Don't Try This at Home
Page 26
She's the one, the only one,
who's built like a amazon
Some of the waiters had two names. One was their "straight name" and one was their "gay name." I came from a very small town in the Midwest, so a lot of this was both new and oddly okay with me. One of the older waiters would tease me at least once a week by saying, "One night with me, baby, and you will throw rocks at your old lady!" But he was like an uncle to all of us, one we loved and watched over. He'd had some seizures and if the owners found out, they might have 86'd him. Makes the touristas jumpy, they'd reason.
"Tammy" was reading the Key West Citizen. He was standing near the pantry when I heard him shriek. This was not the type of shriek you cry out when you're fearful, as if a car were suddenly swerving out of control and into your lane. No, this was the shriek of a game show contestant who had just won the BIG MONEY PRIZE SO COME ON DOWN!! A team of waitstaff rushed Tammy. "What? What? What?" they demanded. Trembling with excitement, Tammy pointed to the paper, where it announced that the Philippine fleet would be docking one of their ships at Key West for the entire weekend.
Estimates of more than five hundred sailors on shore leave!
Tammy looked up, an angelic glow wreathing his fine-featured face, and beamed, "I just adore seafood!" He clutched the paper to his thrust chest and marched out the door to see who else he could share this joyous news with.
She knows she got everything
a woman needs to get a man, yeah.
I glanced at Clyde, still blasting his music. His vibe was beginning to get to me. I think I saw him toss a bottle of Miller High Life, just emptied, in the trash. He looked at me like he was "just working man, just working . . ."
How can she lose with what she use
36-24-36, what a winning hand!
At the time, we didn't have an "in house" pastry chef. Nino the Butcher would make the Zuppa Anglaise cake, the pantry girls would make the Key lime pie base, and so on. I took on the task of making the meringue for those Key lime pies and topping them with a towering stack of the sugary goo, then glazing them in a blast-furnace-hot oven. It was just after I set the batch of six pies in the oven that Danny signaled me over. I beat a path over there and caught another installment of the Rosie Act in all its refinement. Danny and I high-fived each other. That's when I heard Betty the Breakfast Cook laughing wickedly. I looked at her with a dumb "Whaaa?" expression. She pointed to the oven with her 16-ounce Busch beer can and cackled, "You fucked up the pies, Ace." The glory of Rosie's perfect bottom faded instantly as I raced back across the kitchen and flung open the doors on the rickety Blodgett. It is a bit of a miracle to see pies literally on fire . . . on fucking fuego! Dios Mio! Six cylindrical spires of flame danced in the maw of that oven. The heat spanked my face hard. I pulled the sheet pan out, trying to keep away from the Key lime infernos, whipped around, and dropped the pan on Nino's butcher block. I yanked a long spatula out of the knife rack and quickly slashed off the smoldering meringue tops in an effort to salvage the bottom of the pies and the graham cracker crusts. The tops hissed like burning ships sinking in the water as they met whatever was in the garbage can at that moment. Beef blood? Fish heads? I swore at the dilemma unfolding in front of me. "Shit, fuck, dammit to fucking hell!" It was eerie how it almost seemed to be occurring in slow motion. Some faces looked on in horror and some of the crew were slapping their knees, doubled over laughing. You could count on it with this team.
She knows she's built and knows how to please
Sure enough to knock a man to his knees
Shake it down, shake it down now
That's when I snapped. I ran over to Clyde's noisemaker and yanked the cord out of the wall. "That's it, Clyde! No more fucking Commodores today!!" I'd never had the balls to face him down before that day. But Clyde knew what crazy looked like, and he was starin' at a face full of it at that moment.
By now Terry was nearly finished serving lunch to our young family from the Midwest. He had managed to get Mom and Pop to order an extra round of daiquiris and he felt confident about a sizeable tip. He decided to reward himself. The main waiter station was situated so that the waiters could watch the guests arriving or leaving from behind a chest-high wall. As the family happily strolled out, the two kids hoisted on to their parent's backs as if they were about to have a "chicken fight," they could see Terry bent over, apparently doing some waiter task. Since they'd forged such a wonderful bond, the family called out, "Bye Terry!" Terry suddenly snapped up, startled by the proximity of their voices—and by the stimulants now hitting his brain. Back then it was not uncommon for the waiters to have a little cocaine stash. The managers were either oblivious or doing their own elsewhere.
Normally the family wouldn't have been any wiser, with the plate hidden well out of view. But when Terry bobbed up to jovially wave them "bye-bye," he'd come up with the plastic straw still stuck up his nose. The family wrestled with this grotesque image of their lovable waiter buddy, momentarily trying to make sense of it, and then fled down the hallway and off into the little streets of Key West. Terry was confused as to why they had reacted with horror, until he bent down again, and the little mirror showed him what they'd just seen. He yanked out the straw, composed himself, thought for a moment—and then did "just one more tiny bump since I'm here," plus a "freeze" for good measure, before shimmying back to his tables.
Rosie had a brother who worked with us, too. He liked to think of himself as an American Indian. He had long black hair and a tattoo of Geronimo on his beefy right shoulder, always visible since he wore a vest with no shirt. George helped keep the kitchen clean and did some light prep. That night he was cleaning poached chickens, breaking them down for chicken salad. He had two hotel pans full of meat when he was asked by one of the chefs to take some boxes to the Dumpster. Now, George was one of the sweetest guys on the face of the planet; he immediately stopped what he was doing and gathered up the boxes. When he came back to his chicken work a bit later, though, he looked shaken. I asked him what was wrong. He shook his head and answered, "Fucked up, man." "What's fucked up, George?" I prodded. "I went out to dump those boxes, man, and this poor guy is rootin' through our trash. Man, I saw him this morning too, the same guy . . . And so I went back in and got him a little bit of that chicken I've been pluckin' and he looks at me and says, 'No thanks! I'm a vegetarian!' All huffy with me, man! Freaky, man . . . " Yes, indeed, George. You could say that. Freaky. Wacky. Key Westy even.
I finally got out of work around 10 p.m. I needed drinks. Plural. You could always count on the Full Moon Saloon back then. At that hour it was just beginning to happen. Danny and I sat down at the horseshoe-shaped bar and started to unwind.
Buddy D. was bartending. He introduced me to a singer/ songwriter who was down from his home state of Alabama, the same place Jimmy Buffett was from. His name was Keith, a nice guy, got a real kick out of the food and restaurant rap Danny and I were filling him in on. He invited the two of us to go over to Buffett's place and see what was going on. They'd been working on a song for most of the afternoon and maybe we could listen in. No problemo, my new friend. Buffett's. Sure. Let's go give Jimmy a hand. Why not?
Another guy was at the house when we got there, an excellent bartender as well as one of the island's most heralded cocksmen. Tom was a mellow Vietnam vet who I could never imagine being at war with anything other than a stubborn zipper. By now Jimmy had most of the lyrics down and most of the melody, too. But the opener was where he was still seeking the Muse. It was a song about the odd twists and turns of life. Jimmy and Keith made up nonsense words or just hummed to fill in the gap and then moved on to the part they were happy with. That's when I fell out of Jimmy Buffett's window. First Jimmy, then Tom, and then Keith came hot-footing it around to the water side of the house. Danny stayed put and continued to drink. Tom lifted me up and clapped me on the back to get my lungs to open. Then he reached delicately into my shirt pocket and plucked out my moped key. With motorized transport safely out
of the way for the evening, we climbed back up the wooden stairs and Tom fixed fresh drinks. Jimmy picked up his battered Martin and found the notes from before. Words came now and he sang them with a golden smile, "Shit happens."
The Michelin Man
GEOFFREY ZAKARIAN
Geoffrey Zakarian is the executive chef and co-owner of Town Restaurant in New York City, a recipient of three stars from the New York Times, and has worked in many of Manhattan s most celebrated restaurants including stints as chef de cuisine at Le Cirque, executive chef at the '21' Club, chef partner of Restaurant 44 at the Royalton Hotel, and executive chef of Patroon Restaurant, where he also received three stars from the New York Times. Before becoming a chef in his own right, Zakarian trained under some of Europe's finest kitchen masters. His first book, Town and Country, debuts fall 2005.
THERE I WAS in a Monaco casino, at the roulette table, sipping my vodka martini and calmly playing another round. I was on assignment, trying to stop that pain-in-the-ass Blofeld from taking over the world's oil supply. But even a secret agent deserves a night off, to clear the head, refresh the body.
After about an hour of coolly piling up a stack of five hundred-dollar chips, she came in—the sultry, Eastern European brunette whom I had encountered just that morning on the slopes of Switzerland, right before getting into a ski chase that left twenty henchmen dead and a small chalet in ruins.
Our eyes locked and she took a seat beside me at the table.
"We must stop meeting like this, Mr. . . ." She trailed off. I never had given her my name.
"Bond, James—"
Wait, no, that's not what happened.
But that's the way I sometimes thought of myself at the time. It was 1981, and I was a twenty-year-old James Bond enthusiast, discovering Europe for the first time—discovering its ancient architecture, darkly mysterious women, and the food that would change the course of my professional life.
So, this isn't a James Bond tale. Rather, it's the tale of Zakarian, Geoff Zakarian, and how I earned, then lost, my License to Eat.
When we join our hero, I was in college. Though I would eventually become a chef, I wasn't preparing for a career in the kitchen. I don't know where I was headed, really, but for better or worse I was enrolled in Worcester State College in my home state of Massachusetts, where I was majoring in Urban Studies.
I had a fierce desire to blow town, blow the whole country actually, and visit Europe. With the aid of a dedicated professor, I obtained a GMAT loan to finance my trip at the amazingly low interest rate of just 2 percent. While there, I was to research and write a paper on the effect of gambling society—and the influx of wealthy travelers delivered by the advent of rail transportation—on Monaco.
At least that was the plan. But I had never been to Europe. I had never even been out of the country. And no sooner had I arrived in France than I fell in love with everything about it—the style, the relaxed way of life, and especially the food.
I immediately gave up the research project and resolved, instead, to spend a year traveling around Europe, devoting most of my attention to France. All of the country's charms, it seemed to me, were inextricably intertwined, so I decided to use food as the organizing principle of my journey, selecting my destinations based on whether or not the cities and towns had a restaurant that boasted at least one Michelin star.
For the next seven or eight months, I made my way around from town to town. Six days a week I lived on a diet of couscous, which was dirt cheap, especially when purchased in bulk, with an occasional piece of cheese thrown in when I could swing it.
On the seventh day, usually a Friday, I would eat in a restaurant of some renown, preferably a three-star Michelin restaurant.
Dinner Day was a big event for me, the moment to which my entire week built. I would don my one suit, a custom-made blue-gray houndstooth from the shop of the legendary Massachusetts fashion god Alan Bilzerian. To fill it out, I wore a white dress shirt with English spread collar and a handmade, seven-fold blue-gray tie.
I was essentially a poor student—I lived on unalloyed grains all week and slept in dingy little hotels—but when I stepped out on that night, I looked like a million bucks.
And I felt like my hero, James Bond, dapperly lighting out in a European town in search of . . . well, in my case, in search of a good meal. But if I were to happen upon a criminal mastermind trying to execute a nefarious plot, I would have absolutely taken him down, and done so with style.
The first three-star restaurant I went to was Vivarois, owned by Claude Peyrot, and his wife, who ran the front of the house.
They epitomized the perfect hosts: elegant, sophisticated, and charming to all who graced their dining room. And yet, it quickly became apparent to me that I was being treated with more generosity than any of the other guests. In broken English, they made certain that I was pleased with everything, pampering me like royalty, even sending extra courses.
Was it the suit? I wondered. It was a magnificent piece of sartorial craftsmanship. But did it have mystical powers, wooing all who came into contact with its wearer to heap food and hospitality upon him?
Maybe it did, because this royal treatment continued long after I left Vivarois. Without exception, no matter where I dined, I was the recipient of an embarrassing amount of attention. And strangely, the more stars the restaurant possessed, the more fawning the owner and chef were: even at such three-star bastions of cuisine as Paul Bocuse, Taillevent, and Troisgros—places that probably turned away more customers than they deigned to serve.
Before I went to Europe, I had heard a lot of talk about how nasty the French were. But I found them to be the nicest people on Earth.
One day, about two-thirds into my year abroad, I arrived in La Rochelle, a small coastal town north of Bordeaux.
Having run out of cash, I stopped in a beautiful little bank, an outpost of Credit Lyonnais, and slid my passport under the teller's window, along with a five-hundred-dollar traveler's check.
"Francs, s'il vous plait" I said to the stoic woman on the other side of the glass. Moments later, without a word, the teller slid back a wad of money.
I've seen people count their money at bank windows, and I suppose I understand the reasons for doing so. But I've never done it. I figure the teller has a lot more at stake than I do—like his or her job—so I trust they've done it right.
A few days later, I donned my suit, hit the town, and enjoyed another glorious meal. After I paid the bill, my wallet had more heft than it usually did at that moment in the week, when it often seemed so empty it could blow away.
Curious, I counted my money—and realized that I had the equivalent of fifteen hundred dollars more than I should have. I checked the bank receipt and discovered that the teller had made an error, reading my traveler's check in pounds rather than dollars, a huge mistake in my favor.
Cool! I thought, and the next day, fearful of being tracked down by the bank, or the local constable, I took off for Paris, eager to disappear into the anonymity a big city affords visitors.
After Paris, I went to Monaco. I had devised a plan to parlay my good fortune into a real fortune. So I put on my Bilzerian suit and hit the casino. In honor of my hero, James Bond, I chose the roulette table.
Though I had never gambled before, I won a whopping fifteen thousand dollars that night, an amount that would still delight me today, but at the time, when I was a twenty-year-old college student living on couscous, it was almost incomprehensible.
With my winnings I extended the scope and ambition of my culinary mission, zeroing in on the three-star restaurants, sometimes hitting two in one week. Of the twenty-one three-star restaurants around at the time, I ate at eighteen of them.
When my time and finances eventually dwindled, I began making plans for my return to the States. There was only one way to properly bring my international life of mystery to a close: I went to Air France with a bulging wad of cash in my pocket and purchased a ticket on the Concorde.
Back in the States, I went on about my life, setting in motion my plans to begin a life in the kitchen. Coming home from school one afternoon, I collected my mail and while shuffling through the pile, I noticed a certified letter from Credit Lyonnais, a formal-looking envelope postmarked from La Rochelle.
Inside was a letter from a bank executive explaining that they had made a mistake in my favor, and politely but firmly requesting their money back. Tucked in behind the letter was a photocopy of my passport (I guess they photocopy them, though I didn't see it happen), a close-up of my signature, and a number of security camera snapshots of me receiving the money from the teller. My entire dossier, so to speak.
These would be worthy adversaries, indeed.
I decided to meet the problem head on. I wrote them a letter explaining that I was just a student, and suggested that I pay them one hundred dollars per month. They agreed, and let me make the payments interest free, an even better deal than my student loan.
Incidentally, twenty-four years later, I discovered why it was that I had been so well treated in Europe's finest restaurants. In 2005, Edmund Michelin visited Manhattan to host a party announcing that the Guide was at long last coming to New York. During his remarks, he jokingly indicated that single diners here were about to find themselves the recipients of extraspecial attention, because, as everyone knew, most of their reviewers were young men who traveled alone.
So it wasn't the suit, after all.
But that's okay. Because it was one hell of a year.
The End of Innocence