by Scott Haas
“Yes,” Jill said.
Then she let out a deep sigh.
“What time is it?” she asked.
There were no clocks in the kitchen; none of the cooks wore watches or carried cell phones when working. Only Tony knew what time it was.
“Two twenty-one,” I said, looking at my iPhone.
Staff meal: two thirty.
Jill and I carried pots and pans to the Hobart.
“I’m the youngest kid in my family,” she said, as we loaded the dishwasher, “and my father paid for me to go to Johnson and Wales. I got a scholarship the first two years that cut the tuition in half. That helped, but think how much it cost him to pay for the six of us. But let me ask you something: Would you work one hundred hours a week for eight dollars an hour?”
“Is that what it comes out to here?” I asked.
“Pretty much,” Jill said. “Plus, four days a week I have to drive an hour and forty-five minutes each way from Providence to get here. I stay at my brother’s in Charlestown every Saturday night.”
I live about a mile from Craigie. My house had four empty bedrooms on the top floor. I told Jill she could have a room for free for one night a week after the Christmas holidays. She said she would think about it. So far I had discussed with Tony the benefits of a detox for Dakota, planned his family vacation, and offered housing for Jill.
“And of those one hundred hours,” Jill continued, “I get stomped on about sixty of them…Sometimes I wish I could just turn around when I’m driving. Seriously. I see an exit ramp and I swear I think I’ll just get off and go back home.”
“So why do it?” I asked.
“I wish I didn’t have such an awesome family,” she said. “They paid for me to go to college! So I don’t have to work here. Which in a weird way makes it harder. I wish I had no choice, that I had to do it. Having a choice makes it harder.”
Jill felt emotionally obligated to her father, who had paid for her to be a cook. She did not want to let him down. But what about the work was attractive to her?
When I asked her about what she enjoyed about cooking, she said it was fun, but the expression on her face was the opposite of someone having fun. She said that being at Craigie made her feel special, that she would not work for just anyone, and that Tony had taught her a lot.
“I don’t want to do catering,” Jill said, “and I’ve been a private chef. I worked for a family in Providence my first three years of college. I babysat for them, too!”
Carlos, another new cook, interrupted our conversation. He had a steady gaze, a short haircut, and a wide, open face. He just appeared at our side, wordlessly, with a big smile.
Then he handed me a spoon that he dipped into a small bowl of orange liquid, which he explained was tangerine-habanero sauce. He stood and waited while I tasted. The sauce was sweet and hot, so deeply flavorful that I could not resist taking a couple more spoonfuls.
Carlos nodded happily.
“Staff meal!” shouted Matt.
Jill grabbed a bowl, filled it with rice, and topped that with the stew. The other cooks had gathered in the bar area and were eating together. It was freezing, the first week in December, but Jill, dressed only in cook’s whites, ate alone and outside.
I watched her leave.
When Jill returned about ten minutes later, I helped her carry a couple of containers downstairs to the walk-in. They contained golden raisins in muscat and pine nuts, which would become a sauce for the fish. Then we set about making the sandwiches that were served with the pumpkin soup. Jill put plastic wrap on a worktable and placed eight slices of huge Pullman bread onto the plastic. After spreading lots of butter on each slice, she pressed on massive amounts of grated Comte and cheddar cheese. We cut each slice in half. Jill stacked the bread in a plastic container. She placed a paper towel between the two layers. Then she disappeared.
I went back upstairs just as Karolyn came in with Charlie.
“Jamaica,” Karolyn said to me.
“Should be lovely,” I said.
“I’d go to Cleveland,” Karolyn said. “I just want to be with my husband and have him relax.” She definitely knew what she was getting into when she fell in love with a man who was passionate about what he does. She knew that she’d never live more than one mile from the restaurant and that they would spend long hours away from each other. She once said to me during a visit, “I know it sounds cheesy, but Tony has more integrity than anyone I know.”
BEFORE I RETURNED TO THE RESTAURANT A FEW DAYS LATER, I DOWNLOADED the documentary that Jill had insisted I see: A Matter of Taste: Serving Up Paul Liebrandt. Early in the movie, a quote from Thomas Keller about Liebrandt’s cooking caught my attention, as it applied to Tony’s cooking as well.
“You don’t know if his interpretation of a dish is a good one or a bad one,” Keller said, “because you’ve never had it.”
If something tasted good, the dish was a success, but the extremely personal style of Liebrandt, and Tony, made the chef more important than a culinary tradition.
In the movie, Chef Liebrandt spoke of having a lonely childhood in England, noted that his parents divorced when he was very young, described being sent away to boarding school where meals were disastrous, and said that there was no food culture in his family. The accumulation of these experiences, so utterly different from the narratives of the great French and Italian chefs, who had told me of being raised on farms or by parents with knowledge and passion about gastronomy, helped me understand why Tony and Liebrandt had created their own cuisines. Neither man had an obligation to, or feeling based on experience of, the past. They were inventing inside a gastronomical vacuum.
“This is my place, the kitchen, being here,” Chef Liebrandt says in the film.
It was a place where he found meaning, as outside the restaurant, challenges for Liebrandt had fewer resolutions. In the kitchen, how he acted led to predictable results. No wonder chefs got enraged when things went wrong: So many of the feelings typically developed in relationships were displaced onto their cooking because only here could they control the outcome of the emotional tie.
“In this business it’s hard to form relationships,” Liebrandt says in the movie. “I have no family in this country. I don’t have any friends because I work so much.”
The movie shows Liebrandt’s devotion, his fascination with the work, and his blind rage when his staff lets him down. In one scary sequence, he chastises two young cooks who look like boys: “If you ever bring me a dish like that again, I’ll put your heads through that fucking wall.”
Later, one of the cooks, looking sheepish, says: “My work life is going really well, but the rest of my life? Not so well.”
The poignancy of the cook’s predicament is not lost on the viewer: The cook is trapped between trying to withstand the hostility of the chef and pursuing a life filled with even greater uncertainties. That the hostility is at least reliable is the hallmark of a dysfunctional family.
For all the discomfort Tony’s crew expressed at being bossed around by him, they embraced his order. Without him, they had to make personal choices, take responsibility, and commit to independent decisions. By placing themselves in a structure where they were told what to do and when to do it, they took on less risk. In a strange way, this was liberating: If you don’t know who you are or what you can do, there are few better places to find out than in a restaurant kitchen or in the military. You wear a uniform, you follow orders, and how you feel does not matter to the person in charge. Being in the weeds while in the restaurant was nothing compared to being in the weeds in real life.
Returning to Craigie, I ran over to Jill. She still had not found a time to tell me why she felt that Craigie was the craziest place she had ever worked. “Why did you love the Liebrandt movie?” I asked her.
Jill put off telling me her reasons until we were together at staff meal. “Okay,” said Jill, “the reasons I loved it? Number one: The food looked so fucking cool. Number two: Li
ebrandt looked like a fucking psycho. He had these crazy eyes. You can just tell there’s something different about the guy. The best part of the movie was the last still frame, after he gets the two Michelin stars. He’s in a tux, he’s smiling, he’s got that smirk, right? I mean, what the fuck was that? It was, like, what’s he thinking? Did he even know?”
With that, she got up, grabbed her plate, and ran back into the kitchen.
“I’m so in the weeds,” she said.
III.
FAMILIES
SEVENTEEN
Family Holidays
IT WAS A SATURDAY IN DECEMBER, AND THE PACE WAS FASTER THAN ever.
“Hey, come here,” Tony said to me. He was ringside. “Check this out,” he said.
He showed me the results of the 2011–12 Zagat survey in the Boston Business Journal. Craigie was number three. The only restaurants ahead of it were Abe and Louie’s (number two), which is a steak house that is part of a large restaurant group, and Legal Sea Foods (number one), which has several locations.
“We’re ahead of Barbara, Ken, Michael, Jody, and Frank,” Tony said. He was grinning, and immediately I thought of the Gore Vidal quote: “It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.” Tony was naming chefs Lynch, Oringer, Schlow, Adams, and McClelland.
“Congratulations!” I said. “That’s great news!”
He was in a great mood not just because of the survey results. His cooks were working with greater cohesion lately.
There was less screaming in the kitchen.
New inspirational signs had been taped above the workstations by the crew:
Where’s the place, big baby?
REDEMPTION!!
KEEP KLEAR!
It came down to changes created by Matt as the new sous chef, and Marian, who was emerging as a likely sous, too. Tony had greater confidence in them.
However, not everything was peaches and cream.
Conflicts in the front of the house at Craigie had escalated in the past few weeks since Tony had instituted his new system in which bartenders shared tips with servers.
That afternoon I wandered into a tense meeting.
“There is not enough delegation of tasks between server and back server,” said Carl. He looked like a young attorney: small, fine hands, a voice that suggested familiarity with power, and the propriety of a golfer. He looked a little like Dick Cavett in his heyday. Carl was chairing the meeting of more than a dozen servers, back waitstaff, and bartenders. Tony sat in, listening. “To me it should be instinctive.”
A few people nodded their heads.
“Richard, no offense,” said Carl, “but you had fuck-all to do, and you should have paid more attention to everyone in your section. It’s my fault, though; I should have been on it. The thing is? I’m glad you sold the dessert wine, but your other five tables suffered.”
Sean, a server sitting to my right, garbed in a wool cap, with a grizzled beard, wearing Persol eyeglasses, was getting angrier. He glared at Carl.
The atmosphere was getting ugly, and more barbs were exchanged. People belittled one another and spoke with sarcasm.
“There’s a missing element in the culture at Craigie on Main,” Tony said. He had not spoken until then. “Either I’m not hiring correctly or people have attitude problems. Clearly we need to do a better job of giving you the tools to do the job.” He paused. As the only person in the restaurant who worked front of the house and in the kitchen, Tony had more knowledge than anyone else in the room.
“People have to work better as teams,” Tony said. “We’ve been through this; I was unwavering. If you cannot act accordingly, I’ll have to make very tough decisions about people.” No one said anything, and movement was minimal. Tony had become furious. It was obvious that the staff was acting out their disgruntlement over the new wage program by not cooperating with one another.
“We have had the most discussions about this and related subjects in the past month,” Tony said. “Will I allow this to continue? Will we have an antagonistic atmosphere here at Craigie on Main? Absolutely no way. I’d rather start from scratch. We need a system that relies on communication, growth, and education. That’s not happening right now.”
Tony’s comments shifted the discussion. The more cooperative and positive-thinking individuals now felt comfortable enough to speak up because Tony supported their position.
Katie, one of the servers, went on at length about the need for commitment. Short brown hair, a ready smile, always on the go. The kind of person who looked like she would raise her hand to tell the teacher that he had forgotten to assign the homework. Tony grabbed my notepad and pen and wrote: She’s fucking the best!
Bunny added to what Katie had said.
“You have to memorize flash cards,” Bunny said. “You have to be accountable. You have to run the cheese plate you’re terrified to do. You have to mess up the script and then be able to nail it.”
Tony chimed in.
“We ran an ad this year,” Tony said. He was beginning to calm down. “And it read, Prima donnas need not apply. That stands. I don’t want to hear people say ‘I can’t’ or ‘It’s not my table’ any longer. That kind of attitude is not conducive to what this place is about. The water cooler shit has to stop. You might think people can’t hear what you’re saying, but they can. You can’t be bitching, you can’t trash-talk other people. It doesn’t work that way. From now on, I’m calling for a zero-tolerance policy. I don’t care if there are one hundred and forty covers on the books, I’ll send someone home. I’m counting instead on continued positivity from people.”
It was the kind of leadership that I felt could have been there from the start. Although Tony did not acknowledge his part in the trash talking, it was clear that if he kept his anger in check, behaved compassionately, and was genuinely paternal, his staff would grow with him.
Just as he finished addressing his crew, Tony’s phone rang. It was his mechanic. Jill’s car had broken down earlier that day. She had phoned Tony and he had arranged to have it towed to the garage where he had his car repaired.
A WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS, I ASKED TONY IF I COULD FEED THE STAFF. I could not accomplish what they performed at tables and over stoves, but each cook was responsible for a staff meal regularly, and this was my effort to fit in and be one of them, as well as a way to thank everyone for allowing me to be part of their lives.
“Awesome,” said Tony.
I dithered between buying prepared food and cooking at home. If I bought the meal, I could avoid any personal criticism, but that seemed cowardly. However, if I cooked for the cooks and the chef, I had to face the possibility that they would hate my food. So naturally I decided to do both.
I ordered three trays of pizza from Galleria Umberto, which is a neighborhood place in the North End, with truly the best square Sicilian slices I have ever tasted, served up by Ralph and Paul Deuterio from eleven A.M. until they run out, six days a week. Lines are out the door.
I also bought an enormous bone-in pork butt. I had cooked this cut of meat many times before, usually turning it into North Carolina pulled pork sandwiches, inspired by my fantasy of having had an African American grandmother in whose steamy kitchen I had learned the craft. I decided against that method this time. Tony had worked the line at East Coast Grill, where the kitchen had churned out unbelievably delicious pulled pork sandwiches, and I felt certain that my version would fall enormously short of his.
Instead, I came up with a surefire Italian American preparation, inspired by my fantasy of having had an Italian American nonna in whose steamy kitchen I had learned the craft.
I seared the butt on all sides in a smidge of oil in a large pot over high heat to give it a crust, then added a ton of salt and freshly cracked black pepper. Then I threw in a few chopped onions, a head of unpeeled garlic cut in half, and two chopped celery stalks. Next I added about a cup of cider vinegar, two cups of homemade chicken stock, and a small can of tomato paste that I smeared on the flesh. Mo
re salt, more pepper, enough water to submerge the meat, and then I covered the pot with a lid and placed it in the oven at two hundred degrees for a nine-hour braise, turning the meat periodically.
When I got to the restaurant two days before Christmas, as planned, I walked over to Marjorie, who was at the pass. I put down the pizza and the pot of pork and said hello.
“He’ll say the pork needs more salt,” I said to her.
She laughed.
“Oh, no, he won’t,” Marjorie said. “That’s not the way he was raised!”
Matt came over.
“What’s in this?” Matt asked. He looked inside the pot.
“Nice,” he said. “Really nice.”
He poked the meat with his fingers. Cooks cannot just look at food, they have to touch it.
“I’ll put foil on it,” Matt said, “and flash it for about half an hour. We’ll get the fat crispy that way.”
It was about an hour before the staff meal would be served, and meetings were de rigueur. Many meetings were taking place all over the restaurant. Planning, finishing touches, efforts toward refinement. Nothing was ever finished.
“What if a guest is waiting for his drink and the bartender is in the weeds?” asked Carl. He was meeting with the other GMs and Ted. “The next line of defense, if you will, will be for someone to get the guest water, attend to them, go to their table.”
Bunny walked by all dolled up.
“I love Christmas!” Bunny said.
Tony turned a corner with a big box of presents for staff.
“Got to take care of the people!” Tony said. “Got to take care of the people!”
Tony went into the bar area to arrange a gift table.
Marian came up to me with a long tray of pink pork filets. Each piece had a thick ribbon of white fat.
“You should try the fat,” she said. “It’s so sweet, even raw.”
I tasted. It just soared.
For the past five or six months, I preferred being in the restaurant long before it opened. With guests or customers, staff acted out roles.
