Kitchen Confidential_ Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Anthony Bourdain [48]
If you looked carefully, there were other perks. There was a healthy sports book up and running - and side bets aplenty. When a Panamanian and a Dominican were duking it out for the world middleweight title, there was always an employee willing to bet big bucks along national pride lines - whatever the Vegas odds were. A Puerto Rican has a hard time betting on a boxer from Ecuador, even if he's heavily favored. Sensibly, however, I'd buy a case of beer for the whole crew with a portion of my winnings, so there was never any ill will. Many of the Spanish-speaking members of the crew took part in an unusual 'banking' scheme where each week all the members of a large group would sign over all their paychecks to one guy. The recipient was selected on a rotating basis, and the way it worked, I gathered, was that for about two months or so everybody squeaked by, doing their best to make do without a check, spending little . . . until the day it was their turn, at which point they came into thousands of dollars and could spend like drunken sailors. This practice made no sense to me. It also required an extraordinary amount of trust in one's fellow cooks. I did not share my comrades' confidence that Luis, for instance, wouldn't skip town on a drunk after getting his big payday, and leave the others in the lurch. I held on to my meager paycheck. I had no time to spend it anyway.
One foggy night around ten, with only a few customers left in the main dining room, an electric current seemed to run through the floor staff. There was a sudden gang-rush to the upstairs bus station, where one could just barely see and hear what was going on in the Room. 'Frank is here! Frank is here!' was the battle cry. Even the cooks abandoned their stations to see what the commotion was about. Sure enough, the Man Himself had come to dinner: Frank Sinatra was in the house - and he was singing! Sinatra had swung by with a posse of thick-necked pals, ordered up some bottles and snacks, and now, backed by the house orchestra, was belting out tunes to an awe-struck audience of about twenty customers who had been lucky enough to linger over dessert. These few tourists who, up to now, must have been bemoaning the bad weather, the lack of visibility ruining the famous view, the empty dining room and the miserable food, were suddenly the luckiest bastards in New York. Sinatra, having a good time apparently, sang for quite a while. He was still there when I knocked off work.
Other celebrity sightings included a well-known member of a Sicilian fraternal organization - in the 'entertainment and financial services sector' - who made an impromptu visit to the kitchen for a few words with our kindly Neapolitan chef. I saw a fifty go into poor Quinto's chest pocket, with an affectionate slap on the cheek. Now the hapless bastard was committed to making 'Gnocchi genovese . . . like I used to get'. Gnocchi genovese was not on our regular menu, and I doubt that the chef had actually cooked anything - much less gnocchi and meat sauce - from scratch in years. Quinto was more like an air-traffic controller than a cook, but he'd taken the man's money (not that he'd had a choice) and he spent the next hour, in the middle of a busy dinner service, spooning batch after batch of gnocchi into simmering water, his hands shaking with fear and tears streaming down his face, as one batch after another failed to meet his expectations. I don't remember the finished product going out, but the chef showed up to work the next day, so I imagine the customer was happy.
Another memorable evening was the RFK charity