Kitchen Confidential_ Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Anthony Bourdain [109]
At Sullivan's I'd schedule his baking shifts at night, after the kitchen closed. I did not want him interacting with the other cooks. His faux-macho banter with the Ecuadorian and Mexican line cooks invariably caused offense, and he was an incurable slob.
'You will arrive in my kitchen promptly at one A.M. YOU will bake my bread, and you will be gone by the time my first cook arrives in the morning,' were my instructions. I did not want him telling my garde-manger guy that he was going to 'make him his woman', or bragging about some imaginary or real adventure at the 'casa de putas' or singing witlessly obscene and unfunny Christmas carols to the dishwashers, who saw him as a near-Satanic apparition. Allowing Adam to work unsupervised at night, however, meant that he would lift my reach-in doors off the hinges to help himself to midnight snacks of T-bone steaks, white truffle risotto and tomato salad - washed down, no doubt, with a bottle of pilfered Dom Perignon now and again. But that was to be expected. The bread. It was soooo good.
The first few months of Adam's employment were always the honeymoon. He showed up pretty much on time, producing, one way or the other, what was required. Then, when things were going well - the customers commenting favorably on the product, his masters happy - he'd start to enter a fugue state 'martyr mode' - where he'd begin sulking, feeling put-upon, sorry for himself. All that work he was doing by himself, all that fine Adam bread, was under-appreciated by his cruel and insensitive overlords. He would begin trying to jack me up for more money, demanding restitution for 'expenses', taxis and 'research'. He'd want new equipment, massive amounts of specialty baking goods, the authorization to phone up companies and spend money autonomously. In short, he'd become insufferable. When his demands weren't met, he'd start slacking and not showing up for work.
The 'feed the bitch' calls would become more frequent.
That's usually when I began buying bread out.
And that's when Adam, not eligible for unemployment benefits, would go back to making sandwiches at the Yankee Doodle Deli, brunch-cooking at West Side saloons, consulting to some crack-brained pizzeria owner or novice restaurateur, freelancing for deadbeat caterers or just lying around his apartment. He'd print up another resume, another tissue of lies, invariably with another last name, and he'd start all over. And sooner or later, I'd call him again . . . or Sears would, and Adam Real-Last-Name-Unknown would be back in the saddle again.
Adam can surprise you. He gets along well with my wife. He's actually polite in stretches. For the last few years (something of a record for Adam), he's been working for a very fine caterer and apparently doing good work there. I turned on public access cable one night to see Adam, in chefs whites, exchanging witty banter with a late-night cable host and guests, holding his own very nicely. He was delightful and funny and fast on his feet, and he had an impressive display of baked goods laid out on a table to sample. He's still making bread and pizzas for Jimmy Sears. For some time, I have heard no tales of violent assaults or thirteen-dollar whorehouses or near overdoses. So maybe he really has cleaned up his act.
God knows, a man who can make those perfect rough-slashed boules of sourdough and Tuscan country bread deserves his place in the sun. Somewhere.
He's the best at what he does, after all. The finest bread I've ever had. And the most expensive: in human cost, aggravation and worry. Hiring Adam Real-Last-Name-Unknown was al ways a trade-off - with God or Satan, I don't know - but it was usually worth it. Bread is the staff of life. And Adam, the unlikely source.
Something else God has to answer for.
DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN RESOURCES
A GOOD FRIEND OF mine, about a year into his first chef's job, had a problem with one of his cooks. This particularly rotten bastard