Kitchen Confidential_ Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Anthony Bourdain [98]
He has a tattoo of a cartoon cat wearing a chef's toque on his crotch, and he's all too ready to drop his pants should you express interest in seeing it. In hot months, he works in sandals, no socks, the cuffs of his checks rolled up like clam-diggers (a daring fashion statement in a kitchen, where a dropped knife or spilled duck fat can be a career ender). He wears, with defiantly prole-pride, a dishwasher's snap-front short-sleeve shirt, shunning the traditional chef's jacket. He refuses to wear an apron. He eats his meals smashed together in bite-sized chunks - meat, starch and vegetable mixed into an ugly but apparently edible slurry - and he's always trying out new flavor combinations. Middle of the rush, Steven is holding down his end brilliantly and, somehow, making little potato crisp and caviar snackies for the other cooks to try. There's always enough to go around.
Bartenders, waiters, managers, cooks, dishwashers, porters tell him everything. Somehow he induces, without even trying, total strangers to tell him their most shameful and intimate secrets. They'll do anything for him, putting up cheerfully with his practical joking, his groping, his annoying practice of trying to throw petits pois into their ears, his horribly frank anecdotes about the previous evening's sexual adventures.
I learned never to try to compete with Steven in the practical joke department. He'll make a life's work out of getting you back. Leave a potato in his shoes and he'll freeze your street clothes. Put a sticker on his back, he'll take your locker door off the hinges and stack it full of porno magazines.
On his birthday, I once arranged for him to receive a free trial pair of adult diapers. The next day, all the cooks were waiting for his reaction. He thanked me sincerely. 'You know? Those things are pretty cool! I sat around the couch, eating nachos and watching TV in my diaper, and it was great. I didn't even have to get up to go to the bathroom! It was great! And you know, it feels kinda neat!'
Our clean-living, deeply religious Ecuadorian pasta man at Sullivan's, Manuel, would receive 4A.M. phone calls every night for weeks - Steven mid-coitus with his girlfriend: 'Manuel . . . grunt . . . plorp . . . it's Steven . . . grunt . . . guess what I'm doing?'
And, like everyone in Steven's life, Manuel played along. 'Oh, Chef . . . Chef . . .' he'd say, shaking his head, the next day. 'Chuletita call me again lass night!' and then he'd burst into giggles.
I don't get it. Still.
If I did half the things that Steven does regularly - and I'm not even talking about the felonies, just the brutish misbehavior, the bad taste, the remarks, the exhibitionism, the conniving - I'd end up in court defending myself against a host of sexual harassment lawsuits. And yet, I can't think of anyone, except the owner of Sullivan's (but that's another story) who doesn't like Steven, who doesn't find him adorable, who doesn't confide in him, go to him when they're confused or in trouble . . . an amazing accomplishment for a guy who shows up to work with sperm on his shoes ('Stopped at a peep booth to toss off,' he explains casually. 'Hey! I was horny!), who behaves like an utter pig at times, freely discusses his every digestive, dermatological and sexual manifestation with anyone within hearing.
And this . . . this, dear reader, is my closest and most trusted friend and associate.
THE LEVEL OF DISCOURSE
THERE WAS A LULL in service the other night, one of those all-too-brief periods of about ten minutes when the