In those years, Joey finally opened his very own restaurant in the West Village, Extra Virgin, which became an instant success. It was the place he had always dreamed of opening: an unpretentious neighborhood restaurant where the food is interesting, well executed, and delicious. He had neither the space nor the need for a pastry chef, but I did everything I could to make sure his desserts were easy to execute and delicious. Once we had the desserts set up, Joey no longer needed my assistance, and I knew that our eight-year work partnership had come to an end.
After two years of consulting, I was ready, once again, for some routine—at the very least, health insurance. But as much as I wanted the stability of a full-time job and the prestige of working in a restaurant of high repute, I had trepidations about returning to a six-day, sixty-plus-hour work week. I was older, and my life fuller. I was no longer interested in having a monogamous relationship with work. It was a dilemma, but before I could even start exploring my options, Barton called to tell me about a job he’d heard about, one he thought would be perfect. The hours are great, Barton told me, knowing my ambivalence about returning to a full-time restaurant job. You’ll have time for other things in your life. He claimed it was a pastry chef job with “bankers’ hours” at a three-star restaurant. This was unheard of. When Joey called a few days later urging me to look into the very same job, I had to take notice.
I sat across from the chef in the small basement office of Veritas. He leaned back in the office chair, relaxed, and slumped, his legs spread wide, his hair flopped forward over his face. His chef’s pants were rolled up well above his ankles. The office was crowded with stacks of boxes, endless bits of paper were stuck to the walls, and the drop ceiling was missing most of its tiles.
“So,” he said, in a thick Boston accent, “we’re a very civilized restaurant. The pastry chef wahks five days. For the most pahht, I’m very easy to get along with. There’s not a lot of yelling . . . as long as no one fucks with my service. I can’t have my service fucked with.”
“Right,” I said, nodding.
“I like simple desserts,” he went on. “Simple. A lemon tart. None of this architectural crap. Simple. The garde-manger guy has to be able to plate them at night so the plates can’t be too complicated.”
“Okay,” I said. He just looked at me. I’d never been good at interviews, at being put on the spot. I wished he would ask me something. He didn’t.
“Do you want to see my book?” I offered. I held out the large black portfolio I’d been building over the years. It held most of the press I had received, and had plenty of pictures. It was proof to both of us that I was, in fact, a real pastry chef.
“My stuff is pretty simple,” I said as he took the book and started flipping through it. “I like clean lines, more of a Scandinavian or Asian aesthetic. I really like things to taste good and look appealing. But definitely they have to taste good.” He handed the book back to me.
“The thing is,” he explained, “that if you take the job, I’d want you to commit to at least a year, because finding a pastry chef is a pain in the ass.”
I nodded.
“So, why don’t you think about it. Call me the day after to morrow.”
I left the restaurant, my mind already dizzy. A three-star restaurant, dinner only, and a five-day work week? And it was a prix fixe restaurant so I wouldn’t even have to worry about how many customers ordered dessert because every customer got dessert. With only fifty seats, the dining room was small, and the salary was decent. The chef seemed nice enough, not condescending or arrogant as a lot of chefs can be. The kitchen had a reputation for being nice, with cooks that stayed on for years—a sure sign of a good work environment. And I wasn’t even asked to do a tasting. The job had practically fallen into my lap.
“Well,” the chef said when I called back two days later, “the job’s yahs if you want it.”
I hadn’t asked him about health insurance or vacation or any of the other things I was supposed to ask a potential employer at that stage of my career. I simply reacted, as I had so many times in the past, based on gut feeling.
Three weeks later, I started working at Veritas. I knew it would take some time to change the six-item dessert menu, but I was determined to do a special on my very first day. I decided on a dessert I’d done before with much success: a lemon tart, something the chef had mentioned during my interview. Why not let him know I was willing to take his suggestions to heart? Too many pastry chefs tried too hard to establish their independence, but I was used to a collaborative relationship with Joey. I wanted to make my chef happy.
I pressed a dark brown sugar crust into the bottom of a shallow ring mold and baked it. When it cooled, I filled the ring to the top with lemon curd that had just the barest amount of gelatin added to keep it molded. Once the curd set up in the fridge, I unmolded the tarts by heating the outside of the metal ring mold with a propane torch, warming the curd just enough to allow the ring mold to be smoothly lifted off. Then, I piped thick spikes of Italian meringue (egg whites and sugar cooked to 240 degrees Fahrenheit) to conceal the entire top of the tart. Just before the dessert went out to a table, the meringue would get “torched,” gently toasted with the propane torch so that it looked, and tasted, like a toasted marshmallow. Joey had always referred to the dessert as the Don King because of its spiky top. I had just finished the crusts when Felix, my new assistant, who came with the job, arrived at work.
“Hi,” he said. He was pale, with thick, dark hair. He seemed like the kind of guy who had a permanent five o’clock shadow. He had a thick Slavic accent and smelled like cigarettes and after-shave. “So, I need the last Sunday of the month off.”
It was bad enough that he had arrived fifteen minutes late, but now he was telling me that he needed one of my days off. In the restaurant business, Sunday is the day off, the best day, and the day that nearly every chef and pastry chef takes as his or her own. I was no exception, and I had every intention of maintaining my schedule. I just looked at him.
“You don’t have to give it to me,” he explained, “but my friends are taking me out drinking for my birthday the night before, so I’m just telling you that I am not going to be in on that Sunday.”
Though he had graduated recently from a local pastry arts program and had been at Veritas for almost a year, he didn’t have much of a reputation. Chef had given me permission to get rid of him if I wanted, even saying that he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box. He hadn’t said anything about him being a jerk.
“Let me just look at my calendar,” I told him coldly. “I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”
As much as I wanted to deny his absurd sense of entitlement, set a precedent, and show him who was boss, I decided to bide my time. He’d made a terrible first impression, but I didn’t want to make too rash a decision. It could take weeks to find a decent assistant, and in the meantime I would be left to do all of his work and mine, and I wouldn’t have any days off. I left Felix setting up the station in the upstairs kitchen, which had all the stoves and ovens, and went downstairs to finish my special, already imagining how I’d phrase my Craigslist ad for a new assistant.
At Veritas, the chef gave me only a few guidelines to work with. Aside from wanting the desserts to be kept simple, he also disliked anything that sounded too “homey” or American. So, I could make my golden pineapple upside down cake, but I had to call it “golden pineapple financier,” which sounded perfectly reasonable to me. He had only two requirements: that I make some sort of cake batter that could be piped into small madeleine molds, baked to order, and used as petits fours, and that the chocolate soufflé remain on the menu. It was Veritas’s top-selling dessert, and the recipe had remained unchanged since their opening seven years earlier.
The chocolate soufflé was not a soufflé at all but a variation of chocolate molten cake. It was the one dessert I had avoided my entire career, the dessert I had for so long despised, if only for its sheer omnipresence and lack of imaginat
ion. But after nine years of detesting it, I came to appreciate its one undeniable strength: People loved it. It was warm and oozing and chocolate, and it was served with ice cream. With the mandated chocolate soufflé on my menu, there was no pressure to come up with a rich, chocolate dessert, the one that had always been trickiest for me. Knowing that customers wouldn’t be denied their gooey-chocolate desires, I was free to make less intense chocolate desserts, cool chocolate desserts, chocolate desserts with more interesting flavor combinations.
Slowly I phased in all my new desserts. Some, like a pumpkin crème caramel with coconut cream and rum raisins, were very successful. The customers loved it, as did the cooks and waiters, who were happy to gobble down any leftovers. Others, though, like the lemon tart, which I had added to the menu, did not go over as well. I was devastated when the chef suggested I change my tart because it “looked too similar” to another dessert (they were made in the same mold).
Thankfully it was the first and only time that any of my desserts got knocked down by the chef. Over time, I figured out what kinds of desserts worked, what matched the food: French-inspired but with some license taken and, for the most part, quite rich. Veritas has one of the best wine lists in the country, and so the food, as well as the desserts, had to complement the wine. I took my lead from the savory food: I toned down the whimsy of my desserts and kept my plates simple, I used mostly seasonal ingredients, and most important, I kept my flavors delicious and un-fussy. As I grew more confident, I began adding less obvious, more adventurous flavors: white pepper ice cream, for example, with an apple-rhubarb crisp, saffron cream with a coconut panna cotta, Thai coffee ice cream with the chocolate soufflé. I wanted diners to be happily surprised to discover the unfamiliar flavor.
Since Veritas had received three stars from the New York Times years earlier and had long since gotten rid of their public relations company, I didn’t have to worry about impending reviews, and I’d gotten far enough along in my own career that I no longer yearned for press the way I once had. I was happy just being a pastry chef in a stellar restaurant with steady business. But other challenges lay ahead of me, and Felix was just the beginning.
TWENTY-FOUR
Fruits and Nuts
Dalia!” bellowed the voice as Culo, robust as usual, walked into the kitchen.
“Hi, Culo,” I answered.
It took me a while to get used to calling him Culo, which means “ass” in Spanish. When I first started, Culo was on a two-month leave of absence due to a broken arm. Before his return, he’d come up in conversation among the cooks all the time, and when I asked why they called him Culo, the answer was always “You’ll see.” Later, I figured it was a nickname he’d earned from the other guys in the kitchen on account of his loud mouth, and the stupid things that came out of it. It wasn’t until I saw his given name—Justin Couleau—printed out on a paycheck envelope that I discovered he didn’t need a nickname. That it was spelled differently made no difference. Everyone heard “Culo.”
Culo’s arrival each day signified the end of my quiet morning. For two days each week, my assistant, The Albanian (who didn’t seem to mind the name the other cooks had given him), was blessedly off, and I had the kitchen all to myself. I’d been too preoccupied with getting acclimated to Veritas to focus on finding a new assistant, so I had to tolerate The Albanian’s inane stories about his loose connections to the Albanian mafia, his wedding preparations, his plans to sell real estate because pastry wasn’t “really what he wanted to do.” I was actually overjoyed when he told me he needed to leave early three days a week for a real estate class.
Soon the rest of the cooks would arrive, and the kitchen, which had been all mine since eight that morning, would be overrun with boys. They were, for the most part, all nice guys and good cooks, but they were boys nonetheless, despite being in their twenties. They took over the kitchen, bringing with them meat and garlic, sloshing stocks, and spattering hot oil, along with the annoying cacophony of the classic rock station and their even louder mouths. It was no place for a pastry chef like me, whose work depended on exacting methods, straight lines, and careful measurements. I preferred my work environment to be calm and orderly, with the gentle voices of the local public radio station in the background. I switched off the radio and retreated to my pastry area in the basement, where I spent the balance of my day.
My station in the basement was modest: a six-foot stainless steel table, a fourth of which was occupied by an ice cream machine. The ice creams at Veritas were spun every day, so they were always soft and creamy and could be quenelled, or scooped, using only spoons. I also had my own set of shelves on which to store pastry ingredients, and half of the dairy walk-in. Most pastry chefs are anal retentive about their areas and tools, and I was no exception. But we have good reason: Plenty of cooks thoughtlessly use and misplace pastry tools, move pastry mise-en-place to make room for their own, and simply regard pastry as less important. I was happy to find that no one at Veritas really messed with the pastry area or mise-en-place. Maybe it was because every new cook at Veritas had to master garde-manger before moving up, which meant mastering the dessert plates, too. It was something they all had to get past, and respect, before moving on to what they considered “real” cooking.
“Hey, Miyagi!” Culo yelled.
Miyagi, né Carlos, was the butcher/prep guy with whom I shared the basement area. His prep table was just across from mine. He had been dubbed Miyagi because of the slow and steady way in which he worked, just like the sensei in The Karate Kid. Nicknames abounded in almost every restaurant I’d ever worked in, but Veritas, arguably the most prestigious restaurant on my résumé, turned out to be an absolute treasure trove of name-calling. One cook was Cabezón, on account of his big head, and the award-winning wine director who sported longish, strawberry-blond hair was called Peluca, or “wig.” No one was immune to the name game. Even the chef took full ownership of his nickname, Chatos, which means “small nosed” in Spanish. It was the equivalent of calling a bald person Curly.
“Did Truffle Boy come today?” Culo asked Miyagi.
Truffle Boy was the guy who delivered truffle oil, truffle butter, and, when in season, the incredibly expensive whole, fresh truffles. His family owned the small French truffle company for which he worked, and though he was a man in his late twenties, I never heard him called anything other than Truffle Boy, or simply Truf. On occasion his name became All Balls and No Cock, but that’s another story.
“No,” answered Miyagi. He also received all the deliveries. “No truffles coming today.”
“What about pussy?” asked Culo, grinning. “We get any pussy in today?”
“No, not yet,” answered Miyagi calmly. “Octopus coming later.”
It still amazed me, even after so many years, that the moment male cooks walk through the kitchen doors into the “back of the house,” their inner ten-year-olds are suddenly unleashed and with it a glee for saying dirty words (in public! to girls!). They took every opportunity to replace common words with more profane ones: Striped bass, for example, routinely became striped ass.
The kitchen was full of boys, and their majority ruled. Some women working in kitchens decide to join them (since there is little chance of beating them) and try to match them vulgarity for vulgarity, sexual comment (or conquest) for sexual comment. But consistent indifference was my preferred tactic. I’d gotten pretty good at ignoring a lot of the dirty talk, let alone the porn that often popped up on the computer when I started work in the morning (a sure sign that the night before had been slow) and the endless array of “business” cards advertising phone numbers of mostly naked women. A collage of these cards on the inside door of a lowboy refrigerator surprised a female health inspector one morning, though she made no mention of it in her report. The kitchen favorite featured a scantily clad woman suggestively holding an ear of shucked corn. For months, the cooks endlessly asked each other and everyone else, Do you like corn? Te gustas maiz? Even when I thoug
ht the cooks were funny, and the bizarre voice and face that accompanied the corn question was undeniably funny, I tried not to let it show. I was not always successful.
“What are you working on, Dalia?” Culo asked, walking past me again.
“Passion fruit cheesecake,” I told him. “I’m adding it to the menu tonight.”
Though I vehemently disagreed with most of what Culo did and said as sous-chef, he was in a position of authority, so I tried to be as civil as possible. I usually finished work before dinner service, which meant my desserts were in the hands of the cooks. I wanted Culo to watch out for my stuff when I wasn’t there.
“Sounds good,” he said, and walked away.
“Beanbag!” The yell traveled from the kitchen, down the stairs, to my ears.
Beanbag didn’t even work there anymore, but his nickname became so popular that it garnered a cult following and often could be heard echoing spontaneously through the building. “Beanbag!” while searching for a bottle of Chianti wine vinegar. “Beanbag!” while slicing the cured salmon. “Beanbag!” upon entering the kitchen. Every day. Likewise, The Angry Jew, a former curmudgeonly cook who had scowled at every special request, lived on through the cooks’ imitations of him. What? You want me to put a candle on the dessert? Maybe I should just go out there and sing happy fucking birthday, too. What is this, T.G.I. Friday’s?
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