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By Root 603 0

people that I can't vouch for the veracity of even that simple statement. But the point is that this was the first thing I heard about him. That he had killed a guy with his bare hands. And Bigfoot, as you might imagine, is big. As he likes to describe himself, 'a big, fat, balding, red-faced Jewboy', which is typically a less than completely fair description. Bigfoot is not an unattractive guy - he looks like an elongated Bruce Willis - but he is over 6 foot 4, an ex-college basketball player, with enormous hands, strong shoulders and arms and deceptively quizzical eyes. He likes to play dumb - loves to play dumb - and like a sunbathing crocodile, when he makes his move, it's way too late.

'You know . . .' he'd say, 'I'm not a chef. . . and I don't know a lot about food, or cooking . . . so I don't know how to make, say . . . guacamole.' Then he'd shred my recipe and any illusions I might have about him not knowing anything about food, breaking down that preparation ingredient by ingredient, gram by gram, and showing how it could be done faster, better, cheaper. Of course he knew how to make guacamole! He knows to the atom how much of each ingredient goes in for how much eventual yield. He knows where to get the best avocados cheapest, how to ripen them, store them, sell them, merchandize them. He also knows how much fillet you get off every fish that swims, keeps a book on every cook who works for him with their individual yield averages for each and every fish they ever cut for him - so he knows, when Tony puts a knife to, say, a striped bass, exactly how many portions Tony is likely to get compared to the other cooks. Tony averages 62.5 percent usable yield on red snapper, and Mike averages 62.7 . . . so maybe Mike should cut that fish. As an ex-jock, Bigfoot likes scrupulous stats.

Cunning, manipulative, brilliant, mercurial, physically intimidating-even terrifying - a bully, a yenta, a sadist and a mensch: Bigfoot is all those things. He's also the most stand-up guy I ever worked for. He inspires a strange and consuming loyalty. I try, in my kitchen, to be just like him. I want my cooks to have me inside their heads just like Bigfoot remains in mine. I want them to think that, like Bigfoot, when I look into their eyes, I see right into their very souls.

My first night working for Bigfoot - a man I knew nothing of other than the rumor, and the fact that everyone appeared terrified of him - I knocked a few hundred meals out of his cramped kitchen, finished the evening feeling discouraged, exhausted and resigned never to work in his claustrophobic galley again. But the intercom at the bar rang as I was preparing to slink away, and the bartender gave me a curious look and told me, 'Bigfoot wants you downstairs in the office.' Downstairs, in Bigfoot's lair, the big man looked up at me, complimented me on a fine job, and picking up the phone, summoned a waiter with two snifters of brandy. 'We are pleased with the job you did for us this evening,' he began (Bigfoot loves to use 'we' when talking about the management of his restaurants, though in his domain there is never any 'we'). 'And we'd like you to stay on with us - if that's agreeable. Saturday nights . . . and Sunday brunches.' I can't adequately describe the gratification I felt at having pleased the imposing Bigfoot. Though we quickly agreed that he'd be paying me only 40 bucks a shift, I felt, going home that night, like a million. Bigfoot, you see, had purchased my soul for a snifter of Spanish brandy.

I was not alone in handing over my soul to the man. He retained, among other deeply flawed outcasts who'd inexplicably sworn loyalty oaths and joined up for the duration, a Presidential Guard of blue-uniformed porters whom he had personally trained in the manly arts of refrigeration repair, plumbing, basic metal work, glazing, electrical repair and maintenance. In addition to the usual tasks of cleaning, mopping, toilet-plunging and porter work, Bigfoot porters could lay tile, dig out a foundation, build you a lovely armoire or restore a used reach-in refrigerator