Back of the House

by Scott Haas

  Yet for all the seriousness that he conveys, I have always found him to be earthy, an unusually good listener, and a person who brings out the best in those around him.

  “Daniel tells me that he’s looking for more balance in his life,” I said to him.

  “Daniel said that?” said Thomas. “He wants more balance in his life?”

  He laughed.

  “I think he’s striving for it,” I said. “He also said he doesn’t want to be like the FY generation.”

  “What’s the FY generation?” he asked.

  I explained. Thomas laughed again.

  He was in New York for ten days at Per Se. He went back and forth between Per Se and The French Laundry.

  “I know Daniel pretty well,” Thomas said. “I’m closer to him than anyone who works for me. The FY generation! Well, you see that. I think it comes from what they see on TV.”

  “Could be,” I said.

  “You know, my generation of chefs was the first to be considered celebrities by the media,” said Thomas. “Do I seem like a celebrity to you?”

  “No,” I said. “You seem like a cook.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “The FY generation of chefs is the first generation to act like celebrities.”

  Cooks were coming and going around Thomas as he spoke to me, but he was not distracted by them. He looked as comfortable as a chauffeur behind the wheel.

  “You once told me years ago that your restaurants are your children,” I said. “Do you still feel that way?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Of course. Now more than ever. Look, when you have just one restaurant, you’re spending all your time there. Nothing happens there without your knowledge. You’re in control. When you have more than one, you have to let go of that control a little bit.”

  I thought of my son and daughter having left home, and how I worried about them but surrendered to their independence, trying to see things from their point of view, and remembering how I had felt at their age leaving my mother and father.

  “How do you do it?” I asked. “Give up that control?”

  He paused to sip his coffee.

  “You have to gain trust in those around you,” Thomas said, “and confidence in those individuals. It’s like you’ve been raised all your life as a chef to be in control and not necessarily trust anyone. That has to change. It takes depth and collaboration. I went from having ninety people at The French Laundry to having another one hundred and ten here at Per Se. So now I have two hundred people working for me.”

  “That’s been good for you? Emotionally?”

  “I think you have to be prepared to be the next person,” Thomas said. “We grow so much stronger by changing. It’s all about trust. I use a sports analogy. I run a sports franchise, right? When I was in the kitchen, I was the franchise player. But I’m fifty-six years old; I can’t do what a thirty-year-old does. At some point, you have to prepare the next generation.”

  “How do you do it?”

  “The chef is the manager and the cooks are the players. It’s a big responsibility teaching, mentoring, and training the cooks. We give them the best products to work with—you know, you and I have talked about this before; I never ask what things cost. The best things these days are the rarest.”

  “Still, it doesn’t work out for everyone who comes to work for you.”

  “Of course not. How many people can play pro ball? How many major league teams are there? Not many. It takes true talent. Dexterity, balance. We call it in my kitchens, ‘the dance.’ When I was on the line, it could be a gut-wrenching evening with the new guy struggling next to me, and I’d ask him: ‘Can you really do this?’ The next day, he’d be back, full force, and say, ‘Yes, Chef, I can do it!’ You keep training them.”

  “Does it ever get emotional?”

  “That’s not common,” he said. He laughed. “I have boring kitchens. It’s not good TV.”

  “Right, but what if you see someone failing and they still want to work for you?”

  “I talk to him at the end of the night. I take him aside and ask, ‘Is this something you really want to do?’ ”

  “All young people, twenty-three or twenty-four, they want to do something new,” he continued. “I was that way, too. ‘Give me something new, Chef! Give me something new to do!’ But that’s not how you become a chef. You become a chef by doing the same thing day after day, night after night.”

  “Surely you lose patience with cooks who find your outlook challenging for their own developmental reasons,” I said. “I mean, they may not get it because, as you said, they’re in their twenties and want to do new things each day. So how do you handle your anger?”

  “I play golf when I get angry,” he said.

  “But what about when you’re in the restaurant and can’t go golfing?”

  It was nearly time for Per Se to open its doors for the evening.

  “I’m more compassionate now,” Thomas said. “What might I do? I might say, ‘Get off the line,’ and then find another cook to take over. It’s the same as being benched in a game. No one wants to get benched! Or I might say, ‘If you don’t have time now to get it right, when will you have time?’ ”

  “So there’s no drama?” I asked.

  “I’m not saying I’m unemotional,” said Thomas, “but you know what happens when you lose it and scream at a cook? You lose out because later you have to apologize to that person. You have to ask yourself, ‘Why’d I say that?’ I’ll tell you what really kills the kids, if I say to someone, ‘You really disappointed me,’ ” Thomas said. “The last thing you want to do is disappoint your chef.”

  I RECALLED SEEING AND HEARING THOMAS THE TIME WE HAD BEEN TOGETHER before this conversation. He and Daniel Boulud had invited me to hang out in the kitchen at 11 Madison to watch squadrons of cooks—under the aegis of that restaurant’s chef, Daniel Humm—prepare a series of courses at a $500-per-person benefit for The Bocuse d’Or USA Foundation. I wrote down what Thomas said that night as it was happening. The cooks were making his version of Dover sole Veronique:

  “Do we have all the plates we need?” Thomas said.

  “Oui, Chef!” the cooks responded.

  “Take your time. Take your time. Take your time. No rush!” said Thomas.

  As the cooks prepared their stations, Thomas said, “When you’re ready, let’s go.”

  Throughout the assembly of the dish, everyone worked methodically, with a clear rhythm, and Thomas said, ten times, over the course of a few minutes, “Everyone take a breath.”

  Finally, as each plate was completed and carried to the expediting table, Thomas said, in a soothing voice to all the cooks, “The fish is beautiful. Beautiful job. You make us all look good.” He then said, ten times, almost as if chanting, “Great job, everybody.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s weird,” Thomas confided to me now. “I’ve met cooks who like being yelled at.”

  I told him about Bobby.

  “Weird, huh?” Thomas said.

  “So what concrete steps do you take to decrease stress in your kitchens?” I asked.

  “I don’t stretch it out. I don’t require twelve-hour days. You have eight hours, and let’s say twelve things to do for service. Get them done and leave.”

  “Leave?”

  “Leave,” he said. “I’m committed to efficiency. It can be difficult to get kids out of the kitchen, but I tell them not to worry about getting the job done. Be more efficient at what you do. Work more quickly. That way you have time to do something else.”

  “Is that what you did when you were starting out?”

  “Exactly,” Thomas said. “That way I could watch the guy next to me. That way when the chef promoted him and asked who could move up and take his place, I was the one who said, ‘Yes, Chef! I can do it!’ I could do it because I’d been watching and studying him every day for weeks! You promote the guy who knows what he’s doing.”

  I found this line of thought inspiring. I loved how Thom
as opposed passivity, and how, as for Daniel, anticipation was fundamental to his personality.

  “You have always got to be thinking about tomorrow,” Thomas said. “Prepare for the next job!”

  “HOW OLD WERE YOU WHEN YOU STARTED COOKING?” I ASKED DANIEL Humm.

  Humm was New York’s latest top-rated three-star Michelin and four-star New York Times chef. He had joined the most elite group of chefs in the city. The only others to have been so recognized were Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and Masa Takayama. Humm was twenty years younger than these chefs. His drive intrigued me.

  “I started at fourteen,” Humm said.

  We were walking through the kitchen at 11 Madison. Humm was making certain that his cooks were getting their jobs done.

  Before I could respond to what he had just said, Humm said: “My father is an architect.”

  I found it fascinating that he brought up his father in relationship to a question about when he had started cooking, and decided to store away that fascination until later.

  “My father wanted me to go into his profession,” he continued.

  Humm’s mood stayed thoughtful and cheery. We had met several times before, and I had been attracted immediately to his engaging style. He is Swiss, and like my closest friends, who are his compatriots, Humm expressed himself through observations about what went on around him rather than with opinions.

  “I had summer internships at architectural firms,” Humm said. “I was age eleven.”

  “What could you do in a firm as an eleven-year-old?” I asked.

  We were passing by a huge black-and-white photograph of Miles Davis that faced the pass.

  “They took me under their wing,” Humm said. “Took me to construction sites. Explained to me how the plans work. But in the offices? Sitting down was the worst nightmare for me. I could not sit down. Also, I didn’t want to go to bed growing up.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Because I was afraid I’d miss something,” said Humm. “It’s the same today.”

  He has an impish grin, which contrasts with his imposing height.

  “Architecture was not for me,” said Humm. “But I learned a very important lesson from my dad. You don’t have to be a doctor. You don’t have to be a lawyer. Just be the best at what you do.”

  We walked by a long, stainless-steel table where three pastry cooks were assembling very colorful desserts.

  “I then decided to work on farms,” Humm said. “I grew up outside of Zurich. I loved it. I loved working on the farm.”

  “But?”

  “But my father said, ‘You can’t be a farmer because we don’t have a farm.’ So I thought: What do I love about the farm? The products!”

  From his love of products, Humm realized that he might learn to transform and refine their essence.

  “Slowly, I started falling in love with cooking,” Humm said.

  “Right, but was it difficult at first to make the commitment to restaurant work? You said you didn’t like being confined to an office, but here in this kitchen? No windows. Most kitchens are the same.”

  “I’m passionate,” said Humm. “You have to be. When I first started, there were brutal hours. The pay sucked. I was treated like shit. Im seich.”

  “Im seich?”

  “In the shit. You say, in the weeds,” he said. “All the time. But: Everyone was so passionate about food!”

  “I understand the passion, I think,” I said, “but passion can be fleeting. Paul Liebrandt talked to me once about the difference between passion and intensity. How did you develop the intensity needed to cook long hours?”

  “Maybe something else you should know about me,” Humm said. He stopped to watch a pair of cooks making sauces. He nodded approval. “I was on the Swiss National Mountain Bike Team. I raced from age eight until I was nineteen years old. I was one of the best in Switzerland. I trained really hard, four to five hours a day, from age ten. I loved it! I finished in the top ten; I was sponsored early on. But I was never in the top three in the top European events,” he said. “I was never on the podium. And then, when I turned eighteen, I crashed. I was out three months.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that, Daniel,” I said. I paused. “What exactly happened to you?”

  In the three years I had known him, I had never seen him look so sad.

  Unlike joy, pain is the easiest thing to forget. Why else would people pay thousands of dollars to see shrinks to help them remember pain if they could do it on their own? Cooking trumps psychology. There is a Joy of Cooking, but there will never be a Joy of Psychotherapy.

  “I was going downhill,” Humm said, “really fast. Going all out. Anyway, I broke my right shoulder, two ribs. I had a lot of things. Blood everywhere. It took me a long time to come back.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Ja,” said Humm.

  Behind us, Will Guidara, Humm’s business partner and manager at 11 Madison, was interviewing a job applicant.

  “How do you take criticism?” Will asked her.

  Humm and I sat down.

  “Working in the kitchen,” he said, “I loved it. After the crash, I just focused on that. That’s what I did. Cooking? Cooking for me is like a sport.”

  “Thomas Keller said something similar,” I said.

  “It’s an endurance sport,” Humm continued. “The way you deal with changes is what makes you a great chef.”

  “And when your cooks let you down?”

  “When I was younger, I would lose it,” said Humm. “It doesn’t happen anymore. I think when I lost it was the times when it all went over my head. Today I yell, but I first think about it: ‘Is this a good time?’ ”

  “So you exercise self-control?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  We got up to walk to the area in the kitchen closest to the dining room. Humm pointed out all the awards that the restaurant had won in the past year.

  “I’ve been working really hard to get to this point,” he said. “I run marathons. I’m still riding a mountain bike. I’m training for the Boston Marathon!”

  “So you have ways to let go.”

  “I don’t like environments where there’s yelling. I’m a pretty mellow person.”

  He did not look like a mellow person, but I liked the fact that he wanted me to think he was.

  “How do you go about creating that environment?” I asked. “With staff, I mean. How do you hire cooks?”

  “I choose based on what kind of person they are,” Humm said. “Not if they can cook. I don’t even read résumés any more. I ask: Do I want to spend three days a week in the kitchen, fifteen hours a day, for years with that person? If the answer is yes, I can teach that person how to cook. The cooking is the easy part by a lot!”

  “So it’s about personalities?”

  “Right.”

  “How do you build or organize these relationships in your kitchen?”

  “I think it’s important that you don’t take yourself too seriously. Not think of yourself as an artist or craftsman. If you do, I think you miss the point. Cooking is a true team sport.”

  “Yes, and how do you do that concretely?”

  “Every week, I sit down with my sous chefs,” Humm said, “and we each create a different dish using the same three components. Then we take them apart, analyze them. It’s not a defensive exercise. It’s not a competition to see who will win.”

  “And that works?” I asked.

  “My kitchen is truly very collaborative,” Humm said. “That way…”

  “That way?”

  “That way I don’t need to yell at people,” he said.

  Kind of Blue was playing through speakers in the kitchen.

  “So why, in your opinion, do some chefs get so angry that they always are screaming at their cooks?”

  “I don’t think it’s really anger,” Humm said.

  “No?”

  “No,” he said. “I think it’s rock star
behavior.” He laughed. “But I don’t think that works in our business. If you feel that way, I think you’re in the wrong business. Look, a restaurant? My restaurant? It’s like inviting people into your home.”

  We had strolled over to garde manger. Three cooks were cleaning up rapidly.

  “One thing I learned from Danny Meyer,” Humm said, “is that the food starts the fire, but then everything else has to follow. The food is less important than the whole dining experience. Danny has truly taught me hospitality.” He laughed. “And when you have both great food and excellence in hospitality? Then you kill it!”

  “It’s not just about you.”

  “Look,” he said, “I don’t want to be tied to the stove. You can’t micromanage every situation. Anyway, if you try to do that, people will stay two years and leave. They will leave because they can’t influence the direction of where the restaurant is going. But if people feel that they are a part of the movement, they’re not gonna want to leave.”

  Now we headed to the back of the kitchen, where an array of pots and pans glinted or were covered in suds. I loved the heat of the washing, the clouds of steam, and the sounds of Spanish.

  “Four days,” said Daniel, “every January. We brainstorm all our ideas. We honor the past. We take a giant piece of paper and write down the year’s accomplishments. For two days, the managers brainstorm the direction we want to go in. We establish our goals. For two more days, the whole team gets together. We break it down and become more specific. Everyone has ideas and we incorporate them. Everyone feels embedded in the organization.” Humm had one hundred fifty people working for him, seventy-five of whom were in the back of the house.

  We came to the pass. Lunch service was ending, so things were calm. Humm had Leah, a cook, make me the Jack Rose cocktail.

  “It’s made with liquid nitrogen,” Leah said, “and apple brandy.”

  Pomegranate foam, sorbet, and, best of all, delicious.

  “I suppose your father must be proud of you,” I said, “after all these years later, all the awards you’ve won.”