Kitchen Confidential_ Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Anthony Bourdain [42]
Bigfoot paid his purveyors on time - religiously - a very unusual thing to do in a business where a restaurateur's real partners, more often than not, are the suppliers who send him food and material on credit. Given this, pity the poor soul who sent Bigfoot a second-best piece of swordfish.
'What is it?' he'd tell them on the phone, playing the confused dumbo for a while before the metal jaws clamped shut. 'I don't pay quickly enough to get the good stuff? Is there something wrong with my business that you want to send me garbage? Or is it that I'm stupid? Maybe my stupidity makes you figure, well . . . that I want the kind of shit you send me. Or maybe . . . I am stupid . . . maybe I can't recognize fresh fish . . . maybe this smelly piece of shit is really fresh . . . and I just . . . can't recognize it. Maybe I've encouraged you somehow . . . to inconvenience me and my customers. Maybe you could explain to me . . . because I'm having a problem . . . you know . . . figuring it out . . . because I'm so stupid. Or maybe . . . maybe you're just really really rich guys and you don't need my business at all. Things are going so well for you . . . you figure you don't need the money.' And he was always heroically willing to cut off his nose to spite his face. Who cares if he needed that fish delivery? If it arrived five minutes late, Bigfoot waited until the driver unloaded it - then he sent it back. I saw him do this with gigantic, multi-ton dry-goods orders that were a bit late. And let me tell you, now I often do the same thing. Make the driver unload, then reload an entire order of canned goods, 35-pound flour sacks, peanut oils, juices, tomato paste and bulk sugar, and I can assure you - your stuff will start arriving on time. Fish not what you wanted? Let the driver go, then call them up and make them send a second truck to pick it up. You say there's twenty servings of product in every box? There had better be, because Bigfoot's gonna weigh it, count it, and record it every time.
Bigfoot's entire office, the last time I worked with him, was a vault with an actual foot-thick titanium steel door, interior bars, set into brick. From there he'd pore over invoices, plan his next moves, torment his purveyors, and send and receive emanations to and from the floor and kitchen. He didn't have to be on the floor all the time. The people who worked for Bigfoot were sure that he could sense what was going on. Think an evil thought, and he'd suddenly be there. Drop a tray and Bigfoot appears. Running low on soup? Bigfoot somehow feels it, as if the entire restaurant were simply an extension of his central nervous system.
A lot of his time was spent figuring out ways to make the restaurant run more efficiently, more smoothly, faster and cheaper. And one of the earmarks of a Bigfoot operation is the tiny design features: the conveniently located hot-water hose for bartenders to melt down their ice easily at the end of the night (into convenient drains, of course), the cute little plastic handles on any electrical plug near any station where the workers' hands might be wet. And everything is always easy to clean and easy to store. Pots hang from overhead racks, always in the same place. Bottles at the bar are arranged in mirror image, radiating out from a central cash register. Careful consideration is taken with every tiny detail, from where employees store their shoes to custom-cut inserts for the steam table.
I can still walk into a West Village bar and tell immediately if the bar manager is a graduate of Bigfoot University. The bottles are arranged in the classic pattern, free (but spicy/salty)