Henin picks me up. We go to McDonald’s. He absolutely loved McDonald’s breakfast. He explained it in terms of the quality, the price, and the consistency. We get to his house, and yep, he doesn’t have an extra bed … or a couch or a TV. He had a kitchen table. He had a dining room table that he had bought without legs, because he was taking that to the show in Chicago … a whole dining room table, six-plus foot. I ended up sleeping on the floor in one of the spare bedrooms. Underneath his sink, he had giant buckets of vinegar with the fermenting mother. He made us some sort of dinner with giant peeled asparagus—the care he took in perfectly peeling it. The larger ones, he peeled with a peeler.
We get to Chicago and we’re working at the Bismarck Hotel, which was an absolute shithole. In fact, Walter Leible had to re-glaze his platter, because a rat ran over the aspic! We spent five days making food for the food show. Each day we’d go to the kitchen, and he’d shove me against the wall, making fleurons. For five days. I wasn’t allowed to turn my head and see what he was doing. Never. There were few people who were as much of a perfectionist as he was, in a good way. But you’re twenty years old and you’re like, What the fuck am I doing? You know? [Laughs] It was, “Yes, Chef!” no matter what, back then.
SUSAN: What attracted you to each other?
JEFFREY: One of the reasons I was brought on the team is that I’m resourceful, can scrounge, and know how to get around things. He was the cheapest son-of-a-bitch I ever met. Roland told Franz he was only allowed to bring one bag, instead of four; Roland needed the extra suitcase. He told me the same thing. Franz was displaying a full program, just like Roland. He was telling Franz he couldn’t bring what he needed, but Roland could. I’ll never forget that.
Roland is panicking, because he knows he’s going to have to spend money at the airport to check his bags. He had, like, twelve bags. This is before electronic ticketing and self-check-in.
I’m like, “I got it.”
“What are you going to do? What are you going to do?”
“I got it taken care of. Don’t worry; it’s not going to cost a penny. I got this covered.”
I’d worked in airports, so I knew. I said, “Pull the van around, grab a skycap.”
So we pull the van around, and I give the guy at skycap four bags and a tip. I say, “Drive around again.”
I rip the tags off the airline jacket ticket and check four more bags into another skycap. We did this thing four more times and got all the bags checked in … free.
“Wow, wow, wow, that’s amazing. That’s amazing!” He was impressed.
Roland was one of those guys, without a doubt, by-the-book, very straightforward. To call him easygoing would be quite the opposite. [Laughs] He was not an easygoing guy: very rigid, scheduled, and disciplined. I was quite the opposite. I grew up more with common sense and those things. I was always the scrounger on the team. Go figure it out. Go find it. I need this. That was me. Even on the ’92 and ’96 teams, I was the guy who got things done. Whatever was needed, I got ’em.
I went through this brutality in Chicago—the fleuron making, facing the wall—all of it. After we left, I didn’t bother to go to the airport with him. He got stuck with a pretty huge bill having to pay for those bags to come home. [Laughs] Still, even after getting screwed with the bill, I did get an apology letter from him, like two months later. I was shocked. A handwritten note! I still have it. I believe I may be only person who has received an apology letter from Roland Henin.
SUSAN: How did Chef Henin affect you?
JEFFREY: He was an asshole! [Laughs] There’s a photo of him with Raimund Hofmeister. Somebody’s holding a French flag in Roland’s crotch. Roland is out cold, on the table.
I love the guy. There are few guys with his knowledge in the world. He’s a technician, a perfectionist. That’s what it takes. Could you get away with the stuff they did thirty years ago? No. But, it wasn’t just him; it was the culture. One chef hung one of the catering managers on the meat hook in the walk-in, overnight. I used to put in a hundred hours a week on my apprenticeship. He wrote me up once, for not coming in on my day off, to clean the walk-in.
Without a doubt, in terms of knowledge of cuisine, knowledge of the profession, and keeping the profession a profession, there are few guys in this world like Roland. You wish you were able to do some of those same things today and carry them forward. Forget about the abuse and treatment; the discipline is hard to find, in this day and age—to continue to expect those higher standards. He’s never let his guard down, and he’s never compromised his standards or his efforts. Never. Love him or hate him, there was no one who didn’t respect the guy. It was impossible not to respect him.
He was always willing to learn, which was amazing, too. He was constantly looking to see what was going on and to keep getting better. Anything different, any type of technique, he was the first guy. He’d say, “What’s that, what’s that? What are you doing? How are you doing that? Show me. Show me.” Not that he would always show you! [Laughs]
SUSAN: What great crazy stories stand out?
JEFFREY: Orlando. The first team practice. We all made the Olympic team, and they flew all the regional teams down to Orlando to practice. Everyone had to do a display of cold food. We took a break for dinner, and at this first team meeting, Henin stands up and tells the story about how they fired a guy that day at Epcot for eating a roll. It was just a little disconcerting, the strictness and the way he was laying it down. We remembered thinking, If they fire a guy for eating a roll, what’ll happen to us!
As the judges critiqued the displays, they always got more and more angry. I was almost the last one to be judged. They got down to the last team, and I was like, Aw, shit. What’s gonna happen? This isn’t good. There was this one guy, Chef Mike di Maria, who made a Hawaiian plate. He created a chicken breast with sweet potatoes, pea pods, and broccoli. Right? Roland is judging the plate.
“Now look at zees plate. Eez vary nice, vary clean … I can tell zees is Hawaiian theme … I see the pea pods … zas vary nice …”
Henin is laying into him, nicely. Chef Mike is getting a little bigger, he’s smiling now.
Roland goes, “But, then I see zees … zis broccoli. Where the fuck do they grow broccoli in Hawaii? I see zis, and I think you’re jerking me off.”
Then he just rips into the guy. Roland sets him up to rip him to shreds. I swear, all of us, to this day, still say, “He’s zhherking me off!” It’s a Roland Henin term.
I’m supposed to be judged after the next guy … after Roland’s all revved up: “They don’ grow fucking broccoli in Hawaii! I see zees, it tells me you’re trying to zhheerk me off!”
I’m sweating my ass off, going, Holy shit. I’m coming up.
The next guy had an ostrich plate. Ostrich. No one was doing it, at the time. The chefs are laughing so fucking hard by the time they got to me, they were all saying, Fuck it. Fix this, this, and this, and then let’s go. Let’s go home. I lucked out so much. I thought I was gonna be bleeding after that one. I was waiting to be ripped to shreds in front of fifty guys. It didn’t quite happen. It happened plenty of times after that, but not then.
That ostrich saved my ass.
SUSAN: There are probably whole cults of people out there who have been touched by Chef Henin …
JEFFREY: Oh yeah. That’s a whole other line of questioning…. What happens in the kitchen stays in the kitchen. I’m not getting in the middle of that one!
After these practice sessions, he would cook food in the back and take it home on the plane—braised rabbit legs, or whatever it was—back to Oregon with him, to eat. When we were in Anaheim, we had time to kill, so I took him to a mall. He found this turkey platter, but it was about fifty bucks and God forbid he buys it, right? He was doing a platter for Germany and was working at it. This mall was an hour and a half from my house, easily. When he gets home to Oregon, he called me up, he goes, “Jeffrey, Jeffrey. Go get me that plahttah. I need that plahttah. I need that pla
httah. You gotta buy me that plattah. Go get me that plattah.”
I drove an hour and a half, each way, bought the platter, and sent it to him. “No no no, this isn’t it. This is no good. Send it back.” [Laughs] It was one of those … he could have bought it right then and there, but he didn’t want to pull the money out of his wallet.
When Roland and Keith Keogh were writing The Art and Science of Culinary Preparation, Keith had a photographer there. They gave me the recipe to make the veal stock. I’d been making veal stock at that point for quite some time. I was already on the ’92 team, and the way I was taught was: roast the bones for the first couple of hours; add the mirepoix, then add tomato paste; get it nice and caramelized; add the wine to deglaze it, and then it goes in a pot.
He’s watching me, and after I got through that part he goes, “What’s zees? What’s zees?”
I go, “What do you mean?”
“Tomato paste! Tomato paste! Why you put that in there?”
“What are you talking about? There’s tomato paste in veal stock, in a brown veal stock.”
“No no no, Look at the rahsipee! Look at the rahsipee!! It’s right here, right here! It says Optional! Optional!”
“Yeah, I opted to put it in!” [Laughs] And I walked away.
Blood was boiling.
SUSAN: So he doesn’t put tomato paste in the brown veal stock, eh?
JEFFREY: He may have not on that one, because obviously that was the recipe he wrote. If you look at the ’92 Olympic book, there are a few pictures of me making the stock.
Author’s note: Chef Henin responded to this: Veal “fond blanc” does not require a tomato product (NON-optional). Veal “fond BRUN,” meaning roasted bones, does require a tomato product (NON OPTIONAL).
SUSAN: You and David Burke should do a comedy routine at a Henin roast. I’m going to back up. You talked about …
JEFFREY: French flag sticking out of Henin’s crotch? That was after Frankfurt, 1988. We were waiting for our critique, and he had passed out on the table. I don’t know who it was, it might have been Mial Parker or Larry Banares, but somebody stuck a flag in his crotch. I don’t know if there was ever a photo taken, but it’s a vivid memory. I can tell you that.
SUSAN: What is your mentoring style?
JEFFREY: I took everything that Henin and Hofmeister told me and did the opposite! He’s not humble. Just not in his nature! Our background was all yelling and adversarial. We all thought that was normal. My first job outside of the Century Plaza was as sous-chef at the North Ranch Country Club. At the club, the front of house and the back of the house had all been traveling together, working together, and were like a family. There was no yelling and screaming, no beating the crap out of each other. It was everyone together—one big team.
You can’t do what we did anymore. Although, I think the work ethic today is a lot less than it used to be. Few people are willing to put in the time and the energy to do it right. There aren’t many great chefs out there anymore, and a big part of that may be the culinary schools. The schools today aren’t the same as they were thirty years ago. Now it’s about how much money you can make. Back then, they would have kicked somebody out or failed them. But today, they’re not going to give up the money.
SUSAN: What do you think about culinary competitions?
JEFFREY: I think they’re great. Competition teaches you things about adversity, being able to get through things. You can’t trade for that information. Roland was a tyrant in a good way, driving home the seriousness of it. We’d be in Orlando working until midnight or 1:00 a.m., having to be up and ready by 6:00 a.m. If you were twenty seconds late, he’d be tapping his watch, pissed off. Banging pots, let’s go, let’s go, driving it. It wasn’t easy, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. You don’t realize what you end up with, until long after: how to get yourself out of the weeds quickly; how to adapt when you don’t have a kitchen or when you don’t have a stove; how do you get the stuff done.
He always worked backward! It was always last minute. You’d fly to a city, in a different country, with no resources, and you gotta pull it all together. In Frankfurt, we got knocked out of our kitchen. We ended up having to go cook at a military base, in Nestlé, thirty miles out of town. We had to adapt to get the whole thing done.
SUSAN: After that, you can do anything.
JEFFREY: Chefs like Henin would turn off ovens. Unplug a fridge. Force you to cook on Sterno. Bring in live eels. Everything that could go wrong always did. So you couldn’t get pissed off. You had to keep going, because the clock was ticking, regardless. Always feel like you’re behind. Never think you got more time. Rather be an hour early than an hour late.
Culinary schools are not teaching this to kids. How much can you learn in three weeks? You never got the real experience. Externship helped, but three weeks per unit? Come on. Only 30 percent of the graduates remain in the industry. Plus, schools put students so far in debt. It’s not what it used to be. When we went to a culinary school, you had to have a culinary background, and there was a two-year waiting list. Nowadays, your wallet is full, I’m happy to help you.
SUSAN: How has your relationship changed?
JEFFREY: It’s less mentor-mentee, more like colleagues. We’re peers now, because of the respect we’ve had. The whole point is to eclipse your mentor. That’s the one thing about Henin and Hofmeister … they would never tell you that, but, they always wanted you to be better than them. They didn’t want it to be right then and there, but eventually. If I can’t train the people to be better than me, then I didn’t do my job. That’s what I learned from them. Keller is the epitome of it. But guys like that are few and far between. I’d ask Roland, “Chef, how’d you make this?” He’d say, “If I tell you, you take my job.” He’d joke about that, but he always gave secrets of the craft—all of it—away.
Franz Popperl
Chef Instructor, Arts Institute of Seattle, Culinary Olympics, Retired
When you have Chef Henin coaching you, and he thinks that you could win it, you will.
FRANZ: I’ll start off with a little story, first. I was one of four judges up in Seattle for the state competition—the Northwest Regional Team. Roland Henin was there but not as an official judge. We started the first competition and judged the first competitor. We gave him a high score, and so we’re thinking that maybe we are already starting out with a gold medalist? We gave our critique and then Roland gave the last critique. There was something wrong with the way the competitor put down his finishing touches, and Roland noticed this. We enter another kitchen, and Henin starts saying the same thing. There is this big, burly, angry elderly guy growling, “Who is this A-hole French Guy?”
I said, “That would be Roland Henin, Master Chef. He was my team colleague. I spent four years on the national teams and had to share a room with him when we were traveling. He is an amazing guy!”
The chef argued, “If he would do more listening and less talking, this whole thing would already be over by now!”
The funny part is how the people he rips apart the most are the ones he gives the highest score! You always think he’s crushing you, like you’re zero, and you have no idea.
SUSAN: There are two kinds of people: those who respond to his way, and those who … don’t.
FRANZ: You have to know his history. Growing up, Henin apprenticed in France. I had the same experience. We went through the same kind of treatment: stabbed and burned; banished and punished. If we burnt something, we had to pay for it out of our wages. It was harsh, especially for Roland, since he was older; conditions were even harsher for him than when I went through it. In six years, I barely ever heard anything good when I worked, but if I did something bad … oh, boy!
To understand Roland Henin, you have to be able to visualize him when he’s fifteen years old, in a French kitchen. The times, the history about the whole thing … you have to visualize it. If you can see the chefs around him, mentoring him, then you will understand Roland Henin.
Otherwise, you walk away with your mouth hanging open, going, “What? Who is that?” You will not understand where he’s coming from. There was hardly any refrigeration. Stoves were heated with coal and logs; apprentices had to make a fire in the morning. There were dishwashers as big as a gorilla, lifting and washing copper pots so big you could take a bath in them. Technology? No way. You were not allowed to use cookbooks, not allowed to read a recipe! If you wanted to look something up when you were working, they would just scream at you, “You should know this before you come in here!” You must show the chef respect.
When I was working my kitchen as an apprentice, it was always a pot that was holding the fat in the deep fryer. Just a special pot we have in there, and a basket that goes into the fat. When we wanted to find out if the hot fat was hot enough, we always spit in it. Pop! It’s always bubbling up, so you have a bubble bath. Oh, it’s hot enough! If we wanted to see if the oven was the right temperature for baking, we put our hands in it. Aaah! It’s the right temperature. We had to turn the sponge cake with our hands when we were taking it out, because if you forgot it was rising higher on one side, it would not come out level. The chef charged me for the part that wasn’t level. One hundred dollars a month was my pay, back in the day.
SUSAN: Chef Pierre (at Café du Parc) made me remove foods from the boiling oil with my fingers. [Laughs] I got good and calloused, fast! Was it different in Austria compared to France?
FRANZ: Well, I don’t know who were the bigger A-holes. I think the French were pretty strict, because in Austria we cooked all our French/Classical cuisine all day long. We had butcher days; half cows and pigs came in and the apprentices would break them down. The hotel I was working in basically made their money off having apprentices running the kitchen. We had one chef and one sous-chef and that was it. They hired five apprentices per year. We worked 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 pm and then 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. If you did something wrong, you had to work through the afternoon break, peeling potatoes. We were only allowed to use the mixer for making mayonnaise and meringue. That’s it. Everything else had to be made by hand.
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