Something gets me thinking about the kitchen and its occupants, and how it’s just not possible that all of a sudden I’ve become the only misfit. It’s not an altogether unfamiliar sensation, though. When I started working at Sessanta, my first restaurant, I genuinely believed that I needed the job only to pay for a shrink. The paranoia eventually tapered off, and those first paychecks went toward the rent and books instead. Hard work was my medicine. Nothing new there. My grandma used to say that during the war, people were too hungry to be depressed. But this time hard work wasn’t doing it for me, and I needed some new wonder drug to allay my obsessions.
Through the wall I shared with the apartment next door, I could hear the groans of the latest in a steady flow of truck drivers. This one was Speedy Gonzales. I used to have fun calculating how long the johns would last with the Romanian hooker: It was rarely more than ten minutes. Then they’d go and catch some shut-eye in their cabs parked below.
I was on my own because Michele had gone back to Rome and I’d needed to stay this week. The arrangement with Giustini was that we’d be open from Wednesday through Sunday, with two whole days off a week. Piece of cake, if you think about it. So I was all alone, trying to unscramble causes and effects, and the myriad experiences that had led me to this room. I was the Cincinnati Kid facing off Lancey Howard’s queen-high straight flush. With a bad beat of three aces. A smart gambler never changes his bets and never leaves the table on a losing streak. If he loses everything, it just means he’s not as smart as he thought he was. Of course, the temptation to hightail it to Rome and hole up somewhere was powerful. But I had to keep going. There was no other option, friends couldn’t help, I just had to become better, and not simply by memorizing the menu. I wouldn’t go down without a fight.
“Do you mind if I spend the next couple of days sorting a few things out in the kitchen while we’re closed?” I mulled over the question before texting it to Orlando, then I hit Send and turned off the light. As I was about to fall asleep, my cell pinged.
“Okay, whatever. I’ll let you in. But only tomorrow. I’m away Tuesday, and the day after all hell breaks loose.”
Monday morning I made sure I was standing at the back door that led directly to the kitchen. Orlando arrived right on time, said hello, and went into the office to write up the weekly orders.
So far the restaurant hadn’t been under too much pressure (although to me it felt like a grueling obstacle course), but the club was opening now and the celebrations included dinner for a bunch of special guests. It was time to rock and roll. You could tell that Orlando was fretting. He’d quarreled with just about everyone, starting with the maître d’ and his beaten-up face. Stupid squabbles that could easily have been avoided, about the salad for staff meals using the end slices of the tomatoes, the sequence that the orders arrived in, what to do with leftover unfinished bottles of mineral water, and which wine to use for cooking.
Even the head chef had started showing some chinks in his armor, flaring up more often than usual over minor hiccups. He must be a tad paranoid too. And Pietro kept firing off questions and getting in the way. Michele was the only one who remained as cool as a cucumber. Way too cool, in fact, which left me wondering how long he’d get away with being so aloof. Maybe he didn’t realize it, I thought, or maybe he felt that he was all set. Admittedly, his freshly made pasta, his ricotta gnudi, his stylishly smeared sauces were in a league of their own, leaving us eating his dust. A commercial kitchen, like any finely tuned machine, can function only when all of its cogs move in unison, and when one cog starts going it alone, and in slow motion, to boot, it is a bad, bad thing. You can’t work in isolation. Michele could no longer be my go-to person, not the way he’d been at the Verve.
I tied my apron around my waist, grabbed a clean side towel and folded it over the string at my hip, and got down to work. Starting with the mise en place.
Orlando had been on my back for days, moving my things around and bellowing when anything was out of place at my station. I could do the mise en place with my eyes closed; it was an extension of my nervous system. I had it down pat, or so I thought, because by the end of every service I was a filthy, disorganized mess, rummaging through the fridges, groping for stuff, like a blind man without a guide dog or a white stick, in need of a familiar landmark or a helping hand.
Deep breath. I cleared everything away and picked up the menu. First I wrote a list of ingredients — the ones I needed and the ones I might need. A few kitchen tools, knives, cloths, a lighter, a scourer, and some containers for scraps and food. I glanced at Orlando’s station. When he was on duty it looked like an operating room. Nothing out of place, it was his temple, his religion. And don’t even think of touching anything. Number one, because it’s unnecessary, and number two, because you touch something at another chef’s station — especially the head chef’s — only if you’ve been repeatedly asked to do so.
So here we go: fine and coarse sea salt, Maldon crystal salt for the steaks, guesstimating the amount I’ll need for service, plus a little extra. Whole black and green peppercorns, pink pepper berries, ground pepper. A large container for salt and pepper mixed together in the exact ratio. Butter cut into cubes, all the same size and placed in a gastronorm, ready for prepping and softened by the time service starts. Enough big sheets of absorbent paper under the fryer. Curls of tomato skin for frying as garnishes. Lava rock char broiler all set up. Day-old bread sliced thinly on the slicing machine for pressing into muffin tins and turning into crunchy bread cups. Layers of grated Parmesan cheese on Silpat baking mats to be melted in the microwave and laid over wafer-thin broiled beef “rags.” Preparations stashed in the fridge in the correct order: first, containers of chopped parsley; followed by leafy aromatics prepared daily and immersed in iced water; tomato sauce, plain and seasoned; caramelized apples; shallots braised in butter; peeled garlic cloves; baby sage leaves on layers of damp kitchen towels; and roasted garlic pureed with oil in the food processor. Everything I’d need, and every spare cranny filled with empty containers to fill as required. Sauces, precooked brunoise-cut vegetables, bases. Clean cloths stacked in a neat pile for my sole use during service, kept in what I decide will be their secret hiding place because clean cloths are a precious resource. I open the sliding doors of the cupboard above my head and arrange its contents from left to right. First the coarse breadcrumbs, then the fine, the olive oil delivered straight from the press for the carpaccio; an oil and red wine vinegar mixture; white wine behind the red; juniper berries; apple cider vinegar; dried capers; ruby paprika for decoration; brandy, balsamic, and Lambrusco reductions; dried habanero chilies; a sheaf of white paper for orders and prep lists; a caddy full of pens that all write; and an empty tin for my tobacco and papers.
On the workbench I sort out my favorite ladles and lay them out beside the long grilling tongs and the spaghetti tongs. Two small copper pans for sauces (copper is a better conductor of heat than any other metal, and it heats everything more quickly and evenly). Small stainless steel trays for resting grilled meat in the oven and locking in the juices. Spoons of two different lengths, a meat fork, stainless steel spatulas for the grill, and a cleaning brush. A thick-bottomed stainless steel braising pot to keep at my station, and an assortment of aluminum pans (aluminum being almost as good as copper for conducting heat).
From the pot cupboard I select a cast-iron casserole pan and place it on the shelf under my grill. From now on that will be its home. The casserole pan, unlike other cook pots and pans, has to be made of a material that is a low conductor of heat, to maintain a barrier between the exterior — in an oven or on a cooktop — and the interior at approximately 212° Fahrenheit, the temperature at which water slowly comes to the boil. There are two in the kitchen. I take the one with the heavier lid for myself; it will stay perfectly sealed during cooking.
Then I enter the cool room where the meat is hanging. I trim the cuts, removing only the darkest bits, and arrange the fillets from the oldest to the freshest, wrapping them in a clean cloth — carefully choosing only the ones that don’t smell of fabric softener (there’s nothing worse than meat that smells of Marseille soap) — and wiping them thoroughly.
Leaving the cool room, I sharpen my knives one at a time. A dull blade is the biggest humiliation for a chef.
Does an orderly kitchen make for an orderly life? Yes, it certainly does, both while you’re cooking and when you knock off at the end of service. I shut my eyes and feel where everything is, and move a few containers around, making it easier for me to reach the ones at the back. Then I do it again, and again, until every piece is within easy reach. In my defense, I don’t want to waste time thinking or looking for things. I’m fanatical about my mise en place, which is strictly off-limits to everyone, including Orlando.
Then I roll myself a joint and go outside to smoke it in the garden behind the kitchen. Back inside, I take out my cell phone, set up the stopwatch, and grab a chicken from the cool room. I start the timer on the phone and insert my knife into the flesh, running the blade between muscle, ligament, cartilage, and bone. I try to visualize the bird’s anatomy so as to prise it open without tearing the meat, damaging the skin, or leaving any good bits on the bones. At the end, staring back at me, is a chicken that seems to have been mauled by a hungry half-crazed lion, and a time of eighteen minutes, twenty-seven seconds, and forty-three hundredths of a second.
I wrap the mangled bird carefully in cling film and start on the second one. Then the third. At this point Orlando comes in to tell me it’s time to go and I’d better clear up the kitchen. His gaze turns to the knife smeared in chicken fat and the bird splayed out on the cutting board.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“I’m getting ahead with my work, I’m preparing the chickens for Wednesday …”
“Have you lost your mind? First of all, the chickens are for Thursday, and second, do you know what happens to chicken meat if you debone it now?”
“But … I’m putting it straight in the fridge, it’s all sealed …”
“Sealed, my ass, Leo. After you take meat off the bone, it gets exposed to air, at room temperature, and the heat from your hands, and in the meantime bacteria start multiplying. By the time Thursday swings around, all you’ll have left is a fucking old chicken. I told you yesterday: Only remove the giblets. Otherwise I would have got you to stay on and clean them all. I’m not afraid to, you know. There are three of you in here working full time and doing half the work of a very middling chef. I’d have no qualms at all about telling you to stay behind to do more. If I didn’t, it’s simply because it’s a bad idea. Put that poor thing away this minute, you dickhead. You told me you wanted to set things up, not start prepping!”
I head back to the apartment overlooking the exit ramp on foot. Maybe I need a Moleskine notebook to write down all the things I still don’t know. Just as I enter a stationer’s, I get a text message, which I expected would be from Orlando, but it wasn’t.
“Howzit goin’, Leo?”
Shit. It’s Matteo.
“Real tough, only going to get worse.”
“Women?”
“Nope. You?”
“Maddalena might move into our place. With me. What do you think?”
“Better chained to a kitchen than a chick. Cheers.”