there has always been an element of the hustler/showman in the great chef. From Careme"s extravagant pieces montees, best-selling books, and careful career management through Escof-fier"s shrewd partnership with Cesar Ritz and on into the television age, smart chefs have known that simply cooking well is not enough. The chef in the dining room, mingling with the guests in an impeccably white starched jacket and toque, is a different man than the chef his cooks see. All chefs know and accept how much of the business of fine dining is artifice: The mood lighting, interior decoration, uniformed service staff, the napkins and silver, background music, and erotically descriptive menu text all conspire to create an environment for customers not much different than a stage set. Chefs have always written books, multiplatformed, and performeda"to one extent or anothera"for their public. Whether coddling their customers or snarling at them, a chef caters to expectations, creating an image, hopefully one that will sell more food and attract more public.
With the advent of the Food Network and expanded media interest in chefs worldwide, however, the bar has been raised considerably. Speaking well and being good on television, giving good interviewa"these skills now seem almost as important as knife work. Even the Culinary Inst.i.tute of America, the prestigious professional cooking school, now offers media training as part of its curriculum.
Perhaps, then, they should teach the cautionary tale of Rocco DiSpirito as an example of A Chef Who Went Too Far, one who went over the linea"messed with the b.i.t.c.h G.o.ddess celebrity and got burned. Before television, Rocco was the well-respected chef of the three-star Union Pacific, a bright, charismatic guy with the world on a string. He was known for his skill in the kitchen, his innovative style, and his insistence on quality. As he became more recognized, he began expanding the "brand," consulting to other restaurants, signing multiple endors.e.m.e.nt deals, showing up at openings and promo parties. Now, after his hideous, high-profile, post-ironic "reality" television venture, The Restaurant, has run its humiliating course, he"s no longer the chef of his once excellent Union Pacific; he"s banned from his own eponymous eatery (the cynical and soulless Rocco"s); he"s finally settled protracted litigation with his ex-partner, Jeffrey Chodor-ow (famously the last guy in the world anyone would want to face in court); and he can presently be seen hawking cookware with his mom on QVC. When last heard of, the once great chef was hosting a local call-in radio show in which he directs little old ladies to the best kosher chickens. It"s been a long, hard, and painfully public fall. In a highly compet.i.tive business, a certain amount of backbiting and schadenfreude is to be expected. But, in Rocco"s case, the reaction from his fellow chefs has been positively gleeful.
Where did he cross that line? When did Rocco go from being talked about by his peers as a hugely talented but ambitious knucklehead to a betrayer? Why is he seen to have broken faith with his profession?
Culinary students of the future will no doubt look deeply into this question, as it"s an important one. They might ask as well, "Why not Emeril?" Emeril Laga.s.se would seem, at first blush, to have invited an even worse fate. Like Rocco, he is outrageously overexposed: two cooking shows, a line of cookware, a restaurant empire extending into Vegas and theme parks. He"s famously inept at cooking (on television); can barely speak grammatically; still has a thick, working-cla.s.s Ma.s.sachusetts iz6 ISCELEBRITY KILLING THE GREAT CHEFS?.
accent; and while hunched troll-like over his cutting board with gut ballooning over ap.r.o.n strings, he looks like a publicist"s nightmare. More amazingly, he dared star in perhaps the worst television sitcom since Lancelot Link, Chimp Detective. Yet he"s surviveda"and prospered. Why did the handsome, intelligent, and more culinarily girted stud-puppet Rocco crash and burn, and not Emeril?
Maybe it"s because Emeril"s real. (Tellingly, chefs like Emeril. They may hate his show, but they like him personally, and continue to respect him.) Like Rocco, he came up the hard way, in his case starting out in a bakery in Fall River, Ma.s.sachusetts, making his bones as first cook, then chef of a number of well-regarded restaurants before landing a cooking show on the Food Network. But unlike Rocco, Emeril presides over a successful empire of very good restaurants. Unlike Rocco, Emeril looks like he"s enjoying being famous (not whining about it all the time, or trotting out his poor mom for sympathy). Emeril"s awkwardness on camera, his goofy delight in playing to an audience, is, well . . . kinda endearing. Unlike Rocco, when Emeril puts on a white chef"s jacket, he bothers to remove the expensive b.u.t.ton-down dress shirt he was wearing beforea"so on camera, he doesn"t look like he"s ready to bolt for a meeting with his agent or a date with a model should the opportunity arise. And Emeril caught a break: His ludicrous sitcom was canceled almost immediately, thereby saving celebrity chefs everywhere from being last week"s fad. On television and in person, Emeril looks like a guy who likes to cook. Rocco looks like he"d rather be anywhere else. Though far more successful and famous, Emeril projects a public image completely devoid of greed, vanity, l.u.s.t, or ambitiona"sins to be found in obvious abundance all over Rocco"s more handsome but need-riddled face.
Or take the case of Mario Batali. Before he became "Molto Mario," Batali cooked soulful, eclectic, and delicious Italian favorites at P6, a tiny restaurant in Greenwich Village. He was a man of many appet.i.tes, a guy who liked to cook, to eat, to drink ... to live. He loved the neglected hooves and snouts and guts that form the heart and soul of much of traditional Italian cuisine. Now? Mario is still a man of Falstaffian appet.i.tes. Only he"s an empire too. And what has he done with his celebrity? Other than enjoy it? Well, he still serves his beloved hooves and snouts and gutsa"only now, with the bully pulpit of television celebrity to add authority to his argument, he"s seducing thousands more diners into giving them a try. He still serves soulful, eclectic, and delicious fooda"only now he does it all over New York. Every Batali restaurant has a different concept; and every one of them fulfills a need we might never have known we even had. Rare among chefs, Mario has used celebrity to do good works, to continue to do what he loves. Mario on TV is the same as Mario in person. (Except for the smoking and cursing, of course, but we all do that.) I asked Mario about his relentless drive to open more and more restaurants. I said, "Dude! If I were you, making your kinda bucks? You"d never see me again. I"d run off to an island! It would take a week to even find me by phonel Why do you do it?" His answer was simple. And honest: " "Cause I love it."
Chefs have publicists and agents these days. Alain Duca.s.se likely has a legion of them. The restaurant has one publicist, and the chef often has his or her own. As I pointed out to a four-star chef friend of mine who was having a hard time adapting to the rigors of book tour and self-promotion, there is nothing shameful about it. "It"s not just for you that you"re doing this! The insipid three-minute cooking demos on morning news shows, the posing for photos, all the self-promotion. Sure it"s undignified! But it"s good for business! Now stop whining and get out there and take one for the team!" I meant it too. It"s not just you, the chef, out there, puffing himself up; it"s all who sail within: the owners, the investors, the cooks, the long-suffering sous-chef, the floor staff. They like money too. They could use having the restaurant"s profile raised a little. They"d like to move up too. All that work, all those hours, all that loyalty, in a business where the overwhelming odds are that you will fail; almost any strategy that helps tilt the scales is a good thing. Cooking professionally is ISCELEBRITY KILLING THE GREAT CHEFS?.
hard. It ravages the mind and body. Hard-core purist foodies may gripe that a chef is not "keeping it real," but I invite them to try working a busy saute station six long shifts a week on forty-five-year-old legs. Chefs who are still doing that beyond fifty don"t look forward to living much longer.
But where does one draw the line? Where, exactly, does a chef go over to the dark side?
I think that, as with any celebrity, it comes when you forget who the h.e.l.l you were to begin with. When you forget that at the end of the day, even if you"re not actually doing much of the physical cooking anymore, you"re still just a cook.
When celebrity chefs get too far away from the food (which is what got them all this way, wasn"t it?), they run the risk of entering that terrible and transitory zone of D-list reality-show freakazoids. (Does anyone remember any of the original "stars" of Survivor} Or of last season"s Apprentice} Should anyone even care}) We like our celebrity chefs to still be, at the end of the day, cooks. This is not to say that Mario, or Jean-Georges Vonger-ichten, or Thomas Keller spend much time sweating behind the line these days. How could they? But presumably, they don"t wander too far for too long. They still like to cook. They still like other cooks. They clearly love the business they"re in. They haven"t relaxed their standards. They first want people to eat and enjoy the food they lovea"in however many venues they serve it.
It may not be all about the food in the harsh, unforgiving business of celebrity chefdom, but it is still about cooking, about the pleasures of the table. Those who forget that, even the prodigiously talented, do so at their peril. As a TV chef/guy myself, I have always found it useful to remember that the good times could end at any second, that the next book could tank, that the TV thing could come crashing down with the arrival of the very next ratings booka"or the next data from a faraway focus groupa"and that I could well end up right back behind the stove, flipping steaks and dunking fries until I keel over from the heat or alcoholism. I loved my time in professional kitchens, and it would not be a terrible thing to go back to it. The restaurant business, after all, is the greatest business in the world. Cooking is n.o.ble toil. And fun. No supermodel or television producer is ever going to say anything more interesting than my line cooks and sous-chefs. In the end it comes down to the very first question you ask yourself when enduring the hazing and drudgery of your first cook"s job, or your first days at cooking school, when you look long and hard in that mirror and say, "Do I really want to be a chef?"
If you"d rather be an actor, or a spokesmodela"or even a writera"it"s time to get out.
WHATYOU DIDN"T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT MAKING FOOD TELEVISION.
it can"t be that bad, can it? I mean, let"s face it, I"m doing another season. I know I have one of the best jobs in the world. A few weeks ago, as I was sitting on the porch of an old Antillean house in the Caribbean, waiting for my stuffed conch and Creole chicken to arrive, my waiter, a ten-year-old kid, asked me the kind of guileless, painfully illuminating question only a ten-year-old could ask: After watching me knock back around four beers, huff down a few smokes, and stuff my face with appetizersa" pausing occasionally to babble witlessly at the cameras floating around like drunken hummingbirdsa"he looked me straight in the eye and asked, "Mister? What"s your job?" I was absolutely flummoxed. What is my job? What the h.e.l.l is it I do for a living? Am I a chef? Well. . . not really anymore, am I? My hands are so soft and tender from avoidance of manual toil that I could be a spokesmodel for overpriced emollients. Am I some kind of writer guy? I dunno. Don"t like writers much. Given a choice between being trapped on a desert island with a group of writers or a family of howler monkeys, I think I"d pick the monkeys. At least I could eat them. And what the f.u.c.k is a "television personality"? Jesus! I hope I"m not that. I"d rather write "habitual masturba-tor" on my visa applications than admit to that.
Whatever it is I do these days, whatever you might want to call it, I do get to travel all over the world, going anywhere I want, eating what I want, meeting admired chefs who only a few years ago would have thrown me out the door had I wandered into their kitchens looking for a prep job. I get to do a lot of cool stuff that not so very long ago I never dreamed I"d live to experience. I"ve made friends all over the world. And I get paid for it. All I have to do is make television, maybe write about it all once in a while. Compared to cleaning spinach and draining the grease trap, it"s a pretty good gig.
But you don"t want to hear me gloating about nibbling Iberico ham with Ferran Adria at a table in the back of a little Spanish ham shop, or describing the feel of tiny Asian feet working my back muscles in some faraway hotel, or weighing the comparative merits of Moroccan kif versus Jamaican bud. You don"t really want to hear me moaning about the cheese course at Le Manoir aux Quat"Saisons, or how Dale de Groff really does make the best G.o.dd.a.m.n martini on the planet. You want to picture me crawling across a cold tile floor, coughing stomach lining into something that only the hotel manager could refer to as a toilet, begging for mercy as my brutal overlords arm-twist me into choking down yet another mouthful of "pork ring" before submitting me to some new video-friendly humiliation, right? Who wants to read about some undeserving mutt having a good time for free when you actually have to work for a living? I wouldn"t, believe me.
The show is produced, shot, "written" on a sort of fly-by-night basis by me, Lydia Tenaglia, and Chris Collins working for a production outfit called New York Times Television (they also produced and shot the Ruth Reichl shows). Working from a wish list (mine), we storyboard a kind of comic strip, blocking out the scenes in such a way as to incorporate the various destinations, dishes, restaurants, chefs, and cooks we seek to shoot. a.s.sistant producers back in New York, researchers, and an on-site translator/fixer "enable" whatever unwise plan we make (often while intoxicated). Two shooters, usually Chris and Lydia, an a.s.sistant producer, and I set off to the destination, meet up with our translator, and try, as best as possible, to shoot what we need for a show. My impromptu ravings are recorded on camera, whether used in final cut or not, and a post-shoot interview serves as a basis for a later voice-over. We usually shoot about two meals a day. Each show takes about a week to shoot, anywhere from six to fourteen hours a day. There is no stunt food. If you see me eating it on camera, I"m really eating it. All of it. Often with seconds. A lot of very nice people go to a lot of trouble to give me their best, and I try to be a good guest. If I look happy on TV, I"m probably happy shooting the scene. If I look cranky, sweaty, nauseated, and unhappy, then that"s probably my mood at the time. There is no makeup, obvious from the ever-changing panorama of pimples, bug bites, and scars visible on my rapidly aging mug, and if I haven"t shaved for a scene, it probably means I just couldn"t get it together that morning, "cause my hands were shaking too badly.
Chris, Lydia, and I spend a lot of time together on the road, both working and hanging out. After all the hours in crummy hotels and airports, shooting scenes that just don"t "work" but that we continue to "French shoot" (meaning they turn off the camera but mime shooting anyway to be polite), a sort of hysteria sets in. Some tiny little detail will become endlessly hilarious. While in j.a.pan, the word chankoa"for no good reason at alla"had us all spastic with uncontrollable laughter for hours. I am now often referred to in internal memosa"or when being difficulta"as my evil, egomaniacal action-film-star alter ego, "Vic Chanko"a"as in "Vic doesn"t want to come out of his trailer" (though we of course don"t have trailers). If I"m unhappy, I will torment them by referring to myself in the third person, as in: "Vic doesn"t like this scene. Vic is checking out and checking in to the f.u.c.king Sofitel down the road." For episodes with a disturbingly h.o.m.oerotic subtext (as in the Rio show), I become Vic"s p.o.r.n-star brother "Tad Chanko." It doesn"ta"as you"ve probably guesseda"take a lot for us to laugh, not after we"ve been softened up by countless "hang-yourself-in-the-shower-stall" hotel rooms.
Speaking of hotels, you definitely don"t want to know how much time we spend talking about lower intestinal activity and the peculiarities of the local plumbing. In Brazil, for instance, the "capacity" of the hotel toilets is lamentably weak. Used toilet paper, horrifyingly, is to be deposited in a plastic bucket next to the c.r.a.pper. This goes against the grain of everything we"ve come to believe in in American urban upbringinga"who wants the room-service maid giving you the thumbs-up on a good day, or looking worriedly at you after the results of too much dende oil? Such matters should be between you and your porcelain, n"est-ce pas} Not on the road. We are all-too-familiar with our respective contributions, and the viability of our flushing apparatus. Checking in and being greeted with a toilet that roars and whirls like a turbine engine is a much-prized event, discussed with a fervent appreciation that borders on the tragic.
Additionally, when a subject/host/restaurateur for what was supposed to have been an important scene turns out to be as exciting as a slice of American cheese, or exhibits webbed fingers, an unpleasantly ripe odor, evidence of inbreeding, or an inclination to sweaty embraces, the theme from Deliverance is often heard under somebody"s breath. You will notice in season two the occasional humming of the particularly annoying and ubiquitous incidental music we endured throughout season onea"a private joke between us and the editors back in New York. Simpsons references, Cher jokes, shameless cribbing from movie scenes are slipped in whenever possible. Chris and Lydia love shooting nightmare/dream sequencesa"as they get to play with their toys in post-productiona"and they also love to see me looking ridiculous whenever possible. Head injuries, blunt-force trauma, scenes of me on boats or looking like Mister Roper in a bathing suit are much enjoyed by crew and editors alike.
Why do I love working with this particular couple? "Cause they"re really talented. "Cause I think they"re really good at what they do. "Cause they make the show look good on the cheap. "Cause they like the same movies I do, will eat grubs if I insist they share my pain, and drink like champions. Both are absolutely fearless in the cause of good "B-roll," leaning out of moving cars, walking backward in mine fields, bulls.h.i.tting their way through roadblocks, shoving their way through some very scary streets in favelas in nighttime Rio or in red-light Phnom Penh. We"re considering a "chowing with the warlords" show in Central Asia and I know they"re the right folks for the job.
At the end of shooting, back in New York, we watch rough cuts, argue about revisions, rewrite, tweak, and do final voice-overs in a studio. (By the way, recording studios are one of the last workplaces where I can still smoke! Sound engineers know that smokers" voices need the occasional hit.) The episodes then go to the network, which usually asks for surprisingly few revisions: a couple bleeps, cut out the sodomy jokes, the direct drug references, the offensive-to-major-religion stuff, the McDonald"s-as-center-of-all-evil type of thing. "They"re sponsors, for Chrissakes! You can"t say they cause rectal tumors in lab rats! This isn"t 60 MinutesV You know, reasonable.
In short, shooting the shows is a dysfunctional family affaira" much like working in my old kitchens.
WARNING SIGNS.
for the last few years, I"ve become increasingly fascinated by a particular chain of London steakhouses (two related chains, actually). Taking up vast chunks of prime real estate on what sometimes seems like every other corner, they appear to be advertis.e.m.e.nts for What You Don"t Want In A Restaurant, a rude, even proud demonstration of How Awful Things Can Be. Steakhouse franchise number one (let"s call it The Chuck Wagon) often sits directly across from its sister outfit, steak-house number two (let"s call it The Feed Bag), and at eight-thirty on a Sat.u.r.day night, both of them are defiantly, even extravagantly empty. They are everywhere in central London, inexplicably still open each time I visit, their large, red neon letters reading CH K W GON and EED AG, the view through their large picture windows revealing empty faux crushed velvet booths, ugly flock wallpaper, and a single, abject waiter staring hopelessly into s.p.a.ce.
"How do these places stay open?" I always wondered out loud, and as my interest grew into an obsession, a friendly journalist took me to one of them for dinner, allowing me to probe their dark inner workings from close up.
What I found that night was a fascinating working example of nearly all those things you don"t want to see when sitting down to dinner in a restaurant, a real-world, life-size museum diorama representing Restaurant h.e.l.l, a pavilion of shame where an entire restaurant chain decides to flush money down a hole, night after night, so that we, the casual dining public, can learn the many shades of hideousness, the warning signs of what will surely be bad fooda"and apply this newfound knowledge elsewhere. The Chuck Wagon exhibited the following cla.s.sic restaurant crimes for our consideration; all of them can be taken as indicators of Nothing Good Will Come of This.
1) A big, bright chain operationa"loudly advertising VALUE. How good can "cheap" steak be? Especially when the place is completely empty?
2) A big, bright chain operationa"directly across from an eerily similar operation. The place seems to have, at one time, planned for regular arrival of entire herds of spectacularly stupid, undiscriminating diners. That the owners don"t bother to replace the dead neon letters on their signs does not bode well for what"s inside.
3) Dead-eyed waiters, sitting in empty booths, looking bored, unhappy, and defeated. This alone is reason to flee. The waiter knows, better than anybody, how bad things are. At my meal, as soon as my journalist pal and I sat down and a photographer took a picture of us from outside, our waiter inquired of our affiliationsa"and the purpose of the photographera"then immediately made a covert, whispered phone call. (A guilty conscience, and a procedure in place for dealing with too much interest, can never be a good thing.) Accompanying the waiter were a busboy (who apparently doubles as bartender), a dishwasher, and one cook. Now, how can one cook make all the food on an absurdly, even dangerously, huge menu, one might well ask oneself. And how long has that Duck a l"Orange been kicking around that quiet kitchen, waiting for me to come along?
4) Signs of quiet scaling back and cost cutting. A forlorn dessert cart, half-filled with hardy, not-too-perishable fruit variations (nothing that will oxidize or get too ugly too quicklya" probably because it will be used again tomorrow and the next day) sits right by the front door, subtly blocking access to what might once have been an upstairs dining room. What don"t they want us to see? Clearly a sign saying "Section Closed" is not enough. It has been deemed necessary to seal off the stairs, preventing even the casual drunken tourist, hunting for the restroom, from stumbling upon whatever hidden horror lurks above.
5) The trick menu. Wow! It sure looks big! But, wait! There may be ten or twelve appetizersa"but half of them seem to contain prawns! This strategy allows the lone cook to quickly whip up a variety of no-doubt once-frozen delights from a single box of thawed prawns. And there sure seem to be a lot of deep-fried nuggety, breaded thingies ... I regard the chicken "Cordon Bleu" with the same suspicion I cast on the prawn nuggets; they very likely originated in the same far-away blast freezer.
6) The telltale "DING!" of the microwave. Is it a coincidence that I heard its woeful tolling just before my limp, watery, gray, and completely uncaramelized duck arrived? I think not.
7) The table tent display offering festive party drinks with umbrellas in them. I don"t know about you, but when I sit down in an empty steakhousea"whether in London or anywhere else in the worlda"a pifia colada, a gra.s.shopper, or a Singapore sling are not the c.o.c.ktails that leap immediately to mind. Their presence is evidence of a disturbed mind, as if some cargo cult of South Seas natives had found the menu of a fifties-era American diner and after hitting the lottery and moving to the UK, decided to re-create it from memory. "Oh yes! Americans love drinks that look like fabric softenera"as long as they have cherries and umbrellas in them!"
8) The mixed metaphor. The shotgun marriage of New Orleans/Chicago/Virginia City Gay Nineties/Cathouse theme with framed prints of the Scottish Highlands seems strangely . . . inappropriate, as does the melange of "California Burger" (even Californians would not recognize this as food), Prawn c.o.c.ktail, Duck a L"Orange, Chicken Cordon Bleu, and Steak and Chips. I believe I saw a Hawaiian Burger offereda"a warning sign all by itself. How good can they be at all of these? Answer? No d.a.m.n good at all.
9) The universal garnish. When the same brown and limp
premixed salad and woefully unripe tomato slice pops up on nearly every plate, it"s solid evidence that there is no budding Robuchon in residence.
10) The "Why Is This Place Really Here?" factor. Do the math. The place is empty. It"s always empty. Even if they fill once a day for lunch (which they don"t), the place was clearly designed to make money through high volume and turnovera"and they can"t be making enough money to pay the rent, much less electric, wages, gas, and so on. So how do they stay open? And why} What are they really doing upstairs, past the barrier of decaying desserts? c.o.c.kfighting? c.r.a.ps games? Illegal importation of exotic snakes and birds? Human sacrifice? I can"t help but think about this as I listlessly chew a bloodless, flavorless, too-tough steak, without even a sharp steak knife (the secret of every successful steakhouse) to mitigate the miasma of awful-ness.
I urge the reader to patronize, if only once, one of these shining examples of Restaurant h.e.l.l. Sit down in one of the oversized booths, breathe deep, suck up the ambiance, peer deep into the waiter"s eyes. Take notice of the details. Carefully study the menu, a veritable field manual of the submediocre. Nearly everything you want to avoid in a restaurant is right there for you to see. Just don"t order the duck.
MADNESSIN CRESCENT CITY.
three o"clock in the morning and I"m sitting (or am I standing?) with the kitchen crew from Lee Circle Restaurant at Snake and Jake"s Christmas Club Lounge, a favorite after-work haunt of the New Orleans chef/cook demi-monde. It"s a dark, crumbling, and septic shack where the decor is always Christmas. Colored lights wink through cigarette smoke behind the bar as a very large bottle-blonde in a tight latex bustier pours what must be my sixth or seventh Jagermeister shot and pushes it toward me. This is not my chosen beverage, but Snake and Jake"s owner, Tony "Mr. Hospitality" Toccoa"who looks like a Fun House-era Stoogea"is insistent, eyeballing me through lank, greasy hair, a scowl on his face. It"s all about "hospitality" at Snake and Jake"s, he a.s.sures me for the fifth time. Proof? Naked people drink for free. A few weeks earlier, more than forty of New Orleans" finest culinarians and their enables had shown up at the front door and stripped buck naked. I"m glad I missed that.
In my quest for "authentic local" food in New Orleans, I"ve managed to completely avoid the French Quarter. No b.o.o.bs, no beads, no Bourbon Street for me. No cloud of fryer grease, hordes of slow-moving tourists, no eggs Benedict or oysters Bienville in the famous coliseums of Galatoire"s, Brennan"s, or Commander"s Palace. Okay, I did nick into the quarter for a quick dozen oysters at the Acme; and I did call out from my hotel room to the legendary Verdi Mart, where locals can order a MADNESSIN CRESCENT CITY.
quick, late-night delivery of bourbon and cigarettes and the bigger-than-your-head m.u.f.fuletta sandwiches. But otherwise I"ve managed to pretty much stay away from the usual suspects. That said, every time locals ask where I"ve been eating and I tell them, there is disagreement. "Why didn"t you try . . ." or "You should try . . ." is pretty much the standard reaction.
But I think I"ve been doing pretty well. I had a fabulously greasy breakfast at the grim flophouselike Hummingbird Hotel and Grill. I ate sublime sno-cones at the legendary Hansen"s s...o...b..iz Sweet Shop, where the ice is shaved on a nearly century-old hand-cranked device, flavored in stages, and heaped in a cup topped with sweetened condensed milk. I had the crawfish pie, pralines, and jambalaya at Tee-Eva"s; the "Feed Me" red-sauce-heavy a.s.sault at Tony Angello"s; the tweaked cla.s.sics and gumbo variations and best-in-world fried chicken at Jacques-Imo"s; and the ham hock with collards and grits at the Harbor. Before arriving to face imminent destruction at Snake and Jake"s, I drank local beer and ate red beans and rice and listened to jazz and blues at Vaughn"s, an ancient bar in the Ninth Ward, and when the trumpet player took a break between sets to grill rabbit sausage and ribs on an outdoor pickup-truck barbecue, the other customers filling the streets, drinking from "go-cups," I met Tony, grinning evilly under a streetlight. Some of the cooks with me shook their heads. They knew what came next.
Oh, what a wonderful town. Bars are open twenty-four hours. Nearly everyone seems to drink heavily (I"m told that if you mention New Orleans as a residence, you go right to the head of the line at Betty Ford), and at a few bars, like Checkpoint Charlie"s, you can wash the blood and hair from last night"s misadventures off your clothes in the conveniently located on-premises launderette while you begin new ones out front. Fried batter is a menu item. And everybody, it seems, either cooks, eats seriously, or has opinions about both.
I"m enjoying the Jager shots. My brain needs cleansing. Two days earlier, I was the guest of a man called Wild Bill of Zam"s Swamp Tours, sitting on his cramped houseboat in the bayou as he deep-fried alligator nuggets. His nephew, a delightful young tyke with an impressive blond mullet, kept sticking a baby gator"s face into mine, provoking it to snap at my nose. Mosquitoes clogged my ears and nostrils and nearly blocked out the light from the bare lightbulbs as I sampled alligator piquante and grilled alligator kebabs and listened carefully for the first strains of dueling banjos. The smell of frying alligator still clogs my pores.
But I"ve confirmed my hypothesis about enjoying yourself in a new and unfamiliar town. First rule: Run away from the hotel, as far and as fast as you can. Rule Two: Avoid anyplace where people like you (meaning out-of-towners or tourists) congregate. Rule Three: When you find a crummy bar clogged with locals who seem to be enjoying themselves, go in, sit down, and start drinking. Be sure to buy a few rounds for your fellow drinkers. At the appropriate moment, inquire of the best places to eat, emphasizing your criteria to go where no tourists have gone before. "Where do you eat?" is a good starting point. If you hear the same name twice, take note.
Rule Four: If in New Orleans, call Hazelden ahead of time and make a reservation. You"ll be needing it.
AVIEW FROM THE FRIDGE.
i am a chef. Though I can be a terror in my kitchen, in the dining room of other restaurants I"m a p.u.s.s.ycat. I am scrupulously polite and effusive in my praise. And I always tip twenty percent (at least). I"m also, I am told, not the most attentive of dinner companions. I can"t help but be attuneda"almost painfully at timesa"to every nuance around me: the ebb and flow of waiters and busboys, hosts and sommeliers, bartenders and cooks. After twenty-seven years in the restaurant business, the ch.o.r.eography of dining room service, any dining room"s service, has become hard-wired into my nervous system.
I know that there are a number of simple, avoidable things that can throw off the rhythms of even the best-run places. When that happens, a memorable evening can be remembered for all the wrong reasons. I"ve learned plenty about what makes a wonderful dining experience from eating at great restaurants, but not nearly as much as I"ve learned from working in them. What have all my hours of standing before a stove taught me about sitting at a table? I"ll tell you.
If the people at the table beside mine summon a busboy (the first available person in a uniform), unable to distinguish him from their waiter, I cringe. I can tell you with near certainty that additional communication will now be required: The busboy, a member of a profession largely comprising newcomers to America"s sh.o.r.es, will have to take aside the already harried waiter.
"Table seven. Lady say chicken cold. No like-a spinach."
The waiter then must consider whether clarification, not to mention confirmation, is required before braving the chef"s wrath. This means a trip back to the table, annoying the already annoyed customers by asking them to repeat their complaint. If you speak to the busboy, you might just ask him to locate your waiter. Better yet, try remembering your waiter"s face.
I also feel the waiter"s pain when, without warning, a patron seated with friends at a table for four (a four-top) suddenly bolts to the bar (or outside) for a cigarette. This often seems to occur just when the entrees for that table are about to be serveda"or, as waiters say, are "in the window, ready for pickup." I know the electric shock that travels through the restaurant"s spine and into the brainstem of the kitchen: The chef has that table"s food up! It"s sitting perilously under the destructive warmth of the heat lamps. Other orders are coming up around it, new ones are coming in, and the chef is beginning to freak: His lovely food is dying in front of him. And he"s got a difficult choice to make. He can push the orders for the four-top to the side and squeeze other outgoing orders around it for a while, in the hope that the smoker will return before the food gets cold and ugly, a skin forming on the sauce that the chef was once so proud of. Or he can yank the whole order, move the "dupe" (the kitchen"s printed copy of an order) back to the "order" position, and start all over again. It"s a tiny, inconsequential move for the customera"a cigarette at the bara"but for the kitchen, particularly in a good restaurant, it can cause mad panic and much misery. It"s polite to schedule your breaks ahead of timea"as in asking the waiter, "Would now be a good time to grab a smoke?"
The people at the two-top (a deuce) on my other side are friends of the house ... or people with whom the house wants to become friends. I know this because I saw the military-type hand signals between the maitre d" and the front waiter when the couple arrived. I saw the brief, whispered conversation along the service bar. I can recognize the body language for "notify the kitchen" and "comp." These customers will be monitored as if they were in intensive care, with amuse-boucbes and careful recommendations of the chef"s best efforts tonight.
I hope the cosseted duo will be suitably appreciative and that they understand that when the house picks up a check, it is appropriate for the guests to leave a cash tip, preferably a d.a.m.n big one. Waiters, for all practical purposes, live on tips. The twosome is eating up valuable real estate in the dining room (s.p.a.ce and time, representing a considerable chunk of potential earnings). All that extra-special attention necessarily robs attention from others. For these two to walk out without tipping would be a punishment to their waiter. If the floor staff pools tips, it would be a punishment to the whole team.
The same principle applies if a table, especially a large one, is late for a reservation. You want to see real suffering? Look at the face of a beleaguered maitre d" with an unseated eight-top in the middle of a very busy dining room at eight-thirty on a Sat.u.r.day night. He"s already cleared a huge block of valuable time in the reservation book, probably turned away two four-tops (who generally spend more money than one eight-top) from a seven o"clock seating. He"s also kissed off any hope of turning the tables at nine or even ten o"clock, for that matter. The party of eight yet to arrive represents a major leap of faith for him, an investment of not only the house"s but the waiters" and busboys" money. Such no-shows are sticking it to the entire staff. (Along these lines, clowns who book at three or four restaurants on a given night and then neglect to cancel in a timely way are the blood enemies of restaurateurs and their staffs alike.) Now, you might find this a bit disingenuous if you"re thinking back to the night you arrived promptly and the restaurant wasn"t able to seat you for fifteen minutes. Certainly, apologies are in order. But all I can tell you is that it"s in the restaurant"s best interest to seat you as soon as possible. No one on my side of the business willfully creates delays; after all, it"s bad for business when drop-ins see an overcrowded bar. Maybe I"m asking too much, but think about the imprecise science of seating the next time you"re lingering over your coffee and n.o.body seems inclined to give you the b.u.m"s rush.
Should you behave in a restaurant? Should you care what your waiter thinks of you? Does it matter if you show your appreciation? I know well how accurately and in what terms the mood and behavior of customers can be tracked. I know that cranky, rude, or capriciously demanding customers can be givena"in the ongoing triage of restaurant toila"cruel nicknames and be quickly dismissed as lost causes. They are viewed as a liability, and this information is pa.s.sed on to the kitchen in ways subtle and unsubtle: "Rush table twelve, will ya? I just want to get these jerks out!"
Does this mean table twelve will get lousy food and service? No, not necessarily. I have seen four-star kitchens in which the customer"s every reaction is tracked, course by course, with pictograms or cuneiformlike code on the dupes or on a blackboard. If the smiley face from course one turns to a frown for course two, the kitchen might dispatch free amuse-boucbes or a tiny gla.s.s of chilled Sauternes with a square of foie gras.
It"s particularly loathsome when a customer who is displeased with his entree vents his unhappiness on his waiter, as if willfully betrayed by his server. The simple distinction that his waiter did not himself cook his food is lost. Problem with the food? Ask nicely to have it replaced. Most times, you"ll be surprised at how quickly and eagerly everyone responds. If the kitchen has made a mistake, it"s never a good idea to take it personally. No, nothing untoward is likely to happen to your entree when it returns to the kitchen. Customers who behave spitefully, angrily, simply flag themselves as rubesa"even if they"re wearing two-thousand-dollar suits. The whole restaurant will heave a sigh of relief at their exit, and on their next visit they will be relegated to the newest and possibly most inept waiter. The veterans won"t want any part of them.
Polite complaints or criticisms? By all means. They will be recorded, probably in the manager"s log, or at the very least conveyed at the appropriate moment to the chef, who will, especially if he"s heard the same comments before, do something in response.
If the meal was good, should one send compliments to the chef? Yes! Believe it or not, the message will almost always be conveyed to the kitchen. We like it when our labors are appreciated. We remember it. And should we see you in our dining room again, we"ll have a better picture of what you like and we"ll be able to tip you off to what"s new or special. We"ll more than likely send free stuff your way. I"m always happy to hear from the floor staff: "Table six are regular customers, man. Really good people. Can you send them something? . . . What should they have?"
Sitting at my table, watching the action around me, I snicker at the miserable deuce a few tables away. They"ve been bullying their waiter mercilessly, and I can already see that he"s conspiring with the busboy to clear their table as soon as the last forkful disappears into their maws. Later, over drinks with the waiters from the restaurant across the street, the terrible two-top will be discussed. Named.
In the extended, inbred family of restaurant workers, the duo has been identified, their faces and names burned into the consciousness of a growing number of servers as irrevocably as the mugs gracing those Wanted posters at the post office.
We all like places where they know our names and are familiar with our likes and dislikes. And, as in any complex relationship, one can with just a few smiles and nods or the occasionally muttered thank-you, become special: a genuinely appreciated patron, a customer in good standing, a friend of the house. To demand special treatment is counterproductive. You simply banish yourself to the ranks of the undesirable herd. Most servers and chefs are grateful when given a measure of trust, and they would feel lessened if they betrayed it. The favorite customer at all restaurants is someone who by word or demeanor says, "I know you. I trust you. Give me your best shot." My decades in the business tell me we usually will.
For those few, those happy few, every extra effort is made.
They are welcomed as warmly as fellow employees; advised frankly and honestly on the best menu selections; and in every way treated like the home team instead of the visitors: "Great to see you . . . Let me send you dessert? ... A nice snifter of Calvados? . . . Thanks, and please come again."
NOTESFROM THE ROAD.
i walk in out of the roaring midday heat into the air-conditioned lobby of the Goodwood Park Hotel in Singapore, my damp clothes quickly becoming a freezing straitjacket. It"s high tea in the lobby. Waiters plate pastries and pour tea; they"re making coffee in sinister-looking gla.s.s urns, liquid bubbling over gas burners, like you"d expect to see in the laboratory of a mad scientist. Beyond the French doors, no one is swimming in the vast pool, not a single red-faced German lying on the chaise loungesa"it"s just too d.a.m.n hot. A quick vodka tonic in the hotel bar and then I limp up to my suite to change. I"m tired, having flown in from Sydney late the previous night, jet-lagged, my brain and liver still struggling with the vast amounts of alcohol I consumed Down Under. My tooth aches, a dull throb threatening to take over my head, and my throat is sore from talking about myself nonstop for the last year and a half. In my hotel room, I kick off my sodden clothes in the damp chill and take a wary look at myself in the mirror.
It"s an uninspiring sight. My stomach is distended like a just-fed python"s from an eating binge that began early in the morning and will, I am informed by Ilangoh and Bee Ping, my escorts, continue into the late hours. My eyes look like dark sinkholes, my skin is erupting from the tropical heat, and my guts are roiling like those coffee-brewing contraptions I just saw in the lobby. I hate myself. . . and I don"t feel good. I grimace for the mirror and see something black stuck between my teeth.
It"s scorpion.
Tail, to be exact. A single, crunchy, black stingera"lodged prominently up front. Perfect.
The morning began early with a journalist, at the Tiong Bahru market; we met over coffee and cbtvee kueh, a savory rice cake with dried vegetables. This was quickly followed up by curried fish roe, spicy sotong (squid), and prawns at the casual eatery, Nasi Padang River Valley on Zion Road, and then a full-on meal of chicken tikka, fish head curry, Mysore mutton, side dishes, and Kingfisher beer at Banana Leaf Apollo restaurant in Little India. (Everything is eaten off a banana leaf with the hands.) The food was tasty and fiercely spicy, and I wished I were hungrier. Then I was hurried over to the Imperial Herbal Restaurant near Raffles to meet another journalist.
Here"s the downside to having written a book about eating adventurously around the world: People want to feed you stuff. And not just any stuff. They want to see you nibbling on the nether regions of unusual beasties. They want to photograph you chawing on small woodland creatures previously believed to be indigestible. They want to dazzle you with turtle parts you didn"t know existed, chicken feet, hundred-year-old eggs, snake snacks, fried bugs . . . and they want to watch you eat every little bit. At the Imperial, I was honored with a whole cooked turtle, then urged by the owner to try the gelatinous fat ("the best parta"very good for you"), alligator soup, sea cuc.u.mber, and a plate of fried scorpions cooked into shrimp toast. The scorpions sat proudly atop golden brown squares, fried into aggressive attack position, tails raised threateningly. I ate as much as I could, and as I was in an "herbal" medicinal restaurant, inquired about something for my aching throat. Over an aromatic, herbal teaa"which did help somewhata"I was given a holistic checkup by the resident herbalist. He took first one wrist, then the other in between thumb and forefinger, and concentrated gravely. He asked me to stick out my tongue before pa.s.sing judgment. "Good," he said. Yin and Yang were pretty much in alignment.
Maybe a bit too much yang on the left sidea"where my throat felt like it had a baseball lodged in it. I just wanted to know if it was a tumor. Apparently my karma was out of whack. But then, I knew that already. Finishing the last jellylike hunk of turtle, I got a text message on my phone from New York. Dee Dee Ramone is dead. I nibbled distractedly at another scorpion toast, feeling myself sink into a deep, dark depression.
Before returning to the hotel, I waddle around Singapore, a kooky, unbelievably clean, very crowded expanse of lush vegetation, stately colonial-era houses, and magnificent trees poking through and between vast, multileveled modern shopping malls and new office buildings. It"s the world"s largest food court, with major chains like Mickey D"s, Starbucks, and KFC sandwiched between vendors selling fish b.a.l.l.s and curries. There seem to be a Prada, a Ferragamo, an Hermes, and a Burberry on every corner and millions of people shopping shopping shopping. No cops in sight. Not a one. I am surprised by the seeming total invisibility of police presence. I guess the famously severe penalties really do discourage potential violators. I do not, by the way, necessarily see the widely publicized policy of caning as a bad thing. The rotten American kid who received a few desultory whacks for vandalism a few years back should have gotten another ten, just for stupidity and bad manners. After Clinton appealed to the government, his number of smacks was reduceda"unfairly, I think, as his alleged coconspirators from Hong Kong had to bend over and take the full freight. While I"m in town, Singaporeans keep warily inquiring what I think of this, expecting, no doubt, for me to be appalled. But I can think of no punishment more appropriate for, say, the Enron bunch, than a public caning (after being stripped of all their a.s.sets and sentenced to a little prison time, of course). All those investors and employees who lost their life savings while their bosses cashed out should at least have the pleasure of seeing Lay, Fastow, Skilling, et al. publicly bent over a sawhorse and flogged with a rattan pole. Even the pillory would seem appropriatea"as these weasels will still, inevitably, remain rich. It would be a feel-good event for everybody. In fact, while we"re at it, a few whacks for people who order egg-white omelettes, no b.u.t.ter, no oil, might be enlightened policy . . .
The next morning, I"m up early to go to the Tekka wet market to shop, then to the b.u.t.ter bean Bistro, to cook for another journalist. There is no part of me that doesn"t hurt, and it"s been quite a while since I"ve stood behind a stove. I dread having to prepare food from unfamiliar ingredients, in an unfamiliar kitchen, with unfamiliar toolsa"but the bistro is remarkably well equipped with mise en place, and I manage to soldier through a workmanlike meal of steamed razor clams and pasta, followed by a roast lemon and herb chicken with vegetables and citrus beurre blanc. Foolishly, I eat my own food, using up valuable storage s.p.a.ce I should be reserving for professional purposes. A few hours later, we"re on to a faux Spanish restaurant in a new-made-to-look-old food court for sangria and another interview, then to Geylang, where yet another journalist waits for me at a Chinese joint. Ilangoh and Bee Ping, who have been escorting me around, eating what I"ve been eating, and waiting for me in the freezing bar watching the World Cup in between events (Mexico loses to the USA, which does not make me happy, as this means my cooks back in New York will be getting savagely drunk), look bleary-eyed and tired as we enter the last place on the itinerary. A platter of roasted duck stuffed with cured egg, some chicken, soup, and rice await. Ilangoh and Bee Ping ignore the food. I am barely able to speak. I can"t even drink my industrial-size Tsing Tao beer. My eyes swim around in my head like drugged minnows, and my stomach is in full warning mode, signaling "one more thing, Tonya"and it"s curtains." I know what the penalty is for publicly urinating in Singapore. What, I wonder, is the penalty for lurching into the street and spraying vomit into the gutter? Then collapsing into a gibbering, crying, spastically shaking heap? I don"t want to find out. For the first time in a book tour of thirty-two American cities, G.o.d knows how many countries, countless interviews, and equally countless meals, I break things off after only a few minutes. "I"m sorry, man," I rasp. "I just can"t go on. I"m dying here. I need sleep." I have no idea what I said to the journalista"though I think I remembered to slag Jamie Oliver before slumping into my rice.
It"s a twenty-hour flight back to New York, with a short layover and plane changea"and I ain"t eating no plane food. I don"t care that the food is designed in consultation with Gordon Ramsay. Unless I see him pushing the trolley down from the galley himself, I"m not touching it. The man next to me scarfs every course like it"s his last f.u.c.king meal: appetizer, main, cheese course, desserts, and even port. I"m loaded with tranquilizers and liquor and am still awakened every time the flight attendant leans over to serve the guy another course. I eye his utensils, hoping to shank him with his b.u.t.ter knifea"but it"s plastic.
The next meal I have is a bowl of noodles at Narita Airport in Tokyo, something light and soothing and thankfully reptile-free. I"m sitting in the corner, trying to get down a little broth between puffs on a cigarette, when an American tourist recognizes me from TV. He"s been traveling in the East for a long time, he tells me. He"s eaten many strange things. He wants to talk about the delicious rat he had in China. The braised dog he was served only a few nights ago. The delights of tree grub. My cigarette doesn"t taste so good anymore. I feel the blood leave my head and the room swims and when (as Ross Macdonald once said) I go to brush something off my cheeka"it"s the floor.
THEDIVE.
THE SINISTER INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT Consultant Group that hired me gave me an extra day in Greece to kick back after the travails of singing for my supper the previous night. I don"t remember asking for it, but I"ve been working like a rented mule, making television all over the Med for so long that, h.e.l.l, I guess I can use the extra beach time doing sweet f.u.c.k-all. Things could be worse. Thirty minutes of talking over dessert and I pick up a fat check and then it"s front-of-the-the-plane back home. Not a bad deal, especially when you consider I was still slinging hash only five years ago. The company drones and their wives all shipped out this morning, so here I am, alone again, on the deck of a ludicrously luxurious resort on a Greek peninsula, looking out at the Aegean Sea, smoking duty-free Marlboro reds and waiting for my Negroni to arrive. There are a few very dodgy Russian shipping types and their underlings arounda"Speedos, thick necks, and thin watchesa"but otherwise it"s just me: the nearly lone resident of a mammoth, empty resort.
My discreet "bungalow" has its own gym, steam room, whirlpool, a heavy bag (which I"ve found is a lot of fun to punch), a beach ten feet away, view of the Greek islandsa"and a wide-screen TV that would be right at home chez MC Hammer. Naturally, I"m misanthropic. But the Negronis are helping considerably.
I"m coming off the toughest, most maddening, frustrating shoot of my undistinguished television career, a frantic ten- day bounce through the outlying islands of Sicily (all of them lovely, by the way). I was not with my usual close-knit dysfunctional family of producers and shooters. Camera One, Todd, is still new and I"ve yet to really get to know him. Tracey, whom I"ve worked with a lot, was along, but no Chris or Dianea" instead, the nice but indecisive producer, Global Alan, and an annoyingly hyperactive a.s.sistant. It was a bad mix, and our local fixer, an aristocratic lout/bulls.h.i.t artist (let"s call him Dario), ensured that about fifty percent of our carefully planned scenes evaporated in front of our eyes.
"The helicopter . . . she no coming. The weather. Is too windy . . ."
"The helicopter she coming maybe ten minutes . . . okay, maybe she no coming today . . ."
"The sea urchins . . . fisherman say they no more . . ." "The restaurant closed today . . ."
"The giant turtles . . . they-a sick maybe. No coming. We cannot shoot. . ."
The Greek amphitheater at Taormina, in which we"d planned a scene extolling the glories of antiquity, was booked with a film festival, meaning that it was jammed with modern festival seating, a spanking new stage, and a JumboTron screen.
Mount Etna was socked in with clouds. Zero visibility.
The "squid fishing scene," in which I was to head out at night with a local fisherman to later triumphantly haul my still-wriggling catch onto the heaving deck for the cameras, ended with me desperately pinning a dead stunt-squid to a hook and feigning a catch. After two hours of waiting futilely aboard a violently pitching sc.u.m-boat, the entire crew was green and engaged in projectile vomiting. Poor Tracey, though heroically still shooting, looked ready to die.
Dario: "The moon. She no good for squid tonight . . ."
No s.h.i.t.