Spiced

I had barely torn the ticket out of the printer when Nami rounded the corner into the pastry station and grabbed it from my hand. She forcefully scribbled the word Japanese in bold letters at the bottom of the ticket, next to the preprinted VIP notation from the computer. She underlined it multiple times for effect and barely glanced at me before dropping the ticket on my counter and turning to leave the kitchen. Why did she still bother with her act?

Early on, before I really got the hang of things at Nobu, some people tried to take advantage of me or, worse, even seemed to take pleasure in humiliating me. Haruki, the floor manager, took great pride in pointing out even my tiniest missteps (forgetting a garnish or sending a dessert to the wrong table) in front of the waitstaff. Once he announced, in front of everyone, that a customer had found a blond hair in her food and all but accused me of being unkempt. Jemal assured me that not only was my hygiene more than satisfactory but that Haruki was just an asshole who took pleasure in wielding his tiny amount of power as floor manager to make people feel bad. He had no real influence over my fate as a pastry cook; that honor was Jemal’s. If Haruki had been truly concerned, he would have pulled me aside privately to constructively correct.

And then there was Bruce, one of the lead line cooks, who reveled in his inappropriate comments. Mmmmm . . . so creamy, he would say lasciviously as I stirred my crème anglaise. He never spoke to me seriously, or even civilly. All I ever got from him were comments and usually when no one else was around: Ooh, you look good when you come out of the freezer, he’d say, nodding at my nipples.

Nami was the one waiter who simply refused to accept me. She made no effort to be friendly, took no steps to help me navigate the world in which I was a stranger. Even though the pastry station was under my charge once dinner service began, and I was the one who would be dealing with her special dessert requests, she more often called for Mika, who, once I got a handle on things, spent most of her time tending to more important tasks in the blessed calm of the basement. When she appeared, Nami addressed only Mika and only in Japanese, even when I was standing right there and even long after I’d grown more than capable of handling anything that came my way. I was sure she was complaining about me, worried that a haku-jin newbie like me wouldn’t have the inner know-how to meet the standards of her “special” Japanese customers. And her VIP special customers were always Japanese. To make matters worse, Nami actually complained that I unfairly ate family meal (the communal staff meal that the kitchen made at the end of a shift) twice—once when I came in at two and again at the end of service, around midnight. I rarely ate more than a bowl of rice and some salad—both of which were always in surplus—but that didn’t matter to Nami. I was an easy target. She just had to pick on me: the new white girl, the lowest member on the kitchen totem pole.

As I got better at my job and adjusted to life in the kitchen, I figured out that Haruki was probably just cranky from dealing with customers and waiters all night, that Bruce, annoying and inappropriate as he was, was harmless, and that Nami was not to be taken seriously. That’s just Nami, Mika had said politely when I finally worried aloud about Nami’s nasty attitude. It was a condemnation swathed in Mika’s inexhaustible civility, but it was enough to bolster my confidence. Enough was enough. After a while, I didn’t let Haruki, Bruce, or Nami get to me anymore. I had gotten better at my job, good, even, and I could handle anything.

Nami no longer had my newbie Caucasian butt to push around. I knew that true VIPs would be brought to my attention by a manager. I also knew that a customer was not a VIP simply because he or she was Japanese, as Nami’s notations implied. She’d try anything to brownnose a customer into giving her a bigger tip. I filled the order as I would have any other. I started by placing a small aluminum tin of molten chocolate cake onto a sizzle platter.

I had grown to love the strange elements that Mika incorporated into this ever-evolving dessert: sticky pockets made from rice flour, beans cooked in syrup, candied chestnut fillings. And while she was happy and patient to teach me how to make some of them, like a particular kind of mochi—a sticky, gummy dough that was used to wrap all kinds of things—that I loved, she was secretive about others, like her recipe for ogura, a sweet red bean paste. Still, she seemed sincerely pleased that I had taken a true liking to Japanese sweets. I loved the textures most of all and the incredible attention to detail. Sometimes Mika would bring in some wagashi, the traditional Japanese confections that come wrapped up like perfectly designed gifts and are truly an art. We would take a break, and over some hot green tea, she would explain each exquisite dessert.

I plated that week’s traditional Japanese dessert with confidence: a starchy square of mango kudzu, a small round of Mika’s homemade ogura, and a ball of green tea mochi-wrapped ice cream cut into quarters with a halved raspberry in its center, all arranged simply and eloquently on a Japanese stoneware plate. The aesthetic was all about clean lines and minimal clutter on the plate. I had it down. I grabbed a small oval bento box from the top shelf of the station and removed its lid. The molten chocolate cake had to be ready by that time.

In a reverse relay, the hot sizzle platter was handed off back down to me. Seiko, my more experienced daytime counterpart who took care of most of the advanced production, had told me earlier that she’d made an especially good batch that morning. By then, I knew what that meant: the molten chocolate cake was bulging up out of its four-ounce tin with the slightest of wiggles still in its center. Perfect. Finally, my internal timer was calibrated and right on target, going off when six or seven minutes had passed. I quickly but carefully and gently inverted the tin into the bento box, letting the fragile cake fall from its container fully intact. If the cake was handled too roughly, it would break open, its chocolate center would prematurely run into a thick pool, and the customer would be robbed of the joy of discovering the cake’s hidden surprise center: a melted pool of pure Vahlrona chocolate. It would not be servable, and I would have to start all over again, completely throwing off my cadence for the night.

I quickly scooped a quenelle of green tea ice cream and massaged the metal bulge of the scooper in my warm palm to ensure that the quenelle would fall easily from its scoop in a perfectly smooth oval. A squirt of shiso sauce (shiso is often called Japanese mint, but I think it tastes much more like grassy basil) over the cake and a decorative chocolate oval finished the dessert. I replaced the lid on the bento box, pulled Nami’s ticket from the dupe slide, set it on top of the bento box, and started yelling.

I followed her path to the edge of the dining room. It was late enough that I had completely finished setting up the dessert station but still early enough that not many dessert orders were coming in yet. It was the calm before the storm, and until the small printer started spitting out its crushing mountain of orders, I had a few moments of precious downtime during which I could enjoy the view into the dining room.

As usual, we had a full night of reservations (in almost a year that I spent at Nobu, I can’t remember a night on which we did fewer than 275 covers, or people, which meant the restaurant was packed for the entire night) and both the front and back rooms were full. According to our roster of reservations, we would be serving a multitude of VIPs of varying importance that night: rock stars, industry professionals, movie stars, investors, movie stars/investors. Their reservations were noted on the VIP list before service so that everyone would know that they were to be paid special attention. At the very least, they would receive an extra dessert, on the house. I learned that dessert was the “freebie” of choice most of the time. Desserts were low-cost items, as their ingredients were invariably inexpensive (how much do flour, sugar, even chocolate, cost compared to meat, fish, and specialty produce?), and were often thought of as special treats, bonuses that customers might otherwise forgo.

From my post at the edge of the kitchen, I could see into the other half of the restaurant, the front of the house, which was a sensory contrast to the kitchen in every way. The lights were soft and flattering, large windows looked out onto the Tribeca streets, modern “trees” made from stained planks of wood adorned various corners, the tablecloth-free wooden tabletops—everything about the room, save the excitement of the customers and the insistence of the waiters, felt calm and relaxed.

I could see Robert De Niro (famous movie star/investor #1) already seated at his favored table in the back corner of the back room, chatting over sushi with Harvey Keitel (famous movie star #2). They were both regulars. Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow would be arriving later on. The restaurant was so popular with the rich and famous, so regularly inundated with notable names, that I grew accustomed to the constant influx of celebrity. I never actually met any of the stars, unlike the star sushi chefs. They actually worked in the dining room, and could have conversations with them if it seemed appropriate. Morimoto once left his post, ran downstairs, and changed into his street clothes just so he could say hello to Ralph Lauren while wearing his head-to-toe Ralph Lauren ensemble. Then he changed back and returned to work. I once bumped into Bill Murray, when we both happened to exit the restrooms at the same time. He complimented me on a job well done, and went back to his table. After so many months of serving celebrities, I was more impressed with his height than anything else. Outside of that, my relationship with celebrity—with all customers, really—was that of servant-master: they demanded, I served. We communicated via computer-generated tickets or anxious waiter. Mel Gibson wanted to send Rene Russo an “obscene” dessert as a joke? I did my best and cut a long rod of maki, stood it on a plate like a tower, set two balls of mochi ice cream at its base, and spooned some crème anglaise around it. I liked to think that no matter how famous or important the VIPs were, they still needed me if they wanted dessert. I could do something they couldn’t.

The sound pulled me out of the dining room and back to my post with Pavlovian force as the printer began its nightly crescendo and jettisoned its white paper tongue: six tables at once. Time to focus. I tallied the dessert totals: three almond maki, five bento boxes, two fruit plates (damn the time-consuming fruit plates! Why couldn’t people just throw caution to the wind, live a little, and order a real dessert?), one ginger crème brûlée, and one kotaishi maki. Kotaishi maki was Jemal’s latest addition to the menu. Unlike the almond maki, the kotaishi maki was actually two tall cylinders of striped green tea and almond cake, cut on the bias and filled with mango-chocolate mousse, and served with coconut-ginger broth. It was the first dessert to appear on the menu that I actually didn’t like, mostly because of the thin broth that pooled around the towers. After tasting it for the first time, I’d swallowed quietly and just nodded, afraid to tell the truth while being absolutely incapable of lying (another curse I live with). Not that it mattered, since Jemal’s confidence was unwavering and seemingly indestructible. I wondered if I’d ever be so self-assured.

I made all twelve desserts at once. I learned long ago that it is just as easy, and faster, to make five bento boxes at once (or maki or brûlées) as it is to make one. I lined my narrow counter with their respective plates and loaded two sizzle platters with molten chocolate cakes. The bento box was quickly becoming Nobu’s signature dessert.

For the next two hours or so, until the printer finally slowed down, I was a whirlwind of measured movement: assessing tickets as they came in, timing the molten cakes, decoratively cutting fruit. In between, I rapidly replenished sauce bottles, sliced maki for backup, and moved stacks of warm just-washed plates into the cooler so they would be chilled in time for plating. Ice cream on a warm plate turns into a soupy mess, and if I forgot to refill my stack in the refrigerator, I ended up wasting valuable time chilling plates with ice and towel-drying them. I did not have that kind of time. I finally understood what Linda had meant: Work in the kitchen was all about timing, using every moment as efficiently as possible, not wasting a single second.

I responded to urgent calls of “Dali-san!” from frantic waiters who had forgotten to punch in their dessert orders and who needed them five minutes earlier. Those tickets got prioritized to the front of the line, as did those tickets with a single quickly plated dessert unfortunately caught between a bevy of large tables. A customer should not have to wait fifteen minutes for a single crème brûlée just because he or she ordered right after two time-consuming large tables. The waiters and I worked in tandem to ensure that the customers enjoyed their final course, that their last moments in the restaurant were as exceptional as those that led up to them. The better the waiters did their job (ordering concisely and efficiently, noting special requests legibly and as early as possible), the better I was at satisfying their requests and vice versa.

The crush, as usual, lasted a full two hours, and when the tide of orders finally began to recede, I made a quick assessment of the station. I refilled squeeze bottles, shaved more plum into the remaining pool of ginger syrup, removed any broken, unusable pieces from the container of tuiles. Now that it was later in the evening, I would have more time between orders, so I didn’t bother cutting any more fruit. Instead, I started consolidating and cleaning out nearly empty vessels, deciding what could be saved for tomorrow’s lunch service and what leftovers should be given to the family at end of the night. Waiters are always more than happy to eat dessert scraps.

The chocolate was dark and shiny, with two thin stripes of white chocolate decorating its top. He often made hand-molded chocolates as a treat for VIP customers. It was a delight to watch him temper simple slabs of chocolate or boxes of pistoles (chocolate that came in small drops) and turn them into beautifully shiny miniature works of edible art. Tempering the chocolate (melting it down and then re-emulsifying the fats and sugars) made it easier to work with and gave it a more appetizing shiny surface. He would gently heat the chocolate to around 118 degrees, then cool it down by adding unmelted chocolate, stirring until it reached around 92 degrees, depending on how high the cocoa content was. It’s like magic! I told him the first time I had watched. No, Dalia, he said, sternly holding my stare. Pastry is magic.

Jemal always judged the temperature of melted chocolate by lifting his rubber spatula directly from the chocolate to his lower lip, feeling the temperature. He scoffed at any notion that this was unsanitary, and started testing me on my temperature-judging abilities. I always thought it was cool enough when it was actually still at least 10 degrees too warm. Keep practicing, Dalia, he told me, Repetition . . . repetition.

He loved working with chocolate, though he complained that neither the customers nor the waiters amply appreciated his work. At first I thought that he was just being a prima donna, that no amount of appreciation would ever be enough. When someone accidentally (or, more likely, carelessly) unplugged his small refrigerator, set at the perfect temperature to keep the chocolates shiny (temperatures too hot or too cold cause chocolate to “bloom,” turn cloudy or spotted on its surface), Jemal was rightfully angered and demoralized by the waste of all his time, but the rest of the kitchen barely shrugged, let alone apologized. Sadly, I learned that it was true what they’d told me long ago: Cooks just don’t care about pastry.

Jemal believed that everyone, especially pastry people, should eat at least one piece of chocolate every day. But, after being given a license early on to eat whatever I wanted from the pastry station, I’d quickly made myself ill from green tea mochi, dessert maki, and mini fig tarts. He knew that chocolate was the last thing I wanted to eat, even if it was filled with yuzu, one of my favorite new Japanese flavors, which tastes a lot like a more complex, super Meyer lemon crossed with mandarin orange with a tiny hint of salt.

Itaru was the sixth sushi chief, an appendage to the set of five who already performed nightly at the sushi bar, a stage that was only large enough for five. He was instead placed at a tiny scrap of counter space at the end of the kitchen line directly outside the doorway between the hot line and the sushi bar. He was an “extra” chef, handing out various pieces of sushi, sashimi, and other garnishes to the other sushi chefs. He was a quiet, efficient chef and, unlike most of the other sushi chefs, incredibly friendly. He also had an insatiable sweet tooth that he satisfied by way of trade with me. I returned his nod and made my way down the line to receive the bento box.

I removed the lid to the small lacquer box to find a small piece of dark, coral-colored salmon sushi; a piece of hamachi, yellowtail in the palest of lavender hues; and three thick, square slabs of tomago, the slightly sweet chilled omelet that I especially liked to snack on. My interest in sushi had been slow in coming; I’d never even eaten it before working at Nobu. Mika eased me into it, laughing gently at my request to not try anything too fishy. It sounded ridiculous to her; it was fish, after all! But like much of my experience at Nobu, once I got it, I got it. My gift from Itaru was the perfect late-night nosh to enjoy while waiting for the final dessert orders to come in, after which I could finally close down my station and head home or go out for a drink. Happy hour for me, for anyone in the restaurant business, started at midnight. Until then, though, I was at the mercy of those final customers who wanted to linger over the last of their sake, completely unaware that while they put off their decision to have dessert, I could be missing the next train home or the shared taxi to the bar across town.

Ten months earlier I was burning cakes and pots, dropping stacks of plates, doing virtually everything wrong. I used to live in constant fear that I would be fired at any moment. I struggled with adapting to my new lifestyle: the late hours, the social hierarchy, the physicality, the injuries. It had been a slow progression—at times a torturous one—but one I had managed to figure out and even master.

In two weeks, though, my culinary school program would come to an end, and I would begin my search for a part-time culinary externship, the last step in my formal culinary education, after which I would finally leave Nobu for a cooking job. I would miss Itaro and our exchange game, green tea, yuzu, wagashi breaks, bento boxes, unfamiliar tastes, and the now familiar sound of Japanese. Mika and Jemal had always known the time would come, that my time in pastry was temporary. It seemed sad that just as I had really gotten the hang of things, it was time to move on. I would have to start all over again.