Bone in the Throat - Anthony Bourdain [84]
"Looking back, I see a lotta the stuff was outta style. But at the time, when you've been droppin' breaded scallops into a Frialator six nights a week, this was pretty exciting stuff. Some of the things he showed me knocked my fuckin' socks off. And I was happy to learn. I was getting pretty cocky myself by this time, and soon, like, every time we booked another party, me and this chef would try to like outdo each other. We tried everything. Even if we didn't know what the fuck we were doing, we did it anyway. We'd tell the client, 'Sure! We can do that. No problem,' then we'd look it up in the book and wing it. I started reading up on things, going to the food shows. Me and this chef, we'd come into the city and eat around at places he knew about. And you gotta remember, I never ate in places like this before. This was a whole new fuckin' world.
"So there I am. I'm eighteen years old, and suddenly I'm marchin' around in one of those nice uniforms, the cotton ones, no polyester. The new chef hated the polyester. I've got the jacket with the Chinese buttons on it. I'm wearing one a those coffee-filter chef hats on my head, and I think I'm Superchef."
Tommy emptied his wine glass. A waiter came over and refilled it. Al sat quietly, letting Tommy talk.
"And I'm makin' money. I'm gettin' paid off the books. I guess I shouldn't say that, but I'm gettin' paid off the books like everybody else back then . . . I've got hot and cold running waitresses all over the place, and at the end of work, everybody would hang at the bar—the kitchen staff, the floor, some of the bar regulars . . . Everybody would hang out at the bar, drinking for free, gettin' fucked up. I'm makin' the bucks, I'm getting laid like I never thought was pos sible, and people are impressed with the food I'm makin'. People are treating me like I'm hot shit. So, after a few months of this, I'm thinkin' this is not such a bad life. I'm learning a skill, I've got money, there's the sex. The world is my fuckin oyster. I go home and see my old friends from the neighborhood, they're still doin' the same shit, boosting cars, selling firecrackers to kids from Jersey, runnin' errands for people. Like they're still kids."
"So, you didn't want any of that?" said Al.
"Fuck, no," said Tommy. "Course they thought I was some kinda faggot or something. But I saw what they were doing. I didn't want that."
"You still see any of them?" asked Al.
"Not really. I see a few guys I used to know occasionally. They look at me like I'm from fuckin' Mars. Fuck them. I was proud of myself. . . My mother was proud of me. There were a few friends who thought it was cool what I was doing. Friends of the family, they'd come over like before, but this time, my mother would let me like show off. She'd just sit there at the table and I'd do the cooking. I'd try to blow them away with a good show."
"So, what happened the place you were working," asked Al. "How long you stay there?"
"That place folded after a year. He musta had a food cost like eighty percent. He was throwing crabmeat and wild mushrooms and all sorts of imported fish around like it cost ten cents a pound. This guy had to have number one tuna, sushi quality, nothing else would do. If the dry-goods people didn't have what he wanted, he'd come down to the city and buy it retail at Dean and DeLuca or Balducci. That's a fast way to go broke, right there. In the end, I think what the customers really wanted after all was the fried scallops."
"So where did you go after that?" asked Al.
"I got a job at the Rainbow Room. Big, big kitchen. A lotta cooks. I ran the lunch buffet in the Rainbow Grill, I stayed there a couple years, learned some things. They moved me around on the stations. I'd fill in on sauté some nights, on the grill. I even worked in the pastry shop for a while, decorating cakes and shit. I moved on a couple a other places, tryin' to move up a little, looking for a job as a sous."
"You never went to college?"
"Nah . . . never made it," said Tommy.
"How come? You're a smart kid," said