The Bartender: The Chefs Friend
There has long been a happy symbiotic relationship between kitchen and bar. Simply put, the kitchen wants booze, and the bartender wants food. The bartender, seeing himself (rightly) as a more exalted creature than the waiters, would like to eat a little better than the employee gruel hardening under the heat lamps between four and five. By the end of his shift, he's hungry, and chicken legs and day-old pasta don't fit with the bartender's image of himself as raconteur, showman and personality. He wants to be treated as special. And he usually is. The chef wants to drink anything he desires, anytime he wants it, without upper management being fully informed of the extent of his alcoholism or his taste for premium liquors. And the bartender is usually happy to help - if handled correctly.
The bartender, being the guy every employee gripes to at one point or another, is also useful for gathering interesting tidbits of intelligence. He is also privy, at times, to the high-level maneuverings of upper management and ownership. He knows - in dollars - how well or how poorly the place did on a given night, who is getting petty cash payouts, and for what purpose. And he's heard plenty. Everyone, sooner or later, forgets that the bartender is not really like a doctor or a priest and obliged to keep confidences. They forget that yes, he is listening while you bitch about the boss to a friend at the far end of his bar. Hopefully, he's going to tell the chef all about it.
Earlier, I rashly implied that all bartenders are thieves. This is not entirely accurate, though of all restaurant workers, it's the bartender who has the greatest and most varied opportunities for chicanery. The bartenders control the register. They can collude with waiters on dinner checks, they can sell drinks out of their own bottles - I've even heard of a bartender who brought in his own register, ringing a third of the drinks there and simply carrying the whole thing home at night. But the most common bartender hustle is simply the 'buy-back', when he gives out free drinks every second or third round to an appreciative customer. If you're drinking single malt all night long, and only paying for half of them, that's a significant saving. An extra ten-or twenty-dollar tip to the generous barkeep is still a bargain. This kind of freewheeling with the house liquor is also personally good for the bartender; it inspires that most valued phenomenon in a regular bar crowd: a 'following', folks who will actually follow you wherever you work.
Chefs, naturally, love this kind of bartender, and as a rule will not drink anywhere where there isn't this kind of 'trade discount'. After work, posses of chefs and cooks will bounce from bar to bar, on a loose, rotating basis, taking full advantage of the liberal pouring policies of bartenders they know from working with them before. They're careful not to 'burn' their favorites hitting their bar too hard or too often - which is why they tend to move from place to place. The bartender is repaid when he swings by their restaurants with a dinner date and gets treated like a pasha: free snackies, maybe some free desserts, a visit from the chef, fawning, personal service - in short, the kind of warm welcome and name recognition all of us beaten-down, working-class slobs crave when going out to dinner.
ADAM REAL-LAST-NAME-UNKNOWN
THE KITCHEN PHONE RANG, followed by a beep, the little green light indicating that the hostess at the front desk had a call for me.
'Yeah?' I said, covering one ear so I could understand what she was saying over the radio and the clatter of pots and the noise of the dishwasher.
'Call for the chef,' she said. 'Line two.'
I pressed the red flashing light, signaled for Steven at the grill to turn down the radio.
'Feed the bitch!' said the voice on the phone. 'Feed the bitch or she'll die!'
It was Adam.
What he wanted me to do - what he was telling me - was that he was too drunk, too tired, too lazy, too involved in some squalid personal circumstances to come in and feed his starter: a massive, foaming, barely contained heap of fermenting grapes, flour, water, sugar and yeast which even now was pushing up the weighted-down lid of a 35-gallon Lexan container and spilling over on the work table where it was stored.
'Adam, we're busy here!' I protested.
'Tell him I'm not doing it,' yelled Steven from the line. He'd been expecting this call. 'Tell him I'm letting her die if he doesn't get his ass in here!'
'Dude . . . I've got like . . . a situation here, man. And like . . . I just can't. Please. Do me a favor. I promise . . . I'll bake tomorrow night. Please . . . feed . . . the . . . bitch.'
'What's so important? What's so important you can't come in here?' I asked, knowingly soliciting an untruth.
'Dude. They're trying to evict me from my apartment and like . . . I gotta be here. I have to be here when my lawyer calls, man.'
'They're always trying to evict you from your apartment, Adam,' I said. 'So what else is new?'
'Yeah . . . yeah. But this time, it's serious,' said Adam, slurring his words slightly. 'I gotta wait for my lawyer to call; otherwise I'm fucked, you know?'
'What lawyers call at eight fucking thirty on a Friday night, Adam?'
'Well, he's not really a lawyer, per se. He's more like a guy who's like helping me.'
I could picture the scene on the other end of the phone: Adam Real-Last-Name-Unknown, the psychotic bread baker, alone in his small, filthy Upper West Side apartment, his eyes two different sizes after a thirty-six-hour coke and liquor jag, white crust accumulated at the corners of his mouth, a two-day growth of whiskers - standing there in a shirt and no pants amongst the porno mags, the empty Chinese take-out containers, as the Spice Channel flickers silently on the TV, throwing blue light on a can of Dinty Moore beef stew by an unmade bed. He's been snorting coke and smoking weed and drinking vodka from a half-gallon jug of Wolfschmidt's or Fleischman's (if he's drinking a better brand, he probably stole it from the restaurant) and now he's out of money. He doesn't have enough for a cab and he's too lazy and incoherent to hump twenty blocks down and feed the bitch.
I pondered the situation, looking first at the 250-pound blob of starter, and then at Steven.
'I'm not doing it!' said Steven (his voice gets high and squeaky when he gets indignant). 'Tell Vinnie to go fuck himself!' (Steven calls Adam 'Vinnie'. I don't know why. Maybe it's his real name.)
I kept Adam waiting.
'I'll help you feed her, man,' I told Steven. 'I don't want to look at the guy, the way he sounds. You really want to see him? The condition he's in? You know how he gets.'
'All right, all right,' said Steven, grumbling under his breath as he slapped a steak on the grill. 'This is the last time, though. Tell him. Tell him that next time I'm going to let her die. I'm going to throw her in the trash. We can buy bread.'
'We'll feed her,' I told Adam.
I was now committed to wrestling a back-breakingly heavy, ungainly blob out of the plastic Lexan, heaping it in stages into the big Hobart mixer and 'feeding' it with a mix of warm water and fresh flour and yeast. Then I'd have to scrape it back into the Lexan, haul that back up onto its resting place, stack sheet pans and potato sacks on top of it. It was a two-man job, one that would leave flour and goop all over my clean kitchen, leave dough under my fingernails and clinging to my clogs. But anything was preferable to having Adam Real-Last-Name-Unknown in my kitchen right now. Anything.
Why did God, in all his wisdom, choose Adam to be the recipient of greatness?
Why, of all his creatures, did He choose this loud, dirty, unkempt, obnoxious, uncontrollable, megalomaniacal madman to be His personal bread baker? How was it that this disgrace as an employee, as a citizen, as a human being - this undocumented,untrained, uneducated and unwashed mental case who's been employed (for about ten minutes) by every kitchen in New York - could throw together a little flour and water and make magic happen?
And I'm talking real magic here, people. I may have wanted Adam dead a thousand times over. I may have imagined, even planned his demise - torn apart by rabid dogs, his entrails snapped at by ravenous dachshunds, chained to a pillory post and flogge
d with chains and barbed wire before being drawn and quartered - but his bread and his pizza crust are simply divine. To see his bread coming out of the oven, to smell it, that deeply satisfying, spiritually comforting waft of yeasty goodness, to tear into it, breaking apart that floury, dusty crust and into the ethereally textured interior . . . to taste it is to experience real genius. His peasant-style boules are the perfect objects, an arrangement of atoms unimprovable by God or man, pleasing to all the senses at once. Cezanne would have wanted to paint them - but might not have considered himself up to the job.
Adam Real-Last-Name-Unknown may be the enemy of polite society, a menace to any happy kitchen, a security risk and a potential serial killer, but the man can bake. He's an idiot-savant with whom God has serious, frequent and intimate conversations. I just can't imagine what He's telling him - or whether the message is getting garbled during transmission.
The crusaders of yore, it is said, used to stop off at the local church or monastery before heading off to war; where they were allowed to purchase indulgences. This was sort of like a secured, pre-paid credit card from heaven, I imagine, and negotiations probably went something like this.
'Bless me, father, for I am about to sin. I plan on raping, pillaging and disemboweling my way across Southern Europe and North Africa, taking the Lord's name in vain, committing sodomy with all and sundry, looting the holy places of Islam, killing women and children and animals and leaving them in smoking heaps . . . as well, of course, as getting up to the usual soldierly hijinks of casual eye-gougings, dismemberment, bear-baiting and arson. Given this sinful agenda, padre, how much is this gonna cost me?'
'That'll be a new roof for the vestry, my son, perhaps a few carpets from down there. I understand they make a lovely carpet where you'll be goin'. . . and shall we say fifteen percent off the top, as a tithe?'
'Deal.'
'Go in peace, my son.'
Adam gets right with God with every proof rack of sour dough bread he pulls out of the oven: every crispy, crunchy, deliciously blistered pizza. It's God's little joke on all of us. Especially me.
I've hired him three or four times, and fired and rehired him again on countless occasions. He's in his late twenties to early thirties, I think, though he looks older. He's of medium height, with lank black hair, thinning at the crown. He's barrel-chested, with the huge shoulders and upper arms of a guy who's been balling dough for years. His eyes are brown but they look coal-black, at once menacing and pathetic, set into a mischievous baby face whose expression can change in an instant from huggably endearing and childlike to slaveringly insane.
To sign on Adam to your crew is to buy, for a time, the best bread. I've ever tasted. It ensures that your customers, when examining their bread baskets, will exclaim, 'Where did you get this bread?' and 'Where can I buy this bread?' It also means that your life will be a waking nightmare, that every corner of your walk-ins and kitchen shelving will be likely to contain various sinister-looking and foul-smelling science experiments:rotting grapes, fermenting red peppers, soggy bucketsof mushroom trimmings - the gills and stems decomposing into noxious, black sludge - all of them destined for 'the bitch' or one of her many offspring, smaller batches of starter that have been flavored with, or 'started' by one of these primordialoozes. Walk-ins will contain buckets of slowed-down starter and forgotten batches of dead starter. Freezers will be loaded with half-baked boules, frozen sour mix, the floors sticky with dough. Like some virulent snail, Adam leaves tracks.
But, he also leaves the 'stuff: the most amazing olive and herb breads, pepper bread, mushroom bread, focaccias, pizzas, garlic twists, bread sticks and brioches. He claims to be of Sicilian heritage, affecting the mannerisms and gestures and expressions of the street guinea from some Scorsese-inspired Brooklyn - but is he, actually of Italian lineage? No one knows for sure. Steven claims to have seen his birth certificate - the real one, mind you - and that his real last name is Turkish or Arab. But who knows? Documentation from Adam is always of dubious provenance. His cooking background is certainly Italian, no question there, he is not to be relied on for baguettes. If you believe him - which you shouldn't - he was taught to bake by Lydia Bastianich (he's fond of showing off a tattered and dog-eared copy of one of her books, inscribed to one of his many known aliases).
He's worked, to my direct knowledge, as a cook, chef, consultant, pie man at pizzerias, deli help, pâtissier and baker. Half of what comes out of his mouth is utter bullshit - the rest, suspicious at best. He is perpetually broke and in debt. The corner deli, says Steven, gives him credit, as does his local bar, and Adam pays them during the good times and stiffs them in the bad. He's always headed off to Little Italy to pay off some shady character, cop weed, or settle his rent problems. He used to sue everyone he worked for - claiming harassment, breach of contract, theft of services, unfair labor practices, even sexual harassment- and has had surprisingly good luck with his second career as professional litigator. Many of his victims, I suspect, were willing to pony up a few dollars - just to make him go away.
Jimmy Sears, who first brought Adam Real-Last-Name-Unknowninto my circle of acquaintances (the notorious Steven and Adam acquisition of the '92 season), is another reluctant admirer. Like me, Jimmy should know better than to let this savage beast wander free in his kitchen, but he keeps doing it, keeps hiring him, for the 'stuff. The Sears/Adam relationship has been a legendarily contentious one, coming to blows on more than one occasion.
They have been both arch-enemies and close associates, rolling around trying to kill each other on the lawns at the Inn at Quogue, having wrestling matches at 13 Barrow and screaming contests at the Supper Club. Steven, who's known Adam longest, has had many adventures with him, both here in New York and in California - episodes of such nauseating stupidity, self-indulgence, cruelty and horror that even I find them unprintable. Adam has threatened to sue me many times. He has sued Sears, I believe, a number of times, as his assessment of what he is owed is frequently at odds with reality. (To be fair, Jimmy's assessments of what he owes is sometimes at variance with established fact as well.) There is a photo, taken years ago for a magazine article that was never printed, showing Adam, covered from head to toe in flour, holding Jimmy in a head-lock, pretending to bash his skull in with a rolling-pin. It was the perfect re-creation of their relationship.
Just recently, after many years, I stopped by to see Jimmy Sears at his new place, a swank nightclub/supper club in the Gramercy area. I sat down at a table, ordered some food (Jimmy's food is always excellent) and when the bread basket arrived, I looked up from the table at Jimmy with a horrible sense of recognition.
'You didn't?' I rasped, scarcely able to believe it.
'I did,' said Jimmy, sighing. 'I have Adam making my bread and my pizza.'
The last I'd heard, Adam was bragging about getting the marshals to yank out Sears's stoves and equipment to pay off his claim of non-payment, claiming he was going to bash Jimmy's skull into red paste this time, make him cry like a little girl, destroy his life. The previous year, Adam had had to be delivered to the Westhampton train station under police escort after one of the famous Quogue incidents: the Hampton's first forced deportation. Jimmy was Adam's favorite obsession, a ready-to-go revenge scenario, his number one topic of conversation. Now? Like so many relationships in the restaurant business, everything old was new again.
To endure Adam as an employee was to become a full-time cop, psychiatrist, moneylender, friend and antagonist, though he does have his sweet side.
Steven, Nancy and I went skiing with him one time. Adam was thrilled to be doing something normal. Dr Herbert Kleckley, in his groundbreaking work on serial killers, The Mask of Sanity, discusses this phenomonon, where the career sociopath, vestigially aware of his character, emulates normalcy by overcompensating - becoming a scoutmaster, a crisis-line counselor, a Republican fund-raiser. In this case, Adam, excited by the prospect of a wholesome activity like 'going skiing with the guys', prepared a bacchanalian p
icnic lunch for his fellow skiers: two chest coolers filled with homemade caponata, antipasto, sliced cold cuts, freshly baked Italian bread, cheese, marinated artichokes, roasted peppers . . . he must have been up all night getting it ready. And he skied like a hero, though he's the last person in the world who should be allowed. He had his ski boots on the wrong feet for the first hour. He had neglected to bring gloves or mittens. He lost a ski pole. But he soldiered on without complaint. I vividly recall looking down from the ski lift, seeing him fall on his face, then clamber up again, and thinking, 'You know, there is something to love about this guy . . . beyond the bread.' He's an extraordinary survivor, a man who has attained some nice highs and endured some truly low lows and always managed to bounce back. Maybe he's calling himself something else this time around. Maybe his paychecks are made out to some fictional company, a third party, his latest alias, but he's still on his feet at the end of the day . . . and still making that incredible bread.
Adam is not a stupid guy, though I sometimes think he aspires to be. His anecdotes are wildly exaggerated, unspeakably crude and graphic adventures - usually involving his penis - but without the earnest and self-deprecating charm of his friend Steven's accounts. Adam's comedy material runs along pretty predictable lines: referring to his dill bread starter, for instance, as 'dildo', accompanied by a maniacal laugh. He has an unusual and frankly terrifying tic; when he eats, one eye rolls up into its socket. I'm told he makes funny faces when he has sex, too, but I try very hard not to picture that. He's a sentimental guy who can take real pride in his work: I've seen him weep when his tiramisu didn't come out as planned, and when a cassata cake he'd made began to slide in the heat. He sulks, wheedles, whines, and bullies when he wants something - which is always - and you can pretty much tell what frame of mind he's in from his appearance. If he hasn't shaved, it's not a good time to be around him.