by Scott Haas
When Tony came back to the pass, he looked at the stack of pizza boxes.
“Get those open,” Tony said. “Let’s eat!”
I cut the peppermint-striped strings, opened the boxes, and lifted the foil.
Matt returned with the pot containing the pork butt.
“This looks great,” Tony said, “and I’m not being critical, but an easier way to do this would be to braise it, let it cool, slice it, and then go back to braising. It’s easier to slice the meat when it’s cold.”
“Jill,” he said, “cutting board.”
“On it, Chef,” she said.
Tony placed the meat on the board and within seconds cut it into thick, perfect slices. Then he took a few small pieces between his fingers, dunked them into the sauce, and thought about what he was eating.
“You should be proud,” Tony said, after a moment that seemed for me to last an hour. He quizzed me how I had prepared it and about every single ingredient used. “It came out fucking awesome.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Hearing that, I knew how the cooks felt all the time: validated. It was not that I was a good person, but that my food was good, which felt even better. The chef approved of my food!
After grabbing a slice and filling a bowl, Tony shouted to the cooks: “Everyone stop what they’re doing and get over to the bar area! Christmas!”
It was time for their gift exchange, which they called “Secret Santos”; they swapped grill gloves, videos of famous chefs, and bottles of whiskey, beer, and tequila.
About an hour later, when the cooks returned to their stations, the lights dimmed, candles were lit in the dining room, and Marian asked Ted to change the music back to what the cooks really loved: Dre, followed by Snoop. Servers and cooks started to sing and dance to the music.
Marian took a small aluminum tray of fish to her station.
“Back in the spring, before you were here,” I said to her, “Tony was the only one allowed to cut the fish.”
“That hasn’t changed; Chef has his reasons,” she said.
Drew unlocked the front door, and the first people on line started to come in, their faces expectant.
Matt was in charge, at the pass, and I marveled at how much he had grown professionally. Just about a year ago, he was downstairs working in prep, unable to pull small bones properly from fish. Tonight he was running the show. No wonder he had stuck around, through the hard days and nights, the criticism: All along he had believed in his potential.
“You look poker-faced,” Bunny said to him.
“Yeah, well you know I used to be at Foxwoods three days a week playing poker,” he said.
“I know,” Bunny said.
She laughed.
“But then,” Bunny said, “you found your true passion was working ninety hours a week cooking!”
EIGHTEEN
Bite the Big Apple
FROM THE BEGINNING, WHEN I STARTED WRITING ABOUT CRAIGIE, I HAD in mind a trip to Manhattan with Tony to meet with several of the city’s chefs and owners whom I had known for many years and whose work set the national standard for the restaurant industry. Not just to compare, but to try to understand better the different narratives needed to create original restaurants, and how Tony’s story fit in with what others were doing at the top.
Tony loved the idea when I proposed it, but problems arose when it came to fixing a date. “I can’t commit to a time,” said Tony in early December. “When did you want to go?”
“End of January,” I said. “Third week. We could go down on Monday when Craigie is closed, and stay through Wednesday.”
“Let’s talk when we get closer to the date,” he said. “Problem is my birthday is at the end of January and Karolyn might want to take me away for a night.” He paused. “Though maybe we could combine my birthday with a trip to New York.”
“You tell me,” I said.
Tony and I had many conversations through December, but each time he was uncertain. This worried me since I knew that the New York people had schedules at least as demanding as his. Finally, just before Christmas, I e-mailed my contacts. Within two days, I had commitments from Dave Pasternack, chef at Esca; Andrew Carmellini, chef at Locanda Verde and The Dutch; Daniel Boulud; Daniel Humm, chef at 11 Madison; Drew Nieporent, owner of Nobu and Corton; and Thomas Keller.
I decided not to bring this up when I dropped by Craigie on December 31 to wish Tony well and hear him rhapsodize about his New Year’s menu. Marjorie was tweeting and adding content to the restaurant’s website while Karolyn and Charlie played with colorful beads set on each table.
There were two sold-out seatings. Both had the same two courses, which included an appetizer with a choice of citrus-cured hiramasa with oyster aioli and sturgeon roe, and an entrée with a choice between house-cured ham and crab broth or house-made squid ink spaghetti. The second seating had a third and fourth course that offered guests either house-made cotechino on lentils or crispy goose confit, followed by either an assiette of veal—loin, sweetbreads, tongue, and cheeks—or slow-roasted halibut.
“It’s a sick menu. Sick, sick, sick!” Tony said.
Later that night, Karolyn worked beside Tony, pairing wines with the various courses, while Marjorie stayed with Charlie.
IN EARLY JANUARY, TONY ASKED, “WHEN DO YOU WANT TO GO TO NEW YORK?”
“I’ve already arranged it,” I said.
He was ringside, as usual, jotting down notes for the night’s menu, returning calls, tasting dollops of sauces, texting, and answering e-mails. Committing to anything outside the restaurant was contrary to his way of thinking. I understood, outside Karolyn, Charlie, and his parents: This was his world.
Still, he looked sad and disappointed.
“I thought you wanted me to come with you,” Tony said softly.
“I do,” I said, “but you couldn’t commit. The New York people are prima donnas just like you. I had to get them to schedule this before it was too late.”
“You still want me to come?” he asked.
He stopped what he was doing.
“Of course,” I said.
“Then send me the schedule, and I’ll come to all the meetings that I’m able to attend,” he said.
Tony plugged into the two Monday interviews: Dave Pasternack and Andrew Carmellini.
All set, I thought, but I had forgotten what people like Tony and me are like around food. Eating, anticipated as well as experienced, takes on unreasonable depths of meaning. Thinking about where to eat was augmented, too, by the fact that Tony simply was never away from Craigie very much, and I have favorite spots in New York where I eat regularly.
I made several reservations only to cancel them because Tony was not interested: not gutsy enough. I prefer fish and vegetables, Italian, Japanese or French, but Tony sent me links to dumpling places in Chinatown, a gastropub in Brooklyn, and a noodle shop in the East Village: too gutsy. This went on for more than a week. We exchanged more than a dozen e-mails about where to eat lunch. Finally, I realized that we would be better off simply meeting at Esca. I went to Sushi Yasuda, my favorite sushi bar in Manhattan, and Tony went to ABC Kitchen.
I loved my lunch. Tony told me he sent back his entrée.
WHEN I ARRIVED AT ESCA, TONY WAS SEATED AT THE BAR, IN A SWEATER and wearing a tie, checking voice mail and e-mail. He looked like a college kid on a job interview, unaccustomed to dressing up. He handed me a copy of New York magazine opened to a page with a paragraph on Esca in a list of New York City’s 101 best restaurants.
“Have a look,” Tony said.
Adam Platt, the reviewer, wrote that Esca (number fifty-seven) was not as good as it had once been because Dave Pasternack was spending more time running the fish and shellfish section at Eataly.
“I think that’s silly, Tony,” I said. “I come here at least six times a year and it’s always great.”
“Just saying,” said Tony.
“I don’t think Dave would leave Esca to work at Eatal
y if he thought it would compromise what he does here.”
“Maybe,” said Tony.
Tony did not believe that chefs were capable of running more than one place without the quality declining as a result. I did not want to get into this with him again since it never wound up being a discussion. In any event, Dave Pasternack emerged from the kitchen, mopping his hands on his apron, coming toward us quickly.
“Hey, how’s it goin’?” said Dave.
He is burly, unshaven, cultivating a vox populi look, with a gorgeous voice that is shaped by Long Island. He looks and sounds like a fisherman.
“Good, Dave, thanks for making the time,” I said.
“So, what’s this all about?” he asked. “What are you doing with Daniel and Andrew?”
I told him again about the book.
“Basically,” I said, “I want to find out who in their right mind would be a chef and work these long hours.”
“You wanna know what it’s like to be a chef?” Dave asked rhetorically. He pretended that his right hand was a gun and then pulled his index finger like a trigger. “Every fucking day I feel like blowing my fucking brains out!”
“Every day?” I asked.
“Okay, not every day,” he said.
He reached down to adjust the crotch of his trousers, which was a tic he continued doing throughout our conversation.
“How long have you been working in restaurants?” I asked him.
“Thirty years,” Dave said. “I’m forty-seven.”
“Are you here every day?” I asked.
“It’s a full-time job,” he said. “I’m here five days a week. At this point, I’ve earned that right—I make time, always take a day off during the week. I take Sunday off. I take time off for special family events. I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to hire more qualified people so that I can get away from time to time.”
He and Tony talked about a purveyor they had in common.
“Yeah,” said Dave, “I get fish from Rod over at Browne Trading, too, but I also get product from other sources.”
We were seated at the tiny bar near the kitchen. Customers drifted by us on the way to the restrooms in the back.
“We always get our fish early,” said Dave. “I have my own truck for Esca.”
The restaurant was moving at full tilt despite its being three in the afternoon.
“I can feel your intensity,” I said to Dave, “but how do you get staff to feel it? To be motivated.”
“I’ve got to inspire them,” said Dave. “With product, passion, tenacity, and intuition.”
“What if you see someone who’s not getting it?” I asked.
Dave made the sign of an umpire calling an out.
“Next!” said Dave.
“What if you want that person to work out?” I asked. “How do you express yourself to them?”
“I take them to my other office,” said Dave. “The walk-in.”
He hunched his shoulders and leaned in, gangsterlike, something out of a movie.
“We have a conversation,” Dave said. “ ‘Look, you’re not focused. You’re distracted. Your station needs to be cleaner.’ Whatever,” he said. “I’ll give you a perfect example: The New York City Health Department just made a big change. If you log the food that’s out, you can have it out for four hours. Used to be they’d come by and we’d have to throw shit away. Now if you log it when you first put it out, and they come by to inspect you, you’re good as long as it’s within four hours. So if I have someone who forgot to log it, and they come by? That person just fucked up. You fuck up and you’re gonna face the wrath of fucking up.”
“How easy is it to find new people?” asked Tony.
“At the entry level I have two or three new guys every now and then,” said Dave. “I rotate. Promote from within. Once in a while you get screwed.”
“Are they all Americans?” asked Tony.
“Ninety-nine percent Americans,” said Dave, “and one Haitian kid, but he grew up here and he’s as American as the rest of my crew.”
Dave talked like someone who grew up in the business. In a way, he did: His grandmother and her brother owned a family-style restaurant in Coney Island. “They served poor people’s food: balls, hearts, lungs. Plenty of fat. It went out of style, but it’s popular now.”
In many ways, the food he was describing was what Tony refined and served at Craigie.
“Do you see a difference between the cooks now, kids in their twenties,” Tony asked, “and ten years ago?”
“Ten years ago, we had guys who wanted to work because one day they wanted their own place,” Dave said. He reached down and yanked up. “To make a name for themselves. These days a lot of my cooks still live at home. Their mother and father still support them.”
“How about as a generation?” asked Tony.
“Tremendous distractions,” said Dave.
“Cells? Texting?” asked Tony.
“Exactly,” said Dave. “I have a no-tolerance policy.”
Tony agreed with him. Ironic, I thought, given his e-mailing and texting constantly.
“So then you have to get new people,” Tony said.
“Right,” said Dave. He laughed and shook his head in wonder. “I run an ad, I get a hundred resumes. Twenty people make appointments and I’m lucky if three show up,” Dave said.
“Same with me,” said Tony.
“So who makes it and who doesn’t?” I asked.
“There’s an advantage to hiring younger kids,” said Dave. “I’ll put people in garde manger and I can see it in their faces.”
“See what?” I asked.
“Some of them? They can smell it like an animal. They want to be promoted. They’ll work hard to get to that next level. They can smell that fucking piece of meat.”
We sipped our glasses of water.
“How did your father discipline you as a child?” I asked Dave.
“I got ‘punched’ as a kid,” Dave said with a big laugh. He was exaggerating, and referring back to old-school parenting: not how do you feel, but do what you’re told. “Can’t do that here. So, yeah, it’s hard to discipline people. Next thing you know they’re calling 1-800-LAWYERS. Look, in the past I’d go ballistic when someone’s fucking up. Now? Now I try to stay levelheaded. Takes the fun out of it.”
Tony and I laughed.
“So when you’re really upset and can’t express it?” I asked. “How do you feel then?”
“Lemme tell you a story,” Dave said. “Christmas morning this past year, my wife hands me an envelope. ‘What?’ I ask her. ‘You’re giving me money?’ ‘Just open it,’ she says. So I open it and it’s our mortgage statement: zero, zero, zero. She paid off the mortgage! When I get pissed off, I think about that.”
“Right,” I said, “but when you’re here, and feeling furious and overwhelmed, where is your patience?”
“I developed patience,” Dave said.
He stood up and led us to a framed photograph in the back dining room that showed him and his father smiling and holding an enormous fish.
“This was my pride and joy this past summer,” Dave said.
The caption read, Mel and Dave P. 7/4/11. 51 lbs/49 inches. On the Debra.
“Fishing is my patience,” said Dave. “My father and I spend hours and hours together on the boat.”
“What do you talk about?” I asked.
Dave laughed.
“Talk? We don’t talk,” he said. “We fish!”
Dave had literally reframed his relationship to his father. He seemed to have made some peace with that authority. At the very least, an idealized version was on display.
I had intended to walk from Esca, on Forty-third and Ninth, all the way to The Dutch, on Sullivan and Prince, but Tony wanted a second lunch. I had forgotten about the appetite of chefs.
We cabbed to the East Village and grabbed stools at Momofuku Noodle Bar. Late afternoon, pouring rain, the place was empty. Staff had the chill indiffe
rence and cool intensity characteristic of servers at Ko. They acted as if they were doing us a huge favor by serving us, and for some reason I still can’t quite fathom, this was appealing. It was not like dining out, it was like dropping in at a brilliant, quirky friend’s house. The only thing missing at Chang’s establishments were video games to play while eating.
I had never been, but Tony was at home. He ordered pork buns for us, and we each ordered noodle dishes, and soon the food vanished.
“Screaming with flavor,” I said.
“I know, right?” Tony said.
By the time we reached The Dutch, the two lunches we had enjoyed slowed our pace, but we were still in the game. Even with a full belly, Tony has far more energy than most. I was doing all I could to maintain his pace.
I had met Andrew Carmellini in November 2003 in Tokyo, on a junket led by Daniel Boulud and organized by The James Beard Foundation.
Daniel Boulud had been invited, a few weeks after Lost in Translation opened, to put on a few dinners at Park Hyatt Tokyo, which was where the movie had taken place. Daniel, in turn, invited me and two other writers, Adam Sachs and Adam Rapoport (current editor of Bon Appetit), to join him. Andrew was Daniel’s executive chef at Cafe Boulud back then. Andrew was joined by Rich Torrisi, who worked with him, and Mark Fiorentino, who is still Daniel’s head baker. Rich Torrisi now runs two of New York’s hottest restaurants: Torrisi Italian Specialties and Parm.
None of us, except Andrew, had been to Japan before, and with Daniel in charge we wound up staying up all night, dozing during the day, and developing very close bonds with one another. One night, around four A.M., after leaving a yakitori restaurant, Andrew had stepped between me and a line cook who was about to punch me out.
The line cook had asked me where I was from, and when I told him cheerfully that I was from New Jersey but had “gotten out,” his mood changed so fast it was scary. He went from laughing and joking and being pleasant to pursing his lips, turning red, balling his fists, and stepping to within inches of my face.
“What’s wrong with Jersey?” he demanded to know. “My mother still lives there. What are you saying about my mother?”
