Kitchen Confidential_ Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Anthony Bourdain [107]
To sign on Adam to your crew is to buy, for a time, the best bread. I've ever tasted. It ensures that your customers, when examining their bread baskets, will exclaim, 'Where did you get this bread?' and 'Where can I buy this bread?' It also means that your life will be a waking nightmare, that every corner of your walk-ins and kitchen shelving will be likely to contain various sinister-looking and foul-smelling science experiments:rotting grapes, fermenting red peppers, soggy bucketsof mushroom trimmings - the gills and stems decomposing into noxious, black sludge - all of them destined for 'the bitch' or one of her many offspring, smaller batches of starter that have been flavored with, or 'started' by one of these primordialoozes. Walk-ins will contain buckets of slowed-down starter and forgotten batches of dead starter. Freezers will be loaded with half-baked boules, frozen sour mix, the floors sticky with dough. Like some virulent snail, Adam leaves tracks.
But, he also leaves the 'stuff: the most amazing olive and herb breads, pepper bread, mushroom bread, focaccias, pizzas, garlic twists, bread sticks and brioches. He claims to be of Sicilian heritage, affecting the mannerisms and gestures and expressions of the street guinea from some Scorsese-inspired Brooklyn - but is he, actually of Italian lineage? No one knows for sure. Steven claims to have seen his birth certificate - the real one, mind you - and that his real last name is Turkish or Arab. But who knows? Documentation from Adam is always of dubious provenance. His cooking background is certainly Italian, no question there, he is not to be relied on for baguettes. If you believe him - which you shouldn't - he was taught to bake by Lydia Bastianich (he's fond of showing off a tattered and dog-eared copy of one of her books, inscribed to one of his many known aliases).
He's worked, to my direct knowledge, as a cook, chef, consultant, pie man at pizzerias, deli help, pâtissier and baker. Half of what comes out of his mouth is utter bullshit - the rest, suspicious at best. He is perpetually broke and in debt. The corner deli, says Steven, gives him credit, as does his local bar, and Adam pays them during the good times and stiffs them in the bad. He's always headed off to Little Italy to pay off some shady character, cop weed, or settle his rent problems. He used to sue everyone he worked for - claiming harassment, breach of contract, theft of services, unfair labor practices, even sexual harassment- and has had surprisingly good luck with his second career as professional litigator. Many of his victims, I suspect, were willing to pony up a few dollars - just to make him go away.
Jimmy Sears, who first brought Adam Real-Last-Name-Unknowninto my circle of acquaintances (the notorious Steven and Adam acquisition of the '92 season), is another reluctant admirer. Like me, Jimmy should know better than to let this savage beast wander free in his kitchen, but he keeps doing it, keeps hiring him, for the 'stuff. The Sears/Adam relationship has been a legendarily contentious one, coming to blows on more than one occasion.
They have been both arch-enemies and close associates, rolling around trying to kill each other on the lawns at the Inn at Quogue, having wrestling matches at 13 Barrow and screaming contests at the Supper Club. Steven, who's known Adam longest, has had many adventures with him, both here in New York and in California - episodes of such nauseating stupidity, self-indulgence, cruelty and horror that even I find them unprintable. Adam has threatened to sue me many times. He has sued Sears, I believe, a number of times, as his assessment of what he is owed is frequently at odds with reality. (To