'Line one for the chef,' says the hostess.
I push the blinking green light. It's a salesman, wanting to sell me smoked fish. I answer all sweetness and light, lulling him into the bear trap in the Bigfoot style: 'So let me get this straight,' I say, after he's jabbered away about his full line of delicacies, me trying to sound a little slow and confused, 'you want to sell me food, right?' 'Yes!' comes the reply, the salesman sounding encouraged by my interest and apparent stupidity. 'And in general, you'd say,' I continue, 'you have like, a lot of restaurant accounts - in fact, you'd probably say that, like, you are in the business of servicing restaurants . . . and chefs in particular?' 'Oh, yes! says the witless salesman, beginning a litany of the usual prestigious accounts, the names of other chefs who buy his fine smoked sturgeon, salmon, trout and fish eggs. I have had enough and cut him off cold. 'So . . . WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING CALLING ME IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING LUNCH RUSH?!' I scream into the phone, smashing it abruptly into the cradle.
I catch the duck just in time, roll it over skin-side down again and pull it out of the oven. I've got a filet poivre on order - not on the regular lunch menu - but it's a steady customer, says Cachundo, and I'm set up for it anyway, so I start searing one off. Another pasta. I pour extra virgin into a pan and saute some paper-thin garlic slices with some crushed red pepper, add the artichoke hearts, roasted vegetables, some olives. I don't know why, but I always start humming Tony Bennett or Dino - today it's 'Ain't That a Kick in the Head' - when I'm cooking pasta. I like cooking pasta. Maybe it's that I always wanted to be Italian American in some dark part of my soul; maybe I get off on that final squirt of emulsifying extra virgin, just after the basil goes in, I don't know. More pore mignons, the runner calls down to Janine, who's making clafoutis batter at her work station in the cellar, and she comes running up to plate desserts . . .
We're doing well, so far. I'm keeping up with the grill, which is a faster station (unless a table orders a cote du boeuf or a faux filet for two or a whole roasted fish, which slows the order down). Omar is up to date with the appetizers, and I'm actually feeling pretty good, right in the zone. No matter what comes in, or how much of it, my hands are landing in the right places, my moves are still sharp and my station still looks clean and organized. I'm feeling fine, putting a little English on the plates when I spin them into the window, exchanging cracks with Carlos, finding time to chide Doogie Howser for slipping that filet poivre by me without checking first.
'Doogie, you syphilitic, whitebread, mayonnaise-eating, Jimmy Sear-ass wannabe - next time you slip a special order in without checking with me first? Me and Carlos gonna punch two holes in your neck and bump dicks in the middle!'
Doogie cringes, laughs nervously and scurries out on to the floor, trailing muttered apologies.
'Chef,' says Omar, looking guilty, 'no mas tomates . . .'
My jaw drops, and I see white.
I ordered tomatoes. I had thought that tomatoes had arrived then remember I broke up the order between three companies. I call Segundo on the intercom, tell him to come up horita. I'm also furious with Omar for waiting until we're out of tomatoes to tell me there are no more.
'What the fuck is going on?' I ask Segundo, who slouches in the doorway like a convict in the exercise yard. 'No Baldor,' he says, causing me to erupt in a blind, smoking rage. Baldor, though a superb produce purveyor, has been late twice in recent weeks, prompting me to make some very uncivil telephone calls to their people - and worse, forcing me to do business with another, lesser company until they got the message and began delivering earlier. Now, with no tomatoes, and no delivery, and the rush building, I'm furious. I call Baldor and start screaming right away: 'What kind of glue-sniffing, crack head mesomorphs you got working for you? You don't have an order for me? What?! I called the shit in myself. . . I spoke to a human! I didn't even leave it on the tape! And you're telling me you don't have my order? I got three fucking produce companies! THREE! AND IT'S ALWAYS YOU THAT FUCKS ME IN THE ASS!' I hang up, pull a few pans off the flame, load up some more mussels, sauce a duck, arrange a few pheasants, and check my clipboard. I'm in the middle of telling Cachundo to run across the street to Park Bistro and ask the chef there if we can borrow some tomatoes when I see, from my neat columns of checked-off items on my clipboard, that in fact I ordered the tomatoes from another company, that I didn't order anything from Baldor. I have no time to feel bad about my mistake - that'll come later. After screaming at the blameless Baldor, my anger is gone, so when I call the guilty company, I can barely summon a serious tone. It turns out that my order has been routed to another restaurant - Layla, instead of Les Halles. I make a mental note to refer to my restaurant as 'Less Halluss' in the future. The dispatcher at the guilty company apologizes for the mix-up, promises my order within the hour and gives me a hundred dollars in credit.
More ducks, more pheasant, lots of mussels, the relentless tidal wave of pork mignons . . . finally lunch begins to wind down. I enjoy a cigarette in the stairwell while Carlos continues drilling out steaks, chops and paillards, nothing for my station. D'Artagnan arrives, my specialty purveyor, bearing foie gras, duck legs, and an unexpected treat - a 200-pound free-range pig, whole, which Jose, one of my masters, has ordered for use in pates and tete du pore by the charcutier. Now, I can lift a 200pound, living breathing human - for a few seconds anyway - but dragging 200 pounds of ungainly dead weight by the legs through the restaurant and down the stairs to the boucherie requires four strong men. The boucher, charcutier, dishwasher and I wrestle the beast down the stairs, its head bouncing gruesomely on each step. I now know what it must be like to dispose of a body, I mutter. I do not envy the Gambino crime family - this is workl
The general manager sits down to lunch with the hostess. Two calamari, no oil, no garlic, a fish special no sauce, a celeri remoulade. Frank, my new French sous-chef, arrives. I have a list for him: dinner specials, mise-en-place, things to do, things to look out for. When he takes over the saute station later, relieving me, I am grateful. . . my knees are hurting and the familiar pain in my feet is worse than usual.
Jose, my boss, stops by, wanting to take me to the Green-market. I quickly tie up a few loose ends, make sure Frank is briefed, and walk down to the market - about eleven blocks. We fondle, sniff, squeeze and rummage through produce for a while, returning to the restaurant an hour later with pears, lemon verbena, some baby fennel, fingerling potatoes and some turnips with greens, for all of which I'll have to come up with specials. The joke around Les Halles is that every time Jose walks in the door, the food cost climbs 2 percent. The man would have me mount all my sauces with Normandy butter and foie gras, garnish everything with fresh truffles if I didn't squawk - but he loves food, a good thing in an owner. Jose gets a dreamy look on his face when he hears about black truffles coming into season, or the first soft shell crabs of the season, even at sixty dollars (!) a dozen, or anything seasonal, high-quality, classic French, gamey, or difficult to find. He wants to be the first to sell it, whatever it costs. It's a strategy that seems to be working. The backbone of the business may be steak-frites but our regulars are often pleasantly surprised to find 15 dollars-worth of exotic food on a plate they're only paying 20 for, and little extras like that help develop a loyal clientele. Life with Jose means frequent surprise deliveries of very perishable and very expensive items, which I have to scramble to find outlets for, but what chef doesn't enjoy a load of Dover sole, still dripping with channel water and twisted with rigor, falling into his clutches? Okay, my grill man won't be too thrilled - he's the guy who'll have to skin and bone and reassemble them to order - but that's just tough.
Back from the market, night crew suiting up in the locker-room, I have just enough time to assemble the orders for Saturday. This is something I enjoy doing. My young gangster friend Segundo and I take a full tour of my walk-in and reach-ins. I've got two clipboards under my arm: one to assemble my orders (one page for Saturday, another to begin the Monday list) and a second fo
r prep lists - my Things To Do Tomorrow list.
I break it down by company as I go along. De Bragga gets the Monday meat order; Schaller and Webber, the bacon. Riviera and Ridge get the produce - I'm too embarrassed to talk to Baldor right now. I see I need 40 pounds of whitewater mussels, 30 pounds of squid, eight whole fish, and a new fish of the day for Saturday and Sunday. I call Wild Edibles and talk to Chris Gerage, who was also a chef for Pino at one point, and we discuss what's good for tomorrow. I go for some wild striped bass, some king salmon, and some baby octopus for appetizer special. Dry goods, I'm locked in for the weekend - no Saturday deliveries - but I start building a Monday list anyway. From D'Artagnan, I'll need some more foie gras by Monday, some duck bones, maybe some magret, and maybe I'll splurge on some fresh black trumpets and some chanterelles for a special - Jose will be thrilled - and since wild boar has been a big moneymaker for me lately, maybe I'll make up on the boar what I lose on the 'shrooms. I add two boar legs to my D'Artagnan list. Segundo knows exactly what I'm going to ask him and in what order he's ready for me.
We go through the familiar list of items, in my inept, but still useful Spanish:
'Mesclun?'
'Veinte,' he replies.
'Cebolla blanca'
'Una'
'Shallot?'
'Tres.'
And so on . . .
Dairy has to be in early or they'll call me which I hate. So I call the Monday dairy in right away: two poly milks, four 55-pound blocks of sweet butter, one case of heavy cream ultra, a case of large eggs. Gourmand, another specialty purveyor, needs lead time - they ship out of Washington, DC, so I get that order together as quickly as possible: haricots de Tarbe, the expensive white beans we use for cassoulet (perfect absorption), feuille de brik for pastry, Provence honey for the duck sauce, white anchovies in olive oil for nigoise salad, escargots, flageolets . . . I'm already thinking about pot-au-feu for next week and will need plenty of the expensive grey sea salt for condiment.
Ramón, the day dishwasher, tells me he'll need the day off tomorrow to visit a relative in the hospital, but he's replaced himself with Jaime II, the night dishwasher who'll double for him. I'm grateful, as nothing causes me more grief than last-minute emergency scheduling, and I'm always pleased when my crew takes care of things internally. Phoning my Mafia at home is a near impossibility. Most of them claim not to own phones. For those who do, their phones are answered by people suspicious of strange Norteamericanos asking questions, and are not likely to acknowledge that, yes, Mr Pérez, Rodriguez, García, Sanchez, Rivera is actually in residence at said address.
Dinner-tasting for the floor staff is at five-thirty, when the heavy-hitting veteran waiters have arrived. They fall on the family gruel and the tasting plates like rabid jackals. It's never pretty watching waiters eat; you'd think they had no money the way they dive into any available trough. Dinner-tasting is conducted in the kitchen, as there are customers in the dining room straight through lunch into dinner. It looks like a crowded subway car as I describe the evening's specials and present each plate. They tear at the four plates of food, ripping apart the pheasant with their hands, nearly spearing each other with forks as they gouge at the tuna, drag cockles to their greasy maws with bare hands, and quickly turn Janine's lovely tarte Tatin into a dark smear. I swallow some more aspirins.
At five forty-five, the downstairs is clogged with the night-time lifer waiter crew, sitting on milk crates, folding napkins, smokingand talking about each other. Who got drunk last night, who got thrown out of a mob-run after-hours club then woke up in the bushes outside their house, who thinks the new maitre d' is going to lose it tonight when the room fills up and the customers stacked up at the bar start screaming for their tables, who's going to win the World Cup, who thinks Heather Graham is a babe, who probably takes it in the ass this week, and how about the time the Bengali busboys got into a fight in the middle of the dining room and one stuck a steak knife into the other?
Dinner service. Overbooked as usual - with two whopping twelve-tops booked for prime time. I remain in the kitchen to expedite, hoping that maybe, just maybe, things'll slow down enough by ten for me to have a couple of cocktails and get home by eleven. But I know full well that the two big tables will hold up seatings by at least an hour; more than likely, I'll be here for the full tour.
By eight-thirty, the board is full. Entree tickets flutter in the pull from the exhaust fans. To my right, below the window, plated appetizers are lined up, waiting to get delivered to the tables, the window is full of saute dishes, the work table in front of the fry station a panorama of steaks of different donenesses. It's still Cachundo - he's working a double too - and he ferries the plates out by hand, four or five at a time. Still, I have to press-gang the occasional busboy or empty-handed waiter, separating them out from the herd at the coffee and bread stations and returning dirty plates and glasses, into delivering desserts. I don't want ice cream melting over the clafoutis, or the whipped cream on the chocolate mousse to start falling. Food's getting cold, and my voice is already blown out from calling out orders over the noise from the dishwasher, the hum of the exhaust, the whine of the Paco-Jet machine and the growing roar from the dining room. I make a hand gesture to a friendly waiter, who knows what I want, and he soon arrives with an 'Industrial', a beer stein filled with margarita, for me. The drink manages to take the edge off my raging adrenaline buzz and goes down nicely after the three double espressos, two beers, three cranberry juices, eight aspirins, two ephedrine drinks, and a hastily gobbled hunk of merguez, which I managed to squeeze into a heel of bread before swallowing in two bites. By now, my stomach is a roiling hell broth of suppressed frustration, nervous energy, caffeine and alcohol. The night garde-manger man, Angel, who looks like he's twelve but sports a tattoo of a skull impaled with a dagger on his chest (future wife-beater, I think) is falling behind; he's got three raviolis, two duck confits, five green salads, two escargots, two Belgian endive and Stilton salads, two cockles, a smoked salmon and blini, two foie gras and a pate working - and the saute and grill stations are calling for urgent vegetable sides and mashed potatoes. I swing the pastry commis over to Angel's station to help out, but there's so little room, they just bump into each, getting in each other's way.
Tim, a veteran waiter, is dry-humping Cachundo - to Cachundo's apparent displeasure. He's blocking the lane and impeding traffic in the narrow kitchen with his thrusting. I have to ask Tim nicely not to sexually harass my runners during service . . . after work, please. An order comes back for refire and Isidoro is not happy about it; it's cooked perfectly. I peer out into the dark dining room and see nothing except the dark silhouettes of customers waiting for tables at the bar, hear, even over the noise in the kitchen, the ambient chatter, the constant roar of diners as they shout over the music, the waiters describing specials over that noise, then fighting each other to get at the limited number of computer terminals to place orders, print out checks. 'Fire table fourteen! Catorsayy! . . . That's six, seven, fourteen and one on firel' I shout 'Isidoro! You time it!' 'I ready fourteen,' says Isidoro, the grill man, as he slaps the refire back on a plate. Cachundo reaches around me and loads up with food, picking out plates seemingly at random, as if he's plucking daisies. I dry-swallow some more aspirins, and duck back into the stairwell for a few puffs of a cigarette.
A whole roasted fish comes back. 'The customer wants it deboned,' says an apologetic waiter. 'I told them it comes on the bone,' he whines, anticipating decapitation himself. Isidoro growls and works on the returned fish, slipping off the fillets by hand and then replating it. The printer is going non-stop now. My left hand grabs tickets, separates out white copy for grill, yellow copy for saute, pink copy for me, coffee orders for the busboys. My right hand wipes plates, jams gaufrette potatoes and rosemary springs into mashed potatoes, moves tickets from the order to the fire positions, appetizers on order to appetizers out, I'm yelling full-time now, trying to hold it together, keep an even pace. My radar screen is
filled with incoming bogeys and I'm shooting them down as fast as I can. One mistake, where a whole table comes back because of a prematurely fired dupe, or a bad combination of special requests ties up a station for a few critical seconds, or a whole roasted fish or a cote du boeuf has been forgotten? The whole line could come grinding to a dead stop, like someone dropping a wrench into a GM assembly line utter meltdown, what every chef fears most. If something like that happens it could blow the whole pace of the evening, screw up everybody's heads, and create a deep, dark hole that could be very hard to climb out of.
'I gotta hot nut for table sixl' I yell. There's a rapidly cooling boudin in the window, waiting for a tuna special to join it.
'Two minutes,' says Isidoro.
'Where's that fucking confit?' I hiss at poor Angel, who's struggling valiantly to make blini for smoked salmon, brown ravioli under the salamander, lay out pates and do five endive salads at once. A hot escargot explodes in the window, spattering me with boiling garlic butter and snail guts. 'Shit!' I say, dabbing my eye with a side-towel. 'Peenchayy escargots!'
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