At that moment, the event—for me and my team—became more of a military operation than a culinary endeavor. I outlined a rigorous plan that began with the guys on site pouring the spoiled soup down the drain and ended with a thousand guests enjoying a perfect soup the next evening.
Okay, now here's the amazing thing about a crisis like this: the actual cooking was the second concern. The first concern was replenishing the supplies required to make that much soup, most notably about 400 pounds of a variety of five peas. I called every purveyor I could think of, then one of my cooks and I got in a van and personally drove around town, starting in Harlem and working our way south, buying up all the peas we could find.
As for the stock, even if we could have put our hands on enough bones to make a new one from scratch, it didn't matter, because there wasn't time for it to patiently simmer. Fortunately I know how to work with a powdered stock base if I have to.
Instead of making the entire soup hot and chilling it, we used a few kitchen tricks to save time, blanching and chilling the peas, chilling the stock separately, then combining the two. We also used a complicated series of shallow vessels set in ice water to keep it as cold as possible.
When it was time to serve the soup, one thousand little bowls came marching out of the kitchen, beautifully garnished with rosemary-infused cream and rosemary croutons, and little bowls of bacon crackling on the side for anyone who wanted it.
Just the way it was always meant to be.
New Year's Meltdown
ANTHONY BOURDAIN
Anthony Bourdain has been a chef or a cook for nearly three decades, and in 2000 he chronicled that experience in Kitchen Confidential, which has been translated into twenty-four languages, leading Mr. Bourdain to the conclusion that "chefs are the same everywhere." He is the executive chef at Brasserie Fes Halles in New York City.
IN MY LONG and checkered career I have been witness to, party to, and even singularly responsible for any number of screwups, missteps, and overreaches. I am not Alain Ducasse. The focus of my career has not always been a relentless drive toward excellence. As a mostly journeyman chef, knocking around the restaurant business for twenty-eight years, I've witnessed some pretty ugly episodes of culinary disaster. I have seen an accidentally glass-laden breaded veal cutlet cause a customer to rise up in the middle of a crowded dining room and begin keening and screaming with pain as blood dribbled from his mouth. I've watched restaurants endure mid-dinner rush fires, floods, and rodent infiltration—as well as the more innocuous annoyances of used Band-Aids, tufts of hair, and industrial staples showing up in the ni^oise salad. Busboy stabbing busboy, customer beating up customer, waiters duking it out on the dining room floor—I've seen it all. But never have I seen such a shameful synergy of Truly Awful Things happen, and in such spectacular fashion, as on New Years Eve 1991, a date that surely deserves to live in New York restaurant infamy. It was the all-time, a ward-winning, jumbo-sized restaurant train wreck, a night where absolutely everything went wrong that could go wrong, where the greatest number of people got hurt, and an entire kitchen bowed its head in shame and fear—while outside the kitchen doors, waiters trembled at the slaughterhouse their once hushed and elegant dining room had become.
Like Operation "Market Garden" (the ill-fated Allied invasion of the Netherlands) or Stalingrad—or the musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber—responsibility for the disaster that followed rests, ultimately, with one man. In this case it was a talented and resourceful chef we'll call Bobby Thomas. Bobby had the idea that he could create an ambitious menu—as good as his always excellent a la carte menus—and serve it to the 350 people who would be filling the nightclub/restaurant we'll call NiteKlub. He also felt confident enough in his abilities that he could pretty much wait until the last minute to put the whole thing together: little details like telling his staff what the fuck they were going to be serving, and how. In his visionary wisdom, Bobby did not share his thinking or his plans with others. Like the strategic braniacs who thought invading Russia to be a good idea, he was undisturbed by useful details ("Mein Fuhrer? Are you aware winter is coming?"). Those who might have pointed out the obvious warning signs were not included in Bobby's conceptualizing of what could well have been a spec tacular success—for a dinner party of twenty. Bobby was, after all, a kind of a genius. And it's often the geniuses who put us in a world of pain.
I arrived at NiteKlub at about a half hour before the shift, the other cooks trickling in after me. We pulled on our whites, cranked up the radio, and, as usual, stood around waiting for someone to tell us what to do. Our leader had characteristically neglected to entrust us with a prep list. So we did what cooks left unbriefed and unsupervised tend to do, which was stand around gossiping.
The lobsters arrived first. There were cases of them, so many that they reached to the ceiling, 125 of the things, skittering around under wet newspaper and heaps of crushed ice. Since I was de facto quartermaster, and the guy who signed for such things, the cooks—Frankie Five Angels, Matt, Orlando, Steven, Dougie, Adam Real Last Name Unknown, and Dog Boy—all stood there expectantly, looking at me, waiting for instructions as a puddle of water grew larger and larger from the rapidly melting ice. What do we do with them? Who knows? Bobby hadn't left a prep list. Do we blanche them? Cook them all the way? Whack 'em into wriggling chunks? Shuck them, split them, or turn the damn things into bisque? We don't know. 'Cause Bobby hasn't left a menu.
The game arrived next. Boned-out poussin, duck breasts, bones, a case of foie gras. We cleaned up the duck breasts nicely, put on stock with the bones (that didn't take much to surmise), and laid out the poussins on sheet pans and got everything in the walk-in for when Bobby showed. We wanted to start in on the case of foie gras—whole loaves of the stuff!— but were we making terrine, which would require us to open them up and start yanking out veins, or were we leaving them whole for pan-searing? We didn't know. And once you tear open a liver, you can't untear it. So we left those alone. When the meat order arrived, we cleaned up the tenderloins, but left them whole, not having any idea of portion size, whether we were making filet mignon or tournedos or chateaubriand or beef fucking Wellington for that matter.
Oysters! There was a collective moan from the team, as not even a madman would want to put oysters on a menu for over three hundred. Perhaps we could crack them open ahead of time. But should we? What if . . . what //"Bobby had planned oysters on the half shell? In which case I'd be cracking oysters to order all night, since the customers, for the $275 per person they were paying, would prefer them moist and fresh. It was too horrible to contemplate. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Steven peel off out the back door—which meant he was probably going to score—and from the way Frankie was working his jaw muscles, half the cooks were well into the coke already and likely looking for a re-up.
When the produce order came in, it was getting toward panic time. Two cases of oranges, a case of lemons, ten cases of mache (lamb's lettuce)—which, at least, we could clean—Belgian endive, fennel, wild mushrooms, the ubiquitous baby zucchinis, yellow squashes, and pattypan squash and baby carrots that Bobby so loved. Dry goods followed, an impenetrable heap of long-haul purchases: fryer oil, salad oil, vinegar, flour, canned goods. There was no way of knowing what was for today and what was for next week.
We peeled the carrots. It was two o'clock now, cocaine and indecision grinding the heart right out of the afternoon. And still no Bobby.
Truffles arrived. Nice. Then the fish. Not so nice because it was Dover sole—a bitch to clean and an even bigger bitch to cook in large numbers. Orlando, Frankie, and I got down on the sole with rubber gloves and kitchen shears, trimming off the spines. Matt and Dougie cut chive sticks and plucked chervil tops and basil flowers and made gaufrette potatoes for garnish, because we knew—if we knew anything—that we'd be using a lot of those. Dog Boy was relegated to fiddling with the dial on the radio. A new hire, Dog Boy was a skateboarder with a recently pierced tongue and absolutely useless for anythin
g—he could fuck up a wet dream—so it was best that he was kept safely out of the way. Adam, at least, knew we'd need bread, so he stayed reasonably busy balling dough and putting loaves in the oven—which was ironic, really, as Adam was usually the last person to know what was going on about anything, and here he was, currently the best informed person in the kitchen.
By four o'clock, with still no evidence of Bobby and no word, the mood was turning ugly. Dougie's neck and cheeks were red, which meant he'd been hitting the sauce somewhere. Frankie was retelling, for the umpteenth time, the story of how he had communicated the plot to Cliffhanger to Sylvester Stallone during a three-second near-telepathic encounter by the men's room of Planet Hollywood, his previous employer. He'd as good as written that movie!—despite the fact that he couldn't even pronounce it, calling it "Clifthangah"—and one of these days, he'd get paid for it. That's if Sly's "people" didn't "get to him first." Frankie, while high on blow, was often under the impression that various "agents of Stallone" were "watching him" as he clearly "knew too much." When we all started laughing (and how could we not?), the by now manically high, dangerously paranoid Frankie began to tweak. This was not good. As Frankie was taller and bigger and stronger than all of us (over six foot six) and a vicious hockey player sensitive to criticism, things could get really crazy.
"Fucking Bobby," muttered Dougie again. Dougie, at least, wouldn't get violent. He was more of a sulker. But he might very well just disappear if discouraged. He'd done it before—just walked out the door and disappeared for a few days.
I nervously looked at the clock and debated doing exactly that myself. Happily, when I looked back, Matt was doing his pitch-perfect Frankie Pentangeli imitation from The Godfather II: "Oh . . . sure, senator . . . sure . . . that Michael Corleone . . . Michael Corleone did this . . . Michael Corleone did that," which always gave Frankie the giggles. Violence, for now anyway, seemed to have been averted.
Time passed. We continued to set up as best we could. At five thirty, Bobby finally rolled in. I say rolled in because he was (not unusually) on Rollerblades, wearing a new Blues Traveler tour jacket he'd scored off a private client and that charming little-boy smile that had so successfully helped convince a legion of hostesses and floor staff to come into close contact with Bobby's genitals. We, however, were not so charmed.
"Uh . . . Bobby? What's the menu?" I said. "We'd really kind of like to know."
Bobby just smiled, gave us the Ronnie James Dio "devil horn" hand sign, skated back to his office, and emerged a few moments later in his whites, bearing the fatal document:
The NiteKlub New Year's Eve Menu 1992
Oysters Baked in Champagne Sauce with Beluga Caviar
or
Pan-Seared Foie Gras with Apricot Chutney,
Port Wine Sauce, and Toasted Brioche
or
Beggar's Purses of Diver Scallops and Wild Mushrooms
or
Truffle Soup
followed by
Dover Sole with Citrus Beurre
Lobster in a Shellfish Nage with Fennel
Chestnut and Truffle Stuffed Poussin with Foie Gras Sauce
Chateaubriand "Rossini" with Baby Vegetables and Chive Mashed Potatoes
followed by
Harlequin Souffle
New Year's Parfait
Lemon Tart
Profiteroles
To be honest, my memory is not perfect on the exact menu choices. I approximate. What is burned permanently into my brain, however, is the simple fact that this was a killer menu to do "a la minute" and seemed heavily skewed toward the saute station. Which was not, tactically or strategically, our strongest point. The hot app station appeared overladen with dishes as well, and as Frankie Five Angels was already, at this early hour, quietly having an amusing conversation with himself, the prospects of a smooth night in that area seemed . . . unlikely. Our fearless leader, though, brimmed with insouciance that we took for confidence. My muttered concerns were dismissed—understandably, given my pessimistic nature, and my kitchen nickname of the time: "Dr. Doom."
Bobby curtly gave us our prep assignments and a brief rundown of how he expected us to prepare and present his creations. To our credit, we quickly put our stations together, set up our mise en place^ dug in, and by seven we were loaded and ready for the first orders.
It should be pointed out that I had, basically, nothing to do but crack oysters—which I sensibly did in advance (given they were to be baked)—and help Adam plate desserts. Everything else was coming off hot appetizer (Frankie and Dougie), grill (Matt), or saute (Steven and Orlando). Dog Boy was sent home after a less-than-grueling half day.
Half an hour later, there were still no tickets. The little printer hooked up to the waiters' computer order systems lay silent. Our two runners, Manuel and Ed, informed us that the guests were arriving, the dining room filling, and all of us hoped that they'd start getting the orders in fast, in comfortably staggered fashion, so we could set a nice pace without getting swamped all at once.
"Tell them to get those orders in," snarled Bobby. "Let's knock down some early tables! C'mon!"
But nothing happened. A half hour passed, then an hour, as our now-full house of New Year's revelers sat at their tables, admired each others' clothes, drank Veuve Clicquot, and presumably pondered their menus. It would be a long night.
The first order came in at eight thirty. Clack clack clack . . . dit dit dit. . . "Ordering! . . . One oysters, two foie gras . . . a scallop . . . followed by three sole . . . a lobster . . . one chateau and a poussin" crowed our chef. Clack clack clack . . . dit dit dit. The sound of paper being torn off. "Two more oysters . . . two more foie . . . followed by three Dover sole! One lobster!" Clack clack clack . . . dit dit dit . . . and already I'm getting worried because they seemed to be hitting the sole hard. Each order took up a whole pan—a whole burner—meaning we could cook only four of the things at once. And saute was also plating oysters because the lone salamander was on that station; so while I'd popped the hinges on three sheet pans of the things, the saute guys still had to set them on rock salt, nape each oyster with sauce, brown them under the salamander, plate them, carefully top each one with an oh-so-delicate little heap of caviar (of which there was a limited amount), then garnish before putting them up in the window. The beggar's purses were inexplicably coming off that station too, with only the soup and the foie gras coming off Frankie's area.
The machine was printing full-bore now, paper spitting out end over end, and Bobby calling it all out and stuffing copies in the slide. So far we were keeping up, racing to drill out what we could before it really hit the fan.
Two big tables—a ten-top, and a twelve, one after the other—and still no main courses had been fired yet; I looked over and saw that saute was already in the weeds, that Frankie was spazzing out on all the foie gras orders, and that the truffle soup—which was supposed to be a layup—was not cooking as quickly as anticipated. Sure, the heating-the-soup part was a breeze, but the part where Frankie stretched precut squares of puff pastry dough over the ovenproof crocks was taking a lot longer than hoped. Frankie was fumbling with the dough, which either broke because it was too cold from the refrigerator, or tore because it had been out of the refrigerator too long, or tore because Frankie was so high he was shaking—and Frankie wasn't so good at keeping a lot of orders in his head anyway, so the combination of minor frustrations and all those foie gras and the fact that the little crustless pieces of brioche that were supposed to accompany it kept burning in the toaster was taking its toll, pulling down the pace . . . already the oysters were stacking up on one end, getting cold waiting for the foie gras orders that were supposed to go with them, and Bobby (highest standards only, please) was sending them back for reheats and replates, which was causing some confusion as good became commingled with bad. And the printer kept clicking and the stack of orders that Bobby had yet to even call out while he waited for saute and hot-app stations to catch up kept getting bigger an
d bigger (getting mixed up with the orders that he'd already called out and had yet to post in the slide), and it was clear, a half hour in, with not a single main course served—or even fired—that we were headed for collision.
Bobby's reaction to the ensuing crisis was to urge on Frankie. Forcefully. Some might say, considering Frankie's known pathologies, too forcefully: "Where's that FOIE, you idiot?! What the FUCK is up with that fucking FOIE!? What's WRONG with you, Frank? FRANK? Where's that fucking FOIE GRAS?"
Poor Frankie. He was spinning in place, trying to do ten things at once, and succeeding at none, eyes banging around in his skull, sweat pouring down his face, a dervish of confusion, the little four-burner stove full of melting foie gras and over-reducing sauce.
The runners' faces were starting to take on worried expressions as more time passed without anything coming up. A lone four-top went out—and was quickly returned as cold, causing Bobby to scream even more. Bobby tended to blame others in times of extremis. "You idiotsl" he'd yowl at the runners when yet another order of oysters was sent back, making our already-stressed-out runners even more jumpy. And the printer, all the while still clicking and clacking and going dit dit dit . . .
The first of the front waiters appeared, inquiring fearfully about app orders, which made Bobby even crazier. There were easily fifty tables' worth of orders up on the board, God knows how many in Bobby's hand, and a long white strip of them curling onto the floor that Bobby had yet to even acknowledge—and nothing was coming out of the kitchen. Nothing. Bobby finally managed to slap cloches onto a few orders of oysters and foie and send them on their way; and when he finally began to take stock of what he had in his hand, and what was still coming in, and how, by now, the saute station had come to a complete standstill, I think his brain shut down. The next waiters who came in asking about food got shrieked at.
Don't Try This at Home Page 5