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By the time I arrive at Les Halles, I have my ducks pretty much in a row.

I'm the first to arrive, as usual - though sometimes my pastry chef surprises me with an early appearance - and the restaurant is dark. Salsa music is playing loudly over the stereo behind the bar, for the night porter. I check the reservation book for tonight, see that we already have eighty or so res on the book, then check the previous night's numbers (the maitre d' has already totaled up reservations and walk-ins) and see that we did a very respectable 280 meals - a good portent for my food cost. The more steak-frites I sell, the better the numbers will be. I flip through the manager's log, the notebook where the night manager communicates with the day management, noting customer complaints, repair requirements, employee misbehavior, important phone calls. I see from the log that my grill man called one of the waiters a 'cocksucker' and pounded his fist on his cutting board in a 'menacing way' when five diners waddled into the restaurant at three minutes of midnight closing and ordered five cotes du boeuf, medium-well (cooking time forty-five minutes). I sip my cardboard-tasting take-out coffee from the deli next door and walk through the kitchen, taking notice of the clean-up job the night porter has done. It looks good. Jaime grins at me from the stairwell. He's dragging down a bag full of sodden linen, says, 'Hola, chef.' He's covered with grime, his whites almost black from handling dirty, food-smeared kitchen floor mats, and hauling hundreds of pounds of garbage out to the street. I follow him down, walk through the still wet cellar to the office, plop down at my desk and light my tenth cigarette of the day while I rummage around in my drawer for a meat inventory sheet/order form. First thing to do is find out exactly how much cut, fabricated meat I have on hand. If I'm low, I'll need to get the butcher on it early. If I have enough stuff on hand to make it through tonight, I'll still have to get tomorrow's order in soon. The boucherie is very busy at Les Halles, cutting meat not just for the Park Avenue store, but for our outposts in DC, Miami and Tokyo.

I kick off my shoes and change into checks, chef's jacket, clogs and apron. I find my knife kit, jam a thick stack of side-towels into it, clip a pen into my jacket sideways (so it doesn't fall out when I bend over) and, taking a ring of keys from my desk, pop the locks on the dry-goods room, walk-in, reach-ins, pastry box and freezers. I push back the plastic curtains to the refrigerated boucherie, a cool room where the butchers do their cutting, and grab the assistant butcher's boom-box from the work-table. Knives, towels, radio, clipboards and keys in hand, I climb the Stairmaster back up to the kitchen.

I've assembled a pretty good collection of mid-'70s New York punk classics on tape: Dead Boys, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Heart breakers, Ramones, Television and so on, which my Mexican grill man enjoys as well (he's a young head banger fond of Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson, Rage Against the Machine, so my musical selections don't offend him). I'm emptying the saute station reach-in when he arrives. Carlos has got a pierced eyebrow, a body by Michelangelo, and considers himself a master soup-maker. The first thing he asks me is if I've got snapper bones coming in. I nod. Carlos dearly loves any soup he can jack with Ricard or Pernod, so today's soupe de poisson with rouille is a favorite of his. Omar, the garde-manger man, who sports a thick, barbed-wire tattoo around his upper arm, arrives next, followed quickly by the rest of the Queens residents;Segundo the vato loco prep centurion, Ramón the dish washer, and Janine the pastry chef. Camelia, the general manager, is last - she walks to work - and we exchange 'Bonjour!' and 'Comment ç va?'

Soon everyone is working: Carlos roasting bones for stock, me heating sauces and portioning pavees, filet mignons, pore mignons, duck breasts and liver. Before