Kitchen Confidential_ Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Anthony Bourdain [68]
'Those guys are deadbeats of the month every fucking month. Their other place is on COD - and I hear the paychecks are bouncing like Schwarzenegger's tits . . .'
I thanked him for the information and politely declined further discussions.
I was utterly depressed. I lay in bed all day, immobilized by guilt, fear, shame and regret, my ashtrays overflowing with butts, unpaid bills stacked everywhere, dirty clothes heaped in the corners. At night, I lay awake with heart palpitations, terrors, bouts of self-loathing so powerful that only the thought of diving through my sixth-floor window onto Riverside Drive gave me any comfort and allowed me to lull myself into a resigned sleep.
Finally, I landed an interview that sounded promising. It was a steakhouse on Park Avenue with a large business clientele, a respectable 24 from the Zagat Guide, and a well-thought-of outpost in the Hamptons. They served top-quality dry-aged steaks, manly portions of seafood, oversized martinis and single malt scotches and had the inevitable cigar room. As I cabbed downtown, I was confident that a) this place would not be an embarrassment to work at, and b) I could run a steakhouse kitchen standing on my head. In fifteen years, I had learned everything there was to know about beef, pork, veal, about grilling, roasting - it was easy, the kind of simple, honest food I could put my mark on without working up too much of a sweat. The specials, for one, could be easily upgraded; steakhouses were notoriously lax in their specials and seafood offerings. There was plenty about this place I could improve, I was sure of it.
Typically, I arrived about a half-hour early for the interview. Nervous and thirsty, I decided to take the edge off with a pint. I tend to overanalyze questions during the interview process, to answer too wise-ass, and these were not qualities one seeks in a chef. So, I figured, a pint would dumb me down a little, relax me.
I ducked into an inviting-looking workingman's pub - Irish bartender, bowls of stale pretzels on the bar, Van Morrison on the jukebox. After a couple of sips I felt perfectly at home with the daytime drinker crowd and the stale beer stink. I sipped and smoked, looked longingly at a plate of chicken wings a couple of stools down. I couldn't eat before the interview, I reminded myself, I didn't want a big hunk of chicken in my teeth while a potential new boss grilled me about my less than brilliant career. As the hour approached, I yearned just to blow off the interview, stay here all day, drop a few quarters in the jukebox, play Steppenwolfs 'Magic Carpet Ride' and have a few more Bass ales. It would be so nice, I mused, to get paid for this - twelve hundred a week to hang out in the fading daylight of Irish bars, instead of having to go through the full mind-body press of taking on a new kitchen. But I needed the money. I needed the work. I needed to get back in the game.
When I walked out into the sweltering, mid-August afternoon, I was about as loose and ready as I was ever going to be.
The place was done up with the usual dark-wood walls and historical prints of horses, old New York, handlebar-mustached ball players and clubby accouterments. It was between lunch and dinner service, and the dining room was empty except for a frosty-haired man with a well-trimmed beard in the casual clothes that say 'owner' and a younger man in a business suit. They were interviewing another candidate, a stack of resumes in front of them.
A bushy-browed maitre d' ushered me to a bar, where I recognized immediately that this was a cattle call. A full bar of serious-looking chef candidates, in civilian mufti, sat drinking club sodas while they waited. Most were as badly dressed as I was, looking broken and defeated as they stared into space, sallow-skinned from years under fluorescent kitchen lighting. We ignored each other and tried to look as if we didn't need this