As we close in on hotel-motel time, let's compare and contrast. Let's take a look at a three-star chef who runs a very different kind of kitchen than mine, who makes food at a higher level, has had a nearly unblemished track record of working with the best in the business, a guy who has always kept his eye on the ball which is to say, the food. If I suffer by comparison, so be it. I think I said earlier that I was going to tell you the truth. This is part of it.
Scott Bryan, like me, happily refers to himself as a 'marginal' character. When he says 'marginal', you can hear his hometown of Brookline, Massachusetts, in his voice, the same accent you hear in body shops and Irish bars in 'Woostah', 'New Bedfahd,' 'Glahsta,' and Framingham. Scott uses the term 'dude' a lot, though, which leads one to believe there might be surf in Boston. When I dropped by to see him recently, passing first through his stylishly sparse sixty-five-seat dining room, past his four sommeliers - count them, four - through a kitchen staffed by serious-looking young Americans in buttoned-up Bragard jackets with the Veritas logo stitched on their breasts and chef wear MC Hammer pants, down a flight of stairs, I found him wrapping a howitzer-sized log of foiegras in cheesecloth. He was wearing a short-sleeved dishwasher shirt, snaps done up to the collar, Alice In Chains blaring in the background. I took inordinate comfort from this, thinking, 'I do that! Maybe we're not so different!' But, of course, we are very different, as you shall see.
Scott grew up in what he calls a 'housing development - a project, really', unlike me, who grew up in a leafy green wonderland of brick colonial homes, distant lawn-mowers, backyard croquet games, gurgling goldfish ponds and Cheever-esque cocktail parties. Scott went to Brook line High, a public school where the emphasis seems to have been on technical skills; they had a culinary program and a restaurant open to the public. I went to private school, a tweedy institution where kids wore Brooks Brothers jackets with the school seal and Latin motto (Veritas fortissimo) on the breast pocket. Scott learned early that he might have to actually work for a living, whereas I, a product of the New Frontier and Great Society, honestly believed that the world pretty much owed me a living - all I had to do was wait around in order to live better than my parents.
At an age when I was helping to rack up my friends' parents' expensive automobiles and puking up Boone's Farm on Persian carpets, Scott was already working - for Henry Kinison at the Brook line High restaurant. He was doing it for money. Junior year, he took a job in a 'Hungarian Continental' joint, and as a fishmonger at Boston's Legal Seafood. One worked, and that was it. Scott, though still unmoved by the glories of food, found that he preferred cooking to his other imagined career option: electrical engineer or electrician.
His early mentor, Kinison, urged him to attend Johnson and Wales' culinary program in Providence, and along the lines of 'Why not?' he went along.
He hated it.
While studying, he began working for Bob Kinkaid at the much-vaunted Harvest restaurant in Cambridge, and if there is a single epiphany in Scott Bryan's life, a single moment when he decided what it was he was going to do for the rest of his life, it was there - when he first tasted Kinkaid's lobster salad with foie gras and truffle vinaigrette. His reaction was immediate. He decided to leave Johnson and Wales.
'I'm not going back,' he said, abandoning culinary school for life in the real world.
He was good. He had to be. Kinkaid clearly knew he was on to something. With Scott barely out of high school, Kinkaid packed him off to France with the one-word instruction:'Eat!'
Like me, Scott is conflicted on the issue of the French. We like to minimize their importance, make fun of their idiosyncrasies.'It's a different system over there,' he said, talking about the work habits of the surrender-monkey. 'You start young. For the first ten years of your career, you get your ass kicked. They work you like a dog. So, when you finally get to be a sous-chef, or a chef, your working life is pretty much over. You walk around and point.' Putting a last twist on his foiegras torpedo, he shrugged. 'Socialism, man. It's not good for cooks.'
But when he sees bad technique, technique that's not French, it's torture. As Scott well knows - and would be the first to admit - as soon as you pick up a chef's knife and approach food, you're already in debt to the French. Talking about one of the lowest points in his career, a kitchen in California, he described going home every night 'ashamed, and a little bit angry', because 'the technique was bad . . . it wasn't French!
They may owe us a big one for Omaha Beach, but let's face it, without my stinky ancestors we'd still be eating ham steak with pineapple ring. Scott knows this better than anybody.
Back from France, he rejoined Kinkaid, opening 21 Federal with him on Nantucket.
Now here, exactly, is where our career paths divide.
Scott had some chops now. He was good on the line. He had a resume, some notable names and recommendations, working experience, exposure to France and French food.
So did I, at that point in my career. I was good! I'd been to France. I had a CIA diploma - at a time when that was a pretty rare and impressive credential. So, what the hell happened? How come I'm not a three-star chef? Why don't I have four sommeliers?
Well, there are lots of reasons, but one reason is that I went for the money. The first chef's job that came along I grabbed. And the one after that and the one after that. Used to a certain quality of life - as divorcees like to call it, living in the style to which I'd grown accustomed - I was unwilling to take a step back and maybe learn a thing or two.
Scott was smarter and more serious. He was more single-minded about what he wanted to do, and how well he wanted to do it. He began a sort of wandering apprenticeship, sensibly designed to build experience over a bank account. He came to New York and went to work for Brendan Walsh.
Brendan Walsh and Arizona 206 are names that seem to pop up in the resumes of almost every '80s-era American chef. John Tesar, Kerry Heffernan, Pat Williams, Jeff Kent, Maurice Rodriguez, Herb Wilson, Donnie Masterton - everyone, it seemed passed through those kitchen doors at some point in their early careers. And for Scott, it was his version of 'the happy time', a period where 'everyone knew what we were doing was important. It was a team of cooks.' From this early petri-dish of culinary talent, Scott moved onwards and upwards, parlaying one once-in-a-lifetime gig into another, racking up a box score of famous chefs and heavyweight talents that would make any ambitious young cookie jerk to attention just at the mention of their names.
The Gotham with Alfred Portale. Back with Kinkaid at 21 Federal in DC. Square One in California. Back to New York with David Bouley. A Hamptons interlude with Jimmy Sears. (Pause for breath here.) Sous-chef for Eric Ripert at Le Bernardin (!)
As if his career wasn't going swimmingly enough for a guy who only a few years earlier had been considering a life installing light sockets and fuse-boxes, he then opened Lespinasse with Grey Kunz.
And if this isn't rich enough meal for you, to round out his skills and ensure his usefulness as an all-around major league player, he crossed the line from a la carte cuisine to pastry - a nearly unthinkable act - and went to work with the awesome iiberpatissier, Richard Leach, at Mondrian.
See what I mean?
I would never have done that.
If I had a well-disposed Eric Ripert and Grey Kunz in my background, I'd be endorsing blenders, committing unnatural acts in the pool near the Vegas outpost of my not-very-good-anymore restaurant chain, and pickling my liver in Louis Treize. At that point in my career, I wouldn't be shutting down the whole gravy train so I could learn pastry! I'd be mugging it up on the Food Network, schmoozing at the Beard Awards dinner, and contemplating a future where I'd never have to get out of my pajamas!
Just goes to show you.
Scott hates all that stuff. His partner, Gino Diaferia, says, 'I have to drag him kicking and screaming,' to do a guest shot on Letterman, appear on the Food Network, or do the dog and pony act at Beard House. 'I told him, he could get four stars someday' he says. 'He doesn't want it!' Gi
no shakes his head and smiles. 'He says he won't play with his food that much.'
Is it all about the food with this guy? I don't know. Scott likes to refer to himself as a cook, and when he says, about another chef, 'He's a good cook,' it's the highest praise he can offer.
Sopping up free martinis at the Veritas bar, I asked Gino whether he thought Scott was in it for the food or for the lifestyle. It gave him pause.
'I don't know.' He seemed clearly troubled by the question. 'I mean, I think he likes the lifestyle. A guy who comes in and hangs around on his day off, you know he's got to like the lifestyle. And he loves going out after work with cooks and chefs for drinks . . . you know.' He paused and thought about the question again. 'But . . .'
Gino is another example of 'everything I just told you is wrong'. Here's a guy who was in the home fuel oil business, with zero restaurant experience, who became partners with a couple of guys for a lark at the then vegetarian Chelsea bistro, Luma. When things began to lose their charm, he bought out the partners and began spending all his time at the restaurant, learning the business from the ground up. 'I was supposed to be a silent partner!' Looking around for a chef, a waiter who had worked for fishmongers-to-the-stars, Wild Edibles, told him, 'Scott Bryan is available.'
'I met with him at a coffee shop. He looked at the menu and said, "No vegetarian. That's gotta go." I said, "Fine!" Scott said maybe he'd consult.'
'He came in, started working, changing things, months go by . . . six months! I look at my wife and she looks at me: "Is he consulting? Is he staying?" I kept asking him: "Scott, can we make a deal?" Finally, one day he says, "Well . . . I think I will stay."'
The rest, as they say, is history. Luma got a quick two stars from Ruth Reichl at the New York Times and lots of buzz. Restaurants that change their entire approach midstream never succeed - remember I told you that? Wrong! Restaurants owned by guys in the fuel business don't succeed. I might have said something like that, too. Wrong! Operations that expand into multi-units often dilute the qualities that made them good in the first place. Not this time!
Time passed, Luma did well, and Gino and Scott opened Indigo, on West 10th Street, in a spot so poisonous, so reeking of failure that eight or nine restaurants had come and gone in my memory alone. Remember all that yammer about cancerous locations? Sites so cursed that any and all who seek to follow are doomed? Wrong again, jerk.
Indigo was located only a few blocks away from One Five. I'd been hearing quite enough about Scott Bryan, so when the place opened, I remember trudging over in the middle of a blizzard, sitting at the bar and scarfing up free tastings. I thought it was mind-bogglingly good and I told people so. I dragged my crew over, one by one, to try the mushroom strudel, the Manilla clams. We marvelled at Scott's menu, the perfect my-way-or-the-highway document. All the things that conventional wisdom tells a chef he has to do, all those must-have crowd pleasers that eat up half your menu before you can sneak in the selections you actually love, - they weren't there! There was no soup. No vegetarian plate. No steak! The chicken was not some generic roasted bird with non-threatening seasonings; it was a weird, ballsy, spicy concoction, involving red curry, for chrissakes! And good. The only beef was braised shoulder - a daube provengale so good that my whole crew at One Five now ran over to Indigo after work. Our two kitchens closed at the same time, so we'd phone ahead to say we were coming over, and start cooking that daube - just put it on the bar, for God's sake! Let it get cold, it's okay! The Indigo seafood selections were admirably unpopular fishes - cod and mackerel - and exciting. This was food for cooks. This was food that we got. Simple, straightforward and absolutely pretense-free. Like Scott.
Tucking into that daube of beef, or Scott's sweetbreads, was fun for me and my appreciative crew. What's he doing, we wanted to know, while examining a particular item we hadn't tried yet. How is he dealing with mackerel? Then we'd find out.
Everything on Scott's plates is edible. It's food, first and foremost, to be eaten, not looked at - though his presentations are inspired. Try and imagine the clean, unfussy integrity of Japanese cuisine, with the unrestrained flavors and soul-food heartiness of a well-remembered Grandma's best dish. He was braising economy cuts. He was taking greasy, oily fishes that nobody wanted and making magic. He was presenting it in big bowls in pretty stacks where - if you jammed your fork through all three layers - you got something that combined to actually taste good. He wasn't piling food on top of itself because layer one looked good on top of layer two and three. It tasted good that way. And those big bowls? At Indigo, and at Veritas, when something comes in a big bowl it's because there's gonna be sauce left in the bottom; chances are, you're going to be running a crust of bread around in there and mopping it up when the entree has been eaten.
It's why Scott has three stars and I don't.
It's why he probably won't be getting four stars anytime soon. His food is too good - and too much fun to eat. You feel you can put your elbows on the table in a Scott Bryan-Gino Diaferia restaurant and get about the serious business of tasting and smelling and chewing the good stuff.
I asked Scott if he thinks about food after work. When he's lying in bed in the dark, is he thinking about what he's going to run for special tomorrow? He said no. 'I come in, see what's on the market. I wing it,' he replied. I didn't believe him.
'Does Scott think about food? When he's not working?' I asked Gino, out of Scott's hearing. He smiled.
'He thinks about food,' Gino said. 'A lot.'
Scott is thirty-four years old. He's got dark, boyish good looks, with an eccentric nose that looks right on a chef. There are dark blue rings under his eyes and he has the skin pallor of a man who's spent too many hours toiling under fluorescent kitchen lighting. He wears the bemused expression of a guy who knows how bad it can get, who's always looking and waiting for the other shoe to drop. He's not so much a screamer anymore. 'I used to blow up all the time. I still yell, if there's laziness, sloppiness, someone thinks they're getting over.' Pointed sarcasm seems more the preferred tactic these days. And he does not share my pleasure in handling a pirate crew. 'Someone has a problem with another cook in my kitchen? I tell them work it out amongst themselves. I don't have time for that. I say, "Work it out,' cause if you still have a problem with so-and-so tomorrow? You're gone. Maybe you're both gone."' He doesn't bully, harangue or excoriate; the occasional caustic comment seems chillingly effective. I hung out in the Veritas kitchen recently, knocked off work at Les Halles and ran over to see how the other half works. It's a very quiet place.
During the middle of the rush on a Friday night, with a full dining room, the pace was positively relaxing - more a seriously focused waltz than the kind of hard-checking mosh-pit slam-dancing I live with. No one was screaming. Nobody was kicking any oven doors closed, putting any English on the plates, or hurling pots into the sink. Scott, expediting, never raised his voice.
'Go on, entrees. Thirty-two,' he said in a near-whisper. That's all it took for five line cooks to swing into action and start converging on plates. 'Pick up,' he said, 'table twelve.'
Three waiters appeared, each expertly wiping, garnishing and finishing a different plate, squeezing drops of chive oil, lobster oil or thirty-year-old balsamic from eye-dropper-sized squeeze bottles. No one was cursing or sweating. The stove-tops, cutting boards, counter space, cook's whites, even the aprons were spotless - at eight-thirty on a Friday night! Each sauce and salad, each item was tasted by the person preparing it, each and every time. Three orders of veal cheek special came up at the same time; they were absolutely identical.
At Les Halles, I go through a 10-pound bag of shallots every day, so it was truly jarring to see Scott Bryan's mise-en-place. The shallots on station were not chopped. They weren't Robot Couped either. They were brunoised - every tiny little piece uniform, textbook, perfectly squared off and near sub-atomic in dimensions. The chopped chives were the same, not a thread, not a single errant or irregular shred, every one the size of a cloned sin
gle-celled organism.
The whole kitchen smelled of truffles. Two thumb-sized knobs of the wildly expensive fungus sat by the garnish tray, where Scott would shave them onto outgoing orders. Truffle oil was being poured into pans like I use olive oil. Sauces were being mounted with foie gras and Normandy butter. And everything everything - was being made to order. Risotto? Out of the box and into the pot. From scratch.
A tiny young woman worked at a corner station, and I made the immediate Neanderthal assumption as I first took in the crew: 'Extern, maybe from Peter Kump or French Culinary, having a learning experience dishing out veggies.' I passed right over her as I swept my eyes down the line looking for the heavy hitters. In time I began, peripherally, to become aware of her movements. I looked again, closer this time, and saw that she was plating fish, cooking risotto, emulsifying sauces, taking on three, then four, then five orders at a time - all the while never changing expression or showing any visible signs of frustration or exasperation (as I would have under similar circumstances). No worries, just smooth, practiced motions, moves you see in twenty-year veterans: no pot grabbed without side-towel, no wasted effort, every sauce getting a quick taste, correcting seasonings, coming up on her stuff at the same time as the rest of the order - generally holding down her end like an ass-kicking, name-taking mercenary of the old school, only cleaner and better. Her station and her uniform were absolutely unmarkedby spills, stains or any of the expected Friday-night detritus.
'Where did she come from?' I whispered to Scott. Not amazed that a woman could do the job, but that anyone other than a thirty-five-year-old Ecuadorian mercenary could do it so stone-cold. (Remember what I said about Americans versus mis carnales from points south? Wrong again.)
'Oh, her?' said Scott casually. 'Alain Ducasse.' Mentioning God's name as breezily as I'd say, 'the Hilton' or 'Houlihan's'.