Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll

by Andrew Friedman

  “IT WAS ALSO IN THE LIGHT OF DAY, WHICH IS JUST SOMETHING THAT NEVER HAPPENED.”

  Much would change in chefs’ social landscape in the early 1990s, connecting them with each other and with their growing fan base in unprecedented ways. The proliferation of charity events from coast to coast throughout the mid-1980s helped foster a national network by introducing chefs from different cities to each other. But as the 1990s dawned, the daily life of American chefs transformed as well, especially in New York City, where a community of cooks coalesced as never before.*

  An early agent of change was Gerry Dawes, who hailed from southern Illinois, fell in love with wine, especially Spanish wines and culture, and had become a restaurant sales rep for The Winebow Group. Because he sold to what he referred to as “all-star chefs” in New York City, Dawes began organizing industry parties to help promote his portfolio. Most of these were in New York City, but one memorable event was held in Spring Valley, New York, for which he hired a unicyclist as entertainment. There was just one problem: “He was stoned and couldn’t stay on the unicycle,” drawls Dawes, whose accent sounds more Southern than Illinois.

  Rather than spawn larger and larger parties, these events led Dawes to create a more intimate, periodic gathering of chefs who met once a month at each other’s restaurants, where the host chef would prepare a five-course lunch for the others. The inaugural group included future culinary deity Thomas Keller, still stuck in consulting mode; La Côte Basque alum Rick Moonen, cheffing by then for Buzzy O’Keeffe at his waterside Manhattan restaurant The Water Club on the Manhattan side of the East River; Tom Valenti, chef for former Rakel manager Alison Price Becker at Alison on Dominick Street in Tribeca; Arizona 206’s Brendan Walsh; original Union Square Café chef Ali Barker; chefs Phil McGrath and Matthew Tivy; Hudson River Club’s Waldy Malouf; and Andy Pforzheimer, who had returned to the East Coast and was chef at Punsch. It also included New York Mets veteran Rusty Staub, who owned two Manhattan restaurants at the time.

  The name of the group: Chefs from Hell.

  Dawes announced his intentions with an invitation, dated December 1989, that read as follows:

  CHEFS FROM HELL

  ACROBATIC UNICYCLISTS & WINETASTERS CLUB

  CHARTER (Raison d’eat. . . . .and drink)

  I am forming a winetasting club for chefs, because chefs are often neglected when it comes to getting enough wine to drink, that is, to taste. Since chefs ought to know what wines are good for their food, they should get more opportunities to taste wines in a relaxed atmosphere where they can trade impressions with their fellow chefs and shoot the breeze about wine with visiting winemakers, wine geeks, winery owners, etc. We will have special theme luncheons several times a year featuring guest winemakers, area specialists, and winery reps. We will not be conducting winner/loser blind tastings; our aim is to get a group of wines together and let the host chef create something to complement them, so we can enjoy the wine, the food, and the camaraderie, and learn more about using wines to enhance food.

  Our wine luncheons will usually be held on the first or second Monday of each month. They will begin promptly at the appointed hour. (Once or twice a year we will have special tasting dinners.) If you call to attend a luncheon, we expect you to show up or give us ample warning, so that we can get a replacement. Only invitees, and no substitutes or uninvited guests, may attend. Except on special occasions, each luncheon will usually be limited to about 15 chefs, the guest wine hosts, and yours truly, so it is important that you reply early, if you wish to attend. If you know an out-of-town chef who is visiting, please call and we will see if we can make a place for him. No restaurant critics will be allowed to attend except by prior approval of the group. We will, however, invite a prominent restaurant critic to join us once a year for the chef’s roast for critics. If they don’t show up, we will roast them anyway.* Our arrangement with all restaurants hosting our monthly luncheons will be a $50.00 flat fee, tax and tip included, and no corkage. If we have not been able to arrange for the host winery to pay the tab for the group, and they usually will, please be prepared to pay $50.00 in cash. Except for special occasion luncheons or dinners, I really don’t foresee the group having to pay for many of our regular functions. (Please cough up an extra $10 apiece each time to sweeten the tip pool.)

  The first lunch was held at Charlie Palmer’s Aureole. The chefs showed up in the light of day, in their street clothes. Moonen brought his knife kit along, and was asked to check it at the door. (See Rule #5.) Such a gathering is commonplace today, but at the time was uncharted territory. “It was a little awkward at first,” says Dawes. “They really didn’t know what to expect. But after a couple glasses of wine, things started to loosen up and they were cool with it. There was no problem getting them for the second one, and they started recommending other guys to bring in.” (Not all chefs were on board from the get-go; Dawes says that Terrance Brennan, though he eventually joined, commented that it was an unserious forum and wasn’t interested.)

  With his tongue firmly in cheek, Dawes created a series of by-laws that was expanded periodically, eventually swelling to fifty-nine items. Among them were (asterisks indicate rules that were broken, with multiple asterisks indicating multiple infractions):

  ABSOLUTELY no acrobatic unicyclists allowed.

  Meat cleavers and other cutlery are to be checked at the door.*

  If a chef cannot attend, it is not permissible to send dead monkfish, or any other fish or animal, alive or dead, to sit in his seat as a proxy.*

  There will be no overt criticism of the host chef’s food while he is in earshot, and, while we will allow spitting out of wines, we will not tolerate spitting out the host chef’s food.* * * * * *

  The word slut, regardless of which sex it refers to, is forbidden at our gatherings.* * * * *

  Urinating on the shrubbery or fire hydrant outside the host restaurant in daylight is strictly forbidden.*

  This rule should be obvious to anyone in this group with class: We really discourage moon shots during service. It draws attention away from the host chef’s food, and it is just not the image we want to project.

  We really want to discourage these chefs’ war stories about sex in a walk-in. Some of our members haven’t had any anywhere in so long that this kind of talk just makes them jealous.* * * * * * * * * *

  We were successful in getting some women to attend Chefs From Hell functions. After Rusty Staub’s Mardi Gras luncheon, we think it prudent to advise members that we will not tolerate shouts of “Show Your Tits” or any other such sexist remarks (by either sex), even at Mardi Gras luncheons.*

  All meals will be limited to five courses, if courses are full portions, seven if they are tasting portions. Addendum to rule #25: Furthermore, combinations of caviar, truffles, and foie gras are limited to three maximum on any one plate. Any chef who breaks this rule should be advised that the penalty is severe. We will send a copy of the menu to the owner of your restaurant reminding him/her of the $50.00 per head rule and thanking him for his charitable donation to the Chefs From Hell.* * * * * * * * *

  We would like to discourage the past Chefs From Hell trend towards wretched excess in the dessert category, therefore, the official position on desserts from here on will be as follows: We will frown on creations that move, smoke, or require batteries, and we will be especially critical of those configured to pick up radio broadcasts. We really don’t want to eat something from FAO Schwartz [sic].* * * * * *

  God, why do we even have to consider this one a rule. To any civilized person, it would seem obvious that one does not discuss surgical scars, let alone show them during the course of the meal. It also would seem to go without saying that detailed discussions of the fine art of circumcision would fall in this category.*

  The Pittsburgh Pirates hat procurement rule has been deleted. They are no longer the official baseball team of CFH. They threatened to sue for defamation.

  For future outings, where cars are required, we will a
ppoint a designated driver for Colicchio, whether he has had anything to drink or not.

  It should go without saying that the unwritten rule amongst gentleman chefs (an oxymoron, if there ever was one) about not breaking wind at these functions is still a rule, written or not. We have a good idea who has been doing this, so just remember, if you are caught, you risk a one function suspension, enforced by the Sergeant-at-arms, if and when we ever find him again.*

  We are tired of these feeble excuses for missing Chefs From Hell functions. Among some of the more notorious and overused ones are:

  I got married.

  I had to play in a charity golf tournament.

  I can’t stand my husband’s (the host chef’s) food.

  I got locked in a walk-in.

  I am sunning my ass in Mexico.

  And, worst of all,

  I had to work!

  From now on the only valid excuses for not attending a CFH function are:

  I was hung over.

  I caught a social disease for which I was not the primary distributor.

  My restaurant went Chapter 11 and I was held at gunpoint by an irate supplier.

  The host chef is my former sous chef (sorry, chef de cuisine) and I taught him everything he knows.

  It also goes without saying that rules #11 & #47 prohibiting urinating on fire hydrants, shrubs, etc. also includes the pig fountain at the James Beard House.* *

  “And the unspoken first rule is ‘We’ll break every damn rule in this rule book,’ which really appeals to chefs, because they’re rule breakers,” says Dawes.

  It doesn’t sound like the kind of association with which the pathologically serious Thomas Keller would associate himself, but he says he believed in the cause: “It’s camaraderie. It’s the one thing that we don’t really do enough at any time throughout our careers. I think one of the things that inspired me to become a chef or continues to inspire me to become a chef was the book The Great Chefs of France. You look at that book and you look at those guys and they were all comrades, they were colleagues, they were friends. They did things together outside the restaurant. And we didn’t have that in this country. We were skeptical. We were apprehensive. We were threatened by other chefs. So the idea of bringing chefs together is an extraordinary thing. When Gerry did that, it was like, ‘Wow, this is pretty cool. I get to meet these other guys. We get to spend time together. We get to do things together outside the restaurants.’ I think that was a very important thing.”

  Prior to Chefs from Hell, says Keller, New York chefs were too busy to connect. “As a community of professionals, we are one of the few that actually doesn’t spend time together. If you’re an attorney, there are always these guilds, there are always these symposiums. And it’s not about press. That’s where we got off track. Today, we do things together only if there’s a press angle to it, only if there’s some value for somebody to write about it, because it gives us more recognition and feeds our ego. Doctors, attorneys, they don’t do their meetings to be written about; they do it to exchange ideas, because they enjoy one another. Chefs from Hell was kind of like that. There was no media angle. Gerry brought it together just for the benefit of us, to have fun. We’d go out with—Rusty Staub, I mean, Christ, he’d take us to opening day at Shea Stadium.* Who gets to do that with Rusty Staub? Rusty is still a friend today.”

  Tom Colicchio remembers it less loftily than Keller, to whom he was a sous chef at Rakel in the late 1980s: “We would literally sit around and drink and laugh our asses off. A lot of these guys have their ‘chef personality.’ When you get together in a room with them, they’re funny as hell. I remember sitting next to Tom Valenti and just fucking laughing so much that wine’s pouring out of our noses. We had a good time. And some of it was poking fun. If someone bombed a dish, we’d all fucking get on him. You never gave the person the business but you’d comment to each other. Like Tom Valenti would say, ‘You’d eat this? This sucks.’ It was also in the light of day, which is just something that never happened. We’d always get together in bars.

  “The organization wasn’t an organization. It was literally, ‘Who’s cooking this month and where are we going?’ And that was it. But if you were the chef cooking, you were showing off because these were all your peers. So to me, it was a great time because when do you get to hang out with guys who you work with? I worked with Tom Valenti at Gotham, and so he’s cooking at Alison on Dominick, and I’m doing what I’m doing, you don’t see him. So all of a sudden you have this luncheon and you’re with all these guys that you know and you like and you all came up at the same time. It was a blast.”

  Charter member Rick Moonen says that prior to Chefs from Hell, there was scant cross-pollination among cooks from different kitchens, although as more and more young Americans entered the profession and advanced from job to job, a network was being established. “But Chefs from Hell accelerated that process by a large margin,” he says.

  Dawes freely admits that he had several motivations for starting Chefs from Hell. One was to sell his wines to the chefs. Another was that he was tired of hanging out with cork dorks, preferring the company of cooks: “I saw chefs as kind of blue-collar guys in those days that knew how to have fun. They got off late, they went out and raised hell.”

  It was quickly established that the host chef was going to show off for his peers. At The River Café, David Burke, in accordance with his signature River Café chocolate bridge, made the centerpiece of his dessert presentation a chocolate stove that actually smoked, and Rick Moonen fashioned a ship sailing across a coconut-raspberry sea to a cookie island (see Rule #26). Burke also served a tuna tartare covered with crème fraîche and smothered with osetra caviar (see Rule #25). “If Buzzy had caught him, he’d have probably kicked his ass,” laughs Dawes.

  Rick Moonen says that getting to know his peers “excited me, inspired me to do better.” The lunches, he says, became an outlet for healthy competition, such as the one served by Tom Valenti at Alison on Dominick Street. “I remember having a cylinder—[like] a filet mignon—of swordfish. It was served medium rare and wrapped in bacon, or some sort of a pork product. I remember it as if it was yesterday.”

  As in any boys’ club, there were the inevitable pranks: Dawes created a Chefs from Hell barf bag by having his daughter draw a design on an airline bag. At an Alison on Dominick Street lunch, the chefs summoned Tom Valenti from the kitchen to inform him that his food had made Rick Moonen sick. When Valenti emerged, they pointed to an ashen Moonen, holding the bag. (It helped that Moonen was actually queasy that day, so he looked the part.) Dawes, who had surreptitiously loaded the bag with vegetable soup, asked for it.

  “He gives it to me and I opened it up and said, ‘Hey, man. This looks better than the shit coming out of the kitchen.’ I get in with a spoon and take a bite. I thought Valenti was going to have a hemorrhage.”

  Another gag occurred at The Water Club. Recounts Dawes: “Buzzy O’Keeffe always did things right. He had this tuxedoed waiter running the show. He has an upstairs dining room. Moonen had the whole place full downstairs for lunch. And he was feeding us and we had Bob Haas’s Burgundies. They had these beautiful floral arrangements on the table. That’s where I got the rule about you can’t eat the floral arrangements because they cost more than the entrees. Andy shows me that he’s brought this big plastic beetle. So there’s a salad course and I pick a little bit of the salad and I stick the bug in it and I call the guy over. I said, ‘Would you please take this down to the chef and tell him that he really should take more care in washing and cleaning his greens?’ So Moonen’s down there getting slammed and apparently the guy brings it to him. He says, ‘What the fuck? Who sent this down here?’ The waiter says, ‘The guy who’s running the luncheon.’ Nothing was said. Guy didn’t come back and say, ‘Moonen tells you go fuck yourself,’ or anything like that. But come dessert time, on my plate, one of the chocolates is this plastic beetle covered in chocolate.”

  On the more serious
side, after a few lunches, Dawes instituted “show-and-tell,” asking each chef to stand up and “update us on what they were doing, if they’d changed restaurants. Tell us how things were going for them, all this kind of stuff. So they all basically got up and did that.”

  In the 1990s, the group would expand and contract, counting among its members such chefs and industry figures as Odeon chef Stephen Lyle; D’Artagnan co-founder George Faison; Union Square Café’s Michael Romano; Tribeca Grill’s Don Pintabona; ‘21’ Club’s Michael Lomonaco; Tom Colicchio; Mario Batali, who moved to New York from San Francisco; Bobby Flay, who had found his Southwestern voice first at Miracle Grill and then at Mesa Grill, in partnership with Gotham impresario Jerry Kretchmer and partners; and James Beard Foundation president Len Pickell. (Notably absent were Jonathan Waxman and Larry Forgione, which Dawes says was due to the fact that they were traveling in their own rarefied air, part of the more nationally known clique of celebrity chefs of the day.)

  Though largely a boys’ club, women did join the pack, including Arcadia’s Anne Rosenzweig, Rose Levy Beranbaum, Teresa Barrenechea, Pamela Morgan, and honorary member Julia Child. Dawes invited Martha Stewart to join a lunch at Gramercy Tavern when Tom Colicchio was at the helm. Remembers Dawes of that day’s show-and-tell: “When Martha’s turn comes, she gets up and tells a story that has fuck in it because she wanted to show that she’s one of the guys. It was about some guy who had gotten pissed off and quit and had sent out a Christmas card with ‘And I hope you have a fucking good Christmas,’ or something like that, printed on it. And they had to call all these people who’d received these cards and tell them it was some disgruntled employee who had sent it. So she got to work her fuck in to show that she’s one of the boys. Later on, she had us all up to her place in Connecticut.”