Most independently run restaurants have alter egos, suppressed (usually alcoholic) personalities whose liberation each night coincides with closing time. As the last customers take their seats in the dining room and their orders print out in the kitchen, someone is already putting the beer on ice. Sometimes a particular brand of beer is ordered for the sole purpose of satisfying the thirst of the cooks. Sometimes it’s a cheap variety, but just as often it’s a quality import because, well, cooks work hard, earn little money, and deserve a decent beer at the end of the night. When it becomes clear that all the orders are in, the cooks begin to close down their stations. Once the crunch is over and there are no more unknowns, it’s time to relax. Time for a beer. It’s beer o’clock.
One of the first things I learned as a young cook was how to open a bottle of beer without a bottle opener. The hinge end of a pair of tongs works very nicely, ditto wedging the cap between the metal slats of a metro shelf. I was less proficient with the edge of a counter or the butt end of a chef ’s knife but still never had any problems consuming my nightly reward for a job well done. Cold beer does go down easy after four or five sweltering hours of hellish service.
And so every night, cooks, with their abundant reward of free alcohol, relax after a day’s work, just like lots of regular people relax with a drink after work. The difference is that happy hour for cooks begins at midnight, lasts longer than an hour, and is largely funded and encouraged by their employers. And even when these employers have the good sense to limit the drinks, it does little to hamper the overall intake because when you work six nights a week until at least eleven p.m., if you want to have any semblance of a social life, you must have it at night. And what is available to a young cook or waiter at this late hour? Bars. Every restaurant crew has a local bar they frequent. Every one. And who else is awake and interested in socializing at this late hour? Other cooks and waiters, who are in exactly the same boat. The very same waiters the cooks bitch about all night become cohorts once service is over and the drinks begin to work their lubricious magic. The combination of (mostly) young men and women, large amounts of alcohol, the hours of midnight through dawn, and stressful work results in antics that are more reminiscent of a frat house than of a fine dining establishment and usually end in one of three ways: the hookup, the solitary pass out, the fight.
As with the stereotypical frat boy, a cook’s need for conquest is ever-present, and thus the amount of interrestaurant relations is astounding. And because cooks make little effort to keep their exploits to themselves, I know much, much more than I really care to. Her tits hang down to, like, here, Doll, a cook told me, slicing his hand across his belly. And Alex? She’s a maniac! An animal in the sack! another said one day, eyebrows raised in exaggeration. Maybe they were trying to impress me, but more likely, I think, I was just another cook, even if I was a woman, a pastry chef, and their senior. I worked side by side with them in the kitchen and was therefore privy to their sexploits and certainly not protected from them. Have you seen how hairy her arms are? a cook rhetorically asked me. You can imagine the rest of her. . . . What I couldn’t imagine is why these young girls so easily fell victim to these loose-lipped cooks. How did so many of the cute waiters find themselves in bed with these pasty-faced, spongy-looking dogs with the stink of oil and food still under their fingernails and in their hair? It’s amazing how a couple of hours and a few drinks can bring people together.
All of this is not to say that I have not indulged in the occasional late-night sexploit. I’ve had my share of waiter one-night stands, drunken coworker sleepovers, and chef affairs. I briefly made out with my debonair sixty-year-old French chef and once took part in an after work game of all-female-coworker spin the bottle—and that was before kissing girls became fashionable. I am in no position to judge.
For every late night that results in a coupling, there is an equal number that end with the solitude of the severe hangover. I came in one morning and found Carter, a cook, asleep on a banquette in the darkest corner of the dining room. NO! No lights, he moaned painfully as I slid the dimmer switches up. Please . . . no lights. He’d startled me but not half as much as he’d startled the new young prep guy, David, who came to work at seven a.m. that morning and found him locked into the restaurant, left behind when the last of the nighttime dishwashers had locked up for the evening.
David found Carter passed out in the customer bathroom, head resting on the toilet seat and pants pulled down around his ankles, toilet still not flushed from the night before. Not a pretty picture. Luckily for Carter and me both, David pulled up Carter’s pants, flushed the toilet, dragged him over to a banquette, and tucked him under a chef ’s jacket. When it came time for Carter to set up his station and work, everyone sympathized with his green, puffy, silent face, allowing him ample space to sweat it out as well as time to retreat to the staff bathroom to puke. It wasn’t the first time someone had spent a drunken night on the banquette, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.
And then there are the darker outcomes. Every once in a while, the late-night fun takes a turn for the worse and results in destruction. I’ve come to work and found entire parts of a kitchen wall in pieces on the floor, the object of after hours aggression. And I can’t count the number of times cooks have come to work the next day with black eyes and swollen hands. I was in a bar . . . I woke up on a park bench . . . I don’t know what happened. And on occasion, when a cook pulls a no-show/no-call, nine times out of ten he is in jail.
I was older now, farther along in my career as a pastry chef, and I never worked nights anymore, which meant I was no longer witness to the after hour antics. Instead, I was told about them. Truffle Boy had his balls out again last night. He chased the new sommelier around the restaurant. I heard about the sweet-faced bartender who apparently, according to one of the cooks, “likes it rough”: She really made me grab her, hard! I got the dish about the two coworkers who competed to take advantage of an alcoholically impaired female coworker: You should have seen them, Doll—like two little dogs fighting for the same prize. I found out the day after that two waiters had gotten topless on the bar—You know how they both like to show their tits—and what started out as flirtatious dirty dancing somehow turned sour until finally one ended up with a broken glass in her hand and the other got stitches in the emergency room. Another time, I found out that my scale had been used to parcel out a large delivery of marijuana. Whatever the story, no matter how outlandish, how unbelievable, how sick, I knew from my own earlier years that the bulk of it was probably true. There was no need to exaggerate.
When stories started trickling in about what had happened the night before that had resulted in torn-out hair and broken tables, everyone was interested in how far the limits had been pushed and who was involved this time. Some said they saw Chatos in the bar next door, missing a shoe, one eye already swelling, claiming that Will (a waiter) was trying to kill him. Will didn’t say much and instead let his swollen hand and cut face speak for themselves. Chatos did, indeed, have a clump of hair missing as well as bite marks on his arm. Yes, bite marks. But that’s all we ever found out. Nothing definitive. Even Paco, the dishwasher—the one other person who saw it all—kept mum. And when we asked Chatos directly What really happened? his answer was always the same: The first rule about Fight Club is we don’t talk about Fight Club.
Fight Club became the stuff of legend, the subject of jokes, a day remembered fondly if not in detail. It raised the bar of what could possibly go wrong after hours and what would be acceptable. When we heard that another restaurant’s late-night sex capades, caught on videotape, had made the papers, the waiters and cooks scoffed competitively, They got nothing on us! And what about the two female waiters writhing topless on the bar with the broken glass? Cat-Fight Club, of course.
TWENTY-SIX
(Dysfunctional) Family Meal
She’s gonna love this,” Culo said with sadistic glee.
He and Carter were huddled by the stove
, standing over a rondeau. Culo reached across to his station and grabbed a fistful of soft butter with his bare hand and threw it into the large pot of linguine that was already swimming in cream.
“What are you guys doing?” I asked, trying to keep the suspicion out of my voice. I knew what they were doing: They were preparing a family meal. Carter was working the hot appetizer station, which meant he was responsible for cooking the staff meal that had to be ready by four o’clock every day. But they were up to something. I could tell. No one got that excited about family meal.
Culo and Carter looked at each other, clearly struggling with whether or not they should tell me what was going on. It was a common struggle. I was one of them, part of the kitchen’s inner circle (the immediate family, we called it), but they didn’t always trust me. I was the pastry chef, older than all the cooks by at least eight years, and I was a woman, the only woman in the kitchen, all of which made me suspect. I was like a disapproving stepmother. It didn’t help that I occasionally (and futilely) tried to be the voice of reason when their hijinks spun out of control. Despite all of this, they had just as much trouble not telling me, self-satisfied boys that they were. They couldn’t help themselves, really.
“Operation Foie Gras,” Carter finally said.
“Operation Foie Gras,” Culo said again. “We’re trying to make Adrienne fat.”
I didn’t get it. I thought Adrienne was one of our better waiters. She wasn’t particularly friendly with the kitchen, but she was an adult and did a good job.
“She’s such a slob during family meal,” Culo went on. “She wants to act like a pig, then we’re going to treat her like one. Fatten her up!”
“Yeah!” chimed in Carter. “Like the pig that she is!” He oinked.
“How long has Operation Foie Gras been in effect?” I asked, hiding my appall. I didn’t want to alienate them and thus be deprived of information.
“Oh, about a week now, right, Carter?” said Culo.
“Yeah,” said Carter. “And it’s already working! Did you see her dimply ass today? She’s squeezed into those pants like a sausage. She’s definitely gaining weight.”
“That’s pretty harsh,” I said.
“Dalia,” urged Culo with exasperation, “have you ever watched Adrienne eat? It’s disgusting. She’ll just stick her fork right into the communal pot of food and eat while standing there. Do you know how disgusting that is?”
I didn’t say anything; my face was blank. He went on.
“You know how when you eat spaghetti, some of it always hangs off the fork and so you bite it and let some fall back onto your plate?” he asked, not waiting for my answer. “Adrienne does that over the family pot!” He started mimicking her, snorting, while shoveling imaginary food into his mouth. I instantly got an unfortunate image of creamy pasta dripping off of Culo’s goatee.
“She just shoves it in, feeding her face, letting food fall from her filthy mouth back into the communal pot that I have to eat out of.” He was angry, defensive of any disapproval or judgment he might sense from me.
Over the years I had worked with plenty of people whom I wouldn’t exactly have called friends, but Culo was the first coworker I actually found distasteful. For the most part we got along. He was the sous-chef, and though I didn’t respect him, I tried to at least respect his position as sous-chef. We got along well at first, even joked around a bit about our polarized views of the world. But over time, after listening to more and more of the crap that came out of his mouth (about women, artists, various ethnic groups, liberals, New Yorkers, anyone not like him, really), I grew to dislike him. He was the kind of loudmouth not really interested in talking or even debating. He thought that the louder his own voice, the more correct he was.
“Does Chatos know about Operation Foie Gras?” I asked, knowing that he probably did. Chatos was as bad as the rest of them.
“Yes,” answered Culo, “and he loves it!”
Of course he did.
“Here,” interrupted The Sherminator, another cook. Though not as inherently mean-natured as some of the other guys, it was like Lord of the Flies in that kitchen: prey on the weak and follow the leader, who was, unfortunately, Culo. He poured a pan full of freshly cooked diced bacon, grease and all, into the already fat-laden pasta.
“Nice!” The Sherminator said in a Borat voice. “I like!”
“Delicious!” Carter announced, testing a bite. “Like it smells!”
“So,” I asked innocently, “everyone suffers because you guys hate Adrienne?”
“Everyone” really meant all the waiters, since cooks can usually, within reason, dip into their own mise-en-place when they want a snack. They can fry up an egg, sauté some spinach. Plus, they would spend the night sweating over a stove. What did they care if family meal was a grease-laden bowl of starch and cheese? They might as well have been preparing for a marathon.
“Fuck ’em,” said Culo, the ringleader.
“Yeah,” agreed Carter. “Fuck ’em.”
I shrugged, grabbed an olive roll, and went back downstairs to my pastry area, leaving them to their high fives and backslapping.
It wasn’t all that surprising that things could get that bad, really, at least not to me. Some people fall for the romanticized version of family meal that has been the subject of cookbooks: The entire restaurant staff sits down together at a single table to enjoy a leisurely meal that has been prepared with fresh, carefully chosen ingredients, crafted with love, and served on fine china amidst celebratory nods of shared enjoyment. But I knew better. Over my twelve years of cooking professionally, I could count on one hand the number of family meals that bore any resemblance to this idealized, truly familial rendering and still have fingers left over. Most of the time, family meal is at best an afterthought with severely limited resources.
Every day, a low- to mid-level cook who has been given the unwelcome responsibility of making the family meal will have to find something to prepare. He’ll start off by spending a few minutes in the walk-in refrigerator staring at the shelves, searching for some approximation of protein. If he’s lucky, he’ll find five pounds of ground beef set aside, a jackpot ingredient that can be transformed into chili, Bolognese, meat loaf, meatballs, tacos, etc. But it’s just as likely that he won’t be so lucky, because while some restaurants do order cheap meats for the family (ground beef, pork butt, Italian sausage), there is no guarantee. Instead, maybe the cook will find something that is no longer fresh enough to be served to customers, some fish that is starting to stink but that will, once overcooked with plenty of herbs, olive oil, and lemon juice, seem perfectly acceptable to the family, especially the unwitting waiters. Or what about some charred scraps of veal breast that have already been roasted and then simmered for six hours to make sauce? Under different circumstances this meat, now completely devoid of any flavor or tenderness, would be discarded. But technically it is still meat that can masquerade as the foundation for family meal.
Next, this cook might look for vegetables—onions, red pepper scraps, celery, carrots—the cheap ones. Nine times out of ten he will open a can of tomatoes. Then, he will decide on the final and simplest part of the meal: the starch. Every family meal—every single one—includes a large dose of pasta, rice, polenta, or potatoes. If by chance salad greens make it to the family, you can bet they will be on their way out, wilted and slimy edged—still my biggest pet peeve. Once tossed with vinaigrette, though, the slime won’t be that noticeable.
This is not to say that family meal can’t be tasty; it can be, under the right circumstances. Some of the best Mexican food I’ve ever had anywhere (including Mexico) has been the product of family meal. Cooks who make trips back home often return with spices or other ingredients unavailable in New York that they share with the family, even if it’s with just the immediate family: cooks, not waiters. I’ve also had amazing Greek pastitsio, Italian chicken soup, and Texas barbecue for family meal, thanks to the varied ethnic backgrounds of those who e
nd up working in kitchens. But for every tasty soup there are many more trays of broiled fish heads, each one staring aimlessly in a different direction. For every authentic pastitsio, ten pots of pasta primavera—minus the primavera. And even when family meal tastes good, it doesn’t mean we’re all going to sit down together and enjoy it in a relaxing, civilized manner. Restaurant families are far too dysfunctional for that.
And in no way does the caliber of family meal directly reflect the caliber of the restaurant itself. At La Côte Basque, we had rabbit kidneys at least once a week. The slight scent of urine wafting off the hot stew prompted a common response from unsuspecting newcomers: These mushrooms taste weird.
So why is it that cooks who presumably have an interest and talent in preparing tasty food often put so little effort into it? Why not attack family meal as if it were a challenge on Top Chef, the only food show on television that garners even a modicum of respect from cooks? They don’t start out apathetic. At least I didn’t. When I was a new cook and given the responsibility of family meal, I felt an unspoken pressure to prove myself to my peers. Yes, making family meal can be a real pain in the ass, a chore that eats up time that can be better spent on the real preparation necessary for service. But somewhere in the back of my head I wondered if it was all part of a test. So, I did my best to pull something together, despite my limited time and resources. I took pride in family meal. And then, when my food was ready, the waiters would line up. Half of them, upon eyeing what I had made, would immediately leave and find food from somewhere else. The other half would stick around.
“What’s this?” one of them would whine, mindlessly stirring the pot.
“Does this have any meat in it?” another would ask indignantly. “Because I don’t eat meat.”
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