wide and is just heavy all around. You know how Boris the Blade says a good gun feels heavy? Well a good cleaver just feels heavy, like it was cast out of recycled carburetors or something. It can be deftly used to make precision cuts and even vegetable carving, but it requires quite a bit of experience to master it. But stir-fry does not require precision cuts (the Certified Master Chef's exam even docks you points for vegetables that are cut "too precisely" in the Asian cuisine part of the test), and a skilled cook can run through prep really quickly with a cleaver. It can smash garlic cloves in to a paste, it makes a huge shovel for scooping diced onions in to a bowl, and really where it shines over a chef's knife is in butchering (as you could imagine). No more careful deboning around a chicken thigh, just slam straight through that fucker. It is a bit unnerving how high a cleaver hangs in the air, before delivering a thunderous, guillotine-esque chop. If you slip up with a chef's knife, at worst we're probably talking stitches. If you slip with a cleaver, we're probably talking "put those fingers on ice, and call 9-1-1." Even if we did listen to music in the Chinese kitchen, the tunes would be drowned out by the constant whamming of steel hitting wood.

I used to use a whip-like filet knife to break down chickens at Va P. The flexibility of the blade helped it to snake around rib cages and wishbones. A good butcher can clean almost all the meat off a carcass and leave a boneless chicken half for service. I didn't think it was possible to do that with a cleaver. We get cases upon cases of chickens at Pearl, from the waist up (I think white people don't like dark meat or something). I would actually kind of hate to see the Doomsday Machine that relieves these chickens of their lower halves. But we get the top half and butterfly off the breast meat just like anybody else. How do you do that with a thick, rectangular blade? You use the bottom corner to create the first incision, you then insert the wide blade in to the cut and bluntly.. you rip it off. The whole chicken tit.

I thought it was a rather gruesome and imprecise way to butcher a chicken, but I found it's actually quite graceful. It leaves the meat very intact and clean so as long as you have some skills. Then you separate the chicken tenderloin, and save that for certain dishes. A cleaver is the Bowser of the kitchen Mario Kart world; deadly in the hands of a skilled player (I know I use Mario Kart analogies a lot, but seriously they work for ultimate and cooking if you're a nerd like me).

So that was a rather long treatise on knives. But the subtle differences are what I notice and appreciate. The wok system is beautifully efficient. Instead of using multiple pans and having to clean them after every dish like you would on a 6-burner range, you use one cast-iron wok set over a jet burner (a hole the size of a basketball hoop that burps fire at ludicrous temperatures, the only way to stop the flames from searing your face is by plugging the hole with the wok... or turning it off, but that's for pussies). You let the wok go supernova and then you immediately douse it with a handy water faucet that hangs over the range. The intense heat and the sudden introduction of water, and a little elbow grease from a steel wool pad, cleans the wok faster and better than any dishwasher I've seen. How cast-iron can go through thousands of degrees of temperature change, hundreds of times a night, and still retain it's non-stick qualities without degrading is nothing short of a miracle. Get yourselves cast-iron skillets.

And there's a whole 'nother thing. The speed. Most Western kitchens use the "order-fire" system, especially fine dining restaurants that serve complex dishes. When something is "ordered" the cooks start cooking the time-intensive parts of the dish, like a thick steak, a braise, a duck breast, etc. And then when it's "fired," meaning the diner is ready for their entree, we finish it by cooking it to temperature, heating up sauces, garnishes, sides, plating, etc. The pace is a bit more complex, it feels slower and requires strategic planning, and often finds a cook deep in pots and pans, sorting out orders for different timings. In a Chinese kitchen, it's balls to the wall, full-tilt boogie-woogie as soon as service begins, and you finish dishes one at a time at light speed. Every cook gets two woks, one for keeping frying oil at a stable temperature, one for everything else, so you have no choice but to do one thing at a time as fast as humanly possible.

I wondered how we did it. A very busy weekend at Va P saw us doing at most 400-500 covers, and that taxed the kitchen to the limit. A very busy weekend at Pearl has us doing 800-1000 covers. Granted, the complexity of prep is far less and we also serve lunch at Pearl, but I realized it is the brilliant efficiency of stir-fry and the Chinese wok that allows us to crank out so many meals at an average time of one hour per table. Oh and by the way that 800-1000 number doesn't include the 100-150 takeouts and deliveries we do, which feed anywhere from 200-400 people. I realized after all this rudimentary math that my mother has fed well over a million people in her career.

And there are all sorts of other strange little differences. Ways to say that Westerners and Chinese people both recognize the path to ultimate efficiency in cooking, but there is more than one way to skin a cat. (Is that the saying? I'm pretty sure I effed that one up...)

Both kitchens use mise-en-place, much to my relief. There simply isn't a better way to cook professionally. But whereas Westerners put ingredients in restaurant-grade plastic boxes of varying sizes, well organized in a big walk-in refrigerator, Chinese people use good ole' clear plastic bags. There are merits to both. An expensive but efficient plastic box can be stacked, you can put hot liquid in it, it can be labeled, and it can't be punctured. But it has to be cleaned and takes up a lot of space. A plastic bag serves most of these purposes, and they use less space and can be simply thrown out. Instead of rows of boxes, you can load up fat bags of diced onions and cram them in to a cardboard box, and label that instead. Much like general Chinese strategy towards everything, we focus on a just acceptable but cheaper means of doing things.

In Western kitchens you often use big rectangular cutting boards made of hardwood or some kind of weird wood-plastic hybrid that I've never been able to identify. In Chinese kitchens we use circular bamboo cutting boards. Again, they are cheaper.

In Western kitchens you use grills and convection ovens, in Chinese kitchens we use dual-purpose smoker/rotisserie ovens.

In Western kitchens you use butter and flour to make a roux for thickening, in Chinese kitchens we use cornstarch (for damn near everything, I might add).

In Western kitchens you use lids, in Chinese kitchens ... I don't think we've used a lid for anything yet, except the lids on our industrial size rice cookers.

In Western kitchens you have a plethora of stock-based sauces, made often and scrupulously maintained. In Chinese kitchens, you make a redonculous amount of sauce every few weeks and keep it in old soy-sauce buckets in the fridge. Chinese sauces are damn near timeless as they often rely on fermentation to achieve that exotic flavor.

In Western kitchens, you often have a kitchen towel in one hand and either tongs or a spoon in the other. In Chinese kitchens, you have a thick linen towel to grasp the edges of rocket-hot woks, and a long, bowl-shaped spoon in the other which is far more necessary than your hand. If you were a pirate cook who lost his right hand, you may not be able to work in a Western kitchen, but if you put a big Chinese cooking spoon on your nub you'd be just fine with us.

Oh yeah, and in Western kitchens you have handles. I don't know what Chinese people have against handles, but they are few and far between.

So it's little things. Some changes are whimsical, others take a bit adjusting to. I guess our cultures just view things differently. We see gunpowder, we say "Hey! Fireworks!" White people see gunpowder, they say "Hey! An incredibly efficient means to murder and dominate the known world!"

Kidding. Sort of. Don't think I forgot about the Opium Wars. I was an East Asian History major. No big deal. I know some shit ... kind of.

Ah, there's so much to tell. I'm learning so much that my brain, riddled with holes from alcohol abuse, feels like it's leaking. Front and back of the house. Stir-fry, Chinese prep, and DIM SUM. Jesus Christ, I spend most of my waking hours making dim sum rather than actually cooking, and by gorsh there is a lot to be said about my struggles with the delicacy required of dim sum. But that's for another time.

I'll end my little post with an anecdote. We do whole Maine lobsters at Pearl. We do 'em live and we do 'em right. To be honest it's my favorite lobster that I've ever had. Chopped up, lightly floured, fried and quickly wok'ed (it's a verb) in different styles; Szechuan, Hunan, Cantonese, etc. I've been thinking a lot about sustainability, organic vs. non-organic, the merits of slow food and family farms vs. industrial farm factories, about PETA and their whole whack-job operation. And obviously the disposal of lobsters is an important nugget of discussion to the animal lovers. Do they feel pain? What is the most humane way to kill a lobster?

I've killed my share of lobsters. Not a lot over an extended career of cooking, but I did murder like 150 of those sons of bitches in one sitting for New Year's at Va P. And I popped my lobster slaying cherry at Oceanique when I coyly threw one in to the court bouillion steam pot. I don't love it, I do agree that it's rather unpleasant, but it's not the war crime PETA makes it out to be. No one's going to be fucking talking about it at a Geneva Convention or anything. Anyhow, these exact thoughts were running through my head as our executive chef, Ah Gau pulled out a big 3-pound lobster to be cooked to order.

I'm thinking, oh he'll probably parboil the guy and then take the flesh out for frying; quick and clean. Or he might do it the most "humane" way and put a knife through it's brain, ending the crustacean and any "consciousness" it might possess in one fell swoop. So he puts it on the stainless steel prep table and grabs it by the back of the head, where the head shell meets the thorax I guess (I'm not a lobster anatomy expert, okay? What's important to cooks is claw, tail, knuckle meat, roe and et cetera meat). He then RIPS the head off.

Yes, caps is completely necessary there. What I'm talking about is ripping the shell off and leaving the organs underneath intact, and jiggling with life. That's like ripping the top of someone's skull and their face off in one vicious movement, and watching their brains pulsate. I was shocked and awed.

And then he takes a cleaver, one that I was using not five minutes before to cut scallions and having a hard time of it because it's so old, chipped and blunt, and he dispatches and cuts up this lobster in less than ten cuts in less than fifteen seconds. Perfectly, cleanly, no bits of errant shell flying anywhere.

He cuts the lobster in half at the "waist," where the tail meets the body. Cuts off all the legs in two quick hacks, then quarters the body in two chops. Scrapes off the guts and brains in to the garbage. Then he flips the cleaver, uses the blunt side to hammer off the claws and rip them off, then hammer the claws in to smaller, manageable pieces. Then he takes the tail, sets it on the cutting board and watches it for a second as it writhes and curls and jumps. Yes, the lobster is done but it's nervous system is still kicking (it's closely related to cockroaches actually, the primitive nervous system can stay rather lively for a long while after execution). The tail kind of inches and worms around the cutting board, and Ah Gau lifts the cleaver as high as his head and brings it down in a final, and absolute blow that cleaves the tail perfectly in half. The aim, the skill, nothing short of remarkable.

He scoops the good bits in to a bowl, sprinkles a little flour/corn starch/salt over them as he tosses the pieces, and then fashions the ornamental parts of the lobster (the fan of the tail, and the head) so that they'll sit prettily on a plate.

Suck that PETA. I couldn't do anything short of smile. It was a very succinct reminder of how much there is to learn, and how much of it can't be from books, or blogs, or eating at fancy restaurants.

It's from being back in the grind.

EP6

And Here We Are...

After an epic two weeks I've made it.

Home, sweet home to New York.

To be honest, my body feels like bombed-out London after The Blitz. A Luftwaffe of decadent food, cheap beer, a 15-hour road trip, and little sleep have left me unable to process thoughts more complex than hunger or fatigue. But what I can gather in my shell-shocked state is that I have made the right choice. It was a difficult one to leave so many friends, and a city I called home for six years behind, but it was most certainly time to start the next phase of my life.

But my existential satisfaction is uninteresting compared to the aforementioned hedonistic food fest I've been going through the last couple weeks.

See, a lot of people I know created a bucket list that involved experiencing things you could only do in Chicago, e.g. the Sears/Willis Tower, Millennium Park, a Cubs or Sox game, Second City, Lake Michigan, all that jazz. When it came time for me and Wilson to leave Chicago, we strove to create an epic gastronomic tour of the city that would let us experience the wondrous food culture of Chicago.

Unfortunately, we grossly underestimated our own capacity for gluttony and our ineptitude in terms of packing.

Our ambitious gorging fell short. We didn't come close to going to all the places we had intended to. But we did hit the classics and a few new spots. Now as you know, I don't really do restaurant reviews. I have neither the qualifications, the gumption nor the desire to critique someone else's work like that. But I like to try to understand restaurants and glean a little helpful advice from them.

At the heart of any good restaurant is a soul. A restaurant is a projection of someone's desire to care for and nurture others. How they choose to do so will inevitably present itself in the decor, the food, the atmosphere, the employees, the general "feel" of the place. A soulless chain restaurant, a purely money-making endeavor will also show its true colors, and though they may get by on pure volume and aggressiveness alone, I think they are truly sad and unworthy places.

Now a restaurant can range anywhere from a dive joint, replete with kitschy decor, simple food and loud music to an austere temple of cuisine; quiet as a library with silverware costing a few months' rent, and a holistic sense to the whole event. We didn't really get around to any of the latter, and given the pounding my bank account has taken, I won't be doing so any time soon. And you may think that there is the most to be learned from these so-called "temples" as they garner the most respect and praise in the food world. And that may be true. But I don't think a simple "dive joint" deserves any less attention or that is has any less to offer. After all what truly measures success is how long your doors open, and how excited people are to come through them night after night. The color and the appearance don't matter.

Let me talk briefly about Hot Doug's and Kuma's Corner. From an outsider's view, all you can see is the strange decor (Elvis and obnoxiously bright primary colors, Death Metal and dark wood bars, respectively) and lines of people snaking around the building. A quick glance at their menu will tell you that they focus on one thing each; hot dogs/encased meats and hamburgers. They are far and out of the way from the rest of Chicago civilization, Hot Doug's boasts some limited hours of operation, and the smoke from vaporized beef fat at Kuma's is suffocating. But yet they consistently deliver an exciting and delicious experience at a very fair price-to-quality of product ratio.

What do you learn from that? That despite all obstacles, if you deliver a focused product that continues to excite and entice people, you can succeed. If you stick to a brand, a philosophy, a set of principles that people can come to expect of and appreciate of you, then they will come to you no matter what. That's the way people treat food and drink here in America, and it is a beautiful thing when it works in the right direction.

But what about a more conventional restaurant? Your standard place with waiter service, complex and balanced menu, lunch and dinner operations all centered around a type of regional cuisine. You know, a place you'd take a date to on a Friday night in the hopes of holding hands with her later. A few glasses of wine later I can usually make that move, but I depend on the restaurant to be of some conversational fodder at least, hopefully positive rather than negative (I find my palms sweat less when I'm praising a restaurant rather than criticizing it, and then I can "go all the way" and perhaps clasp hands whilst walking home).

Well it's not so simple. Hot Doug's is always going to be thought of as the paragon of sausage emporiums, and Kuma's will be considered the apogee of hamburgers in Chicago, but a conventional restaurant doesn't have such a clean-cut identity. You're most likely going to be categorized by the type of cuisine you most comfortably fall in to and your price range. It's up to you to define yourself from there.

I am not going to name this next place that we went to, because it is still a very young restaurant and I am fully aware that it takes quite a bit of time to hit stride. I think it is possible for this place to become a solid establishment, or it could stumble. But I will mention a few things.

The atmosphere and decor were fantastic, with some Asian, maybe more specifically Korean influences on the menu. The restaurant was constructed out of a lot of scrap and junk, refurbished and pieced together to give a rough-hewn yet quirky feel to the restaurant. The location is also kind of off the beaten path, it's quite small and is BYOB. It is simple and of modest ambition, which is by no means meant as an insult but rather to highlight the comfort of its casual and simple environment.

But yet though everything felt right, the food was difficult to comprehend. It lacked a true focus, and the flavors were not bold and distinct enough to stand alone. If it is the oft-overused formula of "Asian flavors with French technique" then I am still confused. All I could do was say "not bad" or "pretty good."

I give such detail because I had somewhat high expectations of this restaurant. I had followed their blog about opening, and closely observed a restaurant that was similar to something I hope to achieve. I would need to learn from this effort.

And what I learned is that if even if all the pieces seem to fit on paper, even if everything looks right, even if you market correctly and get everybody's attention and their mouths watering, there may be something missing.

To their credit, there were butts in the seats, and there is likely a bright future in store for them, but how they will shine remains to be seen.

And then there was Lola. As we stopped in Cleveland for the night before finishing the last leg of the road trip, we also stopped to dine at what some people call the finest restaurant in the Great Lakes. The moniker is not off base.

I usually don't rant and rave about decor, but I seriously enjoyed the environment put in place for us by Michael Symon. It was dark, but not foreboding. Rather, the dim gave a sense of comfort, privacy and closeness. Gray slate tones offset by brighter, orange marble of a warm nature. And a very impressive open kitchen. Open kitchens are difficult to work with, not only do you have to get your shit done but you are on display. Good cooks not only have to work clean they have to look it. Usually that's not too difficult, but adding another factor to a crazy dinner rush is not always welcome. And then the food...

I seriously enjoyed the meal. The style and presentation of cuisine was very much something I would like to emulate. Bold, bold flavors, every dish powerfully flavored and different from the next. Pristine chilled lobster, tender and refreshing. Crispy pig's ear with tender, and juicy pork belly. Deep fried bone marrow, a miracle of culinary technique in my opinion. The whole event was fantastic, refined, high-class yet casual. There is a lot to learn from such a restaurant.

I think it is especially important I start to see the bigger picture of restaurants now that I am embarking on helping at my mother's. After all, this is the most important thing to our family. The business has kept us going for 30 years, it put me through school and it is integral that I learn what my mother has learned over all that time.

So I thought the easiest way was to become a diner myself. To eat at my own restaurant, something I haven't done in several years, would be the simplest way to get a feel for what point we're at.

I was more than pleasantly surprised...

Let me preface, I did something bad. I came in with an attitude. I thought a year working in a highly-rated Italian kitchen, studying cooking and restaurants on my own, waiting tables and working the trenches of a sushi restaurant, that I was on pretty solid ground. Not an expert by any means, but I figured I could bring back some tricks for sure. I feared the Chinese kitchen, it was going to be unfamiliar, I thought I would have to refine it with a bit of the French brigade system. I thought there would be a lot of difficult ground to cover with the front-of-house staff. Frankly, I thought I might see something that was going to be riddled with holes.

What a poor attitude for me to have, what serious lack of faith I had, and how silly I feel for thinking it. My mother has not kept herself afloat in this business for decades without reason. She is adaptable and keen to improve herself, with an attention to detail and an ability to control that far outweighs my own.

She had changed much in the past few years I've been away. The restaurant is quite beautiful, the ambient noise problem leashed by new carpeting and heavier tablecloths. She has just purchased some high-end porcelain, beautiful in shape and form. The kitchen is brightly-lit and clean, worked by her talented dim sum chef and her faithful executive chef of 18 years. The front-of-the-house is working better than ever; smiling, serving delicately to ladies first, clearing tables and crumbing proficiently, refilling water glasses gracefully, proffering hot tea and giving succinct yet meaningful menu descriptions. The sushi, something we had never really focused on, just sort of had, was very good. The food had been very good in the past, and now was exceptional. The clientele finally seemed just as at ease as the staff, we are able to support more employees than ever, and the restaurant seems to be running on all cylinders.

How could I have dared to think that I had a lot to offer? What an inexcusable ego for me to have. It's time to start back on the bottom, and I'm more than happy to do it. To be fair, my mother had told me every week on the phone that she wasn't happy with the restaurant, so I had kind of low expectations going in to the whole experience. But I was put at ease to realize that she just has a tenacious ambition and desire to improve. That she possesses a work ethic that I sorely need to emulate.

So I am excited. Here we are back in New York, and I have a team effort ahead of me for the next few months. It may be for longer, may be for shorter. It may be harder than I originally imagined, but at least there is a goal and there is always a restaurant to return to. I need to exorcise my obsessive-compulsive tendencies somewhere...

I miss you all dearly in the Midwest. Wish me luck, but know that I am ready to sink my teeth in.

EP6

Wrapping Up

So my last day at Futami has gone and past. I didn't hang up my black shirt, pants and apron in the closet, this time I took them home. It would be the last time I walked through that kitchen as an employee. I shook hands, gave bro hugs, wished everyone good luck, because they have an undoubtedly questionable future at that restaurant, and walked out in to the alley. It would most likely be the last time I breathed in the rank summer air that baked the garbage of four collective restaurants. It would be the last time I had a cigarette there, sitting on the emergency exit stoop and looking in at FlatTop and their odd melange of customers. It would quite possibly be one of the last times I am in Evanston for a long, long time.

Not to draw out the poetic value of the event, but it had a serious impact on me. I can't believe how long I've been in this town. It seems as if it has been too much, and yet I know I will miss it. Six years in Evanston really, a long college tenure plus a year of employment. There were many reasons it took me this long to leave, and sometimes I feel like the time has been wasted, but there was valuable personal growth in those years. I've come a long way, and I like to think it has been all for the better.

I stopped by Va Pensiero during my lunch break that day. I figured if this was one of the last times I were going to be in Evanston, I had to visit the old crew who had recently reopened under a new chef, and moniker (just "Pensiero" now). I stopped by First Liquors and picked up a 12-pack of Modelo Especial, and trekked the familiar path to the Margarita Inn. I opened the side door to the Va P waiter station was greeted by some very unfamiliar sights. This was the first time I'd been to the building since April.

The heavy green curtains that covered the dining room windows were gone. The room seemed more bare, now minus all the personal touches of Chef Jeff. The rosemary sprigs and marble tablets that served as centerpieces, the empty vintage Italian wines that lined the dining room, the warm tea candles all gone. Now just the black fabric chairs and walnut colored tables, waiting for high thread count linens.

I entered the kitchen and it had changed. Someone had reorganized the pots and pans rack, the dishwasher was stacked with dirty plates, and the kitchen seemed darker. Only Chuy and Sergio remained a familiar sight. The owner, Michael, had kind of recognized me and gave me a passing nod as he sat in the chair I was so used to seeing Jeff in. Chuy was dismantling chickens, something he was incredibly adept at, and stuffing what looked like a compound sage butter under the skins. We shook hands and chit-chatted about what had happened in the past few months.

He asked how my family was, I asked the same of him, I wondered what he had been up to in terms of work for the past few months. I had the luxury of another job, and if worse came to worst I could have always packed up my bags and went home to reconnect myself to the parental teat. He did not have that luxury, he had a wife and three kids to support, he needed money ASAP. So he was a mercenary cook for the past few months, just cooking where he would be paid and accepted for it, and no doubt excelling as he is one of the most technically sound cooks I have ever worked with.

He gave me some encouraging words as I told him how difficult it was for me to find a job as a cook in Chicago. He explained that's why it was important that I go to culinary school, because on paper I just didn't have the requisite experience to do any serious work. But he encouraged me and told me I had done very well at Va Pensiero. That I was a reliable cook, a nice guy and of passable intelligence. It meant a lot to me. Having never really had a father or an older brother, Chuy had become something of both to me in the 9-10 months we worked together. I know that seems silly, but when you're working next to a guy for that long, in close quarters with high heat and stress, you bond quickly. It's one of the most fascinating things about the kitchen, the camaraderie it inspires through tribulation.

And I wanted to believe him, but I'm not so sure. I look to my next tasks, my next step in life with a bit of trepidation. I'm going home to start over, to round out my education and to really sink in to my career.

I considered this last year in Chicago kind of a fun, "testing-the-waters" year. It still was pretty college-like, all my college friends pretty much in the same place, still playing ultimate and doing stupid things on the weekends. I was just getting a crash course on what was to come, working 40-50 hours weeks in the kitchen at a leisurely pace, and then spending my off days waiting tables. It wasn't terribly difficult in the perspective of labor. I enjoyed it, I learned a lot, but I think I spent most of this year focusing on myself and my friends.

I don't think I can afford to do that anymore. Not only will I not have much in terms of time, but I will be isolated in the suburban dystopia that is Long Island. It will be time to put my skills to the test as I focus on what is truly important to me and my family, i.e., our own restaurant.

For those who are curious, I plan to start culinary school at The Culinary Institute of America in the Spring 2011. It may be pushed back, so we shall see, but as of now, that is what I'm hoping. I will work lunch in Pearl East's kitchen, probably doing prep on dim sum, Chinese barbecue ribs, vegetables and your usual suspects of soups (won ton soup, chicken and corn soup, hot and sour soup). Hopefully I will get to work the line and learn how to stir fry off a jet butane burner and a cast-iron wok, but as my mother thinks I am the clumsiest bastard alive (not totally unwarranted) and worries for my safety, that may take some working up to. During dinner, I will work the floor using that smile you guys all love (don't lie, you do!) to charm the rich, Jewish grandmoms that make up our clientele.

I don't know what to expect. I really don't know Chinese kitchens at all, I'm not even sure if they really do mise-en-place (I'm assuming they must, as I don't think there is a more efficient system to kitchen work). I've only known, worked in and studied Western kitchens. And my mother constantly bemoans how inefficient and lackluster her kitchen can be. She has lost her dim-sum chef, essentially her executive chef, to another of his ambitious solo projects (talent is hard to keep around), and things are a bit chaotic. I don't know where I'll fit in, I'm scared of the possibility of working with people who don't care about food, but I'll hope for the best. For God's sake, I just hope the kitchen is nice and clean.

The dining room I know. If I had any talent at restaurants, it's working the floor. I know how to mollify an angry customer, I know how to make it all better, I know how to make customers feel cared for. In that arena I know I can help and have a significant impact.

So I guess I have some goals. Restaurant wise, I need and want to get that place on stable ground. Pearl East is very busy, but it's hard to please everyone consistently and we could definitely get our name more established. We are somewhat unknown, and at the very least we should be a "hidden gem." I recognize these as faults. So we turn to Yelp, and other food media outlets, and try to tame the beast that is the public opinion. We try to deliver a more consistent product, and when we inevitably make mistakes, we try to patch those up better than before.

I can't quantify it exactly, but if I can establish a system that makes my mother's life easier, increase our ratings, our public awareness, our kitchen consistency, then I will be very happy. If I can make it so my mother doesn't have to be there seven days a week, ten to twelve hours a day, then I will be very happy, because I don't think she should be working that hard at her age (which I won't reveal because even though she can't use the internet, she'd fucking kill me if I ever told anyone).

So we shall see. It's been a fun, yet difficult, enlightening, yet at times depressing year in Chicago. I have a lot of mixed feelings about it. And I have a lot of mixed feelings about going home. Most aspiring cooks would be slogging away in a (hopefully) excellent kitchen, focusing on working their station well. Somehow I've managed to skip all that and gotten to the managing an entire restaurant phase. Granted, I won't be alone and if I mess up, there will be back up for me. But I can't help but ask myself the question, am I ready? Am I ready to take this on? Am I ready to make this my life? Am I ready to give up a lot of the other things I like in life? Because I foresee it will be many, many hours and many, many weekends, and many, many holidays.

But I always knew that would happen. That this day was coming, when I could no longer consider myself a kid and do whatever I wanted, and play ultimate whenever I pleased. But perhaps now that the reality is staring me in the face that I am a little nervous.

Let's just hope I don't revert back to high school habits of doing triple-feature movie days, and doing drugs at the train station. I like to think I've gotten past that point at least.

If you're ever in New York, you know who to call. See you there,

EP6

How We Got Here

I think it's important to recognize the cultural component of the dining revolution. There is a powerful social undercurrent running abreast a literal culinary movement, and understanding both is going to be important to succeeding in today's industry.

But let's backtrack, start from the beginning. Where did the idea of the restaurant come from? And how did we get from there to an army of obnoxious "foodies" flooding the blogosphere (like this asshole) with their insignificant observations?

Shortly (read a few thousand years) after man discovered that fire + sharp sticks + dumber animals = meat, and that "MEAT!" was a much better pick up line than "Hey, do you come to this primitive rock structure often?" and then that lead to boning, and that man later drew the conclusion that women kind of dig dudes who can cook, and then a few million guys get in to this industry for the wrong reason, and then ...

Shit, derailed. Restart.

Okay after all the shit about the fire, not after the nerds learning to cook to increase their sex appeal (Honestly, who does that? ...), we had professional cooks. As you can imagine, the first professional cooks were hired by royalty and nobility. What peasant, who was following his cows around so that he could burn their poop to keep warm at night, was going to actually pay someone to cook? And anyway you can't smoke a rack of ribs with cow poop, you need some fackin' hardwood, bietch.

So in a time where the divide between the rich and poor was wider and more impassable than it is today, a lucky few serfs were pulled into the royal house for their ability to make a mean stew, or their ability to take a good royal bum running. Maybe both.

A royal cook has some serious pressure and job stress. One little upset stomach, one botched banquet and off with his head! But there are some job benefits as well. Nigh-infinite budget and inventory. Royalty don't need to worry about no profit/loss statements, food waste, or menu budget. They can eat whatever the hell they want in whatever quantity they want, and luxury is expected at every step of the way. So professional cooking in the Middle Ages is predictably ridiculous.

Sauces were often vats of valuable meat cuts, aromatics and herbs reduced down to a fraction of their original volume. A powerfully, powerfully flavored sauce was the end product, with enough gelatin and body to set at room temp, and enough spice to hide the ubiquitous scent of past-due meat.

Entrees were equally ridiculous in ingredients. Imagine a meat pie with a turducken inside. Except this meat pie was the size of a dinner table. And it contained upwards of twenty animals, ranging in size from a goat to an ortolan (a little bird that was kept in a cage with a cloth over it so that the artificial darkness caused it to feed constantly, eventually making it a diabetic, morbidly obese morsel of deliciousness ... oh by the way, it's illegal to sell now).

See, you don't need a lot of imagination when you have a bank account that rivals God (Take notes, Brian Cashman. You have the easiest job in baseball). One surprisingly efficient idea from professional medieval cookery was the "trencher." You didn't use plates back in those days you used a stale round of bread that served as a dinner plate. It had about as much flavor and texture as a dinner plate also. The trencher was eventually discarded to the dogs or servants but not after soaking up some fat and sauce, so a decent scrap all around.

And then The French Revolution happened.

The French Revolution (at least what Les Miserables, the musical, taught me) saw the upheaval of the aristocracy. Generally, people thought they, the rich, sucked a lot and it was time to tell them to kindly fuck off. And then once they were gone, we suddenly had tons of unemployed cooks whose only marketable skills related to food. There were a few restaurants in existence, but those also only served the elite. What was an out-of-work cook to do?

Well, creating a more egalitarian restaurant and using sharp business practices to make a profit whilst remaining competitive seemed to be the only option. Necessity is the mother of invention. Modern kitchen techniques have much to thank for this period of innovation. All of a sudden professional cooking wasn't about having an endless inventory from which you could not out-do yourself with luxury. It was now an exercise in efficiency, taking one animal and stretching it through 5-6 uses, using every scrap some way or another. Because if you can get that extra dish out of a pig, or an extra soup out of your vegetable scraps, that could mean the difference between profit, and loss.

Stock, the foundation of French culinary technique, was a product of this period. Who could afford to make those ridiculous meat-based sauces of the past? And what can I do with all these animal bones I have left over? What a beautiful little invention stock is. Let me roast these bones, throw in some vegetables, let them simmer away, and then I have the building blocks for thousands of sauces.

The whole concept of the garde-manger station was to collect all the scraps from around the kitchen, and make a dish out of them. Pates, terrines, the application of charcuterie was about maximizing a kitchen's potential. Garde-manger literally means "to keep to eat," and that neatly reflected the importance of the position. It required impeccable technique and precision, and is an essential asset to the brigade, even today.

The restaurant era had begun and is still with us today. The explosion in popularity, and wide spectrum of diversity ranging from your Waffle Houses to The French Laundry, from what Bourdain affectionately calls T.G.I. McFuckwad's to your USHG Shake Shacks, is all a result of some people who were a little upset about being poor in 18th century France. I think restaurants are more integral to society than people give them credit for. We may not be saving the world, or curing cancer, but the restaurant groups that can donate often do. Not just catering charity events but donating monetarily as well. And everybody can appreciate good food and a good restaurant experience. The word, after all, comes from "restaurer," French meaning "to restore." Maybe you had a joint your family went to every Sunday. Maybe you had an extraordinary experience with that girl from a few years ago. Maybe you had a life changing steak. Either way, that's exactly what we're here to do. To restore you, to care for you, to let you kick back and have someone else do the dishes so that you're refreshed and you can go save the world or something. All we ask for in return is a place in your budget, but more importantly a place in your heart.

So there we are, my brief history on restaurants. Now let's talk about what's happening today.

Quite obviously, recessions hurt everyone. But just under the tier of bankers, market runners and brokers who are getting axed first, are the slew of restaurants who suffer from everybody panicking about saving money. Now restaurants really got to freak, the competition for customers is severe and the cash flow is thin. But again, necessity is the mother of invention, and you can start figuring out ways to make your business better until things smooth over (if they do ...). I see recessions as purging fires. All the establishments of mediocrity are going to either be forced to improve or they will be wiped out. Unfortunately some good and great restaurants go down with the fire, I think Va P being one of them. But things will pass, and from the ashes there will be growth.

Now the aforementioned cultural movement is an important part to surviving, and hopefully thriving, in this economy. Food has a very different place in society than it did 50 years ago. Back then it was all about a home cooked meal every day, maybe a family outing to a restaurant every now and then. An anniversary or birthday warranted a night out. Now the appearance of a home-cooked meal is less common. People have thousands of take-out options at their fingertips, and they go out to eat more than ever, even if budgets are tight. Yelp, Grubhub, OpenTable, and the whole gamut of restaurant-related websites have given unprecedented ease and access to this dining community, and a powerful sounding board as well.

So not only are we eating out more, but we're making it a hobby of its own. And as a result people are becoming far more educated about how restaurants work, and what really makes the difference between a good and a great place. There's no more hiding, and messing up with one customer not only deprives you of another loyal patron, but will have your mistakes well publicized to the dining community.

My chef used to describe Yelp.com as a "necessary evil." It was only a matter of time until someone made such a streamlined and powerful site, and it can help you just as much as it hurts you. I think it may give some people a little too much power, but that is just part of the necessary evil. For every customer you've wowed and they gave you warm, honest feedback in return, there are going to be a few who will be jilted by a minor negative experience and vilify you for it. I think the most common problems I've seen are customers complaining about employee attitudes. Adjectives like "surly," "unfriendly," "cold" are thrown around, and it's hard to evaluate that properly and use it as constructive feedback. And then because of one "surly" host, who acts as your first line of defense, a Rube Goldberg machine of disasters is created that could have significant impact on your overall rating. Yelp.com even gives ranking, title and power to the most prolific Yelpers. And whereas restaurants could be neurotically prepared for newspaper critics (and they still are), now any and every customer could have a powerful voice for or against you.

Thankfully, there are ways to react to this. Danny Meyer likes to describe media and publicity as a shark. You can't swim across an ocean alone, you'll drown. But you could ride upon the back of a shark to get to the other side alive. The only problem being the shark could destroy you at any given moment, if you're not careful. You can survive a few nips, bites, and even get thrown off, but you have to get back on and make sure the shark doesn't swallow you whole.

I think part of what that means is soldiering on through anything they throw at you, and knowing how to carefully please your customers.

First, know where the threats are and frankly, now they're everywhere. A restaurant is all about consistency and mistakes. You strive to be as consistent as possible in every arena, but you have to be able to handle inevitable mistakes. I don't think you really can exclude and label anyone as "strictly VIP" status anymore. Everybody is equal, everybody is worth winning over. It starts in the kitchen. If you believe in your kitchen and trust that it works hard to deliver a quality product, then things fall in to place from there. Then if a customer doesn't like something, it's more likely to be a kitchen mistake than a difficult customer. So it comes off their bill, no questions asked. If I had more authority at Futami I would do just that. I know all our grilled chicken entrees come out dry when Jorge is in the weeds. He gets pressured and he stops cooking smart, he just tries to beat out the tickets. That means he doesn't rest proteins properly and tries to make up for it by drowning it in sauce. I hate that. That's cooking without integrity. So I see a customer's chicken entree is unfinished, and even though they tell me everything is "fine," I know very well they think the chicken is dry. I want to take it off their bill for them, but I don't call the shots.

Trust in your kitchen, care for your customers, the short-term loss of a $14 chicken entree is worth the long-term gain in faith from your customer.

Secondly, know your clientele. Whether you like it or not, your restaurant is going to reflect your personality. That personality is going to attract a certain crowd. I'm not saying you're going to get a homogeneous blend of customers, but maybe a reoccurring flavor of sorts. You've got to play to their likes and dislikes.

Maybe you have a grand dining room that is going to attract middle-aged people looking for an extravagant experience. Maybe you have a quirky little room that is going to pull a youthful, hipster-tinged, urban crowd. Maybe you have a neutral but classy decor which is going to invite a whole manner of people. Recognizing your environment, and fitting in to either fill a niche or add to the overall culture of your location are paramount to success.

And finally, you need something unique. Almost everything has been done before or is just about to be tried in the restaurant industry. You push too far out of people's comfort zones, and they are confused. If you offer the same thing that everyone else is offering, you'll get lost. When developing a menu, when birthing a restaurant you need to think about what is going to set you apart from everybody else. I think this is especially important during a recession. There are probably 7-10 sushi restaurants in my area, and 4-5 in the immediate Evanston area alone. What is going to make someone choose you over the others? Is it your pricing? Your customer service? Is your product of higher quality than the others? A customer who is pinching pennies isn't going to go out for sushi at every place very often. They're going to choose one place to splurge on here and there. The same goes for any restaurant, and even more so for high-end, 4-star dining establishments. When you offer an 11-course tasting at $135 or whatever, a customer is only going to spend that kind of money so often. Most likely, the next time they're going to try another joint at that price tag just to try something new. What is going to make them choose you not just once, but again and again? You have to keep bringing something new to the table. Diners are too smart nowadays, and have too many choices to be romanced by just one great dish, or one charming manager. You got to keep pushing the envelope.

Somehow this became a summation of my ideas for what it takes to succeed at restaurants. But I think understanding the history is important before moving forward. And nowadays moving forward is the only way to keep afloat, handling a "shark" or not. Both you and the dining public have to keep moving for survival. They have to keep searching for the next new thing, and in doing that we in the industry have to keep providing the next step. Unfortunately, novel ideas don't come from just anywhere. I don't know if I'm a powerfully creative person, but I think a career's worth of accumulating ideas and learning techniques is going to be the only way to getting close.

EP6

PS - Write your Yelp review the day after your dining experience. That way you'll really know how you felt about the place. Either your disappointment or your wonder subsides, either way you're going to be able to give a more fair evaluation.

What Makes a Good Cook

As I work more in restaurants, and I learn more about how to run one, I see why so many fail.

It's because people are stupid.

Well, to be more accurate, people are stupid about the restaurant industry. All the business instincts that you learned in the classroom, or out in another industry aren't going to apply the same way. A restaurant is a living, breathing thing that needs constant babysitting and adjustments by the minute. There are no set rules, and you will probably find yourself creating many on the fly.

I'm sure a lot of wealthy people are attracted to the accessibility and glamor of a restaurant. Anybody can do it and you don't need a specialized degree. But then they get in to it expecting it to be a cake walk, and they are unpleasantly surprised when the paper goes up over the windows, and the doors are closed for good.

My grievances aside, the point I'm trying to make is that if I have learned a golden rule to a restaurant it is this; fill it with good employees.

It's that easy, and it's that hard. Running a great restaurant is more about filling it with good employees, than with good customers. Everything will fall in place from there if you can hire a team of dedicated, hard-working, passionate people who have a dogmatic sense of integrity, and a fine repertoire of skills.

How many people out there possess those qualities and want to work in restaurants? The answer is very few. And if the restaurant world is already competitive over customers, I think it's even more competitive over employees. Poaching employees is a behavior that could make you a hated outcast very quickly. In the words of Tupac Shakur, "you find someone good, you hold on to them." That means treat your employees well, make them proud and happy to work for you, and the world will be a better place.

And by the way I'm talking every employee in your restaurant, not just the key players. From dishwasher to manager, you need a team of people that adhere to a set of core values. Your core values. And they better be good values.

But let's talk about line cooks. The veritable grunts of the industry, the soldiers slogging it out in the trenches.

What makes a good cook? I've never really summed it up in a list before. I just tried to accumulate a bank of skills and neuroses that would make me a more efficient part of the line. As I try to separate them in to coherent thoughts that non-pandas would understand, I find the list to be inexhaustibly long. But I will try to be concise because I appreciate you guys reading my verbose bullshit anyway.

1) Be obsessively clean.

The most important thing I learned at Oceanique was to have a neurotic sense of cleanliness. I think Chef Mark was ecstatic to have his brand new stage spelunk behind a blazing convection oven to scrub the walls. But as I gave the slightest sigh when he commanded me to do so, his mood changed immediately, and he gave me the first stern look I've ever gotten from him and he said, "A really important part about being a chef is cleaning. Get used to it."

Taken aback by his sudden seriousness and menacing look I obediently climbed behind the oven with my tail between my legs, and a ball of steel wool in hand. Picture this; Chef Mark looks like fucking Santa Claus who survived the 70s but didn't really leave them. His angry face made my balls shrivel.

Kitchens should be cleaner than hospitals. They should be immaculate. Not just because of health concerns, but being organized and clean is the first step to being efficient. And efficiency is the other most important thing to being a cook. When the orders are coming in, dinner rush is punching you in the nuts repeatedly, you can't be bogged down by a messy station. It's sloppy, it's unprofessional, it slows the line down and affects your mindset. If you even need to spend an extra second looking for your chive garnish, or wiping a cutting board to split an order of cheese tarts, all those speed bumps are going to accumulate and put you in the shit.

At Va Pensiero I cleaned my burners constantly, wiping them with hot water and getting the crap out. I like keeping my cutting boards clean, and the lips of my sixth-pans wiped. I sweep the floors after each item I prep (especially onions because the papery skin gets EVERYWHERE), I wipe counters wherever they need wiping, I set everything at right angles as best I can. Since I was slow and messy about cooking, I needed to make sure I was on-point about organization and mise-en-place. Sous chef Chuy would always give me this puzzled look as I scrubbed at my burners during a free moment, and he would gesture towards his own clean burners that didn't need wiping and say, "Maybe if you weren't so fucking messy to begin with you wouldn't have to scrub all the time, guey."

At Lula, they clean the shit out of the kitchen between service, and after dinner. I'm talking everything is scrubbed til shiny. The floors, the walls behind the prep tables, the undersides of counter tops, the little nooks on door handles. The lunch crews and dinner crews find their kitchen perfectly clean every time they show up. On Wednesdays they clean the hood, which is a god-awful, horrifying process that will leave you feeling greasy for days. The hood is that massive roof above the stoves that sucks in all the vaporized grease and smoke from cooking. Cleaning it weekly is pretty bad already. Most restaurants clean it anywhere from once a month, to twice a year. Imagine the horror... the horror.

At Le Bernardin, the legendary fish butcher, Justo Thomas, wraps a whole 8x10 room in plastic film; ceilings, floors, walls, everything, EVERY day as he portions and cleans fish. He throws the film out at the end of his shift, and the room is clean under its makeshift condom. Fish scales fly everywhere and a more careless person would probably have left the corners caked in fishy debris after 20+ years at that restaurant.

Clean, clean, clean.

2) Be efficient.

If you're standing around doing nothing, you're probably doing something wrong.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again, being a cook is often a battle against the clock. Some restaurants have ridiculously high volume and are less about precision, more about prepping massive quantities of produce. We call those "turn-and-burn" joints. Others, like many fine-dining four-stars, have dishes that have 15-20 components and take 5-7 minutes just to plate one dish in a marathon of a tasting menu. That requires prep work of such detail and accuracy it could kill an unorganized cook. Even if your restaurant is somewhere in between, time is a cook's most valuable resource.

There's always something that can and should get done. You sure you're completely caught up on your dupes? You sure your station is prepped? What about for tomorrow? And if by some miracle your station doesn't need any prep work whatsoever, there's always a walk-in refrigerator or two to clean and organize. There's always floors to sweep, there's always containers to wipe. There's most definitely something you can wrap in plastic to minimize air exposure. Keep your mind and eyes open, and there will be an opportunity to make something better. Always.

3) Be a team player.

Many cooks defend and honor "the line" with zeal and loyalty. It is a decidedly dangerous place that belongs to the cooks. But it isn't just a collection of tattooed college dropouts and baller Mexican cooks. It is a unified entity. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

At some point or another, if you're cooking professionally, you're going to be in the shit. You're behind on prep, you're behind on orders, something is going wrong. That is when your fellow cooks jump in to save your ass. It happens to all of us, everyone has bad days, just learn how to do it better next time. And just don't let it happen too often, or you may be staring down a firing squad.

So it's important that everyone on the line knows how to work every station. It should be that every cook could step up to any given station, plate nicely, and work it in a pinch if someone calls in sick. And by the way, "sick" for cooks means someone in your immediate family died or you have an illness that literally prevents you from standing. Otherwise, you're not sick. Show up, pussy.

The line does its best work when the cooks on it are helping each other out. Little things here and there, like "Hey, can you pull 6 plates for me?" or "Hey, can you help me sear these scallops?" go a long, long way. On a severely busy night, near the end of my tenure at Va P, I was starting to get pretty reliable on the line. But if we were doing 200-250 covers, I started to slow down around 7 PM, bogged down by orders. I tried my best to fight my way out of it, but Chuy almost always had to come to the rescue. The scallops always fucked me. To perfectly sear 12-15 scallops at once while juggling ravioli and pasta orders was a lot for me. I only had four burners, I hadn't mastered the timing yet. But Chuy, being the saute fucking boss that he is, didn't have hotter burners, but somehow got the scallops done better and faster. It always reminded me how much of a pro he was, and how grateful I was for him saving me from getting crushed.

And the line has to coordinate dishes so that everything comes out hot at the same time. Only amateurish restaurants have plates that go out to diners at different times. If it's on the same course, it goes out together. But obviously a steak and a ravioli dish have different cooking times. It's up to the cooks to get it right. As the steak is 3 minutes from medium rare, the grill chef may tell the pasta cook "Alright, let's do it." That way the ravioli is cooked through, and the steak is rested and beautifully pink-red on the inside as the plates are delivered.

Or you can do what Luis used to do. He would make a motion to "pump the brakes" or simply say "orale, puto!" to let me know if it was time to rock. To this day, "Orale!" is my favorite word in Spanish. I don't think it has an exact definition, something along the lines of "let's go!" but it will forever be associated with some of the crazier adrenaline rushes I've had in my life.

The line has to work together. If you only focus on yourself without helping the cooks around you, you will soon find yourself on the outside, a pariah with deteriorating value.

4) Be humble.

I was watching Tony Hsieh, CEO of the wildly innovative Zappos.com deliver a speech on his interview process. I admire him because I think a lot of his business philosophies apply to restaurants, as well as online shoe companies; take care of your employees, make them happy, customer service comes before profits. Anyhow, one of the core values of his company is "Be humble." But that is something that's quite difficult to assess during an interview. You can't ask someone "Are you humble?" because you're going to get some ridiculous response like "Shit yeah, bitch! I'm the most humble muthafucka there is!"

Being humble is a big problem for a lot of cooks and subsequently a lot of chefs. The kitchen is a pretty macho place. It is not unlike a battlefield in many ways. Surviving and excelling in such an environment is bound to nourish some egos. And a little bit of ego can be good, in the same way that confidence is necessary to succeed. But frankly, I don't think there is room for any serious egos in any serious kitchens. Like in the later half of a season of Top Chef, there are going to be some cocky young guns with the skills, but all the cocky young guns who couldn't back it up are long gone, a forgotten page in reality TV history.

At Thomas Keller's restaurants, all the cooks greet each other with a "Good morning, Chef" and a handshake. It doesn't matter if you just started and you spend the whole day picking herbs and hauling trash, you are "Chef." During prep they all wear blue aprons. In French kitchens, the color blue signifies an apprentice. Only chefs wore white. So blue was a quick way to recognize a commis, or apprentice, who had not ascended to chef-dom yet. So all of Thomas Keller's cooks wear blue aprons to remind themselves that there is always more to learn, to keep your ego in check, to always keep an eye out for improvement and an opportunity to learn.

That's an important part of being a good cook and a good chef. You have to tell yourself you really aren't that sweet nor awesome. There's someone who's right behind you about to be the next big thing, and doing stuff with food you've never even thought of. The dining movement is a collaborative one between all those who would call themselves chefs around the world. It's a big network of people who love food and are constantly pushing the envelope. You can never, at any point, assume you have mastered it all. The day you are too happy with yourself, and let your ego inflate a little too much, is the day you get left in the dust by the next great young chef.

5) Be hungry to learn.

Grant Achatz often cites his natural curiosity as one of the most important factors to his success. A desire to question, and know why something is, how something works, or how something can be better is integral to being a good cook.

A cook's life is the constant pursuit of perfection while knowing that it is an unobtainable goal.

If you think I'm being overly poetic, and/or that sucks a lot of balls, well... it's the truth.

There is no such thing as perfect food, or a perfect dish. Everything can be refined, something can be done better. You could spend a lifetime on one dish and still not have truly mastered it. You have to enjoy the process of striving for perfection. You have to accept mistakes as part of the process, and learn from them, not repeat them. If you read the Momofuku cookbook, it almost seems as if many of David Chang's dishes were happy accidents. Leaving vegetables in the oven too long, dehydrating them. Forgetting about a whole torchon of foie gras in the freezer. Having an ungodly amount of pork fat from making ramen broth. He made something great out of all those little mishaps. If one keeps an open mind, and a constant desire to refine, then mistakes can almost be good things. They can be indicators of how to improve, of what's working and what's not.

I wish Va Pensiero had been open just a bit longer, because the week after we closed I was set to trail Don Manuel through morning prep and pump out stuffed pastas like a boss. Don Manuel works as a dishwasher at night, and he did menial prep in the morning for us. He's never really cooked on the line, and he's definitely an old man. But he makes perfect, perfect stuffed pasta. Just the right thickness (if you ever read of complaints about thick cappeletti at Va P that was probably my bad, not his), completely uniform in shape, organized meticulously. There was a lot to learn just by watching him. He wouldn't be able to explain anything, he spoke no English, I speak remedial Spanish. But just watching him could unearth a wealth of ravioli making technique. The key is an eye for detail and an appetite to learn. The thing about people who are experts at something is that they make it look easy. So easy that you can miss the subtleties that make them experts.

Always question things. Even if you've had a signature dish for 20 years that everybody loves, I'm sure there's something about it that could be done better. Even if you are an ACF Certified Master Chef, there is always something new to learn about handling food. Even if you are a 3-Michelin-star kitchen's entremetier (the vegetable dude) you can still spend your day off working on the meat station, honing your butchering skills.

You're going to create a ceiling for how far your career can go if you keep an attitude that you have learned enough. I don't like ceilings, except when it's raining. I think they are stupid. Ceilings are poopy. I think the most exciting thing about restaurants and cooking is the very fact that there always is something new to learn. No two days are alike, a restaurant is a work-in-progress that doesn't finish until you close the doors, or you die. Revel in it, it's never boring.

I'm wondering if you are surprised that I haven't mentioned anything about actual cooking skills. Like "be ninja with knives" or "be zen with fire" or "be so intimate with a pig, you know its sexual history." The thing about culinary skills is that there is often no one, best way to do something. And even if there was, anybody could learn to do it with the proper attitude.

Unlike sports, you don't really need natural gifts to excel at professional cooking. It's all attitude. The famous maxim from Pixar's Ratatouille, "Anyone Can Cook!" is quite accurate. Anyone can cook, and anyone can succeed in the food industry if they have a big heart, a little luck and thick skin, metaphorically and literally (the hands ... I will never live down the nickname "Bitch Hands"). I mean you may not be the next culinary "Pope," as Bourdain would call it, a position reserved for Keller, but you can be successful in your own right.

So, you cut yourself? Put a band-aid on it, put on a finger-condom, they never stop being funny if you are 11-years-old at heart (Because it's like a condom for someone who has a really small penis?? Like the size of a finger? Get it!? Comic gold!), and start slicing away again.

Burned yourself? Run it under some cold water, use a dry towel next time. Apparently wet towels conduct heat faster or something. I don't know what science is, but that's why they tell me I has boo-boos. Oh, and put some burn gel on it when no one's looking.

This pig kicking your ass even though it's dead? Fun fact, you can use power tools and saws on a dead animal. That'll teach that fucker what's up. In no time you will be a pig carcass destroying machine.

I think my new idol is Frank Crispo. Real working stiff, blue-collar kinda guy who grew up washing dishes in Philly and doing plumbing jobs with his dad. Then he went to the CIA and started cooking like a boss for all the ballers in New York City, including being Daniel Boulud's sous-chef for two years. After decades cooking for other people, and having to get a double-hip replacement for his toils, he buys a space in the West Village and renovates it himself. I'm talking plumbing, furniture, flooring, kitchen, heating, the whole fucking building refurbished and built with his own hands. Nobody has really heard of him, but all the kitchen crews in New York know that Crispo is the real deal. He's not doing anything fancy or new, just very high-quality ingredients, impeccable technique, sagacious business acumen, and good ole' hard work. Not to mention he can fix just about anything. Who needs a repairman?

I think that's my best hopes of success. I am not nearly as handy as Frank Crispo (he welded and fashioned the wrought-iron patio outside of his restaurant ... who does that!?), and I don't think I'll ever be the creative genius that Grant Achatz is, or have the seemingly endless charm and appeal that David Chang has. But if I can focus on being a good cook, then focus on being a good chef, then focus on running a good restaurant, keep my head down, and my heart on the goal ... then maybe I'll be on my way.

EP6

PS - I really need to find a new way to end posts that isn't "inspirational summation for myself." It's like masturbating, I don't think it's doing anyone else any good... I'll work on it.

How Restaurants Can Hate You

I'm going to have to give you a guide on how not to be a douchebag... at restaurants. If you still pop your collar, "make it rain" at the bar to impress girls, or are another of the faceless army of striped, partially unbuttoned shirts at the club ... well, you're on your own. But restaurants, a matter with which I am deeply personal with, is a whole 'nother thing.

I am a firm believer that there will always be three absolute indicators to the character of a man. The kind of company he keeps, the way he treats animals, and the way he treats restaurant staff.

With restaurant staff, you are in a position of power. There is no clearer glimpse into the window of someone's soul than to see them in a position of power. Yes, we as waiters are here to serve you. Yes, we generally are required to meet your every beck and call, and yes, we do want your patronage. But that doesn't give you an excuse to treat us like garbage.

I don't know if it's because Americans have been on the wrong end of a misanthropic Applebee's server or something, but being a waiter is considered a cop-out, bullshit job. We depend on your patronage, your tips to make a living, and the job is unique in the sense that you can pay as much as you think we deserve. If a doctor is an asshole or even bungles up your diagnosis, you've still got to make the co-pay. If for some reason you just didn't like us or you think an extra few bucks would really break your bank, you have the choice in that matter.

This is not meant to be an essay in defense of restaurant workers suggesting that you should always give 20% and think nothing of it. If a server sucks you should let them know that. But there are more constructive ways to go about it.

If a server sucks; is neglectful, poor hygiene, rude, incompetent, etc., then make note of that to their manager. And leave a bad tip. But if you just leave a bad tip, that doesn't tell us anything. If I think I did a good job and you give me 10%, I assume you are a tightwad McScrooge. Also, if you let a manager know, nine times out of ten your next visit will have some sort of comp on it. Constructive criticism will free us all.

So it's important to us that you like us, that you think we are doing a good job. But you may think it's unimportant how we feel about you. And you'd mostly be right. Even if you are the most miserable asshole to be around, we will treat you well regardless. And we won't spit in your food or tamper with anything else you may consume, contrary to popular belief. So it may not be an overstatement to say we are frankly powerless against you. There will be no repercussions for earning our wrath. But I will say there will be rewards for earning our love. So I present to you a brief guide on how to not get restaurant workers to hate you.

1) Don't chat endlessly before ordering.

I know you're real excited and all that Katie just met a new guy, and he's soooo talented and funny, but you came to a restaurant to eat and drink, did you not? Once you finish the Chocolate Lava Cake that you swore you weren't going to eat you can chat as long as you like over coffee about the diet you swear you'll start tomorrow. But just fucking order already. Ask questions if you have them, take your time to peruse the menu, but just order it and we'll get out of your way. On a busy night servers don't have time to come check on you every 5 minutes to wonder if you've started looking at the menu, and we don't want to interrupt your conversation however inane it might be, so just order and get on with it.

2) When you are ready to order, make sure you are actually ready to order.

A good waiter will make rounds on the dining floor to make sure if anyone needs anything. For the most part, you won't need to hold on to us this one time we're at the table because you'll never see us again. We'll be back I promise. So that being the case, take your time to review the menu and be ready to order when you say you are. Nothing is more annoying than when you say you're ready to order and all I'm met with are 3 minutes of "ummms" and "hmmms." You're not ready, you lied to me. You're reading the menu and trying to make a decision on the fly and I'm standing here looking like a jackass and trying my damnedest to not put on my "impatient" face. Then I have to be like "maybe you'd like to take a few more minutes to look at the menu?" and make an excessive return to your table. Oh and if I ask you that, don't be like "wait, wait, I've almost got it!" like you were fiddling in the dark for some poor girl's G-spot or something. In the eternal words of the Governator, I'll ... be... back. Chill.

3) Don't sit there forever and chat about the diet you swear you'll start tomorrow on a very busy night.

Alright, conversation is engaging, you're in your own world, you're having a great time. But are you really oblivious to the line of people and absolute cacophony of the restaurant? It's Saturday, there are people waiting for tables, the restaurant is trying to turn yours for the next guest. I mean I'm not going to kick you out, but maybe you could be polite and move your chit-chat to another venue. And if you're some of the last guests? This is the quickest and easiest way to get a restaurant to hate you. We all want to go home or go out, and see our loved ones who we can't have dinner with on a weekend. Either go make some bartender's night or go home and open a bottle of wine. We've closed the curtains, dimmed the lights, cleaned the dining room, that's a pretty clear sign that we would love for you to go home.

4) If you have diet restrictions, tell us, but realize how much of a pain in the ass it is.

I've been on both sides of the window, cooking plates and bringing plates to customers. It is annoying to customize the menu for you. I'll do it, gladly, so long as you realize this. Don't come up here with your sense of entitlement like we should be so thankful you have a gluten allergy. I know you didn't ask for it and you'd probably prefer to be able to eat pasta, but getting a random vegan, gluten-allergy, shellfish allergy, whatever... that throws a fucking wrench in the plan. A severely busy restaurant only requires one table to take too long, one kitchen mistake to fuck up the whole night for EVERYONE. It is a Butterfly Effect that we avoid at all costs. So show a little gratitude, or be a little apologetic, it goes a long way because it's very difficult for us to accommodate you, and the good restaurants will always want to.

5) Show gratitude when it's deserved.

While we're on the whole gratitude thing, please tip as much as you can afford to. I know not everyone can go out to a fancy restaurant every weekend, and when they do it is a special occasion they saved up for. I'll understand if you saved up $250 to take your girlfriend out and you can't tip 20% on that big of a bill. But seriously, if we do a good job, reward us for it. We do this for a living, if I need to reiterate that any more. And most of us work hard and try hard to earn that living. So like I said, if a waiter is doing a shitty job make that clear, but if we're doing a good job make that clear also. Communication! It's a wonderful thing.

6) Don't split a check a bajillion ways without telling us about it first.

When we take your order and you don't tell us you want it split, it goes in rather haphazardly. That means I only kind of remember who the fuck got what. Okay, fine I do remember, but that's because I know when I see a table of 8 sorority girls to itemize it carefully because they lacked the foresight to tell me they are splitting the check. And also because I have a spectacular short-term memory. So when it comes time to bring the bill, I'm such a sucker, but every time I hope, just pray so hard that you'll just need one bill. But nope, never the case. All of you want it split by order and then charged individually to daddy's Mastercard. Realize that the sheer mechanics and computing time it takes to divvy up your bill takes me at least 10 minutes of haggling with my obsolete computer. You are fucking up my shit. Ten minutes may not seem like a lot, but it's a fucking eternity when I'm not on the floor watching over my customers. So please, if you're going to be annoying, at least warn me about it so I don't go apoplectic in the middle of dinner service. Also, don't be so fucking surprised that there's a flat gratuity charge for your party of greater than 5. Have you ever been to a restaurant? And if I'm not mistaken that is a Prada purse. I know the real shit when I see it.

7) Be clear and polite about what you want, be calm and collected if you don't get what you want.

There's nothing more disgusting than to see a customer rage out at a server. I would say 1/100 times it's actually deserved anger. The other 99% is most likely you, angry man, taking out your frustration on a person who will take it. Yeah, sorry you got fucked by corporate bureaucracy or if your new office isn't on the corner lot, but don't take it out on me, okay? Your girlfriend is not turned on, and if she is? Well you two are sick fucks and I'm glad you found each other to take your sexual depravity out on one another. Seriously, I can't stress how important proper communication is. Just tell us what you need, talk to us like we're five if you really think we're that stupid, whatever, and we'll try our best to meet your needs. If it doesn't come out exactly the way you like it, then please just tell us. If you remain calm, we can do our job and we'll almost always comp you something for the mistake. Any restaurant worth its salt will want your patronage enough that they will be more than happy to try to make amends, you don't have to angrily demand compensation.

8) If we do screw up, realize that it's almost always the kitchen's fault.

Yes, I am a waiter as of now, but my heart is in the kitchen. I am a cook by breed. So I readily admit that if there is a serious error; your food is taking too long, it's under or over seasoned, it's not cooked right, it's cold, etc., it is the kitchen's fault. You just happen to be able to take it out on the waiter only. The waiter is the messenger, don't kill them. Yes, they make errors also, and when they do I get super pissed about it, but generally, it's the kitchen's problem. It's unfortunate there isn't a better way to communicate than to use the waiter as a mediator, but such is the way of restaurants. You leaving a bad tip, without explanation, for an error that was most likely not the waiter's fault seems kind of unfair, doesn't it?

9) Don't shout at me.

You know the scene in As Good As It Gets where an OCD-afflicted Jack Nicholson yells his order from across the restaurant? Yeah, a bit hyperbolic, but you get the point.

Do not whistle, shout or snap at me. This may seem like it should go unsaid, but seriously ... don't do it. I'm a person, not a dog. I know I look Asian on the outside, but believe it or not I am a college-educated American. I speak Engrish, herro prease.

More effective means of communication:

Scanning the dining room for me. Searching heads is a warning sign to us.
Trying to get eye contact from me, and when you do, a polite nod or a raised hand. Don't jump up and down in your seat trying to be a flagpole in the middle of my restaurant.
Once you do get eye contact from me you can also mime a scribble to signify that you'd like the check.

So simple... so simple...

10) The golden rule; treat me like a human being.

All of the above, sarcasm and cynicism abound, is warranted for me because I feel like I honestly try to do a good job. I will be the first to admit that most waiters don't want anything to do with restaurants in the future, but are doing this as a means to an end. I will also admit that there are many lackluster waiters and restaurant staff out there who don't do a very good job. But there are also those like me, who want to do this for a living (in some form), and many more who don't necessarily want to make a living out of restaurants, but work hard anyway.

We are trying, but we are human. We are prone to mistakes and having bad days just as much as you are. Try to see us as equal human beings, rather than less-than-human servants. SerVERS, we are. Not serVANTS. There's a certain degree of respect required of that relationship. And as I said before, your efforts, if we can call them that, can go rewarded.

It's almost a bad thing to be considered a "regular" somewhere. I see nothing wrong with that. I in fact think its terrible that that would ever have a negative association. If you like a place, like the people, have an honest rapport with them and like going there, then why not go there as much as you like? Now you don't have to go somewhere weekly to become a regular, but if you start popping up once a month, or for your special occasions, a restaurant will notice and care for you. If you tip us well, if you've always been such a wonderful person to wait on, you can rest assured that we will do our damnedest to take care of you. That means all the attention you want, comped appetizers and/or desserts, maybe a few drinks on us, generally we promise it'll be a good experience. Regulars are more valuable to us than anything else, and we will make sure you know that.

So if not for just being a better person, confirming for your date that you are a wholesome and decent human being, do it for the rewards. Treat us well, be loyal to us and we will respond in kind.

EP6