Kitchen Confidential_ Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Anthony Bourdain [74]
My fellow chef candidates, and some others already employed by Toscorp who were aiding and abetting the company-wide drive to come up with a menu for the new store, arrived with the usual, 'Look how pretty I can cook' stuff: swordfish tartare with avocado (!), California-inspired faux Tuscan updates, various ring-molded and squeeze-bottled presentations using expensive ingredients. I picked the cheapest, oiliest, and most unpopular fish I knew, one which I'd always liked, and suspected that Pino would like, too: the humble bluefish. I grilled it and added a warm potato and chorizo salad, topped with a little shaved fennel and red onion with mint and basil. Then a braised shoulder of lamb with Sicilian olives, rosemary and garlic on basil-mashed potatoes - as well as a giant raviolone of codfish brandade with crabmeat and lobster . . . just to play it safe. Pino smiled when he saw the bluefish, figuring that if nothing else, I had some balls on me.
I got the job.
Salary negotiations were brief. Pino asked me how much I wanted. I asked for a lot more than I thought I deserved. He suggested 5,000 less. That was still a number far, far higher than I had ever - or still, for that matter have - been paid. After leaving Pino's 59th Street offices, I walked on air over to the Oak Room and treated myself to a martini, my voice still too shaky to speak. When I finally managed to call my wife on the phone, I must have sounded like a breathless young girl: 'Dad! You'll never guess! He asked me to marry him!
An announcement was made in the New York Times. I was introduced to the company publicist, asked to provide a bio, and my short but memorable adventure on Planet Pino had begun.
In a subsequent meeting - and there would be many, as designing the new menu was a painstaking and tortuous affair - was informed that though I would be executive chef, my chef de cuisine (a ferret-like Italian) would fill in the obvious gaps in my knowledge of Tuscan cuisine and provide the sort of street-level, line-cooking, risotto-stirring experience I was lacking. It seemed like a reasonable idea. I could choose my own team of sous-chefs (two would be required) and cooks, but I had better do it fast, because Coco Pazzo Teatro was set to open in ten days. In that time, we would need a menu, equipment, and somewhere between twenty-five and thirty cooks - all of it ready for a celebrity-studded and media-scrutinized soft opening.
It was my greatest, most frantic, madcap and mad-dash recruiting drive ever.
First things first: I called Steven (my perennial sous-chef, but I'll get to him later) and excitedly told him to drop everything, because this was the Big One: the biggest break in our careers! Get over here fast, we need some bodies quickly! Look at this place, I told him, walking him through the rubble of the unfinished restaurant, showing him where the deck ovens and ranges would go, pointing out the tilting brazier, the steam kettle, the pasta machines, the ice-cream makers, the butcher station, the store rooms and offices - everything new and of the finest quality. We were given sixty grand to spend in the next few days, on pots, pans, blenders, beurre mixers, utensils and toys! And that wasn't counting the heavy equipment, which was already in the pipeline.
Steven responded with his usual speed and skill, and became my sous-chef. Alfredo, let's call him, a nice, talented Colombian American from the Supper Club, came aboard as second sous. It was a race now. Gianni, at Le Madri, had taken one look at my chef de cuisine, shaken his head and warned, 'Watch out for dees guy. He'll stobb you inna back,' making a stabbing gesture as he said it.
'What? What's his problem? 'He's Sicilian?' I asked jokingly, knowing Gianni's preference for all things Northern.
'Worse,' said Gianni. 'He's from Naples'.
I had yet to understand that