Don't Try This at Home

by Andrew Friedman

Some restaurants are pretty cheap when it comes to their staff meal; they feed their employees the lowliest of ingredients and expect them to shovel it down in seconds, then get right back to work. But at Rockpool, our staff meals were done in the proper spirit, a gesture of thanks for everyone's hard work and a chance for the men to have some shared downtime in the midst of a grueling schedule.

  On our first Friday night, we were going to have lamb chops for staff dinner. One of the guys was barbecuing the chops on our indoor grill, and as the char-tinged smoke wafted through the kitchen, our hunger pangs spiked. We had been around food all day, but this was to be our food, and it was at this moment that our professional indifference to all the delicious temptations before us finally gave way. We paced around with ravenous, impatient grins on our faces, tortured by the tantalizing smell of the chops, eager to dig in to a richly deserved feast.

  I was deep in this heightened, near-excruciating state of anticipation when all of a sudden I felt a spray of icy water in my face, a forceful, unending blast shocking in its temperature, its magnitude—its very existence. Where on earth was it coming from?

  Shaking my head, trying in vain to avoid the rush, I looked around to see that all of the guys were being hosed down as well. Water was catching them right in the face. Some were ducking or cowering to protect themselves, others were defiantly squinting into the gush to determine its source.

  I was stunned. We all were. What in the world was happening? Had a pipe burst in the ceiling? Were there even pipes in the ceiling?

  Finally, I realized what had happened: lamb chops are fatty things, and the fat dripping into the flames of the barbecue had caused some pretty big flare-ups. Those flare-ups, in turn, had set off the sprinkler system. It was only at that moment that I noticed there was a fire alarm going off as well.

  I don't know if you've ever experienced the deluge created by an industrial sprinkler system, but it is unforgettable. It dumps what feels like thirty thousand liters of water per second, and it covers a pretty fair whack of territory, dispersing it in all directions.

  The effect was like being on a leaky submarine, with water pouring down on us without end. And the water got everywhere. It soaked our clothes, it collected on the counters and ruined all the place (short for mise en place—the prepared ingredients at each station), it pooled up on the floor, it flowed under the doors. It was absolute chaos, and there was nothing we could do but watch.

  Soon enough, the alarm was drowned out by the sound of approaching sirens. The fire brigade raced onto the scene with three trucks, and a small army of men rushed through the door, ready to put out any blaze in its path. More hoses—just what we needed.

  Once the situation became clear, the firemen turned off the alarm and the sprinklers and returned peace and quiet to our soggy kitchen. We explained about the lamb chops and they kindly laughed it off; I think they must respond to food-triggered alarms all the time.

  It was their captain who told me what our problem was: sprinkler systems are set to go off when heat-sensitive tubing inside turns a certain color. Most restaurants have tubing with a relatively high resistance, but our contractor had made a mistake and used the conventional type. It was a miracle, really, that the alarm hadn't gone off on our first night.

  With the sprinklers switched off and the fire trucks headed back to the station, we turned our attention to trying to salvage our evening. Our first guests would be showing up in any minute . . .

  We spent the next twenty minutes just getting the water out—mopping up the counters with kitchen towels, pushing the water from the floor out the back door with brooms and mops, and throwing away the place that was destroyed.

  Then we ran off to the lockers to change into whatever extra clothes we had so we could be as dry as possible that night. One thing none of us had were extra shoes, so it was a very squeaky couple of hours in the kitchen.

  Yet somehow we made it through the evening. We had to take a few items off the menu—for example, the deep-fryer was full of water and we couldn't get it to turn on, so any fried preparations were removed. Other dishes were prepared as you would prepare them at home—completely made to order, with the cook doing all the chopping and slicing he normally would have completed before staff meal.

  Amazingly, even though we have an open kitchen at Rock­pool, the customers had no idea that anything disastrous had happened, which is a real tribute to my opening team.

  After service that night, I took the men out for about four hundred beers. We probably consumed as much liquid as had poured down on us earlier in the evening, and we had earned every precious drop.

  Alibi

  MICHEL RICHARD

  A pioneer in French/California cuisine, Michel Richard's first kitchen job was as an apprentice in a patisserie in Champagne, France, a job he followed by moving to Paris to work in Gaston Lenotre's esteemed pastry shop. In 1975, he moved to Santa Fe, then, in 1977, to Los Angeles, where he opened his own Michel Richard. In 1987, he launched Citrus, and in 1988, was inducted into the James Beard Foundation's Who's Who in American Food and Beverage. A year later, he opened Citronelle, and went on to open Bistro M in San Francisco, and Citronelle in Baltimore and Philadelphia. In 1994, he opened Citronelle in the Latham Hotel Georgetown in Washington, D.C. In 1998, he moved to Washington, D.C, to cook full time at Michel Richard Citronelle. Richard is the author of Home Cooking with a French Accent, published in 1993. He was a nominee for the James Beard Foundation's Chef of the Year Award for 1996.

  IN THE 1980s, I owned a pastry shop at the corner of Third Street and Robertson Boulevard in Beverly Hills. We catered to a very affluent, stylish, often famous clientele, and to make them happy, I worked day and night, and was always trying to catch up.

  One day, a woman came in and hired us to cater a wedding for two hundred people. Now, this was a quarter-century ago, and I cannot remember who the woman was, whether she was the bride, or the mother of the bride, or a bridesmaid, or a friend. I don't even remember what she looked like.

  I do remember, however, that she wanted the cake to be spectacular. In addition to it being big enough to serve two hundred people, she insisted that the cake have two doves on top, instead of little bride and groom figurines. And not just any doves: blown-sugar doves. In those days, I was fond of blowing sugar, done the same way you blow glass—by heating a quantity of it to the melting point, inserting a long thin straw into the center, and very carefully blowing, turning, and manipulating the melted sugar with various tools to create the desired shape, then letting it cool and harden.

  The wedding was held on a scorching-hot Saturday afternoon, the kind of painfully bright and blistering day you have only in Southern California or the desert, where the sun mercilessly beats down on you.

  I sent my staff ahead to the home where the wedding was taking place and loaded up with all of the food—except for the cake. In those days, I had to do all special preparations myself—first, because my name was on the shop; and second, because there weren't any young cooks around in L.A. who could manage it. Today, sure. But then? No way. And I was so busy that I never had time to train anyone anyway.

  Carefully, I assembled the layers of the cake and decorated it with frosting, making it as special as I could, piping tiny white flourishes that were all the same size and perfectly spaced. Even though I was worried about arriving at the reception too late, I took my time. It was heaven to be quietly decorating a cake in the privacy of my own shop.

  Then I made the beautiful little doves, heating the sugar and blowing the shapes out of the blob. They were lovely, like big Christmas tree ornaments, and I delicately perched them atop the cake. Voila!

  Finished, I packed the cake up in a big, shiny white box, placed it in the backseat of my car, and started driving to the wedding. Running late, as I always was in those days, I drove fast, scooting around the less-trafficked backstreets. Hey, I was late for a wedding, what cop would give me a hard time?

  As I was heading into the
heart of Beverly Hills, I took a sharp turn, and heard the cake slide across the backseat—followed by a cracking sound, similar to shattering glass. One of the doves must have broken.

  That's too bad, I thought. But at least I had another dove. Like with kidneys, I figured that I could survive with just one.

  A little while later, I arrived at the beautiful estate, pulling into the enormous cul-de-sac out front. I couldn't see any of the wedding party, because they were all out back. It was just me and my cake in the customer's driveway.

  No sooner did I step out of the car than I was greeted by the wedding director, an officious, highly organized woman in business attire with a clipboard clasped under her arm.

  "Bonjour, Chef Richard," she said, welcoming me in my native language.

  "Good afternoon," I replied, trying to appear calm and not give her the slightest idea that there was a problem.

  "I have the cake," I continued, forcing a big smile, and pointing at the box in the backseat.

  "Of course. We have a place for it." She directed me to the two-car garage where she said I would find a subzero refrigerator in which I could store the cake until the proper time.

  You drive everywhere in L.A., even the shortest distances, so I got back in the car and drove it to the far end of the driveway, pulling up in front of the garage. I hopped out of the car again, opened the big stainless-steel refrigerator door to make sure it was empty, and picked up the cake box, lifting it carefully with both arms and being sure to keep it level.

  I walked up to the refrigerator and tried to slide the cake inside. Wouldn't you know it—it didn't fit. But it almost fit. So I pushed as hard as I could, forcing it, little by little, into the refrigerator, the box crumpling faintly at the sides.

  No sooner did I squeeze the cake into the refrigerator than the shelf collapsed under the tremendous weight, and both the shelf and the cake crashed to the bottom of the refrigerator. I heard the distinctive tinkle of breaking glass again—the second dove had been destroyed. With a sigh, I lifted the lid of the box. There they were, crystalline shards piled up on top of the cake.

  Even worse, the cake itself was hurt this time. Thanks to the impact of the landing, the frosting was dripping off the sides as though it were melting.

  I had no idea how I was going to save the cake, or explain the poor broken doves, but I had other priorities at that moment, like checking on my staff. Since the door to the refrigerator couldn't be shut, I closed it as far as I could and secured it by dragging over a big, heavy box from the side of the garage and pressing it up against the door.

  Quickly, I circled the house, following the sounds of music and distant conversation until I found myself in an enormous backyard with a swimming pool. The beautiful guests were all standing around in their elegant sports coats and dresses, sipping champagne, and eating hors d'oeuvres. They seemed very happy and impressed with the food and my staff, laughing and enjoying a beautiful afternoon.

  But as I stood there staring at the pleased reception, all I could think about were those sugar shards. How could I possibly fix them?

  Shaking my head with frustration, I left the party and walked back out front, across the driveway, and to the garage.

  As I approached the door, I heard the clicking of my footsteps on the driveway mixed in with other footsteps.

  I spun around and saw that the owner of the house had two big dogs, Dobermans, who were following me out to the garage.

  Normally, I might have been scared to have two Dobermans so close to me. But not this time, because my prayers had been answered. I knew how to get out of my predicament!

  "Come here, doggies. Come here," I said.

  The dogs glanced at each other, then decided to follow me to the garage. I raced over to the refrigerator, shoved the box away, swung the door open, and lifted the lid of the cake box.

  ((Bon appetitl" I said.

  As soon as the dogs got a scent of the food, they quickened their pace, dashing right for the cake and attacking it, snorting with joy. I pushed their faces into the cake, encouraging them to eat faster. As they came up for air, shards of sugar clung to the frosting that surrounded their mouths like clown makeup.

  I ran off calling for the wedding coordinator, who had just come out of the house and was approaching the garage.

  "Madame! Madame! The dogs eat my beautiful wedding cake," I cried, sounding terribly upset. This was Hollywood, after all, and I was giving an Oscar-worthy performance.

  "What?" she yelled, and we hurried over to the garage together. There were the dogs, munching away.

  Horrified, the wedding coordinator chased the animals away, screaming at them. Then she turned to me. "Chef Richard," she said imploringly. "I'm so sorry. So sorry. Can you fix it?"

  "Well," I said, trying to appear pensive.

  "Please . . ."

  "Okay. I know what to do," I said.

  "Oh, thank you!" she said and gave me a big hug.

  I drove to a nearby store, where I purchased strawberries, whipping cream, and fresh mint. When I got back to the house, I dressed what was left of the cake with whipped cream, then topped it with the berries and mint. By the time I was done with it, it looked like a giant strawberry shortcake.

  The coordinator and the happy couple thanked me for being so clever and saving the day. "You are such a quick thinker," the bride said when we were introduced.

  She had no idea how right she was.

  You Really Ought to

  Think About Becoming a Waiter

  ERIC RIPERT

  In 1995, as executive chef of Le Bernardin, Eric Ripert became one of an elite group of chefs to earn four stars from the New York Times. Prior to arriving at Le Bernardin, he studied at the culinary institute in Perpignan and worked at some of the world's finest restaurants, including Paris's La Tour D'Argent and Jamin and also Jean-Louis at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. He is the author of two cookbooks, Le Bernardin Cookbook and A Return to Cooking.

  MOST AMERICAN CHEFS I know never considered becoming a waiter, not even for a second. But there comes a moment in every French cooking student's life when he has to make a crucial decision: "Am I going to become a chef or am I going to become a waiter?"

  They have to make this decision because French culinary schools insist that you spend time learning to be a front-of-the-house professional as well as a cook. For this reason, many of my classmates not only considered becoming waiters, they actually did.

  I never wanted to be a waiter. I had always had a passion for eating and cooking, so had dreamed of becoming a chef since I was a little kid. But I almost became a waiter anyway. In fact, if it weren't for the day that my mother came to lunch at our school's restaurant, I might be a waiter right now.

  When I was fifteen years old, I enrolled in the culinary institute in Perpignan, a town of about one hundred thousand people in the South of France. Perpignan was the closest serious cooking school to my home of Andorra, a co-principality on the southern slope of the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain, approximately three and a half hours away by car. The school had a three-year program for younger kids and a more intensive, two-year program for guys like me. It also offered courses in hairdressing and nursing, so it wasn't a bad place for a fifteen-year-old boy to find himself for two years.

  Though situated in an ancient town, the school was contemporary in every way, with modern, meticulously maintained buildings, state-of-the-art classrooms and kitchen equipment, and a handsome little restaurant where we were able to practice our trade on real customers.

  The school had an interesting history: many of the instructors had previously cooked or served aboard the legendary French luxury liner Le France. Once the pride of the nation, Le France had been so grossly mismanaged that the government-owned ship was permanently docked. Its last port of call was Per­pignan, and many of the chefs, cooks, and waiters stayed in town, becoming instructors at the school.

  All of my teachers were very knowledgeable
and very strict, after a 1950s-era model of discipline, discipline, discipline. They treated us like cadets in a military academy, like the crew of their own landlocked ship: you didn't question their authority, ever. If you did, or if you screwed up badly enough, you might find a saute pan hurled at you. Adding to this military air was the classic uniform that the three hundred to four hundred culinary students all dressed in: crisp white apron and jacket, a tall white toque (cylindrical paper hat), and a white neckerchief. A kitchen team is called a brigade, and that's what we looked like: an army of cooks.

  As with any French culinary school, we devoted just as much time to learning about the dining room as we did to learning about the culinary arts. We spent two days per week serving customers in the school's student-operated restaurant, two days in the kitchen, and one day in the classroom studying the fundamentals of cuisine, as well as management, accounting, and other related topics.

  Although it never interested me, being a waiter was appealing to many of my classmates, even those who initially wanted to be chefs. The kitchen was a tough place and it required great patience. Just like a piano student needs to learn notes before he can play scales, and then songs, a culinary student starts with the basics. And the basics can be pretty tedious. The first thing I remember learning to do was clean the stove, and I wasn't even the one who had dirtied it.

  In the dining room, however, you got to the heart of the work right away. And you didn't just wait on tables; you also learned how to debone ducks and chickens, fillet fish, and perform such flamboyant acts as flambeing, so if you still had a desire to cook, you got to do a little of that, too.

  More important, there were only a certain number of spots in each program, so while the schoolmasters would try to accommodate your wish, it was simply a mathematical fact that some students were going to end up in the dining room.

  There was an additional factor, too, one which might be difficult for contemporary diners to fully comprehend: in many countries, waiting tables is a way for out-of-work actors or unskilled laborers to pay the rent. But in France, it's a proud profession with a noble history. Accordingly, the dining room instructors were just as passionate about their work as the chef-instructors were about theirs. So becoming a waiter began to look very appealing to some of the guys, especially when they found themselves ducking a flying saute pan.