Off the Menu

by Stacey Ballis

  6

  After Maria reached a level of fame that made eating out an exercise in fending off fans, she frequently asked both superfamous and up-and-coming chefs alike to cook for her and a few guests in her home. That way she could partake of their wonderful skills without anyone asking for pictures or autographs or hugs or advice or money. On these occasions, I would serve as sous chef, helping the chefs find their way around the kitchen, and assisting in any way I could. Usually they would provide recipes ahead of time, so that I could shop for ingredients and do prep work before they arrived. It was an amazing time for me. I cooked with so many of the greats: Tom Colicchio, Eric Ripert, Wylie Dufresne, Grant Achatz. Rick Bayless taught me not one but two amazing mole sauces, the whole time bemoaning that he never seemed to know what to cook for his teenage daughter. Jose Andres made me a classic Spanish tortilla, shocking me with the sheer volume of viridian olive oil he put into that simple dish of potatoes, onions, and eggs. Graham Elliot Bowles and I made gourmet Jell-O shots together, and ate leftover cheddar risotto with Cheez-Its crumbled on top right out of the pan.

  Lucky for me, Maria still includes me in special evenings like this, usually giving me the option of joining the guests at table, or helping in the kitchen. I always choose the kitchen, because passing up the opportunity to see these chefs in action is something only an idiot would do. Susan Spicer flew up from New Orleans shortly after the BP oil spill to do an extraordinary menu of all Gulf seafood for a ten-thousand-dollar-a-plate fund-raising dinner Maria hosted to help the families of Gulf fishermen. Local geniuses Gil Langlois and Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard joined forces with Gale Gand for a seven-course dinner none of us will ever forget, due in no small part to Gil’s hoisin oxtail with smoked Gouda mac ’n’ cheese, Stephanie’s roasted cauliflower with pine nuts and light-as-air chickpea fritters, and Gale’s honey panna cotta with rhubarb compote and insane little chocolate cookies. Stephanie and I bonded over hair products, since we have the same thick brown curls with a tendency to frizz, and the general dumbness of boys, and ended up giggling over glasses of bourbon till nearly two in the morning. She is even more awesome, funny, sweet, and genuine in person than she was on her rock-star winning season on Bravo. Plus, her food is spectacular all day. I sort of wish she would go into food television and steal me from Patrick. Allen Sternweiler did a game menu with all local proteins he had hunted himself, including a pheasant breast over caramelized brussels sprouts and mushrooms that melted in your mouth (despite the occasional bit of buckshot). Michelle Bernstein came up from Miami and taught me her white gazpacho, which I have since made a gajillion times, as it is probably one of the world’s perfect foods. Those nights, cooking in Maria’s kitchen, were some of my favorite.

  But one of them I’d prefer to erase.

  When Patrick first began getting rave reviews, Maria asked me to set up one of these dinners for a few friends. Patrick had not yet built his empire, wasn’t on television, and was just a young hotshot chef making waves on the Chicago culinary scene. He sent over his recipes, with complex and obsessively complete instructions. A half-dead platypus could have cooked his dishes from those recipes. They practically listed the number of grains of salt.

  Which was a good thing, because Patrick was in no condition to cook them.

  He arrived two hours later than we had agreed upon, suffering from a hangover so powerful that I thought he was going to gag every time he opened his mouth. Deciding that he was essentially useless, I made him a large glass of sangre del tigre—“blood of the tiger”—a lethal Bloody Mary that I had picked up in Mexico City. Tomato juice, clam juice, raw egg, fresh horseradish, hot sauce, ground white and black pepper, salt, the juice from pickled jalapeños, orange zest, and a large slug of mezcal. He drank it down, put on his headphones, and immediately fell asleep on the couch in the back of the kitchen. I prepared the meal for him, making every one of his recipes, seething at his arrogance and inappropriateness, and mentally writing him off, while he snored away across the room. He might be hot shit for the moment, but you can’t be a party boy while you are supposed to be working and maintain the necessary standards to keep a fine dining restaurant running. I don’t care what you do after or before work, how hard you party after the people go home, but you had better be up to speed while on the clock. I know plenty of chefs who will have a snoot or two during service, a few more who rely on some unconventional pharmaceuticals to get them through the day. But I don’t know anyone who can maintain a serious party habit that infringes on the work who gets anywhere. The fact that he had been so unprofessional to Maria, of whom I was always enormously protective, potentially putting her in a difficult position with important guests, made my blood practically boil.

  But damned if his recipes weren’t spectacular. A chilled pea soup of insane simplicity, garnished with crème fraîche and celery leaves. Roasted beet salad with poached pears and goat cheese. Rack of lamb wrapped in crispy prosciutto, served over a celery root and horseradish puree, with sautéed spicy black kale. A thin-as-paper apple galette with fig glaze. Everything turned out brilliantly, including Patrick, who roused himself as I was pulling the lamb from the oven to rest before carving. He disappeared into the bathroom for ten minutes and came out shiny; green pallor and under-eye bags gone like magic. Pink with health and vitality, polished and ridiculously handsome, he looked as if he could run a marathon, and I was gobsmacked. He came up behind me just as I was finishing his port sauce for the lamb with a sprinkle of honey vinegar and a bit of butter, the only changes I made to any of his recipes, finding the sauce without them a bit one-dimensional and in need of edge smoothing. He leaned over me, dipped a spoon in the sauce, tasted it, and then kissed the side of my neck right below my ear.

  “You’re amazing. Perfect fix, it’s been eluding me for weeks.”

  I hated the way my nipples got hard when he did that. Down girls. We hate this smug fartweasel.

  He followed the plates out to the dining room, where I soon heard both laughter and applause. I rolled my eyes, and turned to plate the galette. He returned, wordlessly helped get the plates together, and as soon as the waitstaff took them, turned to me and said, “I’m going to need another one of those magic concoctions.” Whatever bit of respite he had gotten from his condition had started to wane, and I was still so shocked by his behavior, I could do nothing but make him another drink and hand it over.

  It revived him almost immediately, and he was summoned to the living room to join the guests for coffee and cognac. I cleaned the kitchen, packed up leftovers, and made Maria’s lunch for the next day. In the guest bedroom that I used on nights like this when the act of driving home was a recipe for disaster, I changed out of my chef whites and into the pajamas I kept there, taking my hair down from the severe bun I favor while cooking. I headed to the kitchen, suddenly starving, and in need of a little snack and a glass of wine. Patrick was sitting on the kitchen island, waiting for me.

  “My little savior.” He oozed off the counter, sidled over to me, put his arms around me and literally bent me over in a dip and kissed me firmly and a little wetly on the mouth. He tasted of cognac and chocolate. He smelled like freshly mown grass. He was a really good kisser. I’m not really sure to this day why I took him back to that room. Probably a little of it was that it had been a long time since I had slept with anyone. Maybe a little of the cachet: bagging the hot-stuff pretty boy. Some of it was that in the moment I simply couldn’t come up with a good reason not to, which in and of itself should have been the reason, but I was in my twenties and didn’t know better yet.

  The sex was brief and, frankly, unmemorable. I was too tired and he was clearly suffering from some diminished capacity. We didn’t really speak. Patrick got up soon after we finished (or I should say, after he finished), to go to the bathroom, and I fell asleep while he was gone. When I woke it was morning, and there was no trace of him beyond whisker burn on my chin, a condom wrapper on the floor, and a sinking feeling of mortification.r />
  When I went to the kitchen to rustle up breakfast, I found Maria getting ready to head out to the studio.

  “Good morrrrrning,” she said with a smirk.

  I must have blushed the color of cabernet. “Good morning.”

  “And how did you sleep?” She was enjoying the heck out of this.

  “Fairly well, thank you.”

  She raised one eyebrow at me, and then we both burst into laughter. I told her the whole story, she thanked me for saving the meal and the night, and we promised never to speak of it. Flash forward eight years, and she was recommending I work for Patrick. “You go meet him. ’E needs a new assistant now that ’e is adding a second show.”

  “Um, Maria. I don’t think that is such a good idea.”

  “Why not? The job is perrrrrfect for you. You cannot stay with me, you will be borrrrrrred of the salads and steamed vegetables and you hate the sad diet chicken brrrrrrrreast.”

  It’s true. I think boneless, skinless chicken breasts are the devil. The idea of cooking them with any regularity makes my spine lock up. But not enough to leave Maria, and especially not enough to work for that smug, drunk fucksack. Especially after what had happened. Which was essentially nothing. He sent Maria a huge floral arrangement with a gushy card to thank her for allowing him to cook for her, which made me throw up a little in my mouth. He called and told her that anytime she wanted, he would open his restaurant on their day off to entertain her and her friends. He did not ask her about me, acknowledge me in any way, did not call or send me flowers. Which said to me that he was either as embarrassed as I at our little assignation, which pissed me off, since there was nothing at all embarrassing about sleeping with me—I’m adorable. Or it meant that he was so accustomed to any female within arm’s-length falling into bed with him, that there was no need to even pretend that it was necessary to follow even the basest bit of postcoital politeness, as if sleeping with him once was reward enough for some nothing like me.

  “Maria, perfect or no, how could I ever work for him? After what happened?”

  “To be ’onest, and don’ be mad, I don’ think he remembers. When I talked to him, ’e says anyone I would recommend would be welcome, and that he looked forward to meeting you. ’E did not say that it would be good to see you again, but to meet you. It was so long ago, and you said ’e was verrrrry dronk. I know it is not the best, but you would rather it ’ave not ’appened. If ’e does not rrrrrrememberrrr, it did not ’appen! Clean slate.”

  I thought about that for a moment. And she was right. Whatever blow it might be to my ego that the arrogant bastard could actually have sex with me, even minor, quick, drunken sex, and completely not remember it, it did free me up to consider the job.

  “Okay, I’ll meet with him.”

  And I did. And much to my relief there was not the slightest flicker of recognition on his face. Or at least, he made sure there was not the slightest flicker of recognition on his face. If he had twinkled the tiniest bit, smiled in the wrong way, said anything the tiniest bit double entendre, I would have walked right out. But he either genuinely did not remember our night together, which I hoped and prayed, or at the very minimum, he was working very hard to make it appear that he didn’t remember, and, frankly, either was fine by me. He explained the job, the duties, said he would match my current level of salary, and if I passed the tryout, would meet my current benefits package. If I wanted the job, it was mine to try to hopefully keep.

  I went into the job with Patrick thinking I knew what I was getting into. Excited by the challenge. Assuming I would do it for a year or two until I could find the right person to get me back into the personal chef business. Assuming that he would chew me up and spit me out like so many before me. When he promoted me to executive culinary assistant, I made him put in a severance clause that some Fortune 500 CEOs would have envied. Or rather, I asked for something ridiculous, presuming he would have the lawyers bring it down to something rational that would make me feel like I had the smallest bit of security. But he didn’t balk. He just laughed. “You must love me an awful lot to make it so expensive for me to get rid of you.” And signed the papers.

  The thing is, as much as he makes me crazy and I hate the way he treats 99 percent of the population, as much as I get creeped out by his pursuit of fame, and his treatment of women, I do, I suppose, love him in a way. Some days I would prefer to love him from afar, but at the end of the day, he has been good to me. In an overly demanding, obliterating-boundaries, twenty-four-hours-a-day sort of way.

  But if I’m honest, I also have to admit that I’ve never suggested any other way.

  It’s a slippery slope, being needed and depended upon, especially when the person who depends on you is notorious for never letting anyone get close, never trusting someone else. And Patrick has earned his independent nature. His dad left when he was a baby, and his mom resented him fairly openly for what she perceived as his driving away her husband. When Patrick graduated from high school she effectively threw him out—he was eighteen and had a diploma; her work was done. He had a job flipping burgers, and jockeyed the couch at a friend’s place for a few months, living on pilfered food from the restaurant, saving every dime he could get his hands on, knowing that all he really wanted to do was cook. At nineteen, he got a cheap ticket to London, where a friend from high school was doing a semester abroad. He befriended a bartender at a classic chef’s after-service dive hangout, and eventually met Marco Pierre White, who took a shine to him and hired him as a dishwasher. Within six months Patrick was working garde-manger and absorbing everything he could from his cantankerous mentor. After eighteen months with Marco, they had a falling-out and even though they both apologized, it was agreed that Patrick should move on. He used Marco’s connections to do some stages in Paris, and then he moved to San Francisco, working in several restaurants, always moving up the line, until eventually he landed a stage at the French Laundry. He stayed eight months, and then, with Thomas Keller’s blessing, he moved to Chicago to take over a failing old warhorse of a restaurant, his first gig as executive chef. A year later, the restaurant flush with good reviews and a renewed clientele, he landed investors to help him open Conlon, and has never looked back.

  There is obviously more, as most people have seen from the Chefography documentary on him, or, will see in his new memoir (Not) Saint Patrick, which is due out next fall. The short version is fairly typical. Pretty much everyone he has ever relied upon has left him. His mother died before they ever really got close, and well before he opened his first place. His dad, unsurprisingly, reappeared shortly after he began doing Feast, and it was not a warm reunion, resulting in some nasty tabloid headlines, one restraining order, and a hush-hush settlement, after which his fair-weather father disappeared again never to return. After the one brief marriage to Sharlene, which lasted less than two years and little of it happy, he became an unrepentant playboy. Legs last anywhere from one weekend to a maximum of six months, and I have never ever heard him refer to one of them as a “girlfriend.”

  Bob has been directing the shows since the beginning; Gloria has been running the test kitchen. I’m third in seniority, Patrick-wise, and everyone else he works with has been in a reasonable state of perpetual motion. Even Andrea, his current personal assistant, is the fourth person to hold that position in the six years I have been working with him. She’s lasted just shy of two years so far, and we have high hopes that she might just stick around.

  But I am the only one whose lines have gone past blurred into nonexistent. He and Bob might go to a ball game now and then or grab a beer after a shoot, and Gloria does any on-air support when he does shows like Chopped Masters, or when he beat Bobby Flay on Iron Chef America, so they have had the after-work travel adventures that come with that territory. But neither of them get the late-night drop-ins, the invasion of family gatherings, or the complete lack of separation between church and state.

  “I think you like it more than you claim,” Bennie
said one night when I was complaining about how Patrick had shown up the previous night wanting to hang out and not taking no for an answer, requiring that I surreptitiously cancel a long-anticipated romp with Bruce. “Or you wouldn’t let it continue,” she pointed out.

  “I feel bad for him. And yes, I do appreciate that he does trust me so genuinely considering that he doesn’t really trust anyone. But that doesn’t mean I wanted him to come over and twat block me, and make me listen to him whine about not getting the Beard Award for best chef again.”

  “Methinks you doth protest too much,” she said.

  “Because, what? I wanted to spend the night babysitting him and not getting laid?”

  “Because I think if getting laid were more important to you than being Patrick’s go-to girl, you would have faked a case of explosive diarrhea, or told him that Barry was having a crisis that needed attending, or you would have just put on your big-girl panties and told him that it wasn’t a good night for you and that you would be happy to deal with it tomorrow.”

  “That’s not fair. You know I’m a terrible liar. And he would have either stayed to take care of me, or wanted to accompany me to Barry’s, or put on his sad, needy face and convinced me to stay anyway.”

  “Full. Of. Shit. You are so full of shit I can smell you from HERE. Why is it so hard to admit that you LIKE when he just needs his special Alana time? It feeds something in you.”

  “I am not full of shit, I just, it, um … I dunno.”

  And truthfully, I didn’t.

  And don’t. And I prefer not to think too deeply about it.

  7

  So this is how it starts.

  Hello, Alana—

  Free at last, free at last! With our own guidance we are free at last.

  I think of Tennessee as a pleasant enough place to drive through on your way to a place you want to be. I hope you aren’t having to talk your hostess friend off any ledges. Just tell her she’s cooking a big chicken, make people bring their favorite childhood side dishes (green Jell-O and Cool Whip where I’m from), buy lots of wine from Howard Silverman at Howard’s Wine Cellar, and it will be spectacular. I have a great recipe for the world’s most versatile dish—Banana Salad. It’s an appetizer, a salad, a side dish and a dessert. Oh, yeah. It requires three ingredients and a willing suspension of disbelief.