Fresh Off the Boat (20 page)

The dam burst and he unleashed an avalanche of fear, talking about all the worries he had. How he would play Len Bias’s story over and over in his head as a father scared that one of his kids would go out like that. He really believed that it could happen and even though he let me go out and do my thing, he just prayed I was strong enough not to lose total control. He made me promise that I’d stop doing ecstasy and never do coke. The weed, the beer, the Xanax, fine, but stay away from the sugar. I thought it was funny, but I figured, what the hell … Your dad asks you for one thing in life, anything, and it’s not to do coke? We’re gonna grant that wish. I got off easy. Thanks, Len Bias.

We rowed the canoe back home that day after our talk and I felt good. I had a reason to stop doing things that I knew were self-destructive and sometimes that’s all kids need. A reason to live. Some people have the birds and the bees, others have the cat’s cradle, my epic talk with my Chinese dad was Len Bias. I look back and it’s funny. You think it’s gonna be Confucius, Lao Tzu, or maybe even something Grandpa passed on since he was such a great man, but no. Even as an immigrant who came over in his twenties, when it came time for the talk, my dad found the inspiration in an African-American basketball player. Like father, like son.

I REALLY GOT
into working at the restaurant after that talk. I wasn’t so focused on defying my dad. I just wanted to make him proud ’cause I knew he cared about me. His chef was this cool Jamaican dude, Chef Andy. He
had the ill machine-gun stutter and accent so it was always entertaining when he spazzed on people. He’d say shit like, “Tttttakkke tttthhhhaaattt, bbbbbboi.” Warren and I also worked at my dad’s other restaurant, CoCo’s, which served fusion Floridian and Caribbean food that this guy Chef Henry concocted.

I wasn’t a big fan of Chef Henry. He was dirty to me. He had gnarly hair flying around on his head, nasty shit under his nails, and he’d still insist on tasting things with his fingers. It was American kitchen culture. Shit, it was American food culture. People would take pride in having hands covered by buffalo wing sauce or BBQ stains on their face. I remember watching meat heads in the dining room eat thirty-two-ounce porterhouses, challenging each other to see how much they could eat. The way those people experienced food didn’t make sense; it was gross to me. I always loved food, but it didn’t bring me any extra enjoyment to eat it or cook it like a frat boy.

I DIDN’T RESPECT
Chef Henry and he didn’t like me. Mainly because I was the owner’s son, but also because I didn’t respect his food. There were a lot of goofy fusion things that he made and all his recipes were overcooked.
^*
Warren worked with me and Chef loved him. I would always choose the tasks on the prep list requiring more skill and Warren would gladly take on the dirty ones. He took pride in doing the more physically demanding tasks, but I’d rather butterfly shrimp or clean the New York strip because I wanted to learn. Additionally, I liked working on the proteins so that I could make sure we weren’t wasting my dad’s money. Dad would cut the New York strip himself a lot of the time, but when he wasn’t there I’d watch it for him. Since that day eating soup dumplings on my sixth birthday, everyone knew I understood flavors and if someone showed me something once, I wouldn’t forget it. Chef could see it, but he resented
me. He’d rather have someone like Warren who worked hard and followed instructions.

I learned a lot from him, though. That guy taught me how to make sauces on the sauté station, bread proteins, clean meats. All my technique prior to working there came from my mom and it was straight Chinese. We’d use a lot of bone stocks, cornstarch, scallions, ginger, dried chilis, and aged Chinese rice wine. The biggest surprise to me in an American kitchen was the use of butter. It was everywhere! Regular butter, infused butter, heavy cream, all things that you’d never see in an Asian kitchen unless you cooked Southeast Asian, but even then it was coconut milk.

I also kept my shifts at Cattleman’s, where I worked as the expediter. I loved expediting because you could control the whole operation and identify weaknesses. I expedited almost every Friday and Saturday night at Cattleman’s where we did $10K on average nights and up to $15K on big ones. The expediter stands on the side of the pass opposite the line, which is where the food is cooked using a grill, sauté, fryer, or whatever. The tickets come in, you put them on the speed rail, and as the food comes out, the expediter finishes the dishes with garnish, wipes the plates clean, and organizes the tickets. In a lot of ways, the expediter is the catcher calling the game. You tell the kitchen what to fire, what to hold, what to refire. The waiters and managers need to tell you what’s going on in the dining room, who’s in the weeds, which tables are causing problems. If you have a table that doesn’t have patience, you bump their ticket up in line, turn and burn ’em. If there’s a table that’s cool, drinking wine, having appetizers, you slow their meal, give a little extra, send a dessert. You want them to come back. My dad put me there to keep an eye on quality as well. If something came out that was inconsistent, I’d send it back.

When I started, I was a slow expediter because I kept burning myself. Most expediters were in their mid to late twenties and had been working in restaurants their whole lives. They had reptilian skin. Nothing could burn them. I sucked until I started wearing two gloves at a time. Such an easy fix and it made all the difference. There were people who were faster than me, but they made mistakes and didn’t pay as much attention to food
cost or customer service. They just wanted to do their job, get the food out, and finish the tickets. Since my dad owned the place, I tried to stay aware of all the other factors and started to see how difficult it was to be the owner. Every single person in the restaurant needs to do things exactly how you teach them or you lose money. Additionally, they need to think like you and more than that, they need to care like you. It was an important lesson. I saw how managers would give people manuals, train them, and write them up, but it was empty. If you really wanted good employees that would have your interests at heart, they needed to buy in. You needed people who wanted to grow with your business and see themselves as valuable members on the team. My dad was the master at that.

He knew where everyone was from, their background, their struggles, their boyfriend or girlfriend, their hobbies. He took a real interest in people’s lives at the restaurant and even made the down payment for one of his manager’s homes.
^†
No one called him boss or Mr. Huang. He wanted them to call him Louis, but they respected him so much they insisted on Mr. Louis. There were numerous people at the restaurant that had been at Cattleman’s over ten years and two employees literally worked there until they died. I still go home now and see the same bartenders and servers I grew up with. If they don’t work there, they still drink there.

On the other hand, my mom was the guard dog. Every day my mom would hunt down the parts of the operation where people were losing money or did their jobs wrong. These people were stealing right from under us and if they weren’t stealing, their laziness was costing us money. Fines from the health department, giving the wrong portions, ordering the incorrect amount of meat or produce—things fall apart every day at a restaurant, but as a manager, the key is to understand and accept the human element. No one is perfect and if they were, they wouldn’t be working for you.

People don’t make much working at restaurants so you need another way to motivate them. Servers have motivation because they make the most, but your kitchen, your busboys, your dishwashers, these guys don’t see shit and they work ten times harder than the servers. My mom wanted to fire everyone, but my dad understood that you have to have the proper expectations at restaurants. You understand people’s strengths and weaknesses, and put them in a position to succeed. There are numerous positions in a restaurant; it’s your job as the owner to find the right fit.

My favorite thing to do was watch the Haitian guys make ribs. I loved barbecue my whole life but had no idea how to do it. Southern food was one of those things that always eluded me. It drew me in because of the play between savory, sweet, and aromatic. Compared to other regional American food I ate, there wasn’t any comparison. You could see from the motley of dishes in the Southern American canon that it was created out of necessity and there was genius in how they made do with scraps. There was an honesty to the cuisine that I gravitated toward and I’d skip school in the mornings with my friends just to eat biscuits ’n’ gravy. It wasn’t until I became a chef that cooks would say to me, “You got nice moves.”

“What are nice moves?”

“You know, like that thing you do with the dried shiitakes. How you wash them, soak them, then use the infused water to give vegetarian dishes umami.”

“That’s just cooking, g!”

“No, Chef, that’s a nice move.”

In cooks’ terms, Southern food simply had a lot of nice moves. From the pickling to the smoking to the frying, Southern food really spoke to me.

Just like Charles Barkley, Jonathan Swift, hip-hop, and
Married with Children
, I saw parallels with Southern food and my home. Mom loved pickling things and one of the first recipes I learned from her was this quick garlic pickle we’d always have in the fridge. Those were the only pickles I knew until I started seeing things like chow chow, pickled okra, old pickles, young pickles, and everything in between. The first time I saw boiled peanuts on the side of the road in Georgia, I said, “Grandpa used to eat these!” I thought some Taiwanese people were gonna jump out
from behind the barrel, but instead it was some dude with no shoes and a pair of overalls. Apparently, Southerners liked boiled peanuts, too. But the most familiar thing was to take little bits of smoked meat to flavor vegetables, starches, and soups. In the old days, meat wasn’t plentiful so Hunanese people got really good at smoking meat, especially duck or ham hock. One of my dad’s favorite dishes was a plate of leeks stir-fried with bits of La Roh or smoked ham hock. I remember watching collard greens come at me across a counter in a pair of dark brown hands. It was unfamiliar until I took a bite and recognized that the flavors easily could have come from my father’s hands, carried in a melamine bowl with plastic chopsticks.

The Haitians at Cattleman’s taught me how to make ribs, but it wasn’t until years later that I realized how un-Southern their technique was. Yet, seeing it done the wrong way, knowing there was something off, and then learning to do it the right way taught me a lot about food. With food, there’s a right way to do things, but it’s probably only right for you. You may like
char-siu
pork roasted in an oven hanging from hooks like the old Chinatown joints. Or, you may like to sous-vide and finish it on a high-heat grill like me so you get the caramelization of sugar with a bit of char. They’re both acceptable ways to make
char-siu
pork, but whatever method you take, there’s a right way to roast it in the oven and a right way to sous-vide. Style isn’t an excuse to cook without a standard. Style just determines the set of rules you choose.

I have to say, the Haitian guys chose a really shitty style, but my mom and dad loved it because the technique was familiar. They would boil off the first,
^‡
but the liquid was infused. It would have bay leaves, oranges, onions, garlic, carrots, liquid smoke, scotch bonnet peppers, sugar, etc. We would throw all the ribs into this boiling stock and cook off the first. A lot of the technique revolves around cooking the “stink” off of pork and then
slow-cooking the meat so the juices you want come out later. After boiling the ribs, we’d finish them in the oven with BBQ sauce. It was definitely not barbecue in the traditional sense, nor was it delicious. I’d say to myself, Why do they insist on calling this barbecue? Why don’t we give up on BBQ and just do a red cooking braise with the ribs? Or even my mom’s winter melon and sparerib soup! No one listened and I became the “crazy” one that didn’t like “barbecue.” I had a lot of fun cooking with those guys, but I still needed someone to teach me real Southern American techniques.

Warren and I reconnected through the restaurant, too. Once he started working at Cattleman’s in the kitchen, we got to hang out like we used to. We’d become so close by that time that we didn’t even ring each other’s doorbells. Warren had the code to my garage door and vice versa. Warren would still surprise my mom all the time, but my dad loved it. Whenever Warren came in, we’d set him up a plate, a chair, and some chopsticks, which he got really good at because he followed instructions. My mom used chopsticks the wrong way, holding them with her knuckles instead of fingers, so we all picked it up, too. Warren learned from my dad and those red chopstick paper instructions so he was pretty nice with them. I remember my brothers or Mom mumbling in Chinese when Warren would go to the bathroom, “This guy is taking the food so fast!”

“Bu yao fan!”
(Don’t be annoying!)

“I’m not annoying, he’s eating everything!”

“He is our guest! Let him eat.”

“He’s here every day! When is he gonna stop being a guest?”

“Eh! You guys always complain white people make fun of our food, then we find one that likes our food and you complain he eats too much! White people can never win with you guys!”

“What are you talking about?! White people win at everything! If they didn’t lose with us, they never would!”

“Ha, ha, ha, bunch of assholes, man! Bunch of assholes …”

I remember for Thanksgiving at our house we would just eat hot pot or some strange spread of sautéed Chinese items, cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole from Boston Market, and sushi from Publix ’cause I guess it
really made the table pop. These days my Jamaican friends have turkey but it’s flanked by oxtail, beef patties, rice and peas, cabbage, etc. My Cantonese friends have turkey with lobster steamed over
e-fu
noodles, salt fish fried rice, and stir-fried squid with yellow chives. I fux with Diasporic Thanksgiving and consider it more American than duck sauce, but at the time, I felt left out of the American experience. Our family really didn’t like Thanksgiving until I went to Warren’s and finally understood what it was about.