by Roy Choi
The first dude I met outside was Peter Vafeas. He was as big as an offensive lineman and seemed to be wandering around in the same daze I was in. He was a little bit older than most of the other kids there—around twenty-three, just out of college. We connected right away, and he would become one of my best friends over the next couple years, even up until today. We downloaded each other on where we came from—L.A. for me, of course, and he from Long Island, New York—and walked around to take in the serenity.
The campus rested on a hill just above the Hudson and sloped downward into the trees. It was centered around Roth Hall, a redbrick castle that used to be a Jesuit seminary and now served as the main building on campus. A bridge took you over to the baking center and kitchens. Every other building on campus was redbrick, too. There was a library, four dormitories, classroom buildings, and a small lake. There were trails and gazebos and a huge parking lot that faced Route 9.
This was the Culinary Institute of America.
THE FIRST DAY OF CLASS was a blur. In the maze of the school, we made our way past the white coats and the cool, confident stares of the second-year students and picked up the supplies for our adventure. Down the hallways for our starched chef’s coats, houndstooth cook pants, and paper toques. Another room for textbooks. Then over to another room to pick up our knives—a whole set from a ten-inch down to a paring.
Piled high with books and knives and uniforms, we ran to our rooms, dropped off all our new gear, and went straight to our first class: gastronomy. Gastronomy was in a big corner classroom on the top floor of the redbrick castle; it had beautiful stained-glass windows that faced the Hudson Valley. By the time I got in, it was already packed to the rafters with a hundred or so students. I found Pete and sat down next to him, and we said what up to a bunch of other dudes that would become our crew: Rich Perez, Jesse Gutierrez, Rob Peck, Vinnie Fama, Manny, the list went on.
And if you hadn’t noticed, it was all dudes. Back then, it was like three girls for every seventy guys. Not great for the girls. Or the guys.
The classroom was abuzz. We were just now catching our breaths after our Cinderella morning. Everyone was so excited, and no one had any idea what to expect. Then there he was. He walked in like a general, and the room fell quiet. His eyes lit up, and he started pointing at people to sit down, and we did. Then he spoke, in the most regal of ways.
“Welcome to the Culinary Institute of America.”
Pause.
“I’m Chef Ron DeSantis. And this is Gastronomy 101.”
Chef DeSantis was a certified master chef, a former military chef, a bad-ass muthafucka. He spoke in Shakespearean colloquialisms and walked like a panther. We were all amazed. And we learned. We learned about Carême; we learned about Escoffier. We learned about the brigade system, the history of food, the origins of dishes, how a knife is a carefully constructed balance of blade and handle. I felt like I was an assassin meeting a gun for the first time.
Too soon, the history lesson was over, and they funneled us down to our meal period. This was no joke. One thing about going to a culinary school is that you eat: somebody has to eat all the stuff you’re making; nothing goes to waste. The CIA food life cycle went from teaching to eating to compost back to knowledge. And we were the perfect, hungry guinea pigs. Every day was a different trip to a Las Vegas buffet. One day it was all the classics, with veal blanquettes and pommes Anna. Another day all the food was out of the international kitchen, with Hungarian goulash and ropa vieja. Then it was all charcuterie, our stomachs filled with sausages, terrines, pâtés, and galantines. Breakfast was always available from the breakfast class. And breads and pastries were everywhere. That food sustained us for our studies. Our chef whites became dashikis, and our knives became dream catchers as we fluttered from class to class, workshop to workshop.
Basic, entry-level classes were set up in seven-, fourteen-, or twenty-one-day blocks, so we had at least a week with Chef Ron DeSantis in gastronomy, plus hot foods, butchering, product identification, breakfast cookery. All the basic cooking techniques were taught in skills class. And this skills class was where, for the first time, I was a model student. I even clicked with the professor, Lou Jones. Yeah, I was that kid who spent time after class with the teacher, hungry for knowledge, asking relevant questions, following up.
In fact, this was the first time since elementary school that I was actually interested in and excited by academics. Everything was coming naturally—I understood the basic elements as if they had been written just for me. I was quick to the knife. The glove fucking fit. The flavors were leaping out of my fingertips and finding a home.
After the classrooms the library was my second home away from home. I got lost in the rows of books, combing the aisles, reading, digesting, reshelving. I picked up everything from histories of early human cooking methods to guides about how to make carved mice out of mushrooms. I got lost in Culinaria and its foods from around the world, explored France through Waverley Root, got a crash course on sauces from James Peterson, connected with Native American and Chinese books on cooking, found obscure books on Himalayan and Nepalese cooking. Most nights, I stayed there and read and read till they turned off all the lights. Then trudged back through the snow to my room, where the lava lamp was still burning and the boys were still partying.
And that was the only part that didn’t fit. The top dog really didn’t like anyone else in his space; truth is, we were both bossy and cocky, and there was just too much ego for one tiny room. Since day one, we had been like two dogs silently fighting for dominance, engaging in a lot of passive-aggressive bullshit like giving each other stares or getting in each other’s way accidentally on purpose. Just to piss me off, the top dog and his boys would sit at my desk and use my books to roll joints. Or rummage through my desk and ask, “Who’s this in this picture?” or grab a pencil and never return it. When all you got are your books, some photos, and a couple number-twos, that’s some major shit. And it worked. It really pissed me off.
But I pulled back. Because of my past, I knew how easy it would be for me to slide into bad behaviors and lose everything over some petty bullshit. I knew I needed structure, and here was a structure built around something I was truly interested in. I couldn’t let it slip out of my hands. I couldn’t fuck up.
So I pulled the top dog aside, shortened my words, and opened my eyes deep like I do when I’m scolding a cook. Told him in so many words that he had to stop it or I’d end his life. It stopped.
Outside that dorm room, I was making friends. Rich was from Bayside, Queens, and had a vacation home in the Candlewood Lake area just outside of Danbury, Connecticut. At just an hour away, that was a perfect getaway for us. Rob would haul us in his Jeep, and we took impromptu trips up to Montreal to gamble our money away and sink into tits and ass at the strip bars, speaking broken French and eating crusty baguettes. We would get stopped at the border, looking like a band of thieves trying to sneak into the United States. I mean, it was one Korean dude (me), a mutt-looking white dude (Rob), a Mexican dude from Phoenix (Jesse), and a black dude from the Bahamas (Manny), all worn out, all broke, all wired, all smelly. Great fucking times.
AFTER NINE MONTHS OF CLASSES, cooking, and library time, it was time to look for an externship. This was the badge of honor for culinary students; you’re either a king or a jester, depending on where you get accepted and where you decide to go. And because everyone’s gunning for the same spots in the same precious few restaurants, landing a primo externship was a highly competitive process. You had to bring it.
I had a choice. I could have gone back to L.A. and tried to find something at Patina or Valentino. But I knew I might fall into my old ways again. So I moved to New York. I had to live out the cliché. I had to make it big in Manhattan. No matter what.
I already had a rough idea of the city’s neighborhoods and their restaurants. Over the course of the school year, a bunch of us had done short, unpaid stages, immersing ourselves fully in the environme
nt of a professional kitchen, thinking, living, and breathing cookery. Rich and I staged for a while at Aureole, the best restaurant in New York City at the time, with me on the morning shift, prepping potatoes and doing a lot of knife work for the lunch service, and Rich on the evening garde-manger, where he took to chiffonading like a secretary to a typewriter. We both did a stint at One If by Land, Two If by Sea, then a day at Le Grenouille, set within all the opulence of the red velvet booths and fresh flowers. I stepped into Le Cirque for a day; it had just reopened in the Palace Hotel with a new chef, Sottha Khun, and Jacques Torres madly spinning chocolate and constructing dessert masterpieces. I was really enamored with Patrick Clark at the time, but Tavern on the Green was too high volume for me. All those places just weren’t meant to be. Either they were full or they weren’t the right fit.
And so me, Rich, and a few other guys pounded New York City pavement. For three days, we followed word of mouth and magazines, researching every nook and cranny for leads on open positions. The only places I didn’t really look at were Asian restaurants—back then I thought it was too obvious a career path for a Korean dude who had grown up around stinky tofu and black beans and kimchi and abalone porridge. Instead I looked for places where I could be a French chef. Because in my mind, cooking classic French food would mean that I had arrived, that I had reached the pinnacle of cookery. It would mean I was for real.
After throwing dart after dart, my crew started hitting the bull’s-eye. Rich went to a Spanish restaurant called Solera. Someone found a fit at An American Place by Larry Forgione. Other guys went to Gramercy Tavern, Bouley, Nobu, and Daniel. High-class restaurants. As my guys celebrated, I panicked. I was the last kid still waiting to be picked to play for someone’s team. On our last day of hunting, I hit up four places. No cigar. It was getting late, and I walked down 51st Street, empty-handed but for one last copy of my résumé, head down, dejected, depressed, and ready to call it a day.
Then, for some reason, I looked up. And right into a restaurant kitchen window. Looking out that window was a chef. It was right before service, almost 5:00 P.M., and he was watching the street traffic, maybe getting a piece of Zen. His face looked familiar—I must have seen him in some magazine. Somewhere, I even knew his name, but I just couldn’t place him. I stopped and made eye contact. I grabbed my résumé and showed it to him through the glass, making hand gestures and miming, trying to explain that I was a culinary student. Surely he would understand.
He looked at me. Then, still through the window, he signaled for me to go around and down and up into the restaurant through the staff entrance. I don’t know how I understood the directions, but I did. As I made my way around, down, and up, I realized: I was at Le Bernardin. The temple of seafood. One of the best restaurants in the world. And that debonair chef standing in the window was Eric Ripert.
I flew down the stairs to the elevator, then back up to the kitchen, popping out right in the back kitchen next to the prep sinks and three huge walk-ins. Made my way down the hallway, past the pastry kitchen. I found the chef standing in front of the office. He asked to see my résumé.
The résumé was hogwash, filled with everything I had done up to that point, no matter how trivial. So not only my experiences staging at some of the best restaurants in New York, but also my time dishwashing at Leatherby’s ice cream shop in high school. The night classes I took at the culinary school in L.A. Books I’d read. Anything to fluff up the space.
But he talked to me. For fifteen minutes right before service, we sat in his office, and he told me his philosophy on food and about the roots of Le Bernardin. The history of Gilbert and Maguy Le Coze, who had founded the restaurant. How the fish arrived and how they had to be treated with care. He talked about what it meant to work there and how the restaurant operated like a symphony. He stressed the importance of dedication and detail and connecting with the food as if it were an extension of your hand. And how I had to decide, really decide, whether I wanted to be part of something special.
We were done with the sit-down. He walked me to the pass, where all the dishes landed for one final inspection before going out to the dining room, and introduced me to the chef de cuisine, Chris Muller. They told me to stand against the wall. And to watch. The place was lit up like Carnegie Hall and as shiny as the rims on my old Blazer. I was right at the pass where Eric himself stood during service. There were maybe a dozen people in the kitchen: the cooks harmoniously worked their stations; the servers took the finished dishes from the pass to the dining room. I watched the plates sail right by me, as if I were Vin Scully calling a game. Whenever my eyes wandered from the kitchen, Chris would snap a finger at me and point out something—he’d explain how the sauce was bacon brown butter or show me how thinly the tuna was pounded so it could absorb the dressing just right. They asked me if I was thirsty and handed me a glass of water. The cooks all smiled at me as they handed dishes to the pass. It was intense but serene. And beautiful. Everyone hitting his or her notes in perfect rhythm. A symphony, just as Eric had said.
Right about then, Eric came to the line and expedited orders as they went in and out: he organized the ticket orders, calling them out to the cooks as they came in, and inspected plated dishes before they went out to the diners, wiping them clean and tasting each and every one before clearing it to go. Chris stepped back onto the line and tutored the cooks. It was a silent dance; this all happened without even a word whispered between them. Chef ran the line for the next thirty minutes or so, then asked Chris to step back on. Chef gestured for me to come to the office.
Gulp.
We went in and sat down, right back where we had started. He asked if I liked what I saw. I blurted out as best I could what I had just seen and experienced. He asked if I could see myself working here. If I’d like to do my externship at Le Bernardin. All of this in the humblest of ways.
My answer was something like “Yesyesyesyesyesyesyes.”
The dealer had just handed me the best hand in the deck. What poker face?
AFTER CLASSES ENDED for the year, I hopped on the train at Poughkeepsie, rode it out of the Hudson Valley, past West Point, past Sing Sing, and into the bustle of Grand Central Station. It was late summer, early fall 1997, and my makeshift headquarters for the next eight months would be my cousin’s living room once again, surrounded by medical school textbooks and that beautiful New York view of another building right outside the window. No big deal. I wasn’t there for the view. I entered my first day at Le Bernardin with my rolled-up knife bag, a fresh attitude, and butterflies.
My first order of business was easy enough. I registered with the office upstairs, a small room filled with cubicles and nice people, mostly women, who gave me all the necessary things I needed for payroll and work and such. They sent me downstairs to see the steward. So it was back down the freight elevator to the basement, where I met a very kind man named Fernando. He welcomed me and gave me three sets of my new uniform: white pants and a white chef coat and an apron. He walked me to the locker room, showed me how the system worked, then went on his way, leaving me alone to take a deep breath like a boxer getting into the zone before a fight.
I went upstairs and entered the kitchen.
The kitchen was separated into a few sections: the main area where most of the food was prepped and cooked, an oyster station, and a completely separate section just for pastry. The kitchen was coming off the back end of lunch service, so things were moving a million miles a second. Cooks in full motion, servers taking silver platters with amazingly simple and clean plates of fish on blue-rimmed white china and whisking them to the dining room for the last of the lunch guests.
I said hello to Chef Eric Ripert, but it was Chef de Cuisine Chris Muller who grabbed my attention and took me on a quick tour of the kitchen stations: fish pass, vegetables, canapés, hot appetizers, garde-manger, saucier.
I was to start with Juan at the fish pass. Juan was an amazing dude from the Dominican Republic with tight, gnarly, bris
tled Afro curls. He was in charge of all the fish that went to each station in the kitchen. On any given day, he could be dealing with monkfish, striped bass, red snapper, skate, scallops, pompano, squid. He stood like a watch commander waiting for each ticket to be called so he could start prepping cod for a brandade or slicing yellowfin tuna paper-thin to be cooked rare and draped on a salad of bean sprouts, roasted peanuts, mint, coriander, and a soy-ginger vinaigrette. Juan was a master whistler, and he had a whole vocabulary: he’d whistle to signal the fish that came in; a short or long chirp, like Morse code, depending on the fish. He also whistled to get attention when he needed something and hit another note when he acknowledged what someone needed from him. His whistle was also an indicator of his mood: songs if he was happy, sirens if he was pissed off. Through Juan, I learned all about fish and respecting its proteins.
Just as important was what I was learning about working in a kitchen: organization, follow-through, teamwork, how to open my ears and really hear what people needed. I picked up the fish pass quite well, and they moved me to the vegetable station, where I was paired with the guy who was going to train me. His name was Daniel Holzman—later, he would go on to start up the Meatball Shop in New York, which is now wildly successful.
But at that moment he was supposed to teach me the station. To this day, I remember his entrance: he came into the kitchen, singing with all the confidence in the world. He was no more than seventeen years old, with curly sandy brown hair, all cocky as one can be when one looks just like Justin Timberlake. Even before his first words to me came out of his mouth I couldn’t stand the guy.