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By Root 727 0

the boom-box, I have to squeeze over for Janine, who melts chocolate over the simmering pasta water. I'm not annoyed much, as she's pretty good about staying out of my way, and I like her. She's an ex-waitress from Queens, and though right out of school, she's hung tough. Already she's endured a leering, pricky French sous-chef before my arrival, the usual women-friendly Mexicans, and a manager who seems to take personal delight in making her life miserable. She's never called in sick, never been late, and is learning on the job very nicely. She inventories her own supplies on Saturdays, and as I hate sticky, goopy, sweet-tasting, fruity stuff, this is a great help to me. As I've said before, I greatly admire tough women in busy kitchens. They have, as you might imagine from accounts in this book, a lot to put up with in our deliberately dumb little corner of Hell's Locker-room, and women who can survive and prosper in such a high-testosterone universe are all too rare. Janine has dug in well. She's already managed to infuriate the whole floor staff by claiming she inventories the free madeleines we give away with coffee. I'm pleased with her work, making an exception in my usual dim view of pâtissiers.

Next to me, Omar, my garde-manger man, is on automatic. I don't even have to look over at his station because I know exactly what he's doing: loading crocks, making dressing, rubbing down duck legs with sea salt for confit, slowly braising pork bellies for cassoulet, whipping mushroom sabayon for the ravioli de royan. I rarely have any worries about his end. I smell Pernod, so I know without looking what Carlos is up to: soupe de poisson.

Segundo is downstairs receiving orders from the front delivery ramp. I hear the bell every few minutes, as a few more tons of stuff arrive. He'll have my walk-in opened up like a cardiac patient by now, rotating in the new, winnowing out the old, the ugly and the 'science experiments' that sometimes lurk, forgotten and fuzzy, in dark corners, tucked behind the sauces and stocks. He's a mean-looking bastard. The other Mexicans claim he carries a gun, insist that he sniffs 'thinner' and 'pintura', that he's done a lot of prison time. I don't care if he killed Kennedy, the man is the greatest prep cook I've ever had. How he finds the time and the strength to keep up with deliveries, the nuts and bolts of deep prep, like cleaning squid, washing mussels and spinach, dicing tomato, julienning leek, filleting fish, wrapping and deboning pigs' feet, crushing peppercorns and so on, and yet still finds time to make me beautiful, filament-thin chiffonaded parsley (which he cuts with a full-sized butcher's scimitar) is beyond me.

The last cook to arrive is our French fry guy. This is a full-time job at Les Halles, where we are justifiably famous for our frites. Miguel, who looks like a direct descendant of some Aztec king, spends his entire day doing nothing but peeling potatoes, cutting potatoes, blanching potatoes, and then, during service, dropping them into 375-degree peanut oil, tossing them with salt, and stacking the sizzling hot spuds onto plates with his bare hands. I've had to do this a few times, and it requires serious calluses.

I hold the waiters' meeting and tasting at eleven-thirty. The new waiter doesn't know what prosciutto is, and my heart sinks. I run down the specials, speaking slowly and enunciating each syllable as best I can for the slower, stupider ones. The soup is soupe de poisson with rouille - that's a garlic pepper mayonnaise garnish, for the newbies. Pasta is linguine with roasted vegetables,garlic, baby artichokes, basil and extra virgin olive oil. The whole roasted fish of the day is black sea bass - that's not striped bass, for our slower students - and crusted with sel de Bretagne. The fish of the day is grilled tuna livornaise, asparagus and roasted potatoes. Does anyone need 'livornaise' explained . . . again? The meat special is roast pheasant with port wine sauce and braised red cabbage. There are faux filets for two available (that's the big, hip-end piece