Kitchen Confidential_ Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Anthony Bourdain [47]
Since shanking Luis, I'd been increasingly considered to be a person of substance. The chef, an affable, blue-eyed Italian named Quinto, now felt free to take full advantage of my youth, my resilience and my willingness to work for minimum wage. After coming in at seven, taking care of my retirement village upstairs in the Club, breaking down the buffet (and saving what I could for re-use tomorrow), I was now regularly called on to stick around and help prep for the massive night-time banquets and cocktail parties. Absenteeism being rampant in our little corner of the Worker's Paradise, Local 6,l was taken aside more and more at the last minute and asked to remain until midnight, filling in on the hot line. I worked grill station, saute, fish station - at first only as a commis, hunting and fetching, covering the cooks on breaks, reloading reach-ins, straining sauces, mopping brows, running numbers to the house bookie, collecting bets, and so on. But in no time I was working stations alone, and keeping up my end nicely.
I made thousands and thousands of baby quiches for parties, and gristly little kebabs from the tough, nearly inedible chain that runs along the side of the beef tenderloin. I peeled 75 pounds of shrimp at a clip, seared Wellingtons, made chicken liver mousse (our version of foie gras), and in the course of my labors as general dogsbody, got to know the far recesses and dark corners of the vast Room facilities.
I also got to know the heavy hitters: the silent butcher and his assistant, the mercurial baby-faced chef pâtissier, the doomed-looking night saucier. And most memorably, Juan, the sixtyish day broiler man, a fierce, trash-talking Basque who, I swear, I saw one time sewing up a very bad knife wound on his hand right on the line - with a sewing needle and thread, muttering all the while, as he pushed through the flaps of skin with the point, 'I am a tough (skronk!) . . . mother fucker (skronk!). I am a tough son of beetch! (skronk!). I am tough . . . mother (skronk!) . . . fucker!' Juan was also famous for allegedly following up a bad finger wound with a self-inflicted amputation. After catching a finger in an oven door, he had consulted the union benefit list for amount given for victims of 'partial amputation', and decided to cash in by lopping off the dangling portion. Whether this story was true or not mattered little to me; it was entirely believable after getting to know Juan. He may have been over sixty, but he lifted stockpots without help, wielded the largest knife I'd ever seen, and generally kicked more ass more quickly than any of the younger cooks.
There was a procession of Swiss, Austrian and American sous-chefs, none of whom lasted for more than a few weeks. They were quickly discouraged by our veteran crew from even attempting to impose order or quality control or change of any kind. The lifers like Juan and Luis would tell these eager young neophytes to go fuck themselves right to their faces; the intractable underlings who looked to them as role models would simply feign agreement and then do what they'd always done anyway. Short of murder, you really couldn't be fired. One beefy German sous-chef, after taking more than his share of lip from a lowly commis named Mosquito, had the poor judgment to grab him by the throat, lift him off the floor and shake him. The ensuing storm brought in the moustache Petes from the local, two sinister-looking guys in long coats who'd show up to settle disputes. Sous-chef, commis, chef and all holed up in a room for half an hour, after which the sous emerged, tail between his legs and suitably apologetic, having found out who the bosses really were. Like all his predecessors, he disappeared soon after.
I began to move more freely through the halls, back stairways, offices, dining and storage areas of the Rainbow Room. I made an interesting