Don't Try This at Home

by Andrew Friedman

  No single person inspired more people to become waiters at the Perpignan culinary institute than the tough-but-fair manager-instructor of the school's restaurant, Monsieur Moccan. M. Moccan was like a Dickens character: well into his forties, he was a chubby, slightly hunchbacked, bespectacled figure who strode through the dining room greeting customers with one voice and using another, stronger, firmer voice to correct any mistakes in his path.

  M. Moccan thought I was the best waiter in my class, and he took every opportunity to tell me so. He tried to push me, more than anyone, out to the front of the house for the rest of my life.

  But I never changed my answer: I wanted to work in the kitchen.

  Toward the end of my first year of school, a decision had to be made about what the focus of my second year, and consequently my career, would be. Of course, my mind was made up, but I was only sixteen, and they wanted me in the dining room, so it was decided that my mother and stepfather would make the drive from Andorra, have lunch in our restaurant, and meet with the administrators to discuss my future.

  To make the day as special as possible, and afford me an opportunity to impress my family, M. Moccan appointed me sommelier for the afternoon. The thought was that with nothing to do put pour wine and shuttle cocktails from the bar to the tables, an accomplished waiter like me would have an easy time of it and put a big smile on Mom's face.

  I donned the regulation waiter's uniform (white jacket with epaulets, bow tie, black pants, black socks, and leather shoes), and began the shift uneventfully, walking the midsized room, surveying the hundred or so seats, just as comfortable as I always was.

  As the lunch service progressed and the dining room filled to capacity, a real military man came into our little academy: a colonel from the French army, about sixty years old, rather skinny, in uniform, with his wife and a civilian couple. I took their cocktail orders, got the drinks from the bartender, and returned with one of our round, rimmed drinks trays balanced on my open palm. Before I could get one glass on the table, something happened that had never happened before: I lost control of the tray, turning all four drinks over on the colonel and soaking his beautiful starched uniform.

  To his credit, the colonel didn't lose his composure. He wasn't happy, but he was a true gentleman about my mistake and he sat there patiently while I patted his back dry.

  M. Moccan hurried over to the scene of the disaster and pulled me aside, supportive as ever. "Don't get stressed out. The guy's going to be okay. He's knows it's the restaurant of the school." But he was also just as firm as he always was. "Go fill up your tray again, come back, and serve them," he instructed. "You have to finish the job."

  So I got the drinks again and came back as fast as I could. It turns out I came back too fast because they hadn't had a chance to clean the floor. As I approached the colonel's wife, I slipped on the ice cubes from the first disaster and upended the tray on her. I expected her to start screaming, but I think they were all in shock at this point. Nobody said a word to me as I did my best to clean the table and help her dry herself off.

  Once again, M. Moccan began whispering in my ear, telling me to go back to the bar and finish the job. I remember thinking that I hadn't even started it yet.

  When I returned to the bar, the bartender looked at me as though he had just found out I had six weeks to live—his eyes conveyed pity, sadness, and discomfort. With a sigh, he replenished my tray once again and I gingerly made my way back to my little table of horrors. En route, I noticed that a quarter-inch of water had collected in the well of the tray. Convinced that lightning couldn't possibly strike three times, and unwilling to lose any more time before successfully serving the table their drinks, I resolved simply to be careful and leave the water where it was. I delivered three of the drinks without incident, then turned to the colonel. He nodded slightly to me. I nodded in return. And as I reached for his drink, the tray tipped, spilling the water right in his face.

  That was it. The colonel shot up out of his chair and began screaming, "That's enough! Get this guy out of here!"

  I flinched, taking a few nervous backward steps. But he wasn't yelling at me. He was yelling at M. Moccan, who was suddenly nowhere to be found—until I spotted him through the little window in the kitchen door, laughing uncontrollably, unable to compose himself and return to the dining room.

  "As for you . . ." the colonel shouted at me. And I stood there while he dressed me down in full view of the customers, who watched in awe, and my mother, slowly turning green, struggled to understand why the school so desperately wanted her son to become a waiter.

  I never did get to spend time at my mother's table that day, and I'm sure I didn't impress her, especially with where I ended up next: demoted to dishwasher. But at least I had found my way back to the kitchen, and I never came out again.

  You're in the Army Now

  ALAIN SAILHAC

  Alain Sailhac began his career in France in the 1950s, cooking at the Hotel Claridge and Hotel Normandie. He worked in kitchens all over the world before moving to New York City and becoming executive chef of Le Cygne, where he earned the first four-star rating ever awarded by the New York Times. He went on to become the executive chef at Le Cirque, which also earned four stars. Among his many honors is being named Chef of the Year by the Master Chefs of France in 1997. He currently serves as executive vice president and senior dean of studies of the French Culinary Institute in New York City.

  IN 1956, I was called upon to serve my mandatory time in the French army. Because I was a cook with experience in Paris restaurants, I was appointed chef de cuisine of a base that abutted the "Zone Interdict," the dangerous no-man's-land on the border of Tunisia and Algeria, which was fighting for its independence.

  The base was an odd collection of barracks, tents, and houses that had been abandoned by their fearful occupants. I was in charge of two kitchens and a staff of about twenty cooks. The food in the army wasn't very exciting. For breakfast, we served coffee and bread. Then we served lunch and dinner in the mess hall, a big tent with long wooden tables and folding wooden chairs.

  As chef de cuisine, I was also in charge of cooking special meals for visiting generals and preparing daily rations for the men—essentially anything having to do with food was my responsibility. The rations were a nighttime job; I'd spend hours packing up little boxes with the designated provisions, including two cigarettes per soldier. It was one of the reasons that I developed a schedule shared only by the camp lookouts: I'd work at night, killing the downtime by playing poker with the other insomniacs, and sleep during the day.

  There were several kitchen challenges unique to a military base. For one thing, the number of soldiers stationed there changed all the time; one day you might be cooking for a thousand guys, the next for fifty, so meal preparation involved plenty of improvisation and last-minute adjustments.

  For dinner, we made stew a lot because it was the smart thing to do with the tough pieces of meat we were supplied by the military; and if you had extra, you could serve it again a day or two later. Occasionally, we'd get a good leg or shank of some animal and we'd roast it, but even then it sometimes came out chewy. There's only so much you can do with poor ingredients.

  But sometimes we got lucky. Our base was very secluded; you couldn't set foot outside its perimeter because we were under constant bombardment by the enemy. Two rings of barbed-wire fences surrounded the compound, with just enough room between them to walk around the circumference of the encampment.

  Sentries were on the lookout at all times, training rifles on the rugged terrain. Their orders were to shoot anything that moved, on sight, because if the enemy was within range, that meant we were within their range, and there wasn't a second to spare.

  So, they'd see something move, and they'd shoot it dead. More often than not it wasn't an enemy soldier, but rather a wild cow, donkey, pig, or some other animal that had stumbled into view. When that happened, they would sneak out into the no-man's-land outside
the camp and quickly drag the carcass back, delivering it to my kitchen door. I'd come up with something to do with it, and run it as a special.

  Even with these occasional treats, however, the men were still apt to complain about the lack of meat. And who could blame them? They were risking their lives; they deserved a good meal.

  So one day, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I grabbed my rifle, went out to the edge of the base, and began walking along inside the barbed-wire corridor, my eyes trained on the craggy land just beyond my reach.

  Before too long, I spotted a wild steer grazing on a meager patch of grass. With enthusiastic thoughts of the meal I would soon prepare, I raised my rifle, took aim, and squeezed the trigger.

  But I missed—the shot ricocheted off a nearby rock.

  The steer spun its head around in my direction and, with a snort, it started charging at me. I got off another shot, but only nicked him in the side, making him even angrier. He picked up steam, running so hard that I was sure he was going to burst right though the fence and trample me to death.

  I was frozen in my tracks, unable to turn and run.

  My heart racing, I got down on one knee. With slippery, shaky hands, I aimed my rifle, steadying its butt on my shoulder.

  This time, I was patient. Waiting. Waiting.

  Finally, I pulled the trigger.

  Boom! I hit the steer right in the head, dropping him instantly.

  I sank to the ground, looking up to the heavens in relief.

  I was saddened and upset. Sure, I had been butchering animals for years, but I had never killed anything larger than a chicken. And I certainly never found myself fighting for my life against an animal bound for the kitchen.

  It's funny, I suppose, that this was the most intense life-and-death moment I experienced in the army, but it didn't seem so at the time. The men were happy to have beef for dinner that night, but this horrible incident haunted me for days.

  Accidents happen in the army. They happen with machinery. They happen with coordinates and directions. And they happen with food.

  Every day, at four in the morning, I made coffee, 200 liters of it, in a big, stainless-steel vat. Then I sweetened it with about 12 pounds of sugar.

  As the chef, and the only person in the mess hall at that hour, I got to have the first cup of the day. So one morning, as usual, I made the coffee, added the sugar, poured myself a cup, and took a sip.

  I spit it right out.

  It was the most disgusting coffee I had ever tasted. I looked at the cup, then at the vat, in search of some kind of explanation. But it looked fine. Had I imagined it? I was pretty tired. Curious, I tasted it again—and immediately spit it out again.

  I wasn't imagining anything. And then it hit me, what must have happened. I had put 12 pounds of something in the coffee, alright, but it wasn't sugar.

  It was salt.

  In the army, you can't just make another 200-liter vat of coffee, because you don't have extra provisions like that. So to try to cover up my mistake, I added 12 pounds of sugar to the vat.

  I poured myself a cup and tasted it.

  Somehow, it was even worse.

  What was I going to do? Soldiers need their coffee. They love their coffee. But what could I possibly do? Baffled, I decided to say nothing, just wait and see. Maybe nobody would notice.

  Within minutes, the first soldiers began coming in for breakfast. A group of four men each took a hunk of bread and fixed themselves a cup of coffee, then sat at a table.

  All four took a sip.

  And all four spit it out.

  One of the men waved me over.

  "What'd you put in this coffee?" he growled at me.

  "Why, nothing. What's wrong?"

  "It's disgusting."

  "Maybe there's something wrong with the coffee. I'll go check," I said, and left, hoping that maybe they would leave before noticing that I never came back.

  But already more soldiers were on the way. It was a busy week at the base and about four hundred men had slept there the night before.

  I watched from the kitchen as soldier after soldier went through the same routine: pouring a coffee, sitting, tasting it, spitting it out, and then looking around for a chef to scream at.

  Soon enough, four hundred people had spit out their coffee and a big, angry mob was beginning to form.

  Finally, I emerged from the kitchen, admitted my mistake, and made my apologies to the troops. They laughed and shook it off.

  But not the base commandant. He was so upset with me that he sentenced me to one week in the brig.

  Hearing of this, my captain upped the punishment to two weeks.

  The brig wasn't really a prison. It was just a small, standalone room with a locked door. There was no actual cell and no other prisoners with me. While I was there, I slept a lot, and talked though the window to the guard who paced back and forth outside with a rifle resting on his shoulder. Three times a day, he'd let me out and we'd go for a walk.

  It ended up being a nice little break. I was almost disappointed when they let me out of the brig after just one week.

  Each soldier is supposed to serve twelve to eighteen months in the army, but because we were at war, I ended up staying in the army for twenty-eight months. They say that time in the military builds character, and mine certainly did: I never shot another living thing and I never put salt in the coffee again.

  The Big Chill

  MARCUS SAMUELSSON

  The youngest chef ever to receive three stars from the New York Times, and winner of the James Beard Foundation Award for Rising Star Chef in 1999 and Best Chef/New York City in 2003, Marcus Samuelsson was born in Ethiopia, raised in Sweden, and trained all over the world, before making Swedish food hip at Restaurant Aquavit in Midtown Manhattan. He is also an author of cookbooks in both Sweden and the United States.

  THE GLORIFICATIONOF celebrity chefs has created the impression that my colleagues, and the cooks who work for us, spend our lives clowning around in the kitchen, then head off into the night, gallivanting around town and partying until dawn.

  Sure, there are moments like that for any chef or cook, but generally speaking, our work is more serious and taxing than most people realize. This is especially true of ambitious culinary students and novice cooks who lead disciplined, cruelly solitary existences that can be aptly compared to those of Olympic trainees or long-distance runners. They might blow off steam together after work, but for the most part, their goal demands stamina of the mind and body and a single-minded devotion to their work. Without that sense of purpose, it's likely that they'll crack under the pressure, retreating from the industry or letting it destroy them.

  I've seen guys crack in all kinds of ways. I once saw a cook so fatigued and distracted that he stuck his hand in a meat grinder and didn't get it out until four fingers were gone. I've seen good cooks driven to acts of self-destruction, going broke or turning to heroin. It's always the same: the pressure slowly builds, sometimes over several years, until they simply can't take it anymore. They say "fuck it" and do something drastic and stupid.

  Kitchen professionals are prone to breakdowns because nobody cares about their problems. At the end of the day, you're all alone. When you fuck up, nobody wants to know the reason; they just want to chew you out and leave you to pick up the pieces.

  There have been many moments in my career when I, myself, was this close to throwing in the towel. Like when I worked for a cruise line and the entremetier (cook in charge of vegetable preparations), after months of smooth sailing, suddenly "went down"—a phrase we used to describe when someone fell victim to seasickness. Normally we'd have called the corporate headquarters and had a replacement cook flown in to meet us at our next port of call. But we were too far out to sea to orchestrate a switch. Like any true pro, the entremetier tried his best to hang in there, working himself so hard that he vomited, repeatedly, into a garbage can right at his station. Finally we kicked him out, and in a gesture of camaraderi
e, attempted to cover for him by divvying up his dishes, one to the meat station, one to the fish station, and so on.

  That didn't work. It's just too much to monitor the doneness of fifteen pieces of fish and saute, say, some brussels sprouts to order—so even though the entremetier tried his best, and the rest of us were doing one-and-a-half jobs each, all that mattered was whether or not the kitchen unit was getting the job done, and we weren't. Everybody, and I mean everybody', came into the kitchen to chew us out, including the captain of the ship itself.

  You know that old expression, "It's not whether you win or lose; it's how you play the game." That line was definitely not coined by a chef. Because for a chef, it's only about whether or not you pull through. If you fail, nobody cares how hard you tried.

  My loneliest, most discouraging professional moment came in the winter of 1988 when—thanks to the placement department of my culinary school—I was hired as a commis (lowest cook on the totem pole; a cog in the culinary machine) at La Terrasse, the fine dining room of the Victoria-Jungfrau hotel in Interlaken, Switzerland, an insanely ritzy hotel that catered to a mix of superwealthy Americans, Europeans, and Arabs, many of whom stayed for months at a time.

  The kitchens of Victoria-Jungfrau in general, and La Terrasse in particular, had a reputation more or less comparable to that of the Navy Seals boot camp. The assumption was that they would break you and you would quit or be fired, and go crawling back to wherever you had come from. Turnover was so brisk that new students arrived every day, from places as far away as India and Japan. The upside was that those who survived were the best of the best, exactly the people you'd want to work with and learn from. And if you yourself could make it through all the hardships, then you'd be a better man, and a better cook.