"That's ridiculous. Tell him I'll take responsibility. If there's a fuckup, you can fire me."
"Scott . . ."
Give me a break!, I thought. Sweat was soaking through my uniform and they wanted me to sit there in my own little private tanning salon? I pointed up in the general direction of the office, one flight up from the kitchen: "Go tell Gray I'm not doing it."
The sous-chef walked off toward Gray's office. A few minutes later, he returned and told me Gray wanted to see me upstairs.
I climbed the stairs to Gray's office. He was sitting behind a large desk, dressed immaculately. He waved me in and, dispensing with the formalities, politely laid down the law.
"You have to have two salamanders on at all times. You can't say no to the chef."
"Gray, you and I both know it's not that busy, and it's not gonna get that busy. I can fit eight dishes in that thing."
He remained cool, utterly impassive: "Scott, you can't say no to the chef."
Fuck that, I thought, this isn't Hong Kong, where you can exploit your workers. This is America.
"You have to do it," he said. "Or leave."
We looked at each other for a long moment, neither one of us speaking. Gray crossed his arms, waiting. And I'll tell you truthfully, even if it hadn't been such a strange and exhausting six months, I would have done what I did next.
"Okay. Then I guess I'm giving you my two-week notice."
Gray shook his head. "No. If you're not going to obey the chef, you have to leave now."
"Then I'll get my stuff."
We shook hands, I collected my things, and left.
And that was how my time at Lespinasse came to a close.
Neither Gray nor I hold a grudge about the day I quit. Gray even sends me some foie gras and kugel (noodle pudding) every Christmas. We don't hold a grudge because it's a small world in our business, and we're both good guys at the end of the day. And on top of all that, it just wouldn't be practical.
White Lie
DAVID BURKE
The chef/owner of davidburke&donatella, David Burke first rose to prominence at New York's River Cafe. He then went on to become executive chef of Park Avenue Cafe and vice president of Culinary Development for the Smith & Wollensky Restaurant Group. Burke trained at the Culinary Institute of America and alongside legends such as Pierre Troisgros, Georges Blanc, and Gaston Lenotre. He has been a part of several American Culinary Gold Cup Competitions, was voted Chef of the Year by his peers in America in 1991, and was the first non-Frenchman to win the Meilleurs Ouvriers de France Association medal and diploma, France's highest cooking honor. He is the creator of several gourmet packaged goods and the author o/Cooking with David Burke.
SEVERAL YEARS BACK, one of my customers, a real nice lady, told me that she wanted me to cater a fiftieth-birthday party for her husband. They were an artistic pair, with friends in the arts and entertainment field, and she flattered me right into it: "We love your food. It's unique and different, and I know you'll do something that'll make him happy. Please, won't you do it?"
How can you say no to that?
The details were manageable: Two hundred people. A huge, rented event hall with a decent kitchen. A couple of hors d'oeuvres, two main courses to choose from, dessert. The usual.
I said I'd be happy to. Hell, it'd be my honor.
And then she tells me that there's a hook. The birthday boy loves surprises, and is a souffle fanatic, and she wants to combine these passions, blowing him away with a giant floating island—the classic French dessert that features clouds of meringue adrift in a sea of custard—his favorite thing in the world. She envisioned an island big enough to serve two hundred rolling into the room as the climax of the celebration, the piece de resistance.
I didn't know how in the world I was going to make such a thing, so as we shook on it, I said what any good chef would say.
"No problem."
I had to be out of town for a few days leading right up to the day of the party, so my team and I had a planning meeting before I left. We went over the canapes, the meal, and then came up with a pretty straightforward strategy for the dessert. The pastry chef would make twenty enormous meringue clouds and bake them. Then we would press them together and, simply because of the tacky nature of meringue, they would stick to one another. Finally, we'd transfer them into the biggest bowl we could find, surround the island with creme anglaise, shower it with mint and powdered sugar, and float candles in the creme.
We weren't going to serve this thing, mind you. No, no, no. We were going to wheel it into the hall on a cart—like a wedding cake, if you will—let everyone sing "Happy Birthday," then wheel it out. Behind the scenes, we'd have already made two hundred individual servings, ready to be presented in their ramekins. Everyone would think that the giant island had been divvied up; in reality it would just be thrown away.
On the day of the party, I was about to board an airplane back to New York, when one of the guys called me on my cell to tell me there was a problem with the meringue.
"Don't worry about it. We'll deal with it when I'm on the ground," I said, and hung up. How bad could it be?
Arriving at the banquet hall that afternoon, I was impressed. My customer had spared no expense, turning it into an elegant dining space, with white linens, exotic floral centerpieces, and a very sexy lighting design.
But when I left this little paradise and pushed through the door into the dark kitchen, I saw that the meringues had all collapsed when baked. They were flat and big as manhole covers, and totally useless.
I turned to my pastry chef. "And" he said with the grin of one who thrives on adversity, "there ain't no more egg whites to be had."
He knew what he was talking about. It was a Sunday, and a few of the cooks had made a trip to all the markets in the immediate vicinity, only to discover that they had been mercilessly picked over, with maybe a carton or two of eggs remaining per store.
There's some genetic thing that chefs have. A perfectionist gene, I guess. I could have done something easy to get out of this predicament. I could have piled up the two hundred finished servings in a big pyramid, lit the hell out of it with candles, and probably everyone would have been happy. It wouldn't have been a Guinness Book-worthy floating island, but it would have worked fine.
However, one of my customers had ordered a floating island, damn it, and I was gonna give it to them.
"We have to do something," I muttered to myself. "This is the piece de resistance. We have to do something . . ."
I stood there, eyes closed. Thinking. Thinking. All the while feeling the gaze of my team upon me . . .
"Okay, I got it!" I said, and my crew's eyes lit up. Here was the quick thinking they expected from their leader.
But what I said next was definitely not what they had planned on: "Everybody, bring me your dirty laundry. Aprons, towels, chef coats, whatever." I paused, then clarified: "As long as it's white."
I went over to our supply table and found the big white garbage bags we used to clean up after ourselves at events like this. I walked around, holding the bag open wide with both hands, like somebody taking a collection, and the guys threw all their linens inside.
We loaded the bag into the enormous bowl that was supposed to have the meringue in it, teased the plastic to create little meringuelike wisps, and poured the creme anglaise around it. Then we dusted it with powdered sugar and mint leaves, and lit the floating votives that were standing in for birthday candles, setting them afloat in the custard.
It looked just like it was supposed to—a giant floating island—even though it was really a miniature garbage barge.
Right before we wheeled this decoy out into the banquet hall, I instructed my guys to stand around it and sing "Happy Birthday" along with the other guests. Their mission was twofold: one, to provide a security detail for the barge, making sure nobody touched it; and, two, to sing at a really fast clip, so the song would be over and the island was out of sight as quickly as
possible.
We walked out into the room singing "Happy Birthday" and the entire place stood up and cheered, oohing and ahhing at the sight of the beautiful floating island. As soon as the last speedy note had been sung, my guys helped the guest of honor blow out his candles. He maybe blew one out himself.
Then we ran the cart out of the room and into the kitchen. We dismantled it immediately, just in case someone came back looking to take a picture or something.
The desserts were served and nobody was the wiser. It was a triumph of on-your-feet thinking, if I do say so myself.
I'm still pretty friendly with that woman, and her husband. I never did tell them about the secret of the floating island, though if they see this, the jig is up.
Well, she did say that he loved surprises as much as he loved meringue.
Surprise!
A Simple Request
SAMUEL CLARK
Samuel Clark is partners with his wife, Samantha Clark, and the couple are known to the British food lovers simply as Sam and Sam Clark. They met working at the Eagle gastropub, and then worked together at London's famed River Cafe. They spent their honeymoon touring Morocco and Spain, then opened Moro in the Clerkenwell district of London in 1997, with their associates Mark Sainsbury and Jake Hodges. The restaurant won both the Time Out and BBC Good Food awards for Best New Restaurant. Sam and Sam Clark are authors of The Moro Cookbook and Casa Moro: The Second Cookbook.
IN THE LATE 1980s, when I was a young cook just out of cooking college, not yet employed in a restaurant, the famous British art dealer Adrian Ward-Jackson, a friend of my mother, informed me that he was having Princess Margaret round to dinner.
"Perhaps you'd like to cook for us," he suggested very sweetly, downplaying the enormity of the suggestion.
How could I resist? It was a thrilling proposition.
"Great. Sure," I said, attempting to contain my excitement.
When the day of the dinner arrived, I shopped for the freshest and finest of ingredients, as befitted a royal affair such as this, and then made my way to Adrian's flat in Mayfair. It was a beautiful home, modest in scope but very richly and ornately decorated. Adrian also dealt in antiques, so the sitting room was crowded with paintings, sculptures, and various objets d'art. And the overall design of the home was the equal of the collection it housed; every fabric was textured; every surface, polished to the perfect finish. Despite the lavish decorations, it was also remarkably cozy, and had the effect of putting one quite at ease, rather than causing any undue intimidation.
The kitchen, too, was delightful, done up in wonderful decoupage. For instance, the refrigerator was made to look like a bookcase loaded with clothbound classics; but when you pulled on the door, it of course opened and inside were the bright, fully functioning shelves of a refrigerator.
In preparation for the evening, I had made a number of careful decisions, all of them intended to eliminate any element of risk. I hadn't yet worked in restaurants or developed my own personal style, so for the menu, I turned to the same dishes most cooking students would make: I prepared a soup (though I can't for the life of me remember what kind), and a rack of lamb with potatoes Dauphinoise, and for dessert a rhubarb fool, a mousse made by folding rhubarb compote into whipped cream.
My goal was to prepare a meal that could be described as unadventurous but delicious, if only ultimately of very average quality. Put another way: my mission was not to embarrass myself.
To remove any lofty expectations, I even downplayed my culinary education, dressing for the occasion in a beautiful shirt and apron, in no way indicative of any professional training.
My attire and the meal selection were also intended to make me as comfortable as possible. I had been cooking in a home setting since I was a child, so I created the environment to which I was accustomed.
By all accounts, as the dinner hour approached, my plan seemed to be working. I spent the better part of the afternoon making the meal at a relaxed pace, feeling quite at ease. Adrian left me to go about my business, though I could hear him moving about, talking on the telephone, and so on.
Finally, I heard the princess arrive and felt a tingle of excitement. A member of the royal family was going to be enjoying a meal prepared by my hand! I was confident that she would enjoy it because most of the dishes were nearly finished: the lamb was attaining a lovely burnished golden brown exterior in the oven; the soup was done and kept nicely warm under a pot lid, even the rhubarb fool had been set to cool in the traditional serving vessels, long-stemmed, glass wine goblets that show off its brilliant ruby-red color.
Adrian's home was designed so that one passed by the kitchen on the way in from the front door to the dining room. As Adrian and the princess neared, I again felt a twinge of giddiness. No sooner had they completed their pass than Adrian reappeared, stuck his head in the door, and casually whispered, "Oh, by the way, I'd like to have some biscuits with dessert," before disappearing again, following after the princess.
What's that? I thought. Did he just say "biscuits"? How odd, because we never discussed biscuits.
Panic set in quickly. Christ, I thought. Biscuits! What am I going to do?
I hadn't planned on biscuits, hadn't brought along the ingredients necessary to make biscuits, and—if I'm to be honest— didn't really know how to make biscuits, not being a pastry cook and not having any recipe books with me.
I can't very well march out there and tell them that I don't know how to make bloody biscuits, now, can I?
Adrian had employed a waiter for the evening and I sent the first course, the soup, out with him. As Adrian and Princess Margaret began their meal, I rooted hurriedly through the cupboards to see what ingredients I had at my disposal to pull off this last-minute request. The decoupage didn't seem quite so charming as all of a sudden my carefully laid plans were turning to rubbish.
In one of the cupboards, I found a box of inexpensive gingersnap cookies, known to all in England as a supermarket staple of completely unremarkable quality.
I studied the box in my hand, thinking: Okay, how can I make these taste different, better than they are?
On the counter, I espied a bottle of brandy and snapped my fingers.
I've got it!
I laid the cookies out in a glass baking dish and drizzled enough brandy over them to submerge them. Then I set them aside to let them soak.
When the waiter returned a little while later, I sent him out with the lamb and potatoes, and concentrated on finishing the dessert. As I began to lift a cookie from the dish, however, I discovered that it had become hopelessly limp, tearing in half like a soggy sheet of newspaper.
Hurriedly, I turned on the oven, still hot from the lamb, delicately transferred the cookies to a baking sheet with the aid of a spatula, and slid them inside.
It was a torturous situation: I had no time to lose, and yet I had to keep the heat relatively low, for fear of burning the cookies—or perhaps even igniting the alcohol. That would've been a truly fine mess, if 1 had started a fire in Adrian's miniature museum.
Time was ticking away and I stood shaking my head impatiently and looking into the oven, whispering to the cookies, "Dry, you bastards. Dry."
Finally, I couldn't delay the dessert any longer. I took the biscuits out of the oven, only to discover that they were still limp and soggy. As the waiter looked on in bemusement, I fanned them with my hand, trying to get them to dry just a little bit more, but it was hopeless.
I plated the biscuits, which were slightly hard around the edges and mushy in the center, with an alcoholic aroma emanating from them—and sent them out along with the glasses full of rhubarb fool.
To take my mind off of what must be transpiring in the dining room, I began cleaning up the kitchen, scrubbing the pots and pans, and returning the ingredients, including that box of gingersnaps, to their proper homes.
A few minutes later, a figure appeared in the kitchen door, but this time it wasn't the waiter; it was Adrian himself—holdin
g the empty biscuits plate in his hands. With a twinkle in his eye, Adrian informed me that "Her Majesty would love some more biscuits." Then he disappeared back into the dining room.
It was an unbelievable turn of events. I could scarcely fathom how the appalling biscuits had been so well received. Not that it mattered much at that point. My astonishment was instantly overwhelmed by the realization that . . . Christ! I have to go through all of that againl
Hastily, I dug the box of gingersnaps out from the cupboard, sprinkled the bloody things with brandy, shoved them in the oven, took them out, fanned them like an idiot, and plated them, noisily bumping around the kitchen as if I were in some sort of vaudeville routine.
To this day, I don't know if Adrian and his royal guest were having a bit of fun at my expense. Perhaps, as I've sometimes imagined, they flushed the biscuits down the toilet and were only asking for a second serving as a sort of private, though good-natured joke.
When Adrian brought the princess round on her way out the door, she stopped by the kitchen to say, "Thank you for a lovely meal."
I wanted to ask if she really had liked the biscuits, but there simply wasn't any appropriate way of doing so.
"You're quite welcome, Your Majesty," I said. "I'm glad you enjoyed it."
I suppose I could have asked Adrian about the true reception the cookies had received but I decided to leave it alone. It was awfully nice of him to give me such an opportunity, and if they were having a laugh at my expense, then it was richly deserved, the least I could do to say thank you.
The Traveling Chef
TOM COLICCHIO
Tom Colicchio, originally from Elizabeth, New Jersey, is the chef I co-owner of New York's celebrated Gramercy Tavern, ranked New Yorker's #1 favorite restaurant in the 2005 Zagat Survey, as well as chef"Iowner of Craft, the 2002 James Beard Best New Restaurant in America. In 2002 Colicchio opened Craftbar, a casual adjunct to Craft, and CraftSteak in Las Vegas' MGM Grand Hotel. In 2003 he followed up with 'wichcraft, next door to Craftbar in New York's Flatiron District, bringing Craft's ethic of simplicity and great ingredients to the ever-popular sandwich. His first book, Think Like a Chef, won the James Beard Best General Cookbook in 2001, and was followed by Craft of Cooking: Notes and Recipes from a Restaurant Kitchen in 2003. He is married to filmmaker Lori Silverbush, and is the father of Dante, who is a big fan of his father's scrambled eggs.
Don't Try This at Home Page 8