by Scott Haas
“You were faster yesterday, Marian,” Tony said. “You were more organized yesterday.”
Marian did not say a word, but every bit of her exposed skin was now bright red.
“I need two more duck right now,” said Tony. “Two duck! Two duck! Two duck! Two duck! Listen, Davey, the first time I called this it was ten minutes ago. You gotta make this happen, buddy.”
“Yes, Chef,” said Davey. “Now!”
Davey was hampered by his efforts to keep Devon on track and Marian focused, all the while cooking food that Tony needed, too. The situation was spiraling out of control.
The risk was this: If Marian did not manage to complete her orders, the other cooks would need to do her work. Then they would fall behind with their orders. Soon the entire kitchen would be cooking older orders that should have been completed. New orders coming in would not get done. Guests could find themselves waiting impatiently for food. Servers might not receive good tips. Tony’s intensity and anger were fueled by the recognition that as the chef, he was the only person who had the authority and responsibility to turn things around.
“Marian,” Tony said, “you’re standing there doing nothing.”
He stopped what he was doing and walked over to Marian. He put his hands on his hips. He glared at her.
“Marian,” he said as calmly as he could, but his voice deepened and grating, “you’re taking so many extra steps with the duck. Slice it right.”
He took the duck breast from her and swiftly butchered it correctly.
“C’mon,” Tony said, “make this happen, please.”
He returned to the pass, hoping that his intervention had worked, but when Marian brought the duck over, which she had plated, Tony could not believe his eyes. He was exasperated, but struggled to speak.
“Marian!” he said, finally. “Where’s the sauce?! When I tell you it needs sauce, it needs sauce!”
She took back the plate and shuffled off. Tony’s anger was getting worse. All the planning, the preparation, the trials before he put a dish on the menu, the expensive product, the thought that had gone into the recipe, the efforts of the cooks…gone! Gone because one cook was not getting it right.
Rather than give in to his frustration, Tony chose Davey to handle the situation and decided instead to shave black truffles over a plate of veal, then a second plate, but at the third plate he stopped cold.
“Look at the veal!” he said. “What the fuck is this?!”
Davey, Devon, and Marian froze. The veal had come from their station.
“Where are my two sweetbreads?!” asked Tony.
They had forgotten how to assemble the dish despite having made it dozens of time. This lapse further infuriated Tony.
Then Matt stepped in and Davey got even better. The sweetbreads were added to the plate. Food started getting cooked the right way. The cooks regained their intensity.
“Awesome,” Tony said almost happily to Matt when he brought over a perfectly cooked whole chicken.
“Oh,” sang Davey, “oh, we’re fucking doing this!”
Tony clapped his hands.
“Okay, let’s go,” he said.
He turned to Devon and began to shout orders in rapid succession.
“Four marrow!” said Tony.
“Oui!” said Devon.
“Black bass!”
“Oui!” said Devon.
“Chicken!”
“Oui!” said Devon.
Davey stood between Devon and Marian and kept them organized. He told them what to do; he took the pressure off Tony.
“Marian,” said Davey, “what can I do to help you?”
Marian did not say anything, which was a terrible mistake. Cooks might be forgiven when they ask for help or welcome it, but not when they refuse to participate.
“Are you okay?” Davey asked her.
Marian did not respond. The yelling had gotten to her. She was shutting down.
Davey grabbed a chicken to sear on the grill, almost colliding with Marian, and then smiled at me and rolled his eyes.
Tony walked over to her.
“You were so different yesterday,” he whispered to Marian. Now his anger was tempered by a desire to understand what was wrong. “What’s different tonight?”
Being direct with people, when he did it calmly, focusing on the task rather than the individual, was one of his skills. Tony shook his head and returned to the pass. His phone timer went off.
“Tweety-bird,” Tony said. “Okay, Davey, there’s your pickup.”
Davey got the chicken and placed it on a cutting board for Tony. Tony turned and began slicing it with a long, white-handled blade. He was faster than anyone else in the kitchen and deft with a knife. First, he cut off the thighs and legs. He put them on a plate, spun around, and put that under the salamander. Then he sliced the breasts off the bone. The juices spilled out, the aroma wafted, and by the time he was done, I was salivating.
The chicken was Marian’s job, but Tony had had to step in.
Then he came back to the pass, took a ticket for a completed order, and put the paper through the spike. Another ticket came in while he was doing this.
Marian was given a chicken by Davey to cut. He placed it in front of her. She worked laboriously, pressing in, not slicing so much as pushing the knife in. She wasn’t close to the bone and then she was too close to the bone.
“You know what we should do?” said Davey. He grinned exuberantly. “We should fire some pigs. Yeah, let’s fire some pigs!”
He referred to pigs’ faces, which were flying out of the kitchen that night, as usual.
Pigs fired, Davey walked over to Marian and whispered in her ear. She turned and thrust her hips against him, miming sex.
“That’s what I want to see!” said Davey. “Some fire!”
Matt showed up at the pass with a small bowl of rye flour casarecce with house-cured ham and mushroom ragoût to send out. Tony had gone downstairs to check on Santos, Carlos, and the pastry chefs.
When Tony returned, it was with big strides, focused, in a hurry, trying not to fall further behind. Then he looked over at Marian.
“Marian,” he said. “Marian?”
She looked back at him with a defiant expression.
“What are you doing, Marian?!” Tony asked.
She was trying to slice a duck but was doing it wrong again. She worked slowly and without precision. Tony bounded over to her station, grabbed the duck out of her hands, peeled the breast off the bone with a knife, and tossed the bloody bone into a bin next to her.
“That is how you do it!” Tony yelled. “The skin needs to stay on the meat!”
He returned to the pass. Marian just stood there looking at the duck.
Out of Tony’s earshot, I heard Marian grumbling to Davey.
“What’s wrong?” asked Davey.
“The skin,” said Marian. She did not look up. “The skin was okay.”
Davey nodded sadly.
“I understand,” Davey said to her.
That was all he could say or do.
“C’mon, Jill,” Tony said, “I need three things!”
“Yes, Chef,” Jill said.
As Tony gave Jill orders, the chicken stuffed with sausage arrived at the pass: Vidalia onions, spinach, potato purée, chanterelle jus.
“Jill,” Tony continued, “do you have sandwiches for me?”
“On it, Chef,” Jill said.
Orders were not being completed again, the cooks could not keep up again, and Tony was angry again.
“Guys,” he said, “are you talking to each other? You are? I don’t hear it!”
Tony went back to get the char from Jill to bring it to the window. Even when the cooks were getting it right, they were too slow. Tony shaved black truffles over the fish.
“Okay,” he said to Katie, handing her the char, “I need this out of here.”
Tony went back to Jill again, this time to get a plate of sandwiches he had ordered and th
at she had just finished cooking. He gripped the plate rather than held it.
“C’mon,” he said tersely, “this is a shit show!”
Then Tony picked up the phone and called downstairs.
“Can you set up a fish board for me and two Arctic char,” he said to Carlos. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”
Downstairs, Carlos set up two big stainless-steel trays next to the vacuum sealer. He put a bed of ice on the first tray and put the second tray on top of it. Then he went to the walk-in and returned with a whole Arctic char, which was about eighteen inches long. The fish had tiny pointy teeth, translucent eyes, and glistening silver skin. Carlos wrapped the fish in a white towel that had long orange and blue stripes alongside it.
Tony showed up with two very large knives. He told Carlos to move everything to a different, larger station where he would have more room to work.
Tony sliced into the fish, just below the gills, and lopped off the head. Next he sliced it across the back.
“Grab a pair of tweezers,” he said to Carlos.
“Yes, Chef,” said Carlos.
“Get a scale,” Tony said. “Grab something to put on it.”
“Yes, Chef,” said Carlos.
Tony tossed the head and spine into the garbage.
“Now go get some brine,” Tony said to Carlos when he returned with the fillets and scale.
Tony continued to trim the fish. He sliced off fat.
Carlos returned with a big bucket of water. Tony portioned the fish into fillets and weighed each piece perfectly on the tiny scale Carlos had brought to him.
“Okay, so listen,” Tony said to Carlos, “I want you to pinbone this so I can put it away.”
“Yes, Chef,” said Carlos.
“It used to be that with every bone I found, there were ten push-ups,” said Tony.
“I’m fine with that,” said Carlos. “Better you find it than the customer.”
“Exactly,” said Tony.
Carlos went to work with the tweezers.
“Not bad, Carlos,” Tony said. “You have a fighting chance! Let’s see if you can do other things as fast.”
“Thanks, Chef,” said Carlos.
“Now bring the fish up to Jill,” said Tony.
Carlos ran behind him and up the narrow stairs to meet Matt at the pass.
“All apps it is!” shouted Matt.
“All apps it is!” said the cooks in unison.
Matt stepped aside. Tony took his place at the pass.
“C’mon,” shouted Tony over his shoulder. “We’ve got to be better! We’ve got to be better!”
Marian was still having a hard time. Tony shook his head with frustration: He was devastated by how poorly his cooks retained what he had taught them.
“Guys,” said Tony, “I’m not the only person with eyes here. C’mon, guys, let’s do this right, please.”
Tony took a small pot and spooned polenta into bowls. Matt ladled eggs that had been cooked bain-marie onto the polenta.
The dishes finished, Tony stared at the veal that Davey handed him. He had a look of disbelief. Nothing was going right for too long. Just when he was out of the weeds, he was back in again.
“Give me stuff on the veal!” Tony shouted to Davey. One veal dish had the correct sides and jus, the other didn’t. “Look at this one, and look at this one!”
“Right,” said Davey. “That’s bullshit! That’s bullshit!”
Matt yelled out: “I need an egg on the fly!”
The pace was picking up, but the focus was not there. People were running in circles.
“Listen!” yelled Tony. It was the angriest he had been all night. “LISTEN! No excuses! I don’t give a shit! Pay Scott to listen to your bullshit! He’s a shrink!”
Then Tony picked up his cell phone and called home. As if he had never even thought of having just been enraged at his cooks, Tony said softly and sweetly, “Hey, Charlie Maws, I just wanted to call and wish you a good night. What’d you eat for dinner? Asparagus? Cool.” He listened to his son talk for a few moments. “Awesome! I miss you. Got to go. See you in the morning.”
After ending the call, Tony faced the cooks.
“Easy! Easy! Easy!” he said. “Finesse! Finesse! Finesse!”
An ambulance roared by the front of the restaurant, red lights visible, but siren inaudible because of the noise surrounding us. A second ambulance followed. The ambulances were heading either to the housing projects down the street or to the emergency room at Massachusetts General Hospital across the bridge over the Charles River.
“Give me tongues!” shouted Marian. Finally, there was urgency in her voice. The night was ending. “Tongues! Tongues! Tongues!”
Then, not clearly apropos to what was happening, Tony started to tell me a story. “I had a conversation with my high school coach,” Tony said. “He turned to me and he said, ‘You’re not gonna make the team.’ ”
I looked at Tony’s sad face.
“Which sport?” I asked.
“Hockey,” Tony said. He crossed off a ticket and put it through a spike. “Hockey was my sport. Belmont Hill. I loved being on that team.”
“When was this exactly?” I asked.
“Sophomore year,” said Tony. He sighed heavily as he recalled events that took place twenty-seven years ago. “Man, I cried. I just stood there and cried!”
Veal three ways arrived at the pass, and Matt squirted jus over the meat and dabbed the rims of the plates clean.
“Why not?” I asked. “Why didn’t you make the team?”
“I wasn’t tall enough,” said Tony. “I wasn’t big enough. I weighed one hundred and fifteen pounds: one elbow, one little elbow, and I’d go crashing down to the ice! Coach said I was spunky and a fighter, but that I didn’t have the size.”
Tony shook his head.
“I still remember that conversation,” he said.
He leaned into the pass, slid tickets across the board so that they fanned out, and told Patrick he needed sauce for the chicken.
“That teacher/coach,” said Tony, “he’s a legend at Belmont Hill. A great guy. About a year ago, he ate here with his family. I hadn’t known he was coming in. I missed his name on the reservations list. My jaw dropped! I almost cried. About a week later, he sends me a three-page letter, handwritten on his personal stationery. I picked up the phone and called Karolyn.”
“What did you say to her?” I asked.
“ ‘This is fucking awesome,’ ” he said. “ ‘No one gets this kind of letter!’ ”
When I thought of what Tony had said, I wondered what it had been like to have been cut because of physical limitations he could do nothing about.
“That coach saved your life, Tony,” I said.
Tony laughed.
“How’s that?” he asked.
“Saved you from concussions, head injuries, lasting neurological damage,” I said.
“Oh, c’mon,” he said. “Hockey is a great sport!”
“It’s great,” I said, “but it’s dangerous.”
“I loved playing hockey!” he said. “What are you saying?”
“I understand that,” I said, “but I’ll tell you something: Charlie will never play hockey. Karolyn won’t let him. Charlie? Charlie will play tennis!”
“We’ll see,” said Tony, crossing off another ticket. “You might be right, but we’ll see.”
It took me over a month before I was startled enough to realize that the story of the coach who cut him was Tony’s public narrative: the one Tony believed, and the one that he was convinced I should believe with him. But that coach existed alongside other, more private experiences, much longer stories, and to appreciate Tony’s anger, resilience, and ambition it was necessary to put all of these together.
No life has a single “Rosebud” moment that explains everything. What was clear instead from Tony’s story was that he still felt he had something to prove to that coach who had cut him because he was too small and to his father w
ho had belittled him for striking out. The fact that Tony could not provide that measure of validation to himself fit in well with cooking for a room of guests to gain their approval, but it was also an infuriating, repetitive exercise. He was, ultimately, angriest at himself.
“Six ducks,” said Matt, “two by two by two.”
Marian brought the ducks to the window.
“Listen,” Tony said to Marian. “Listen, listen, listen. I can’t serve this! One of these is nothing but fat! And this one?” He held up a piece of duck meat. “This one is sliced too thick!”
“Yes, Chef,” said a crestfallen Marian.
She returned to her station to redo the ducks with Davey’s help.
“I need…these…ducks…please,” said Tony between clenched teeth.
At long last, the ducks arrived again.
“When I’m done with these ducks,” Tony said to me, “we can have dinner together in the bar.”
Tony organized the ducks. They had not been plated correctly by the cooks.
Then he walked over to Marian and, livid, he said, “Whatever you fucking did in other kitchens, I don’t care where, we don’t do that here. I don’t cut corners. I don’t cut corners! The best thing you can do when you have a shit night is to do it right. The bullshit I’m seeing tonight? It stops now. Right now!”
She was berated for a while. There was no reaction. What could she say? What could anyone say?
“Let me just check on things in prep,” Tony said calmly when he was done yelling at Marian.
Tony went downstairs.
It was around midnight. The cooks were breaking down their stations, washing up the surfaces and stovetops.
“Want to go out for a drink when we’re done?” Jill asked me.
“Sure,” I said. “When do you think that will be?”
“About an hour and a half from now,” she said.
“One thirty?” I asked.
“That’s about right,” she said. “That’s when we get out.”
I had to say no. I’m up at six with my dogs.
“It was a rough night of service,” Matt said to me with a big grin.
“It wasn’t unusual,” Jill piped in. “I’d say it was typical. Pretty typical for this place.”
“But I’m sure you’ve seen nights like this before in other restaurants,” said Matt.
