by Scott Haas
We went back to the walk-in and brought back a huge piece of swordfish. We unwrapped the green paper around it.
I touched the skin, which felt like a racing swimsuit. The flesh itself was the skin color of a Caucasian. When Santos cut the skin from the fish, I threw it away. It was hard for Santos to boss me around. Despite what Tony had said about him, he seemed to be a person who had never exercised authority over anyone.
“Here,” said Santos, handing me a small tub of white powder. “Taste this.”
“What’s it for?” I asked.
“For the fish,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Activa.”
“What’s it for?”
Santos shrugged. I decided to stop asking him so many questions.
He cut the swordfish into big chunks.
He got out sheets of greasy brown paper from the walk-in. We took off the top sheet, and beneath in were two layers of very thin, house-cured guanciale. I threw away the greasy paper.
Santos placed one chunk of swordfish on top of the guanciale and sprinkled the activa on top of it using a tiny silver-colored sieve.
Then Santos told me to place each new chunk of swordfish on top of four or five slices of guanciale and roll the fish forward. Once that was done, I had to roll plastic wrap around the guanciale-wrapped swordfish. The plastic wrap kept breaking or sticking together.
“It’s easy,” Santos said.
“For you,” I said.
Mary laughed.
Santos showed me how to lean my whole body into the wrap so that it broke at my elbow. Forty-five minutes later we had eight rolls of swordfish, which equaled sixteen portions for dinner that night. I felt as if I had passed an important exam. The feeling of accomplishment was powerful, and I supposed Santos felt it, too.
“Now I must cut the striper,” he said.
I carried the portioned swordfish back to the walk-in. Santos took out the striper he had broken down a short while ago. We returned to the workstation.
“Where’s my scale?” asked Santos.
I found the scale and handed it to him.
“Each piece has to be one hundred fifty grams,” Santos said.
He took his newly sharpened long knife and positioned it a few inches alongside the striper. He cut the first piece and weighed it.
“That’s one hundred seventy-four grams,” I said to Santos. “What will you do with the extra weight?”
“Family meal,” said Santos. He cut the portion down to 153 grams.
My job was to take the extra pieces for family meal and put them into a small clear plastic container. When Santos had finished with the striper that had been on the long tray he carried in, I put the tray into the sink.
As I worked, I watched Santos weigh the fish portions. I wrote down each size: 176, 164, 160, 168, 160, 162. I did not understand why Santos did not take one correct portion and measure it against the fish to create equal portions. He could also have weighed the whole fish and calculated the number of 150-gram portions he could get from it. However, both methods involved planning and math, which were not approaches that Santos knew. Tony had not taught him how to do the job correctly but was angry at him for making mistakes that caused waste.
“Into the basura,” said Santos, throwing away a few tiny pieces that were not to be used for family meal.
Two more fish were on another tray.
“Are you going to clean the char now?” I asked.
“It’s not char,” said Santos.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
Tony came by to look at our progress, and I asked him.
“It’s gray mullet that’s been sustainably raised in Spain,” Tony said. “A beautiful fish with deep flavor!”
It was intriguing to see what the chef knew and what the cooks knew. Knowing less about their work meant that the cooks were less engaged in what they were doing.
“Here,” said Santos, handing me the clear container of leftover striper. “To the walk-in.”
“Where in the walk-in?” I asked.
“Top shelf,” said Santos, “on the left.”
The handle made a loud puckering sound when I opened the door to the walk-in.
When I returned to Santos, there were more trays to put into the sink and more trays to carry upstairs. The repetition of my work, done in silence, with indie music playing low on a radio next to Jess, made for a numbing, calming experience. It was possible to forget complex thoughts and language and simply be the task.
“Where is the brine?” asked Santos.
I found the brine for him.
He tried to cut the mullet into seventy-gram portions but had the same difficulty as he had had with the striper.
“For tasting menus,” Santos said.
Once the mullet was portioned, I carried it to the walk-in with Santos. Behind us we heard screaming upstairs: “How many times? How many times?” The noise of a blender muffled the voice, and neither of us could say for certain who it was.
We had more mullet to clean. Santos took a small silver-colored device from his drawer. It looked like a mallet.
“Here,” he said, handing the scaler to me, “try to scale the fish. Think you can do it?”
“Show me first,” I said.
He held the fish by the tail and brushed away from himself vigorously.
“Easy,” he said.
He handed me the scaler.
“Now you,” he said.
I stood over the sink, tail in hand, and began scraping. Scales the size of a baby’s fingernails flew into the air, caught the light, and soon covered surfaces near me. The flesh under the scales was firm, but malleable.
“What do you think?” I asked Santos after a few minutes. “I’m afraid to go any further because I don’t want to damage the fish.”
Santos examined the fish.
“It’s good,” he said, “it’s good.”
Then he scaled it some more.
We went back to portioning the swordfish.
“Take the sword up to Matt,” said Santos when we were done.
I went upstairs to the kitchen and found Matt at garde manger, where he was supervising the cooks.
“Matt, for you,” I said.
“Thank you,” said Matt with an amused look. “Thank you very much.”
When I went downstairs to finish the fish with Santos, we had more striped bass, huge and bloody, to work on.
Santos grinned at me.
“Sexy, no?” he said. “This is more sexy, no?”
He grabbed the gills and gave it a whack with the hammer and cleaver. I knew my turn would come soon.
BY THE SECOND WEEK WITH SANTOS, HE WAS MORE COMFORTABLE TEACHING me, and his confidence in my efforts felt good.
“Matsutake,” he said. In front of us was a big box of the largest and most beautiful matsutake mushrooms I had seen outside Japan. “Perfect. Sexy.”
Tony, in apron, came over to us.
“I have a forager in New Hampshire who finds these for me,” Tony said.
Santos took a small black-handled knife and trimmed the frills of the mushroom tops. When that was done, he placed the dozen or so cleaned mushrooms in a small container and returned the rest to the walk-in. Next up were the chanterelles.
“Beautiful chanterelles,” I said.
I had shopped for chanterelles for my wife and myself earlier that day at Whole Foods and returned home empty-handed as the mushrooms for sale were dark, torn, and spongy in texture. The chanterelles in front of Santos were perfect.
“Nice,” said Santos. “Ready, always ready. Sí?”
“Sí,” I said.
“Sí is yes in Spanish,” he said.
“I know,” I said.
“I know you know,” he said.
He laughed. The other Salvadorans laughed, too.
Santos then handed me a knife identical to the one he was using and motioned with his hands to do what he was doing. I held
each mushroom with the index and middle fingers of my left hand, resting the stem against my thumb, and slid the knife down gently in a scraping motion. Once the stem was white, I placed the mushroom on a board and cut off its end.
“This is for stock,” Santos said, picking up the scrapings and tip and placing them to the top left of the cutting board.
He took the trimmed mushroom and put it to the top right.
“This we must wash,” he said.
As we worked, Santos told me how to get it right.
“Maybe lose money,” he said, “don’t cut so close.”
I watched him work with speed and accuracy.
“Like this?” I asked.
“Good,” said Santos.
We continued to trim the golden mushrooms.
“So you are writing a book about Santos?” he asked with a smile.
“You’re in it,” I said.
“Good,” he said. “The book should be about Santos. You don’t have to write about anyone else. Except maybe Mary and Jess. Sexy!”
The women laughed.
“See these mushrooms?” Santos said. He pointed to a pile of the chanterelles. “These are VIP family meal. Staff meal.”
Convinced that I could do the job, Santos pointed to the entire box of chanterelles, about four or five pounds of them, and indicated that I was to trim all of them. He helped another cook move bags of ice. I was flattered to think that Santos had confidence in me and set to work rapidly until Tony showed up at my side.
“Don’t throw away my mushrooms,” Tony said.
I looked up, surprised.
“You’re cutting off too much stem,” Tony said. “Let me show you how it needs to be done.”
He illustrated by taking my knife and scraping the stem. I had been cutting.
“Got it?” he asked.
“Got it, Chef,” I said.
He turned to Santos.
“Danny needs the fucking ribeye, Santos!” Tony said. He started to yell. “I mean, what the fuck? He needed it hours ago! You told him you’d have it. Where the fuck is it?”
“I’ll get it,” Santos said.
Santos went to the walk-in and returned with a huge slab of ribeye that needed to be broken down and portioned.
“Perfecto,” said Santos.
He sharpened knives and sliced open the bag holding the beef.
“Santos,” said Tony, watching him cut, now speaking gently, “do you remember how last week you hung your head in shame? You didn’t do a good job, right? So I want to see you get it right this time, okay?”
“Yes, okay,” said Santos.
“I want this fat,” said Tony. He took the knife from Santos and stepped in to cut the beef. “This is good fat.”
Santos nodded.
“This fat?” said Tony. He cut some more. “This fat I don’t want.”
Santos nodded again.
“Tell me if you understand,” said Tony sweetly. “Tell me if you don’t understand. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” said Santos.
“Good,” said Tony, handing him back the knife and heading upstairs. He patted Santos on the shoulder. “Do a good job, please. I know you can do it.”
Tony had spoken in a voice gentler than I had heard from him. He had a protective side; he was angry and disappointed, yes, but now I saw the good paternalism behind the emotions. He wanted Santos to experience the pleasure that comes from being successful.
At one point Tony may have regarded the people who worked in his restaurant as separate from his family, but his actions showed me that his employees were his family, and he considered them as such, whether he acknowledged it or not, which was what made the work so difficult, complicated, and meaningful.
“You see all this beef?” Santos said to me. “Beautiful.”
Danny came racing down the stairs, shouting, “Where’s my fucking beef, Santos? I need that beef!”
He ran past us toward the walk-in. He grabbed a box of greens.
“Danny,” said Santos, “where’s your father?”
“Probably banging my stepmother about now,” said Danny, and then he raced back upstairs.
“Nice,” said Santos, ironically. “Very nice.”
He continued to slice the beef.
“Sharpen my knives,” Santos said to me. “Muy importante.”
As he cut, I trimmed.
“Not like that,” Santos said to me.
He stopped cutting the beef and took my knife to show me how he wanted the mushrooms to be trimmed.
“Too much stem,” Santos said. “Don’t waste it. It’s money.”
He made a gliding motion into the mushroom.
“You understand?” Santos asked me.
“Yes,” I said.
“Good,” he said, handing me back the knife.
The way he spoke to me, his manner as well, were an homage to the way Tony had just taught him.
I returned to the task and Santos went back to cutting the beef.
We cut our products for well over an hour.
To my right, Santos began to portion the meat and place each piece in a plastic bag with about half an ounce of butter.
When I was done with my mushrooms, I helped Santos bring the bagged beef to the Cryovac, where each portion was vacuum-sealed.
“Into the máquina,” said Santos.
We lined up the bags, six at a time, against small metal hooks on the two sides of the inside of the machine, lowered a lid, and then Santos pressed a button. About five minutes later, the bags had the air sucked out of them and then Santos and I took them back to where we had been working. Gabriel, one of the prep cooks, built like a minotaur, took a black magic marker and labeled each one 19, for the date. Then he put them back in the tray, which Santos handed to me.
“Put these in the deli,” said Santos.
“The deli?” I asked.
“The walk-in,” he said.
Gabriel then took my bowl of cleaned chanterelles to a sink to wash them and cut them up. I felt the proprietor’s sense of loss. Those mushrooms were mine! The customers or guests who enjoyed them that night would be enjoying my work. I am certain that everyone who worked in the restaurant felt connected to their food in that way, and to one another.
The pace was picking up: 4:10 in the afternoon, only eighty minutes before service. Food was leaving the prep area for the kitchen upstairs, and food was arriving to us for final preparation before it was cooked. Gabriel lowered huge bags of purple, tangled octopus onto ice in the sink to my left.
“I’ll be right back,” Santos said to me.
He returned with swordfish and rolls of guanciale that had been pressed flat.
“Same as the first day,” I said.
Santos unrolled the guanciale and I placed the swordfish on top of several slices, but I was doing it wrong.
“You forget,” Santos said. “You forget what I showed you.”
He showed me again.
“Okay?” Santos asked. “Show me,” he said.
After I showed him that I had understood, he nodded his head and pursed his lips in approval. “I think,” Santos said to me, “that in a couple of weeks you’ll be a pro.”
“No, Santos,” I said, struck by his generosity, “more like a couple of months.”
“No, a couple of weeks,” he said.
Danny showed up between us.
“Doctah Haas,” he said, his expression completely deadpan, “what’d they call you growing up?”
I was surprised by his question. No one had ever asked me that.
“I don’t know, Danny,” I said. “What did they call you growing up?”
“Groundhog,” he said without hesitating. “Then when I got to be about ten, they called me Scamps ’cause my last name is Scampoli.”
“Scamps,” I said, laughing.
“Okay, so how about you?” he said. “What’d they call you?”
“Gee, I don’t know,” I said. “Scott. Scotty. Wh
y?”
“Never mind,” Danny said, and ran back upstairs.
The rest of the cooks followed Danny as it was the daily meeting before service. I stayed downstairs.
Within minutes, the four prep guys were having a lively conversation in Spanish. Santos left the conversation and began to butcher fish next to me. I continued rolling the swordfish and guanciale in plastic wrap.
“Every time Chef sees me,” Santos said, “he says, ‘too much meat thrown out.’ I’m not complaining, but it would be nice to get out of this kitchen sometimes just for a few minutes.”
“To clear your head,” I said.
“Exactly,” said Santos. He thought a moment. “What do you do when you fight with your wife?”
“I walk the dogs,” I said. “I say, ‘I’ll be back in twenty minutes, honey.’ When I come back, we’ve both calmed down.”
Santos nodded his head sadly.
“Nice,” he said. He leaned into the knife and exerted pressure on it so that it glided into the flesh of the mullet. “I can’t do that here.”
FOURTEEN
Attacked, Detoxed, Let Go
SEVERAL DAYS FOLLOWING MY FIRST TWO WEEKS WITH SANTOS, I e-mailed Tony to remind him that I was coming in on Saturday. The plan was to work with Santos for eight hours starting at noon. Usually, I came in without notice, but on weekends, when the restaurant was busiest, I sometimes sent in reminders. Most often I got no response or a terse Cool, but this time Tony wrote back: Sorry, but it’s just too crazy, down two cooks, talk early next week?
This was the first time in fourteen months of observing and working at Craigie that Tony had asked me not to come in. E-mail is notoriously robbed of emotion; I had no idea what he was feeling when he had written his refusal, and being curious I pressed on.
So I shouldn’t come in as planned? I wrote.
Moments later, he replied: Not today. Sorry.
Hmmm, I wondered, what was up? Was he backing out of the project? I e-mailed him again: Then Wednesday, okay? Deadlines loom.
From Tony: Sorry, Scott, but I’m not too concerned about deadlines right now.
This was so completely uncharacteristic of him that I began to worry if he was all right. I had told Tony the week before about my concerns.
“I’m worried about you,” I had said while standing in his cavelike office. He looked surprised but flattered that someone in the restaurant had interest in his emotional life. His job, after all, was to take care of staff and guests. No one at work cared if he was down or anxious, but I did.
