Kitchen Confidential_ Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Anthony Bourdain [91]
I'm on the way out the door but Isidoro wants to talk to me. My blood runs cold. When a cook wants to talk to you, it's seldom good news: problem with another cook, minor feud, paycheck problem, request for time off. In Isidoro's case, he wants a raise. I gave Carlos a raise last week so I'll have a rash of greedy line cooks jumping me for money for the next few weeks. Another note to self: Frank needs the 16th off so I have to call Steven. I'm still buzzed with adrenaline when I finally push through the last waiting customers by the hostess stand and out the door, and wave for a taxi.
I'm thinking about going home but I know I'll just lie there, grinding my teeth and smoking. I tell the cabbie to take me to the corner of 50th and Broadway, where I walk downstairs to the subway arcade and the Siberia Bar, a grungy little underground rumpus room where the drinks are served in plastic cups and the jukebox suits my taste. There are a few cookies from the Hilton at the bar, as well as a couple of saggy, bruised-looking strippers from a club up the street. Tracy, the owner of the joint, is there, which means I won't be paying for drinks tonight. It's 1 A.M., and I have to be in at seven-thirty manana, but the Cramps are playing on the jukebox, Tracy immediately fiddles with the machine so there's twenty free credits - and that first beer tastes mighty good. The Hilton cookies are arguing about mise-en-place. One of them is bitching about another cook nicking salt off his station, and the other cook doesn't see why that's such a big deal - so I'm gonna be involved in this conversation. The Cramps tune is followed by the Velvets singing 'Pale Blue Eyes', and Tracy suggests a shot of Georgian vodka he's got stashed in the freezer . . .
SOUS-CHEF
MY SOUS-CHEF, IN AN ideal situation, is like my wife.
I'll go further: my sous-chef, in an ideal situation, is closer to me than my wife. I mean no disrespect to my wife, Nancy, whom I adore, and with whom I've been stealing horses since high school. It's just that I spend a lot more time with my sous-chef. The judge, as Nancy likes to remind me, will never believe it.
Steven, my sous-chef from 1993 until recently - when he finally took on a kitchen of his own - was my evil, twin, my doppelganger, my director of clandestine services, a Bilko-esque character who, in addition to the usual sous-chef responsibilities such as running the kitchen in my absence, line cooking at a high level and watching my back, was invaluable to me for his remarkable ability to get things done.
Key to the walk-in lost? Just ask Steven. He'll have that door off its hinges in minutes. Robot-Coupe need a replacement part in the middle of a busy holiday rush? Steven will slip out the door and be back in minutes with the part - slightly used - and with another restaurant's shallots still in it. Want to know what they're thinking in the office? Ask Steven. He's suborned the secretaries and is reading the interoffice e-mail on a regular basis. Need bail money? A codeine pill for that knife wound? A new offset serrated knife real cheap? He's your boy. When I wonder what's in the heart and mind of someone I work with? I ask Steven. He'll take them out, get them liquored up so they blab their guts out, and I'll have a full report by noon next.
All the things I couldn't do - or couldn't be seen to do - he did. And he did them well. In fact, though a highly paid executive chef now for a major corporate outfit, he still works for me one night a week on my grill station, to keep his hand in, I guess. So there is still an action arm to my administration, a covert-action arm.
Having a sous-chef with excellent cooking skills and a criminal mind is one of God's great gifts. In our glory days together,