Don't Try This at Home

by Andrew Friedman

  When he arrived for his trail, I took him around on an introductory tour of the prep area and the walk-in and the hot line. At each station, he bent over and put his forehead against everything I showed him. It was fascinating at first—and later, heartbreaking—to note the angle at which he scrutinized each item in the refrigerator.

  "Over here," I said, "is where all the proteins are kept. Fish here. Meat here. Cooked above raw. Always. Okay?" And instead of holding the six-pan of pork belly close under his nose and squinting down upon it—like a very old man might do trying to read his train ticket—he instead held each item up to his forehead, above his eyebrows, and stared up imploringly into it.

  We set him up in the basement prep area with a cutting board and a menial task that wouldn't matter if he screwed it up: picking parsley. This took him most of the afternoon and it was painful to watch him bent in half, killing his back in order to have his untethered eyes close to the cutting board.

  The trail is simply the time to sniff out the guy, to see how he stands, how he holds his knives, how much he talks or doesn't, and what he says. Does he ravage everything with tongs or finesse with a fork and a spoon? Does he sit at the bar at the end of his trail and get hammered? Did he bring a pen and small pad of paper? Did he thank the people who trailed him? I wasn't worried that he was supposed to hold down the grill station. And I didn't give a shit about the parsley. But I understood twenty-five minutes into his trail that there was no system of compensation, he had not become hypersensate, and that he had not, emphatically, evolved into a superior cooking machine. Sadly, the guy was just plain blind. And I still had on my hands another four hours and thirty five minutes of a trail to honor.

  The night started slowly with just a couple of tickets at a time. I buckled myself into a seat at the back of the bus, so to speak, right behind the blind guy in the grill station and let my sous-chef do the driving: calling out the tickets and their timing, expediting their plating and pickups. Every time an order came into our station, I quietly narrated the procedure to the trailer, and watched, slack-jawed, as he painstakingly retrieved a portion of meat from the cooler, held it to his forehead, set it on a plate, and then proceeded to carefully season the countertop with an even sprinkling of salt. When the call to "fire" an item came, I stood back and let him place the meat onto the grill—which he managed—but I had to pull him back a few inches from the flames so he wouldn't singe his bangs.

  Eventually we fell into a kind of spontaneous, unfunny vaudeville routine in which I shadowed him, without him knowing, and seasoned the meat he missed, turned the fish he couldn't, moved the plate under his approaching spatula to receive the pork, like an outfielder judging a flyball in Candlestick Park. I was not worried about him slowing down the line as we never expect a trailer to actually perform a vital function. But I really started to feel sick with worry when he pulled a full, fresh, piping hot basket of shoestring fries up out of the fat with his right hand and turned them out to drain—not into the waiting stack of giant coffee filters he held in his left hand, but into the thin air directly adjacent, pouring them out onto the dirty rubber mats and his clogs.

  This did not escape the notice of the other cooks. All the lightheartedness of a good night on the line went right up the exhaust hood. The banter between garde manger and saute came to a screeching halt. The fun part of getting through the night—donkey noises, addressing the male line cooks as "la­dies," as in "Let's go, ladies!"—was abandoned. The stern but soft-hearted barking from the bus driver down the line lost all playful bite and got tamed down to the most perfunctory, gently articulated, "Please fire apps on seven." With one basket of hot fries cascading to the ground we all saw at once that this fellow was in physical danger.

  In silence, I raked the fries up off the floor, trashed them, and dropped another order on the double. I asked him, kindly, to step back to the wall and just watch a bit, explaining that the pace was about to pick up and I wanted to keep the line moving. This is—even when you have all your wits—the most humiliating part of a trail: when the chef takes you off of the line in the middle of your task. You die one thousand deaths. For a blind guy with something to prove, maybe two thousand.

  To this point I had been somehow willing to participate in whatever strange exercise this guy was putting himself through. I was suspending disbelief, like we are all asked to do every time we go to see a play or watch a movie. I know that this isnt real but I agree to believe that it is for these two hours without intermission. But something about the realization of the danger he was flirting with in service of his project, whatever his project was, suddenly pissed me off. I took over the station and started slamming food onto the plates, narrating my actions to him in barely suppressed snide tones. "This," I practically hissed, "is the pickup on the prawns. Three in a stack, napped with anchovy butter. Wanna write that down?"

  I exhausted myself with passive-aggressive vitriol. "On the rack of lamb, you want an internal temp of one twenty-five. Just read the thermometer', okay." This got the attention of my sous-chef, who quietly came over and asked the guy if he'd like to step into garde manger for a while to see how things there ran. I was relieved to have the guy away from the fire and the fat and in the relatively harmless oasis of cold leafy salads and cool creamy dressings. And I was grateful to be rescued from my worst self. The guy spent the rest of his trail with his back up against the wall in all the stations, eyes rolling around in his head, pretending to apprehend how each station worked. I spent the remainder of his trail wrestling meat and unattractive feelings triggered by this insane predicament in which we had found ourselves.

  I have never known what he was doing. I allowed him to finish out the whole trail, and when he had changed his clothes, I encouraged him to sit at the bar and have something to eat, which he did. And as he was leaving I said I would call him the next day, which I did. I told him that I was looking for someone with a little more power, a bit more of a heavy-hitter, but that I would keep him in mind if a position more aligned with his skills became available. This, remarkably, he seemed to see coming.

  Genus Loci

  FERGUS HENDERSON

  Fergus Henderson trained as an architect before becoming a chef, opening the French House Dining Room in 1992 and St John in 1995, which has won numerous awards and accolades, including Best British and Best Overall London Restaurant at the 2001 Moet & Chandon Restaurant Awards. He is the author of The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating, winner of the 2000 Andre Simon Award.

  IT WAS THE middle of an evening service, orders were rattling out of the printer on the pass; there was a good flow afoot. The chefs were, each and every one, full steam ahead. Suddenly a commis chef of a very bouncy nature gave out a cry and became more than usually agitated. Clasping her ample chest, she shouted, "I've lost my crystal! Where's my crystal?" A matter not of the greatest urgency during the middle of a busy service, but after sending half a pot roast pig's head for two—a thing of joy—I went to enquire what the problem was. The commis chef explained: in her previous life she had worked with a vet in a large stable, during which time she had discovered a lump in one of her breasts. A real do-it-yourself kind of girl, she had dosed herself up on horse tranquilizer and proceeded to cut out the lump, and then sew the wound back up. To complete this surgery, she had nestled a healing crystal into the resultant indent. This, not surprisingly, took the kitchen somewhat aback. All chefs and kitchen porters stopped what they were doing to start looking for this far-from-ordinary stone.

  Well, now that we are on our hands and knees scouring the kitchen floor for the crystal, it seems a good moment to ponder the peculiar nature of restaurants, this recent discovery putting one into a thoughtful frame of mind.

  The kitchen—which in my experience is staffed by an extraordinarily diverse group of people who become an incredibly close team when dressed in their whites, inhabit a fairly inhospitable space, and produce delicious food on time at different times—is the heart of a restaurant. Even
speaking as a chef, a restaurant is not just the food (though let's not forget how vital that is), but it is more. It is the "whole catastrophe" which comes together to create the magic that can exist in a great restaurant. Genus loci (the spirit of time and place) is strong in the world of restaurants.

  When asked to cook a grand lunch at another establishment, could we make it very St John? We were delighted. Encapsulating spring and St John perfectly, we prepared a lunch of gull's eggs and celery salt, then a slice of jellied tripe. (I know the word tripe strikes fear into the stomachs of many, but we have won over the most fervent antitripists with jellied tripe.) This was followed by braised squirrel and wild garlic. Gamekeepers at this time of year are culling squirrel, as they are seen as vermin, so there is much squirrel around. It is delicious and cooks very well, rather like wild rabbit.

  This recipe, rather poetically with the aid of some dried cepes and the wilted garlic greens, re-created the bosky woods the squirrels came from. I popped my head out of the kitchen to see how the lunch went down, only to be met by the rather crushing comment: "That was a very brave menu." Now, if this lunch had taken place at St John, this comment would never have been made. It must be something to do with the musk and vibrations—the spirit of time and place.

  The magic is rife, the dining room full of happy eaters, you're serving food you and your chefs love and enjoy, and that pleasure gets passed through the food to the eater. Everyone is tucking in. It's fantastic. . . . Then lo and behold, we get a message that someone on table 27 says their grouse livers on toast are not grouse livers. Crash goes the magic. What's the point of cooking the rest of that person's lunch when they just said the kitchen is lying? Where's the joy in that? I'm sure people like that get indigestion. But let us not dwell on this sour occasion.

  The customer's tolerance, on the whole, is extraordinary. For example, one night pepper fell onto a hot flat top stove, causing an evil stinging smoke, which the dumbwaiter sucked up and proceeded to exhale into the dining room. It traveled like mustard gas through the trenches, table after table being affected, triggering coughing and spluttering. Strangely, once fresh air was made available and the gas attack was over, everyone was remarkably jovial about the whole affair; this was all part of the theater of the restaurant.

  But woe betide the chef who is late with their supper! Here is where the tolerance ends. It is the interesting thing in the whole equation: timing. However much people love the food, and whatever strange smells and punishing gases they agree to wilfully endure, they want the food on time. This is no dinner party at home where you can placate your guest with another round of martinis until you've put the final touches on your creation.

  A waiter came into the kitchen one evening and promptly collapsed on the floor in a writhing mess, his eyes rolling back into his head. An ambulance was called, but it was evident that he needed wiser and more prudent attention than fellow waiters or chefs could administer in the short term. So we stepped out of the kitchen and yelled "IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE?" Fortunately there was one who could do right by the waiter until he was wheeled away strapped to a stretcher. Now the yelling and the stretcher seem to come under the theater of a restaurant, not deflecting anyone's appetite, but the fact that we had emergency ward 10 going on in our kitchen did not seem to alter the fact that they still wanted their mains on time.

  Enough ruminating. It's time to get off my hands and knees; I can hear someone's found the crystal among a pile of oyster shells. With the crystal washed, dried, and safely returned to its cozy nook, service could resume, much to everyone's relief. Except for the floor staff. A waiter cannot say, "I'm afraid your dinner's been held up for ten minutes because the kitchen have all had to stop to look for a healing crystal that fell out of a hole in one of the chef's breasts, due to her self-mutilation in a horsy haze." Even though it was the truth.

  Just as a last reassuring note, I met the chef some years later. She's looking very well, I'm glad to report.

  (Not) Ready for My Close-up

  PAUL KAHAN

  Paul Kahan, winner of the 2004 James Beard Foundation's Best Chef/Midwest award, has been executive chef of Chicago's Blackbird since the restaurant opened in 1997. Prior to Blackbird, he worked at some of Chicago's best restaurants, including Metropolis Cafe, Metropolis 1800, Frontera Grill, and Topolo-bampo. Blackbird's accolades include a place on Gourmet magazine's list of Chicago's top five restaurants and the magazine's list of the country's top fifty restaurants. In 1999, Food & Wine Magazine placed Kahan on its Best New Chefs list. In September 2003, Kahan, along with Chef du Cuisine Koren Grieveson and his Blackbird team opened Avec, a wine bar located next door to Blackbird.

  A LOT OF GUYS who, like me, grew up in the era of celebrity chefs, are in it for the fame and glory. But that's not what attracted me. I came to cooking relatively late in life—in my early twenties—and got into it because I love the work, not because I need to see my mug in the papers, or on television.

  But public relations is important, so you do what you need to in order to get your name and the name of your restaurant out there. You provide recipes to magazines. You share tips with the local papers. You go on television when your publicist can swing it. It all helps get the word out and keeps the dining masses aware of your restaurant and what you do there.

  Despite my appreciation of this fact, there's one element of the PR mix that I've never been particularly comfortable with: the live cooking demo. I'm happy to demonstrate just about anything for one of my cooks, or even for a home cook looking for a little professional advice. But cooking demos, it seems to me, are a time when people expect chefs to ham it up, to crack jokes and clown around and really make a show of it. That's just not my style. If I wanted to do all that, I'd have become an actor.

  Nevertheless, about three years ago, one of the national food magazines threw a food festival in the Grand Ballroom at the end of Navy Pier, a big attraction on Lake Michigan that's about a quarter-mile long and quite wide. Once a naval docking station, Navy Pier was converted years ago into a site for festivals, antiques shows, and so on. There are shops and a Ferris wheel and a children's museum and . . . well, you get the idea. At the end of the pier is the ballroom, a gigantic, domed space that's used for conventions and other special events.

  As part of this festival, a representative from one of the major cooking-equipment companies convinced me to do a demo for them. I was told that it was a simple affair: I'd prepare the same dish three times for three different audiences, then people would file out of the auditorium into a little makeshift cafe where they'd sample another dish from my restaurant, prepared and served by a sous-chef and some line cooks we'd bring along for the day.

  This sounded like the kind of thing that would be an ordeal for me, so I was hesitant. In fact, I initially declined. Even when the event's organizing chef told me it would be no big deal, I still had my doubts. I didn't know why, but something was tingling in the back of my head, telling me there was more here than met the eye.

  Nevertheless, I eventually agreed to do it. The dish would be Seared Diver Scallop with Wild Mushrooms, Sea Beans, and Meyer Lemon, a collection of slightly exotic ingredients finished with a warm Meyer lemon vinaigrette that was emulsified with butter.

  On the morning of the demo, I arrived at the Navy Pier, parked out back behind the service entrance, and found my way to the little holding area that served as a backstage of sorts. I had brought my own chef coat along, with my restaurant's logo on the left breast, but before I could put it on, one of the cooking company's reps handed me a new one, with the name of the company emblazoned on the front, and my name, in smaller letters, above it.

  I found that a bit odd, but it was nothing compared to the surprise I was about to receive: when I stepped into the amphitheater, I discovered that the room was set up as a gargantuan demonstration pit, with a full kitchen in the center and seats surrounding it on all sides—360 degrees of audience. Moreover, the sheer volume was astounding: th
ere had to be two thousand seats.

  As if that weren't daunting enough, above the kitchen hung a huge 12-foot banner with a close-up of my face on it, and above the photo, in big block letters, my name and the name of my restaurant. When I saw that, my heart sank. This was a setting fit for a heavyweight fight, not a cooking demo.

  Before I could protest, the crowd began to file in, a nonstop procession of Chicago-area food enthusiasts who had purchased tickets to see me cook. They filled every last seat.

  A techie appeared from out of nowhere and clipped a little microphone onto my jacket, the house lights dimmed, and there I was, expected to perform.

  I began the demonstration, slowly, tentatively, not feeling my best, beginning with some basic instruction on how to shop for and properly clean a diver scallop.

  And that's when my cell phone rang.

  Here's the thing with the cell phone: it's my lifeline to my restaurant, and more importantly, to the love of my life, my wife, Mary. Mary and I have been together for about twelve years and we're just as in love now as we always have been.