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By Root 605 0

law school a chink, which ensures your presence in court for the next six months; your bartender is giving away the bar to under-age girls from Wantagh, any one of whom could then crash Daddy's Buick into a busload of divinity students, putting your liquor license in peril, to say the least; the Ansel System could go off, shutting down your kitchen in the middle of a ten-thousand-dollar night; there's the ongoing struggle with rodents and cockroaches, any one of which could crawl across the Tina Brown four-top in the middle of the dessert course; you just bought 10,000 dollars-worth of shrimp when the market was low, but the walk-in freezer just went on the fritz and naturally it's a holiday weekend, so good luck getting a service call in time; the dishwasher just walked out after arguing with the busboy, and they need glasses now on table seven; immigration is at the door for a surprise inspection of your kitchen's Green Cards; the produce guy wants a certified check or he's taking back the delivery; you didn't order enough napkins for the weekend - and is that the New York Times reviewer waiting for your hostess to stop flirting and notice her?

I have met and worked for the one perfect animal in the restaurant jungle, a creature perfectly evolved for the requirements of surviving this cruel and unforgiving business, a guy who lives, breathes and actually enjoys solving little problems like the ones above. He is a man who loves the restrictions, the technical minutiae, the puzzling mysteries of the life as things to be conquered, outwitted, subjugated. He rarely invests his own money, but he always makes money for his partners. He never goes anywhere and never does anything except what he's good at, which is running restaurants. He's good. He's so good that to this day, more than ten years after I stopped working for the man, I still wake up every morning at five minutes of six, always before the alarm, and I'm never late to work. Why? Because to disappoint the man - not to live up to his shining example of total involvement would be, even now, treason to my trade. I became a real chef - meaning a person capable of organizing, operating and, most important, leading a kitchen - because of the man. He taught me everything really important I know about the business. He, more than anyone else I encountered in my professional life, transformed me from a bright but druggie fuck-up into a serious, capable and responsible chef. He made me a leader, the combination of good-guy bad-guy the job requires. He's the reason I am never off sick, go to sleep every night running tomorrow's prep lists and menus through my mind. He's also the reason I smoke three packs of cigarettes a day, and know everything there is to know about everyone I work with, why my purveyors cringe when they get my call, and why my wife has to remind me when I get home from work that she's my wife and not an employee.

Let's call him Bigfoot.

BIGFOOT

I FIRST MET BIGFOOT while still at CIA. He was then, and remains, a West Village legend, either loved or despised (and frequently both) by generations of bar customers, waiters, bartenders, cooks, chefs and restaurant lifers. I won't give his name, though everyone below 14th Street who reads this will know who I'm talking about. He'll certainly know. He'll call me.

'Hey, Flaco,' he'll say. He calls me Flaco to this day. There was already a Tony working for him when he took me on, and as Bigfoot likes an organized operation, he needed a distinct name for me. 'Flaco, I read your book . . .'

'Yess . . .' I'll respond, waiting for the shoe to drop.

'There's a typo,' he'll say. 'I don't know a lot about publishing, but . . . it seems to me that . . . maybe someone over there should know how to spell . . .'

Now, the first thing I heard about Bigfoot when I worked for him weekends back in the '70s was that 'he killed a guy'! Whether this is true or not, I have no idea. Though I like to consider him a friend and mentor, we have never discussed it and I have heard, over the years, so many versions from so many unreliable