Dirty Dishes

by Andrew Friedman

  The only thing that’s kept me sane is that I’ve become better at recognizing the two biggest problems, which are laziness and attitude. A good busboy or waiter is somebody who knows that he needs to spend time on the bottom rung of the ladder before moving up, and who understands that he needs to put in the time and sweat to learn and pay his dues. When I see that commitment and passion, I become a mentor. For every waiter or busboy I ever unceremoniously dismissed, there’s another who became a great American success story. Last I heard, Fuzzi was running his own chain of take-out restaurants in Long Island, and a former waiter opened his own Italian restaurant in Newburgh, New York.

  Back in my formative days, I believed that I could turn any employee into such a model citizen. After observing the culture of indifference that defined the table-waiting trade in New York at the time, I decided to do something about it, and as usual I called on my theater roots. Today, the nightly staff meeting is a given in every restaurant in New York City—a time for the manager to brief the waitstaff about the nightly specials and other orders of business so that everybody is synched up. But back then, there wasn’t such a thing. I started holding a nightly meeting at Il Cantinori based on the preshow powwow we had held in my theater days in Rome, when we’d review the staging of the play. The meeting was my first performance of the evening, followed by the one I did for the customers. I’d gather all the waiters in the dining room, and my presentation always began the same way: “I’ve been here since nine o’clock this morning, cooking the food you are going to be serving tonight. Now let me tell you a little about it so that you can explain it to your customers.” And then I’d give them a culinary lesson. If we were serving chicken livers, I’d explain that they were small, whole chicken livers, immaculately cleaned, and served medium-rare so they didn’t dry out. We obtained their flavor by sautéing them in a very hot pan with white wine and sprinkling them with salt and black pepper at the last second. “If you describe it like this, you’ll sell it,” I’d say. “If you don’t, it’ll just sound like chopped liver.” Same with steak Florentine: if you just say, “It’s a steak, seared and sliced, with hot olive oil,” you’ve already lost them. But if you say, “Our steak Florentine is prepared the authentic way. The chef takes a two-inch-thick prime steak, oils it, seasons it with salt and pepper, and grills it, catching the drippings, which get added to a sizzling hot herb oil that’s poured over the steak just before serving,” they’ll be intrigued. I’d try to speak their language a little bit, asking them to describe the food as if they were auditioning for Hamlet and even throwing in a bit of financial incentive. “You do it right and people will tip for your passion.” My nightly meetings ran about an hour, which is long even by today’s standards, and when Marian Burros reviewed us in the New York Times and wrote that the waiters “knowledgeably and graciously explain[ed] the dishes,” I felt like they were worth every minute.

  But for every happy incident, there was a horror story. One night, I overheard a waiter describe ribollita to a customer as “overcooked vegetable soup.” As soon as he turned away from the table, I ambushed him, took him by the elbow, and dragged him over to the side of the room. “Overcooked vegetable soup?” I asked incredulously. “I’ll overcook your fucking mother.” Then I reminded him of everything I’d said before service, recounting the long history of the dish and how we, like my mother had done, sautéed each vegetable individually. When I finished, I said, “I hear you say that again and you’ll be out of here on your overcooked ass.”

  Just as Fuzzi and Mr. Chow won my affection in the busboy department, I also had three or four great waiters, and I had a wide-open mind about what constituted greatness. Really, all I cared about was sincerity and professionalism, and I appreciated them in whatever package they came in. For example, there was Ray, a waiter from Kansas City who was about as different from me as you could get: a nerdy, mustachioed guy who made up for his non–New York persona with his enthusiasm for food and a romantic view of the business. Ray was engaged to an Asian woman and Chinese food was his first culinary passion, but during his tenure at Il Cantinori, Italian cuisine became a close second. At every preservice meeting, he would sit forward in his chair and listen as attentively as a star pupil, then he’d take the explanation of the dishes and make them his own when he spoke to his customers.

  I looked at employees like Ray as friends and allies. But the rest were a constant disappointment.

  The ultimate bad-waiter story took place one night after Il Canti-nori had been open for about a year. In the middle of service, I noticed that one of the waiters had been absent from the dining room for about fifteen minutes. I went searching for him, eventually opening the door to the walk-in refrigerator downstairs, where I found him, seated at the shelf of a utility rack which he had set up like his own private dining table, complete with a placemat and a glass of wine, and he was tucking into a plate of pasta. When I found him there, I cursed him out and locked him in, returning later to find him shivering in a corner, with lettuce leaves, strips of cardboard, and other meat-locker miscellany wrapped around his limbs in a desperate bid to stay warm.

  That might seem severe, but actions like his had the potential to undo everything that I had worked so hard for and it pissed me off, not just because I was paying these people and they were making great tips, but because I was also a wonderful host to them. For dinner service, they showed up to work at four o’clock. By four thirty, they were sitting in my restaurant, chowing down on my food. Most restaurants in those days served mediocre staff meals, but I cooked mine as if I were serving my own family. There’d always be two courses: pasta and meat, or soup followed by fish or meat. They’d even be welcome to sit and sip an espresso afterward. Then, at five o’clock, during our nightly meeting, I shared with them the most intimate details of my life, and a little history lesson about Tuscan food. After that, they had only to perform for about five hours in order to make up to one hundred fifty dollars a night, which was great money in 1983. And so, when they failed to do their jobs, I took it very personally, as a betrayal of my friendship and hospitality.

  After a few months as an owner, there was no part of the restaurant where I didn’t perceive at least one or two enemies in my midst. In the kitchen, there were good cooks, but there were also people who were either incredibly stupid or just didn’t care about what they were doing. My biggest vulnerability was dishes prepared à la minute. One of my personal favorites was calf’s liver. Its success depends on attention to details: the liver must be very thinly sliced or it basically becomes a steak. The butter needs to be just browned, or else it’s burned butter, not browned butter. And a little of that butter goes a long way, just enough to dress the slices. I demonstrated that dish to death in the kitchen, but once in a while, a plate would come out that was like the textbook example of how not to cook calf’s liver, the one that should be in a red circle with a line running diagonally across it. Sometimes, I’d be on the phone taking a reservation and a calf’s liver would glide by me, cut two inches thick and sitting in a pool of in burnt butter. I’d grab the runner by the shoulder, hang up the phone, take the dish off the tray, storm into the kitchen, slam it on the counter, and scream, “What the fuck is this?”

  Does that make me a tyrant? From the reputation I acquired in those days, you would think that it did. But I truly felt that my own people were trying to undo me. I was so desperate to succeed every night that I just couldn’t stand for less than perfection. And I have to say that I always confined my anger to the subject at hand. I never called a person a “jerk” or an “asshole.” I just asked logical questions, like, “What the fuck is this?”

  Am I making sense?

  I’ll put it another way: people believe that the restaurant business is complicated, and at moments it can be. But my philosophy is that fundamentally, it’s actually quite simple. In the long run a restaurant survives on the basis of all the tedious little details—making sure water glasses are filled, bread shows up war
m, food is cooked consistently, and dirty dishes are cleared when people are finished with them. You do that, and it adds up to a great performance; word of mouth will be so great that no critic will be able to destroy you. Critics, even those who like you early on, can treat you like their first fuck. When you’re young and hot, they want you, but when you settle into middle age, they leave you for somebody new. If you treat your customers like marriage material, like the loves of your life, they will keep coming back. Maybe not every day, but once a week or once a month, and if you do that, they won’t care about what the New York Times or the Za-gat Survey has to say.

  Accordingly, there was no end to my determination to maintain my high standards. Even after the busboys, waiters, and cooks were gone for the night, nodding off on the subway, I was still in the restaurant, double checking everything. And, of course, just like everybody else, the dishwashers had the power to enrage me. From my very first restaurant job, I have always loved the peace of knowing that a day has been truly finished, which means that the dining room has been cleared, the chairs are up on the tables, and every last dish, piece of silverware, and surface has been well and properly cleaned. After the European model, in my kitchen, the cooks were responsible for wiping down their cutting boards and the cabinets down to their knees, while the dishwashers were to finish their days scrubbing the walls and cabinets from knee-level down to the floor. Even this proved too much to ask; I’d often find a few plates and pieces of silverware in the sink, and grease trickling down the wall.

  If the place wasn’t cleaned properly, I’d lock the front door and wait in the dining room. When the dishwashers emerged, usually in their street clothes, I’d shake my head from side to side and make the same disapproving face I made for the busboys in my “no-no” talk. I wouldn’t say a word, just point toward the kitchen, ordering them to go back and do it right.

  The way I figured it, the least I could ask for was a clean start the next day.

  INTERLUDE

  HIS RANT COMPLETE, Pino takes a deep breath.

  “You tell me: I’m right, or I’m an asshole?”

  The vulnerable expression on his face would probably surprise anybody he ever chewed out, or canned. Clearly, he’s given this topic some thought, and he’s come to doubt whether or not he’s been too severe over the years. I must say that while he usually confines himself to the offense at hand, he does sometimes get a little insulting. One day, we were meeting in his dining room between lunch and dinner when his waiters began dragging a very large and expensive country table across the floor.

  “Guys, guys!” he screamed. “You need to lift it! That table is delicate, and it will break. I’m sorry if you are so weak in your arms from masturbating too much, but you need to carry it!”

  As I turn that last sentence over in my mind, another moment occurs to me: “You know what this whole subject reminds me of?” I say. “That hostess at Le Madri.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he says. “That was bad.”

  I’m referring to one of my earliest encounters with Pino, about ten years earlier, while we were working on the cookbook Simply Tuscan and I lived a block away, at the corner of Eighteenth Street and Eighth Avenue. One Saturday night, half drunk on red wine and having listened to Italian opera all day for inspiration, I was craving some pasta and martinis. My girlfriend (now wife), Caitlin, and I walked over to Le Madri, which Pino had opened in 1989, and pushed through the crush of people in the bar area, working our way up to the podium.

  There was a blonde woman managing the reservation book. I asked her if they could take two walk-ins. She said to give her a few minutes. Though we were known to the restaurant’s manager, and to many of the waiters, I didn’t want to muscle my way into the dining room, so I kept incognito and Caitlin and I ordered some vodka martinis. Periodically I made eye contact with the hostess, and she smiled and nodded back, which I took to mean she hadn’t forgotten us.

  Twenty minutes ticked by. Then thirty. I figured there was a table in the offing or she would have sent us on our way. After forty-five minutes, the bar area was almost completely emptied out and we were still sitting there in limbo. I went back to the podium and asked what the status was.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said, throwing up her arms and speaking in a bizarrely upbeat tone, as if I’d find what she was about to say amusing. “We don’t have a table!”

  I was annoyed. We had wasted almost an hour sitting there, and it was well after ten P.M. at that point, too late to start over at another restaurant. If I hadn’t had a personal connection to Le Madri, I never would have returned. So, the next Monday, when I met Pino in his conference room to work on the book, I felt I had to share our experience with him.

  “Before we get started,” I said. “I have to tell you something.”

  I proceeded to describe the entire saga, and as I did, a transformation took place. Pino’s body tensed up and his gaze became inscrutable, but as I continued, almost imperceptibly, he began to tremble, literally simmering with anger. I was getting, I realized, my first glimpse of the famous Pino Luongo temper, and it was something to behold. I finished the story and he didn’t say a word. Without looking away from me, he reached over, picked up the phone, and dialed four digits, meaning an interior extension.

  “Yeah, Alan, get up here,” he said gruffly, and hung up.

  Pino and I sat in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes until Alan, the general manager of Le Madri, a curly-headed, swarthy, and perennially cheerful man of Moroccan descent, came up to the conference room dressed for service in a pinstripe suit.

  “Hi, guys. What’s up?” he said.

  Pino motioned to me. “Tell him. Tell him the whole thing.”

  Alan’s jaw dropped. He’d heard this tone before.

  “Pino, I don’t want to . . .”

  “It’s OK, I want him to hear it from you.”

  Pino calmly lit a cigarette as I proceeded to recount the story again, blow by blow, watching as Alan began to understand where it was going and started pulling at his collar nervously in a way that reminded me of Rodney Dangerfield.

  I finished and Alan turned to Pino, bracing himself.

  After a long pause, Pino said, “This is the kind of 1980s bullshit that’s got no place in my restaurants.” He extinguished his cigarette in an ashtray for emphasis. “I didn’t want it then, and I don’t want it now. This is the worst story I never heard.”

  “Andrew, I’m so sorry,” Alan said. He clasped my hands in his and all but prostrated himself before me. “I’m so sorry. So sorry. Please, next time you come in, let me know you’re coming. Please. Sorry. Please. Sorry.” And continuing like that, he backed out the door and disappeared down the hallway, never showing me his back in an embarrassing show of respect and contrition.

  The very next day, I was walking home and I saw Alan standing on the corner outside Le Madri smoking a cigarette.

  “Alan! How you doing?” I called out.

  “Hey, Andrew,” he said, extending his hand.

  As we shook, he pitched his cigarette butt into Seventh Avenue and said to me, sotto voce, “I took care of that thing.”

  I felt as if I’d been thrust into a scene in a gangster movie.

  “Thing? What thing?”

  “You know. The girl. You won’t be seeing her no more.”

  “What do you mean? You fired her?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “But I—”

  “It’s OK,” he said; he shook my hand again and went into the restaurant.

  I felt terrible. I thought I had just been tipping Pino off that one of his employees needed some quick remedial training, and now I found out I’d gotten her sacked. The gangster undertones of this tale might suggest The Godfather, but despite Pino’s identification with Vito Corleone, a more illustrative comparison is Brian De Palma’s remake of Scarface, which was released in 1983, the same year Pino opened Il Cantinori. The protagonist, Tony Montana, is Cuban rather than Italian (although he
was played by Al Pacino), but he has more in common with Pino than any of the characters in The Godfather—the quick wit, the Everest-size confidence, the forwardness with women (like Tony, Pino married an American, not a paesana), even the fact that he gleaned much of his English from movies: “I learned. I watch the guys like Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney. They teach me to talk. I like those guys,” Montana says to his interrogators when he arrives in the United States.

  The movie’s promotional tagline also served as nifty foreshadowing of Pino’s budding career: “He loved the American dream, with a vengeance.”

  SEVEN

  High Tide

  IN THE FALL of 1987, on one of our unfashionable, off-season weekends in the Hamptons, I was driving along Route 27, about to round the bend into Wainscott, when I passed what looked like a haunted house. I had never paid much attention to this particular building, which had been the site of Charlotte’s Hidden Pond restaurant and before that the home of a state senator. Set back from the main road and enshrouded by shrubbery, it was fast becoming invisible to the modern Hampton eye.

  But a sign at the edge of the property caught my attention: the owners had gone into bankruptcy, it said, and the building was up for sale.

  I swerved into the parking lot, got out of my car, and took a walk around. The place was an eyesore: a hulking, Tudor-style English house with a dark wooden frame and a sad gray tint to the stucco. It was in merciless disrepair, with huge nicks in the walls, cracks in the wood, and a stale stench that had no doubt been exacerbated by the damp sea air.