Power Through

Most normal people…that is to say, most people who work a 9-to-5, or whoopty-do 8-to-6 or something; stay home when they’re not feeling well. Now, when I say not feeling well, I don’t mean, “oh my throat is sore and I have the sniffles,” I mean wake up puking, food in your stomach turning to liquid (don’t think I need to expound), taking anti-nausea medication kind of not feeling well. People who work in kitchens are wired a little differently. For the most part, we don’t get sick days or vacation pay or understanding bosses. We get the crystal clear understanding that if you don’t show up, you don’t get paid; its just that simple. At least on the flip side, you are working in a restaurant and at least get a free meal every day.
Last Saturday I woke up after getting about six hours of sleep and felt a little sick. I’d started feeling shitty on Thursday; and because cooks don’t have the part of their brain that tells us not to have a drink after leaving the kitchen; I wasn’t exactly getting a lot of sleep. So I rolled out of bed, my head pounding, and padded downstairs to the shower, started coughing and ended up standing in a puddle of my own puke. I cleaned my shower, re-cleaned my feet, got dressed and went into work. An old roommate of mine has a great expression to describe how I was feeling…like a bag of smashed apples. So I puked when I got to work, then set up my station (did I mention all of this was taking place before 11, a.m. because I work a double on Saturday’s and have to in for Brunch by 10 in the morning?) and tried not to pass out on my feet. Brunch started slowly and around noon I walked over to Duane Reed to buy myself some anti-nausea medication, mints and Sea-Bands (which don’t work, by the way). So I powered through most of Brunch until our Chef showed up, took a look at me and suggested I try to take five, off my feet. I got a little down time, came back upstairs and worked dinner service with 186 covers, turning out plates like a man (with a horribly upset stomach) possessed.
I’m not telling you this because I want to toot my own horn; I’m telling you this so you can understand the mentality of people who work in restaurant kitchens. We are wired differently. I can tell you with absolute certainty that when I was working on Wall Street, well fed, getting fat and getting paid to sit on my ass for nine or ten hours a day I probably would’ve called in sick if I stubbed my toe getting out of the shower. Ever since I’ve been living my life trying to be one second faster than I was the day before, calling in sick is no longer an option. In Ruhlman’s “The Soul of a Chef” (his follow up to “The Making of a Chef”), he talks about says, “Not getting enough sleep? Too bad, sleep later!...(its) you against the clock, every day, every year. Whoever does the most the best wins. Period.” And that’s how I live my life now. I bust my ass every day. Every day I walk into the kitchen, my goal is to be a little bit better than I was the day before, to be a little faster than I was the day before, to take on a little more responsibility than I had the day before. It’s a tremendous amount of self-imposed pressure, but honestly I wouldn’t have it any other way. After all, my Chef and I were having this talk the other night about two kinds of people who work in kitchens: guys who spend their entire lives never advancing beyond line cook and those who become Chefs (capital ‘c,’ not cooks) and run kitchens, own restaurants and make people stand up and take notice. Well, I decided long ago that I wasn’t very good at flying under the radar…

Floor Spice and Everything Nice

I love New York City like nobody’s business, it’s got just about everything anyone could want; especially when it comes to the food. But the one area in which New York is seriously lacking is our street food. New York has no good street food, none. I like hot dogs as much as the next guy, but the meat tubes that spend their days floating in 180 degree water aren’t exactly my idea of a good meal, or even a meal in a pinch. We’ve got some of the best restaurants in the country; great food shopping, including awesome farmers markets and fresh fish; and probably the only place in the world where you can find geoduck, Ghost Peppers, Yorkshire Pudding, durian, Ras el Hanout, Langoustine, over 100 different types of Curry, pulled tea, chocolate-covered bacon and quite possibly some black market Pufferfish. I can get a hot dog from a cart or rice and beans or a knish or shish-kabob or even roti from a truck on Wall Street in New York City…but I can’t get a fish taco with fresh lime (like I can on La Cienega) or split a Three Dog Night with a buddy of mine (like I can at Pink’s on La Brea). What I’m trying to say is that the street food is Los Angeles is dynamite. Nothing hits the spot like a fish taco from a taco truck after a long night of drinking at one of LA’s clubs or bars. I don’t know, maybe it has something to do with driving everywhere, that you work up an appetite. But there’s certainly no shortage of awesome food to be found on street corners in LA.
I remember when I lived in Salamanca, Spain for a Summer my girlfriend and I used to get churros or empanadas when we were hungry. I don’t just mean around one in the morning, we wanted to munch on something; I’m talking about the sun is blinking its eyes and we have maybe three hours to get home, sleep and then wake up before trying to conjugate in a different language. The churro guy was open…with a line behind his cart. The empanada guy (if he hadn’t sold out already) was probably the right combination of surly and ready to bargain with you for a few Pesetas over the last of the night’s food. The best we were able to do in the City was grilled hot dogs in Midtown or an Arab guy selling “authentic Mexican” rice and beans…
New York’s lack of good street food surprises me. It doesn’t make any sense that a city that has so much to offer; wouldn’t have something as innocuous and simple as good street food. Sure, you can go to Gray’s Papaya or Shake Shack and get a decent hot dog or hamburger, but those places are closed by midnight and sometimes when I go out drinking I want something other than a slice of pizza.
I don’t know what we can do to change the street food culture in New York City, but I know that something needs to change. There’s no reason, we can excel as a city in so many areas related to food and fail so horribly when it comes to something as simple as keeping cheap food warm in your truck, or cart or insulated box…steps in the right direction are maybe being taken; what with the advent of the “Wafles & Dinges” truck, the “Cookie Truck” and others, but the problem therein, is that these trucks cater predominantly to those with a sweet tooth, and also become like a groundhog in sunlight after 1, a.m. I know there’s not a lot I can do about it, but I don’t think its too much to ask for a fish taco or Yakitori or even some decent churros when I leave the kitchen or the bar, or where ever my wayward travels have taken me…

Mr. Fix-It

Every neighborhood has one, I’m sure just about every restaurant has one…a local handyman who comes by whenever he sees fit to work on “projects” for the restaurant. He’s not an employee, you don’t know exactly where he lives or if he has an actual job; he just floats in like an apparition freaks out your customers and then leaves until the next time. We’ve got a guy like that, a toothless, bespectacled old codger who walks into the restaurant at least once a day to build something for us and then like clockwork he walks into the kitchen to request, er demand a burger, “with bleu cheese if ya have it!”
A few weeks ago, he rolled in during Sunday brunch, while we were slammed and proceeded to paw through the pastry basket with his dirty street fingers until he found the doughnut he was looking for. Then last weekend he came in and demanded I give him “four or five” slices of Prosciutto. I informed him that it was a busy service and that we were running low and I couldn’t just give him over an order of meat. He looks at me and says, “well how about I ask this guy?” This guy being our assistant manager. I told him he could ask, but the answer would be the same.
So that’s that, what can you do. Mr. Fix It’s always going to stop by, he’s always going to demand food and skeeve people out; but where else are you going to find someone to build you cabinet to hold menu’s for like $30 bucks…?

Oysters Man…Effing Oysters!

This is more like a little rant than an actual post. I hate oysters, I really do. I hate eating them, I don’t finding them all that tasty and I especially hate opening oysters. Most restaurants serve oysters because most people like the idea of oysters. That is to say, people like being able to go out and order a dozen oysters when they’re on a date because they think eating said oysters will make them more attracted to the person sitting across from them. This is just plain wrong. Oysters are no more an aphrodisiac than fried chicken is a health food. Somewhere there are some gristled old Mainers having a good laugh about this. I’m pretty sure (and I’m sure if I were writing a book and could take the time to research this) the idea of oysters as an aphrodisiac was perpetuated by fishermen trying to unload large quantities of oysters…most likely when they were out of season. This in-and-of-itself, is another problem I have with the serving and eating of oysters, is that for large parts of the year, oysters spawn; which makes them taste fairly terrible. There are a few different schools of thought on this, the two most common being: do not eat oysters in months ending in “y” and the other most prevalent being only eat oysters in months that contain an “r.” As you can see, this poses some problems, January, for example, contains an ‘r,’ but it also ends in a ‘y,’ thus making it difficult to determine whether you should eat the slimy fuckers in the first place.
As I understand it, the ‘y’ principle primarily applies to Summer months, when male oysters are busily gunking up ocean waters with their sperm and go from being concerned with being snatched out of the water and eaten, to knocking up all the eligible female oysters in the vicinity. Don’t get me wrong, I like an oyster Po’ Boy, I think they’re pretty tasty, but then again, that’s a fried oyster that’s served with some friends on a Baguette with a Remoulade and usually lettuce, tomatoes and pickles. That’s neither here, nor there though; I have an awesome Po’ Boy recipe which I’ll share at some point, along with many of my other Southern recipes which make little sense as my being a Northerner.
Bottom line, oysters suck. And I’m especially upset with them now seeing as I opened up a two inch gash on my left thumb trying to open two dozen oysters in the practical dark on Saturday night. To that end, the next time you go out to eat and think you need a little “help” when it comes to getting your dinner companion on their back, or all fours (as it were), order some Champagne and leave me out of it.

Fast Food Fantasies

The past few weeks I’ve been craving fast food. I don’t mean a burger from Five Guys or a dirty water dog, I’m talking about abandoning my faculties and going to McDonald’s for a Big Mac, Wendy’s for a chicken sandwich or god forbid even Arby’s. Seriously, you know you’ve got a problem when you find yourself actively watching McDonald’s and Burger King commercials and wishing there was one next door to you.
So today, after I exercised my democratic responsibility to vote for someone who I don’t think is going to send our country further down a sewer; I walked over to McDonald’s and made my first bad decision of the day. I purchased a Crispy Chicken BLT meal with medium fries and a Coke as well as a Big Mac…because I figured, why not? To give you some background, the last time I ate fast food, or McDonald’s for that matter was in 2004 shortly after watching Super Size Me. Those of you that know me, know that I have since eaten at In-n-Out Burger on my trips to Los Angeles, but I don’t consider In-n-Out to be fast food considering they deliver fresh unfrozen meat to their restaurants every day and cook your food to order. We all know about McDonald’s on the other hand. And while I stood there waiting on line, I watched someone slapping ¼ inch thick “ burger” patties onto some kind of double sided grill, tossing the excess back into a freezer and then closing the lid. Then I got home and started in on my sandwiches. I removed the top piece of bread to my Chicken BLT to find a piece of lettuce as brown as one of the patties on my Big Mac staring me in the face.
To say the least, my McDonald’s experience today will be the last of my life. After I ate the once frozen, unsalted fries, the soggy chicken sandwich with the brown lettuce swimsuit and the Big Mac; which tasted primarily like Thousand Island dressing and bread; I felt pretty crappy. I know Morgan Spurlock talked about this in his documentary, saying how McDonald’s food would make him feel sluggish and sick after eating it. That’s basically how I felt. I had a slight stomach ache, I felt tired and ever so briefly contemplated praying to the porcelain goddess. I’m since doing a lot better, but I’m serious about never eating McDonald’s food ever again. I can say for sure, I’ve gotten over any fantasies I may have been harboring about eating fast food and am going to turn my attention to other pursuits like trying out a vegan restaurant…just once, and basically so I can ridicule the waitress and cooks the entire time I’m there. Who knows, I might even bring a bloody steak and leave it on the table like a party favor. I’m also going to continue eating some of the foods that fall outside the norm, such as Goeduck, Durian, Balut and Sheep Testicles. The way I look at it, if I was able to keep down a Big Mac and a Chicken BLT, or whatever the hell that thing was, I can eat a fertilized duck egg or the stinkiest fruit known to man. I’m ready for whatever life throws at me, and as long as I’ve got a stomach that works, I’m going to continue to find crazy food to put in it.