I got to know a steely-eyed Irish hood in his fifties who worked 'with' the pressmen's union, sometimes. When he had a big tune-up scheduled, he'd recruit other regulars from the bar to go down to some warehouse or printing plant and smack some heads together. One night he came in with his right hand busted up terribly, the knuckles pushed back nearly to his wrist, and a bone jutting horribly through the skin.
'Dude!' I said, 'You should go to the hospital for that!'
He just smiled and ordered a round for the house, then a dozen oysters and some shrimp with that - and ended up drinking and dancing and partying until closing time, waving his bloody hand around like a merit badge. His pal James, who'd worn the same fatigue jacket he'd worn in Vietnam fifteen years earlier, liked to hang out by my shellfish bar, telling stories. James was a West Village celebrity, never, to anyone's knowledge, having paid for a drink. He lived off the generosity of others, throwing a well-attended rent party once a month so he could pay for the curtained-off illegal cellar cubicle he called home. James carried a mysterious stainless-steel attache case with him wherever he went, hinting that it contained the Great American Novel, the Nuclear Codes, Unlimited Firepower. I suspected it was a few tattered copies of Penthouse and maybe a change of socks - but smelling James, I was less sure about the socks. He was a bright, sweet, apparently educated guy from a military family. He'd been 86'd from half the bars in the Village, but the place I worked put up with him as long as the customers were willing to endure him. I admired his survival skills, his longevity, his staying power. He certainly didn't get by on his looks. He'd just learned how to hustle, instinctively - he didn't do it in a calculating way - he just did what was necessary to stay alive.
I saw myself becoming like him, and I didn't like it. Okay, I wasn't cadging drinks for a living, listening to a bunch of drunks in return for the occasional freebie, or throwing rent parties. I did have a job, and an apartment and a girlfriend who still, it appeared, loved me. But there was little good happening in my life. I was living paycheck to paycheck. My apartment was a dark, dusty cavern with paint peeling off the ceilings. Though I was no longer getting high at work, my off-hours were still revolving around the acquiring and doing of controlled substances - even if they weren't heroin. I was barely a cook. My culinary education, my early food epiphanies, the tastes and textures and experiences of my childhood in France and my rather privileged high school and college years were of little use to me behind a shellfish bar.
Something had to change. I had to get it together. I'd been the culinary equivalent of the Flying Dutchman too long, living a half-life with no future in mind, just oozing from sensation to sensation. I was a disgrace, a disappointment to friends and family and myself - and the drugs and the booze no longer chased that disappointment away. I could no longer bear even to pick up the phone; I'd just listen to the answering machine, afraid or unwilling to pick up, the plaintive entreaties of the caller an annoyance. If they had good news, it would simply make me envious and unhappy; if they had bad news, I was the last guy in the world who could help. Whatever I had to say to anybody would have been inappropriate. I was in hiding, in a deep, dark hole, and it was dawning on me - as I cracked my oysters, and opened clams, and spooned cocktail sauce into ramekins - that it was time, really time, to try to climb out.
WHAT I KNOW ABOUT MEAT
AN EPISODE FROM THE Wilderness Years.
Things were not going well. It was August, and my tree from the previous year's Christmas still lay in a heap of brown, dead pine needles in my dark, unused dining room. I was ashamed to take it out to the trash, not wanting my neighbors to see how far I'd fallen, how utterly paralyzed I'd become by my years of excess. Eventually, my wife and I would make a heroic effort to dispose of the incriminating object - chopping it up like a dead body and stuffing it in plastic bags before lugging it in the dead of night a few floors down and leaving it near a known coke dealer's doorway. Let him take the rap, we figured.
My unemployment was running out, and the responses to the resumes I'd sent out inevitably invited me to meet with such a transparently doomed bunch of chuckle heads that even I, the seasoned carrion feeder, couldn't stomach the prospect of working for them. There was a guy planning a Maria Maples restaurant; Maria would sing in the upstairs cocktail lounge, he confided, ensuring hordes of high-spending gourmets. The feng shui advisor was riding a cosmic groove around the half-completed restaurant when I arrived for the interview, boding poorly for the man's prospects. I deliberately tanked the interview.
Another well-known New York restaurateur summoned me to a series of highly secret meetings to discuss the changeover of his current operation - an unbelievably loud, grotesque, television-themed monstrosity - into a fine French bistro. I took the job, sight unseen, on the strength of his reputation, a generous money offer and the prospect of serving fine French food, which he knew quite a bit about. But one night in that place was more than I could take. Squealing children shoved up against the expeditor as they lined up to buy lunch-boxes, gummy bears, T-shirts and bomber jackets from the merchandising concession. Waiters with microphones urged customers to Name That TV Show as the theme music from Green Acres and Petticoat Junction blared over Volkswagen-sized speakers. The food was what you might expect to find on Air Uganda tourist class: boil-in-the-bag veggie burgers, pre-cooked bacon slices, greasy meat patties which were pre-seared and left to marinate in grease in the steam cabinet. It was soul destroying, and at the end of the night, I scrawled a quick note to the owner, something along the lines of: 'I could never last even another ten minutes in this shithole. I don't care if you're turning the joint into Lutece - it's too horrible NOW.'
A couple of '70s survivors wanted me for a new seafood restaurant on the Upper East Side, but when I called my connectionat a reputable fish wholesaler to tell him I was thinking of taking the job, he groaned out loud.
'Those guys are deadbeats of the month every fucking month. Their other place is on COD - and I hear the paychecks are bouncing like Schwarzenegger's tits . . .'
I thanked him for the information and politely declined further discussions.
I was utterly depressed. I lay in bed all day, immobilized by guilt, fear, shame and regret, my ashtrays overflowing with butts, unpaid bills stacked everywhere, dirty clothes heaped in the corners. At night, I lay awake with heart palpitations, terrors, bouts of self-loathing so powerful that only the thought of diving through my sixth-floor window onto Riverside Drive gave me any comfort and allowed me to lull myself into a resigned sleep.
Finally, I landed an interview that sounded promising. It was a steakhouse on Park Avenue with a large business clientele, a respectable 24 from the Zagat Guide, and a well-thought-of outpost in the Hamptons. They served top-quality dry-aged steaks, manly portions of seafood, oversized martinis and single malt scotches and had the inevitable cigar room. As I cabbed downtown, I was confident that a) this place would not be an embarrassment to work at, and b) I could run a steakhouse kitchen standing on my head. In fifteen years, I had learned everything there was to know about beef, pork, veal, about grilling, roasting - it was easy, the kind of simple, honest food I could put my mark on without working up too much of a sweat. The specials, for one, could be easily upgraded; steakhouses were notoriously lax in their specials and seafood offerings. There was plenty about this place I could improve, I was sure of it.
Typically, I arrived about a half-hour early for the interview. Nervous and thirsty, I decided to take the edge off with a pint. I tend to overanalyze questions during the interview process, to answer too wise-ass, and these were not qualities one seeks in a chef. So, I figured, a pint would dumb me down a little, relax me.
I ducked into an inviting-looking workingman's pub - Irish bartender, bowls of stale pretzels on the bar, Van Morrison on the jukebox. After a couple of sips I felt perfectly at home with the daytime drinker crowd and the stale beer stink. I sipped and smoked, looked longingly at a plate of chicken wings a couple of stools d
own. I couldn't eat before the interview, I reminded myself, I didn't want a big hunk of chicken in my teeth while a potential new boss grilled me about my less than brilliant career. As the hour approached, I yearned just to blow off the interview, stay here all day, drop a few quarters in the jukebox, play Steppenwolfs 'Magic Carpet Ride' and have a few more Bass ales. It would be so nice, I mused, to get paid for this - twelve hundred a week to hang out in the fading daylight of Irish bars, instead of having to go through the full mind-body press of taking on a new kitchen. But I needed the money. I needed the work. I needed to get back in the game.
When I walked out into the sweltering, mid-August afternoon, I was about as loose and ready as I was ever going to be.
The place was done up with the usual dark-wood walls and historical prints of horses, old New York, handlebar-mustached ball players and clubby accouterments. It was between lunch and dinner service, and the dining room was empty except for a frosty-haired man with a well-trimmed beard in the casual clothes that say 'owner' and a younger man in a business suit. They were interviewing another candidate, a stack of resumes in front of them.
A bushy-browed maitre d' ushered me to a bar, where I recognized immediately that this was a cattle call. A full bar of serious-looking chef candidates, in civilian mufti, sat drinking club sodas while they waited. Most were as badly dressed as I was, looking broken and defeated as they stared into space, sallow-skinned from years under fluorescent kitchen lighting. We ignored each other and tried to look as if we didn't need this job. My fellow chefs looked like sub commanders on shore leave, I thought, nervously fiddling with swizzle sticks and tearing at their bar napkins, unwilling to smoke at interviews. I gave my name to an indifferent bartender who assured me that the boss would be with me 'soon', and waited and waited and waited. It was quite a while and I was pissed that I, an executive (if recently disgraced) chef, was being made to wait like this, herded into a holding pen like . . . like . . . a waiter.
A Frenchman with dark circles under his eyes and bad burns on his hands read soccer scores next to me. Down the bar, the other chefs pretended they were customers, pretended they weren't the type to wait compliantly on line for an interview at a steakhouse. I drew strength from their misery.
A lone civilian stopped in for a quick, midday maintenance cocktail, answering the bartender's 'Howaya?' with an entirely-too-chipper-for-my-taste account of vacation in Aruba, a golfing trip to New Mexico, a mention of the comparative merits of the Beemer versus the Mercedes coupe. Then he answered his ringing cellphone with a dirty joke. I couldn't help eavesdropping and then - in an awful epiphany - saw that all the other chefs were listening in too, wistful expressions on their faces as they perhaps imagined, like me, what it was like to take vacations, own a car, combine a little golf with business. I felt myself sinking into a dark funk.
Finally, my name was called. I straightened my ten-year-old jacket, ran a hand through mousse-stiffened hair and strode confidently to the interview table. Firm handshakes all around, and I sat down, looking as crisp and cool as an ex-junkie skell with a culinary degree could look.
Initially, the interview went well. The owner, an affable Scot with a thick brogue, handed my resume to his aide-de-camp, an American, who immediately smiled with recognition at some of the places I'd worked.
'So . . . Supper Club . . . How they doing now? You worked for Marvin and Elliot?' he asked, all smiles now. 'Those were crazy times,' he reflected, a dreamy look on his face. The guy was letting me know that he too had gotten laid a lot back in the '70s and '80s and done a lot of cocaine.
We moved on, the American casually inquiring about various periods of my employment history, thankfully missing the fudged parts, the missing months, the long-dead restaurants that I'd helped to bury.
'You worked with Jimmy S.?' he inquired, chuckling and shaking his head. 'He still wear roller blades in the kitchen?'
I nodded, laughed, greatly relieved at this trip down memory lane. Clearly the man had also suffered under Jimmy at one point in his career. We were bonding!
'Haven't seen him in years,' I replied, separating myself deftly from my one-time mentor as fast as I could. 'Ha ha . . .'
I continued to smile warmly at both owner and the American manager, listened carefully, with a serious, yet calculatedly pleasant expression on my face as the owner began to fill me in on the history, philosophy and long-term aspirations for his steakhouse. There were a few questions from each of them, which I knocked down easily. I could see from their expressions that things were going well. I was acing every question. I had all the answers. No matter what they threw at me, I was ready.
'What kind of hours would you expect to put in?'
I knew that one. 'Whatever it takes. I'll put up a pup tent in the kitchen for the first few months . . . After that? I usually work ten to ten . . . at least. Six, seven days, whatever's needed.'
'What would you say your strengths and weaknesses are?'
I'd fielded this one before, neatly handling it with a wry but self-deprecating assessment of my finer qualities.
'Why are you leaving your current position?'
Snore. I knocked that out of the park, knowing full well that to slag on my most recent employer would not speak well of me. I embarked on an articulate dissertation on 'honest, straightforward American food'.
'What kind of positive changes could you bring to the table?'
I was doing fine. Every answer brought smiles and nods, the rote answers falling trippingly and amusingly off my tongue. Soon they were all laughing. I larded my account of my hopes for the future with casual references to owner-friendly buzzwords like 'point-of-sale', 'food cost percent', 'labor-intensive' and 'more bang for the buck', careful to slowly, almost accidentally reveal that I was a serious, experienced chef, a reasonable man good-tempered, reliable - the sort of guy a fifty-five-year-old Scottish steakhouse owner could talk to, spend time with - a realist, a journeyman professional - without airs, illusion or pretense.
I finished a sentence and smiled at the two men, pleased with myself at how things had gone so far. When boss man asked how much money I was looking for, I took a chance, said 85,000 dollars plus family health plan - I was a happily married man after all - and the guy didn't blink, he just jotted the number down on the corner of my resume with a sharpened pencil and said, 'That's do able.' I kept the conversation moving, more than anything else trying to avoid the obvious - that sure, goddamn right I could do the job! I could train a schnauzer to knock out a few hundred broiled steaks a day, wrap a few spuds in foil and make floury clam chowder for customers who smoked cigars while they ate. This gig would be ridiculously easy for me practically free money. I didn't say this, of course. That wouldn't be good.
I was closing in on the position. I could feel it. I cleverly volunteered that my personal approach to cuisine was appreciation of fine ingredients, that too much froufrou on the plates, food too sculpted, excessively garnished like that of many of my peers, was a distraction. Owners usually like this rap. And by saying it, I had inoculated myself against the 'I'm too good for this place' issue. Oh yeah, I assured them, all those squeeze-bottle Jackson Pollock designs on plates, the carved veggies and the frizzled this-and-thats, they detracted from the natural beauty of fine ingredients - a time-consuming and costly indulgence that satisfied only the chef's ego. 'Good food, honestly prepared,' I repeated, 'doesn't need that silliness. If the ingredients are the best, and they're prepared conscientiously, you don't need it,' my tone implying that there was something less than masculine - even gay - about dressing a hunk of meat up like a goddamn birthday cake.
This was going down very well - until suddenly, things took a strange and confusing turn. The owner leaned in close, and with unexpected gravity, lowered his voice and asked what was clearly the Big Question. His blue eyes searched the inner recesses of my skull as he asked it, his thick brogue and a passing delivery truck obscuring the words. I didn't hear. I asked the man to repeat the question,
suddenly thrown completely off my game. I listened intently this time, feeling suddenly at a disadvantage, not wanting this guy to think I was hard of hearing - or worse, having trouble with his accent.
'I'm sorry,' I said, 'What was that?'
'I asked,' said the owner, slightly irritated, 'What do you know about me?'
This was tough one. The man had seemed strictly business the whole time so far. What kind of an answer was he looking for? How did he expect his future chef to answer such a question: 'What do you know about me?'
Did he want his ass kissed, I wondered. Was he looking for something along the lines of: 'Oh, yes! Of course I've heard about you! How could I not? Why, every schoolboy in America is aware of your heroic trip from Scotland in steerage, your resolute climb up the ladder, how you worked your way up from piss-boy to magnate and created this fine, fine steakhouse, where the food is legendarily good. Why . . . why . . . I've got your bio tattooed on my chest as a matter of fact! You . . . you're an inspiration, I tell ya! A childhood fucking role modell' Was this what he was looking for?
I thought not. It couldn't be that. I had to think fast. What could this guy want? Maybe it was just the seriousness of the enterprise he wanted acknowledged, something like: 'Sure! I've heard of you - that you're a no-nonsense, stand-up guy, a man who works his people hard, expects a lot from them . . . that you've been fucked over before by bullshit artist chefs, early in your career, and you're unlikely to allow the to happen again . . . that you clawed your way to the top over the broken skulls and shattered limbs of your competitors . . .' Was that what he wanted?