Don't Try This at Home

by Andrew Friedman

  "You stupid American," they would say, shaking their heads in mock contempt. And I'd answer back, "If it wasn't for us Americans, you'd be speaking German!" Then Carl and Xavier would crack up, laughing their big, meaty chuckles. It was a routine we did at least once a day.

  Eventually I got on well with everyone in the kitchen, including the pastry guys—though I can't remember their names anymore—and the other Japanese guy, Mitzu, a great cook with an infectious grin and a great sense of humor. I loved singing to Mitzu; my favorite song was a faux Irish number that I serenaded him with every day: "His name was Mitzu, oh Mitzu, O'Reilly"

  So, once the ice was broken, things were great for me at Chapel. I loved waking up in the morning and coming to work, then going out with the guys after the dinner shift. I even saw my enemy, Sushi Guy, humbled. One night after service I was going out to a moules-frites joint with the Belgians and Sushi Guy forced himself on us, tagging along without an invitation. We got crazy-drunk, and Sushi Guy spent the entire night out of control, fighting off bouts of nausea and being unbelievably loud and undignified—bursting out in laughter one moment, and looking like he might pass out, or throw up, the next.

  In the morning, when we got to work, Sushi Guy sheepishly tried to apologize to us and explain himself. Big mistake. We really didn't care; if anything, his night of debauchery had humanized him. But in apologizing, he firmly established himself as King Geek of the Universe and his clout in the kitchen plummeted. Even in a French kitchen, it's possible to be too square.

  By the third month, I was as at home at Alain Chapel as I ever was in New York or New Jersey. Maybe too much at home . . .

  One day, things in the kitchen were particularly laid back. It was one of our dead days for lunch, and all morning Anton, Ernest, and I were picking on the Belgians.

  "Hey, shut up, you stupid American."

  "You know if it wasn't for us stupid Americans, you'd all be speaking German right now."

  "Ha ha ha ha ha."

  Like that.

  This had been going on for hours when I went into the walk-in to get some fish. Carl and Xavier were in there and as soon as they saw me, they started up with the whole stupid-American routine again.

  I was so at ease by this point that I had totally reverted back to my childhood self—which wasn't really that far in the past anyway.

  I stepped up to Xavier, pulled his arm toward me in a wresting maneuver, spinning him around and getting him in a headlock from behind. As he struggled, we both twisted around, grazing one of the shelves. Its contents bounced violently, then settled.

  At some point during my struggle with Xavier, Anton and Ernest had wandered into the walk-in; the next thing I knew, Carl and Ernest were going at it. They weren't punching each other—there was barely enough room in there to throw a decent haymaker—no, they had grabbed each other by the shoulders and were grappling for control. Finally, Carl—the 6-foot Belgian—managed to gain some momentum and thrust Ernest into the back of the walk-in. The shelves there—built for easy removal—broke away, like in an action movie where staircases and windows explode on contact. I remember thinking, like a little kid, how cool that was, and I let Xavier push me into the shelf behind me so I could be like a superhero myself. Sure enough, as I connected, the shelves in my path gave way: rectangular plastic containers of perfectly chopped shallots, carrots, and celery came crashing down to the ground, spilling their contents all over the place.

  Carl spun around to witness Anton coming up behind him, ready to avenge the downing of Ernest.

  "Yaaaaaah!"

  But Carl was already in full flow. He caught the charging Anton like he was a ballerina and flung him aside. Those shelves crashed next and buckets of stock—clear vegetable, blond chicken, dark veal—fell to the ground, bursting open on contact, and splashing all over the ground.

  It was an all-out food fight—the Fish Guys versus the Meat Guys—but instead of throwing food at each other, we were throwing each other at the food.

  Through all of this, Xavier and I were still struggling for dominance, spinning around and around, and each time we grazed a shelf, something else would be knocked over. Finally, I twisted him too hard and we lost our balance; we crashed into an overturned crate of herbs, collapsing on the floor.

  "The Fish Guys win!" I shouted. "We still have one guy standing."

  "No fair, you stupid American, there's three of you and only two of us."

  We could've probably argued all day, but suddenly Carl's face froze. Anton and I turned around to see what he was looking at.

  Maurice, the chef de cuisine, Chapel's lieutenant, was standing in the doorway of the walk-in, shaking his head sadly from side to side.

  "Chapel's going to be here tonight," Maurice said, all business. "We have a lot of reservations. So you better get going and clean this up."

  Then he left. It was as merciful a response as I can imagine.

  None of us took our lunch break that day. While the other cooks left to enjoy their afternoon break, we stayed to clean up the walk-in, wiping down the walls and mopping the floor. And we busted our butts all afternoon to catch up, making quickie stocks and slicing fruits and vegetables so fast that it's a miracle one of us didn't lose a finger.

  As well as we did, we were still a little behind: a few things were unready for service that night. So when Chapel showed up, Maurice was forced to tell him what had happened. The master was very cold to us that night—it was a quiet, harsh evening in the kitchen.

  I left Chapel after six months, when my money ran out and I needed to get back home to some paying work. I stayed in touch with many of the other cooks, and for a long time. We wrote to each other for years, before we moved on to other friendships, to families, to—dare I say it?—our adult lives.

  I still hear about them once in a while. A few years ago, a couple I know returned from the Riviera and were telling me about the restaurants. There was one they hadn't made it to, a little place in Provence run by a hot young Japanese chef they had heard about named Mitzu.

  "I know him!" I said, then started singing: "His name was Mitzu, oh Mitzu, O'Reilly:'

  I broke off, lost in a memory of that kitchen, those guys, and our daily taunting and torments, our little playpen in the back of a three-star Michelin restaurant.

  When I came to, my friends were looking at me like I was nuts.

  "Sorry," I said to them. "You were saying?"

  Friends and Family

  LAURENT TOURONDEL

  Laurent Tourondel honed his craft in the world's great cities—Paris, London, Moscow, and New York—working for such masters as the Troisgros family and Joel Robuchon. While serving as executive chef at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, he was named one of Food & Wine Magazine's Ten Best New Chefs in 1998. His next stop was Cello in New York City, where he was awarded three stars by the New York Times in 1999, the same year New York Magazine named him one of ninty-nine people to watch. In 2004, he opened BLT Steak, Bistro Laurent Tourondel, and followed it in 2005 with BLT Fish. His first cookbook, Go Fish, was published in 2004.

  THERE'S AN ANAGRAM used in just about every kitchen in the English-speaking world: VIP. It stands—as it does outside of the kitchen—for "very important person."

  There are a number of reasons you might designate a customer VIP. He or she might be an affluent regular who comes in often and spends a considerable amount on wine. He or she might be a celebrity who is accustomed to special treatment. Or he or she might be a fellow chef whom you admire.

  You do what you can for VIP customers, wanting them to feel well taken care of. You might give them one of the better tables in the house, or maybe send them a little something extra, like a midcourse or some desserts. If they order foie gras, you might have the waiter bring out a glass of Sauternes, the sweet dessert wine, as an accompaniment. That kind of thing.

  The craziest gesture I ever made for a VIP customer was to open a new restaurant on a day when I should have stayed in bed. But, of cours
e, you don't know such things until it's too late.

  As I tell this story, I've just opened BLT Fish, the second of three restaurants bearing my new brand, Bistro Laurent Tourondel. The first was BLT Steak, which opened in March 2004 in midtown Manhattan and was an instant success.

  Did I say "instant success"?

  Better make that "almost instant success." Because our first night was an evening I'd like to forget.

  At the beginning of 2004,1 hadn't cooked professionally in a year and a half. The owner of my last restaurant, a three-star jewel box called Cello on the Upper East Side, had closed it unceremoniously—while I was away in Venezuela, no less—and I had spent the past eighteen months recovering from the shock, distracting myself by writing a cookbook, traveling, and meeting with a number of restaurateurs, investors, and potential partners who wanted to brainstorm concepts for my next place.

  Though I was spending a lot of time in other cities and countries, there was never any doubt that I'd stay in New York. I love being a New York City chef, and I wasn't planning to go anywhere.

  The result of this lengthy period of professional blind-dating was that I ended up "married" to Jimmy Haber, a tall, slender, perpetually youthful-looking New Yorker who owned two spaces that he periodically transformed into new restaurants. One was in Chelsea; the other in Midtown.

  Jimmy and I decided to open BLT Steak, in the Midtown location, which was to mark my return to the New York spotlight.

  More casual than Cello, with a focus on beef, sides, and sauces, BLT Steak was a concept that seemed right in line with the times, including an a la carte menu—one of the big trends of the early 2000s—that invited each diner to create his or her own meal, drawing from lists of cuts of beef, a few fish, sides, and sauces.

  At a time when most kitchens are geared to completing entire dishes—a protein, a starch, and a vegetable plated together—this approach would be new to my team of five cooks. As a result, one of the biggest question marks was how well my team, most of whom had just met that week, would coordinate themselves. I had a few young veterans, like Mark Forgione, son of the great American chef Larry Forgione, whom I had hired as my meat man, the guy on the grill. But two of my cooks were new to the big leagues, trying their hand on the hot line for the first time, having only worked garde manger (salads and cold appetizers) before.

  The early signs, however, were positive. We had done well with the restaurant equivalent of dress rehearsals: two "friends and family" nights in which VIP guests, personal friends, and relatives of the owners come in for a free meal in exchange for acting as our guinea pigs, letting us work out any kinks in our system on their time.

  Those evenings had gone off without a hitch. The friends and family members had loved the space—you entered past a small 277 lounge, shadowed a long bar, and emerged into an intimate dining room, with plush seats and lacquered wooden tables. On the back wall was a bulletin board on which we posted the menu, the wine list, and nightly specials. And the staff had been crisp and attentive from the start, consummate professionals who did a good job of shepherding customers through our potentially confusing menu.

  Our first "official" night was to be a Saturday. Jimmy and I decided to soft-pedal the opening, delaying the announcement to the media so we could start slowly, get comfortable, and pick things up at our own pace. This kind of debut is known in the industry as a "soft opening" and another good reason for it is to fly under the radar of the food critics, so they don't show up on your first or second day, when you're still getting your bearings.

  But when I walked into the restaurant on Saturday morning and checked the computer's reservation system, I saw that we were expecting an even quieter evening than I would have liked. In fact, there were just two parties on the books.

  I spoke to Jimmy about this.

  "Should we close for the night and open on Monday?" he offered.

  Unfortunately we couldn't wait until Monday, I explained, because one of the customers was a super-VlP from my old Cello days, an honest-to-goodness princess from a faraway country I'd rather not name, who was a loyal longtime customer.

  "Okay, then," Jimmy said, considering his options. "I'll invite a few friends."

  What the hell, I thought. We'll open as planned, our VIP will come in as expected, and we'll have one more friends and family night in the bag. A real win-win situation.

  Or so I thought.

  ***

  Our first few hours that night were silent, as you'd expect of a restaurant on East Fifty-seventh Street that nobody knew was open on a winter Saturday. I was standing around the kitchen with my team of five cooks, just hanging out and talking.

  This isn't such a bad night, I remember thinking. We're all getting a chance to know one another.

  Not that we weren't ready to cook: our ingredients were prepped, our ovens were fired up, and we were eager to spring into action. There just weren't any customers.

  After a few hours of this, at about eight o'clock, Kelly, a normally unshakable manager, came running into the kitchen. She was uncharacteristically pale, and short of breath. Beads of sweat broke out on her forehead before our eyes. As she fanned herself with her hand, she told us that eighty-five people had just walked in the door and were ordering drinks at the bar.

  The friends and family had arrived.

  I thought back to my conversation with Jimmy. Should I have mentioned that his guests should be spread out over four or five hours? I guess I thought it was obvious.

  It's true what they say: never assume anything.

  Kelly was followed almost immediately by Keith, my dining room manager, who arrived with a detailed description of the scene: although many of the guests had tables reserved in their names, they didn't want to sit yet, preferring to wait for Jimmy to arrive, and then toast his new venture, wishing him well. The result was that the restaurant had turned into one big cocktail party with the eighty-five guests mingling uproariously, with no idea of how much anxiety was being produced in the kitchen.

  When Jimmy finally showed up, he made the rounds, cordially greeting his guests. Keith suggested that perhaps they should get a few people seated and let the ordering commence, in an attempt to pace things.

  Jimmy walked around, tapping guests on the shoulder and ushering them into the dining room. When they saw the trend, others followed, and before long the entire eighty-five had made their way in to dinner.

  But they didn't take their seats.

  Instead, they continued to socialize and table-hop and say hi to Jimmy and so on. Tables reserved for four were pulling up chairs and becoming tables for eight.

  This would have been fine at a banquet function—a Bar Mitzvah, say, or a wedding—where you're served a salad, a choice of salmon or steak, and a predetermined dessert. But in a restaurant like BLT Steak, with about fifty menu items, it was a recipe for disaster.

  In the kitchen, my team and I were waiting, bracing ourselves for the coming storm. All of our eyes were on the little machine that spit out tickets as orders were punched into a computer by the waitstaff in the dining room.

  Finally, the computer spit out one ticket.

  I grabbed it and began calling out the first order ever at BLT Steak.

  "Okay," I said, with a smile, not having done this in more than a year. "Let me have two rib eye-"

  Before I could get the words out of my mouth, the machine printed another ticket.

  And another.

  And another.

  Andanotherandanotherandanotherandanotherandanother . . .

  A hot New York restaurant, packed to the gills with customers, on its busiest Saturday night of the year, will still find a way to stagger the orders. The most tickets you'd ever see in a flurry would be about ten.

  In the space of two minutes, we had received thirty-five.

  My team and I knew then and there that we were dead. The only question was how long we had to live.

  Trying to put on my best face, I continued calling out that fir
st order and one by one the guys got to work. The more seasoned cooks, like Mark, got going with grim determination, the younger ones with visible anxiety, their hands shaking, their eyes wide with fear. They had lost that swagger most kitchen guys have, that confidence that governs all actions, from the squirting of oil into a hot pan to the last sprinkling of salt on a dish as it goes up in the window for pickup.

  Keith tipped us off that Jimmy himself was seated at a table of thirteen people. We had our eye out for his ticket and somehow managed to pull it out of the throng. He and his guests had ordered pretty much what you'd expect—an assortment of steaks including four rib eyes, some fish, and a selection of sides. We got his order out, slightly relieved, and went on to the rest.

  But not two minutes later, Jimmy's four rib eyes came back, along with the two fish. He and his guests felt that these dishes were undercooked. Just what we needed—a mistake on the owner's table. We dropped everything, redid those orders, then went back to work hacking away at the others.

  By now, we had all eighty-five tickets in the kitchen. Because of the unique structure of the menu, one table's order could be 80 percent complete and still not go out. For example, if a table had ordered four steaks, creamed spinach, potatoes, and mushrooms, everything but the mushrooms could be ready and the other components would have to wait.

  Every time a waiter came into the kitchen, we'd have to take a survey of each station. So, if he came in and said "Is Table Twenty-two ready?" we'd go around the room:

  Meat guy: "Yes!"

  Fish guy: "Yes!"

  Veg guy: "No."

  One single "no" on a table became an overall veto, meaning that the food for that table would have to stay in the kitchen for the time being. So, the waiter would try a different table: "How about Table Thirty-seven?"