Kitchen Confidential_ Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Anthony Bourdain [71]
Or, I wondered shrewdly. Did he want to see if the applicant had any balls on him. 'Oh yeah' the right answer there might be, 'everybody says you're a miserable, Machiavellian, coldbloodedrat bastard with a million enemies and balls the size of casaba melons - but I also hear you're fair.'
Maybe that was it!
The fact was, though, I'd never heard of this guy before walking in the door. Not a thing. Sure, he got a 24 in Zagat's, but that was about it. It was all I knew of the man! To lie . . . to flatter now. . . when everything was going so well - it could be a fatal mistake.
So I decided to take a shot at the truth,
Proudly, with what I later realized must have seemed to be nearly idiotic pride, I answered the 'What do you know about me' question with complete honesty. I stared back into the owner's eyes, smiled, and with forceful determination and complete candor, answered as breezily as I could, considering my heart was pounding in my chest:
'Next to nothing!' I said.
It was not the answer he was looking for.
Both owner and manager gave me tight, shocked smiles. They might have been impressed with my balls, but this was clearly outweighed by an instant appreciation that I was not going to be the next chef - nor would I ever be. I'd got it wrong somehow.
Oh, they laughed. They were even amused. A little too amused, I thought, as they tidied up the stack of resumes, signaling the interview was over. In what seemed like seconds, I was being politely if quickly escorted to the door, being handed the pro forma kiss-off of 'We have other candidates to interview before we make a decision.'
I was halfway down the block, already in a full flop-sweat from the August heat and the wringer these guys had put me through, when I realized my mistake. I groaned out loud, practically bursting into tears at the foolishness of it all, as I realized, exasperated, what this proud Scot had actually asked me. This steakhouse owner - whose end-of-week sales reports probably constituted at least 90 percent meat sales - hadn't been asking me what 'I knew about me . . .' He'd asked a more reasonable question for the owner of a very successful steakhouse.
He'd asked me 'WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT MEAT?'
And I, like some half-crazed, suicidal idiot-savant kamikaze pilot, had asked him to repeat the question, pondered it thoughtfully, then proudly replied, 'Next to nothing!'
It was not my finest hour.
PINO NOIR: TUSCAN INTERLUDE
OF ALL THE HIGH-PRESSURE, full mind-body crunches, strange interludes, unexpected twists and 'learning experiences' in my long and largely undistinguished career, my brief Tuscan interlude with New York's Prince of Restaurant Darkness, Pino Luongo, was perhaps the most illuminating, if exhausting. The owner of Coco Pazzo, Le Madri, Sapporo di Mare, II Toscanaccio and other businesses, Pino was, and remains, one of the most controversial figures in the business, a man envied, feared despised, emulated and admired by many who have worked for and with him.
I'll flash forward a few weeks into my account to give you a general idea of what the perception of life under Pino was. I was the newest executive chef in Toscorp, Pino's umbrella company, looking as chefly as possible in my brand-new Bragard jacket with my name stitched in appropriate Tuscan blue, standing in the front cocktail are of Pino's newest: Coco Pazzo Teatro on the ground floor of the swank and stylish Paramount Hotel on West 46th Street. A journalist acquaintance, whom I knew from Vassar, came in with a large party of high-cheekboned models and sensitive-looking young men in designer clothes. Startled to see me, he shook my hand and said, 'Tony! I