by Scott Haas
Even though Tony had a young family at home, his bearish presence was in the restaurant from early in the morning until the last customer was served. He told me that he missed being with his wife and his son, who was turning three in June. It was just that the demands of being the owner and the chef meant that Tony was in Craigie no fewer than ninety hours a week.
“I’m here just about every night. I walk to work. I spend more time here than anywhere else. This is my home!”
THREE
Show Some Emotion
I KNEW WHEN I WALKED INTO CRAIGIE ON MAIN THAT TONY WANTED TO BE seen as a maverick: a chef who was fearless in his ability to improvise, cook animal parts not typically seen in expensive restaurants, dazzle customers with his sophistication, and supervise a knowing staff who saw their role as educating customers nearly as much as serving them.
Tony was aiming to be a great chef, better than most, but his uncertainties and limitations were as much a part of his story as the nerve. His difficulties defined him and contributed to high staff turnover.
Since I had been at Craigie, within three months, a sous chef, a cook, two hostesses, and a bartender had left. Lydia would be the first to go. She had found a job at a restaurant–bookstore–record shop in Jamaica Plain, a rather hip, transitional, sort of Hispanic, kind of old Irish and German neighborhood of Boston. It was a place that once the working and poor people were kicked out, the folks who replaced them would gripe about their loss over delicious croissant and cold pressed coffee. Being in J.P. would allow Lydia to live closer to home, but I wondered if it wasn’t a step backward for someone whom I had observed as having greater ambition.
“Working here is hard. I know that,” Tony said. “I know I can be a fucking pain in the ass to work for. Either you love the hard work or you don’t.”
Lydia was capable of working hard, times ten, but unfortunately for Tony, who saw her potential, she apparently did not love working for him enough to stay longer.
Early on I had asked Tony what turnover was like. He singled out Danny, who had been with him for almost five years, and then pointed to how easily people come and go—front of the house and in the kitchen.
“It’s the business,” Tony insisted.
But it wasn’t, I thought, not in top restaurants where I knew cooks and chefs. There was longevity in these great establishments: loyalty, a sense of purpose, a feeling of being part of the team, the knowledge that one was essential to the restaurant’s success. When a sous chef did leave from these other places, it was often to open his or her own restaurant or travel or do a stage, which is kind of like a brief internship, at a restaurant in Napa, New York, France, Spain, Italy, or Tokyo, and then return. What about the environment Tony created in his restaurant added to Lydia’s decision to leave and work in a simple neighborhood establishment?
Tony held daily meetings outdoors, unless it was raining, in late afternoon with the sous chefs and cooks. Here the cooks went over the work they had completed and what still needed to be done before service each night. This was typical for any good restaurant; this was what the meetings were about each and every day: review, preparation, a back-and-forth dialogue.
As in every other restaurant where I had spent massive amounts of time working, such as Da Silvano in the West Village, there were no manuals, few recipes, and almost nothing written down. So dialogue, a verbal exchange between chef and cooks, was essential. The best restaurants have the best lines of communication in place.
Tony explained to the cooks the types of ingredients he was using and why he had chosen to have them cooked in certain combinations. He talked about the seasons, his choice of purveyors, the differences between types of oysters, how kitchen equipment worked, and how to create balance in a dish. Throughout the time that they met, the cooks handed him tiny white plastic spoons to taste the food. It was a hushed atmosphere punctuated by nervous laughter.
The cooks, all of whom were fifteen to twenty years younger than Tony, were in awe of him, and for good reason. They were years away from acquiring his knowledge and might never be able to do so.
As is true with most restaurant crews, these men and women were so young that many of them did not know who they were yet. They felt one way today and another way the next. They were still their parents’ children and talked often to me about their moms and dads. Their personalities were mostly what they imagined that they would one day do or be. Like many of us were in our twenties, they were more passionate than informed.
The meeting was run by Danny and Lydia. Tony hung back and talked to me while they went through the lists of prep items that still needed to be done. No one was asked for his or her ideas or suggestions; they were there to follow directions, not to deviate from the plans, and to cook exactly the way they had been shown countless times by Tony and the sous chefs.
“I want everyone to read this,” said Danny.
Danny passed around the daily quiz.
“I like to keep my cooks mentally stimulated,” Tony whispered to me.
Tony had photocopied a page from Setting the Table, restaurateur Danny Meyer’s book on hospitality, and added to it: Failure, Learning, Confidence. Please connect these three words and discuss the relationship between them. Talk about the relationship with respect to our food and service philosophy at Craigie on Main. You may use personal examples, but do not have to—it is more important to connect them to our work, overall.
“Due in a week,” said Tony.
Tony did not grade the papers and simply used them as a tool to get his team to think about what they were doing in the kitchen. It was his way of keeping them motivated and focused. No different than any other good chef.
“I understand that many of my crew have difficult emotional lives that I have to deal with when training them,” Tony said to me, as the meeting continued.
“Do you think that a good chef has to be emotional?” I asked.
“If by emotional, you mean passionate, yes,” he said, “but the best chefs are the ones with the greatest focus.”
Moods brightened, postures became more formal, people stopped slouching.
Then Tony asked the cooks what projects they were working on for service that night.
“Working on the pistou-dashi broth,” said Dakota. “Again!”
Timmy: “Shallots for oysters.”
“James?” asked Tony.
“Fine,” said James.
“Fine?” said Tony. His mouth opened in wonderment. “Fine? What the fuck? I mean: What do you have left to do?”
“Boudin noir sauce,” said James.
“That it?” asked Tony.
“Yes,” James said.
He looked at his feet.
James had seemed odd before, preoccupied, and now he was even more aloof. He did not share the interests of his fellow cooks. He was not approachable.
“Okay, then,” said Tony. “Good.”
After Tony had spoken to everyone and was satisfied that they had prepared as best they could for the night of service ahead, he said, “Let us rock tonight!”
“Yes, Chef!”
“Got it, Chef!”
“We’ll get to it, Chef!”
To succeed, all the crew needed to do was straighten up, work hard, and do what they were told. Unlike home cooking or being a chef, working the line was all about speed, repetition, and surrendering your will to the act and the directives of the chef in charge. Many cooks did not know this when they began their careers or went to culinary school. They had thought that being a cook is creative; on the contrary, few jobs are as deeply unimaginative. Ironically, that is where redemption lies: in the act of repetition. Stop thinking and cook. Get it right again and again and again and again.
James’s personal life might have been chaotic, but if he could allow the repetition to give it meaning he would be all set. It was like saying the same prayer every day and night. For now, however, I saw him sinking deeper into himself.
Tony was ending the me
eting when he saw that a conflict had started between Danny and one of the two bakers.
“We need the cake batter by five P.M.,” said Danny.
“I don’t have a mixer,” said Paul.
“You don’t have a mixer?” said Danny. He laughed angrily. “Tell me you don’t have a mixer.”
“I don’t have a mixer,” said Paul angrily.
“How can a baker not have a mixer?” asked Danny. His voice took on the inflections of his home: Cranston, Rhode Island. “How is that possible? Am I dreaming?”
Dakota laughed.
Paul put his head down. Shaggy-dog look, have pity, don’t get mad at me please.
Danny asked: “What are we gonna do, Paul? How are we gonna solve this fucking problem?”
“I’ll find a mixer,” said Paul.
“You’ll find a mixer?” said Danny. “Where the fuck are you gonna find a mixer today?”
“Hold on,” said Tony. “You’re a baker and you don’t have a fucking mixer?”
“There’s a story,” said Paul.
“Uh-huh,” said Tony. His eyebrows went up and he grinned. “Yes?”
“I gave it to my girlfriend,” said Paul.
Tony asked: “Break-up gift?”
“Right,” said Paul.
Paul looked as if he were trying to decide whether smiling was worth the effort.
“Okay, man,” said Tony. “Danny, don’t worry about it. Paul?”
“Yes, Chef?”
“I’ll get you a mixer,” Tony said.
AFTER THE MEETING ENDED, WE RETURNED TO THE KITCHEN.
“Is it better perhaps to have kids just out of culinary school or who’ve never had a restaurant job?” I asked.
Tony was tasting all sorts of things as we talked: soups, stocks, slivers of fish, beans, powders.
“Not necessarily,” he said. He used his fingers to pick up pieces of fried oyster that a cook had handed him on a plate. He pulled off the coating. He sniffed the oyster. He rubbed it with his index and middle fingers. Then he took a bite. “Mmmm, good.”
“Thanks, Chef,” said Mary. Then she returned to her station to work on some house-smoked bacon that needed to be sliced up.
Mary was from Indiana, working in both garde manger and pastry, as the kitchen was short-staffed, and although she was delicate in how she moved, she had great intensity in her mien and posture: out to win, get out of the way.
“I like to have a staff with advanced skills,” said Tony. “The thing, too, with culinary school? Look, I tell my crew here, cooks who think of leaving and going to culinary school: This is your culinary school. This is where you’ll learn to cook.”
“You have that much to teach them?” I asked.
“Not me alone,” he said. “It’s the process of cooking—being here every night, prepping all day, working from scratch, doing it the hard way. Cooking well comes from doing. This isn’t something you learn in a classroom or at home.”
Tony pointed out who was who in the open kitchen, where more noise came from slicing, chopping, and sizzling than from conversation.
“Matt Foley worked for Michael Schlow at Radius downtown,” Tony said. “Kyle was at Bouley.”
“What do they bring to Craigie from the restaurants where they worked?”
“Commitment,” said Tony. “A professional outlook. Show up, cook, clean up. You’ve got to be super organized to work here. My guys who worked with other chefs know how to do that.”
“Right, Chef,” said Danny.
Even without a task at hand, as he stood beside Tony, Danny’s eyes blinked, his neck moved side to side, and one shoulder shot up. He rarely spoke, and when he did it was with terrific, comical profanity.
“I also expect speed, ability to work with others, agility,” said Tony. “Passion. Willingness to take criticism.”
“Works in progress,” I said.
“Exactly,” said Tony.
“What are you doing here?”
“It’s more than team building,” he said, gesturing warmly and expansively with open arms. “We’re not playing sports. I played hockey in high school. I know the difference between that kind of team building and what I’m doing here. This, is more like starting a family, but…”
“But?”
“But it’s not,” he said. “It’s not the same. I have Karolyn and I have Charlie. The people who work for me at Craigie aren’t my wife and kid.”
“Yet you’ve said that this is the place where you spend more time than anyplace else. You’re with people here far more hours than you are with your wife and son.”
“Right,” he said. “So I don’t think about them the same way, I certainly don’t feel about them the same way, but…”
“But de facto they are your family.”
“Maybe,” he said, and then he went back to tasting more dollops, forkfuls, spoonfuls, and little bits of the food that were to be served that night.
“So what exactly has the psychology you learned at Michigan got to do with it?”
“I think my background in psychology helps me understand who’s working for me,” he said. “To know them as individuals. Not just as cooks.”
“Doesn’t always work.”
“No,” Tony said, “but at least I’m trying!”
FOUR
The Chef Leaves Town
THROUGHOUT THE YEAR, TONY HAD NO MORE THAN TEN CONSECUTIVE days off. He regularly went away in the summer with his wife and son to stay with his mom at her place in Menemsha on the Vineyard. For him to take any more time away from his restaurant, it had to be related to his work as a chef.
This year he would be returning to Manhattan as a Best Chef Northeast James Beard Award finalist, as he had done the two preceding years. To be recognized by peers was a great honor, but it had been disappointing to remain a nominee; the trains there and back, two nights at a hotel, and the $425 ticket for Karolyn to be admitted to the awards ceremony were also big expenses. To make it worthwhile, Tony wanted to win. He had also accepted an offer to cook at a Beard event in San Francisco, followed by a Meals on Wheels benefit dinner at Rockefeller Center. He would be away a total of about four days.
Danny, put in charge, ran the daily meeting for cooks and, although it was sweltering, they met, as usual, in a tiny spot outside the restaurant on cement benches and beneath spindly sumac and locust trees. The noise was deafening as tractor-trailers drove by hauling, horns blasted, and radios played hip-hop from passing cars.
Immediately, the vibe was different. Like Tony, Danny ran the meeting with authority, but unlike him, he needed to remind the cooks that he was in charge. It was just like being in a classroom with a substitute teacher. Half the time is spent getting the kids to take you seriously; the other half you spend trying to take yourself seriously.
“Okay, Bobby,” you’re up,” Danny said. He was going from cook to cook to see what they still had left to do before the start of service. “Bobby, you listening?”
Bobby, whose real name was Thomas, which was never used by anyone in the restaurant, looked like he had stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting. He had a sweet-as-sugar personality, a gentle smile, and an easygoing manner. He moved calmly, as if he were on the beach, resting during a long hike, or just waking up from a nap.
Bobby didn’t address Danny as Chef, the way he referred to Tony, but launched in: “Finish up the lamb sausages, sharpen my knives.”
“Right,” said Danny. “Good. Dakota?”
“Yes?” said Dakota.
Dakota picked up his notepad and stood as if to run back to the kitchen.
“We’re not done yet,” said Danny. “Please sit down.”
Dakota sat down and grinned at the other cooks. He was pleased to have challenged Danny. Oddly enough, Danny grinned, too. He was uncomfortable with authority, and I had to wonder what lay in store for him as he got older and might want to own his own place.
“One of my struggles,” Danny told me later that night, “is running t
hings when Tony’s not here. This is only the sixth or seventh time I’ve done it.”
Danny had been with Tony for four and a half years.
“Without Tony, it gets a little lax around here,” he said. “I noticed that last summer. It’s my own need for greater maturity. I’m not going to let things get lax again. He keeps people on edge.”
The restaurant was fifteen minutes from doors opening. Customers were lining up outside. The kitchen was humming: cooks in motion, but sillier and more talkative than when Tony was there.
A crew witnesses and feels the chef’s willingness to endure pain and confusion and the intense, pure concentration often seen in the most successful people. By becoming what they do, chefs overcome ordinary life, which makes them leaders. The chefs’ leadership, night after night, separates them from cooks. Lacking the ability to lead, many talented cooks never own restaurants, end up with physical injuries from working on the line past their prime, cook for caterers, teach in culinary schools, or give up the profession and start over at a job that has little or nothing to do with cooking. A real chef is a grown-up who is more than just willing to sacrifice: A chef is eager to sacrifice. Sacrifice provides the rush.
“Do you want to be like him?” I asked.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get the same level of respect as Tony,” Danny said. “My relationship to the cooks is just different. There’s a word for what Tony gets the guys to feel here. Not anxiety…not worried…not on edge,” he said.
Danny looked thoughtful as he looked over the menu, tasted stock brought to him in the tiny white plastic spoons by several cooks, answered questions regarding VIPs asked by the managers, and dialed a supplier to order more eel.
