Kitchen Confidential (8 page)

Stock. Stock is the backbone of good cooking. You need it-and you don't have it. I have the luxury of 30-quart stockpots, a willing prep crew, readily available bones and plenty of refrigeration space. Does this mean you should subject your guests to a sauce made from nasty commercial bases or salty canned broth? Make stock already! It's easy! Just roast some bones, roast some vegetables, put them in a big pot with water and reduce and reduce and reduce. Make a few months' worth, and when it's reduced enough strain it and freeze it in small containers so you can pull it from the freezer as needed. Life without stock is barely worth living, and you will never attain demi-glace without it.

Demi-glace. There are a lot of ways to make demi-glace, but I recommend you in some slowly this stuff simply take your already reduced meat stock, add some red wine, toss shallots and fresh thyme and a bay leaf and peppercorns, and slowly, simmer it and reduce it again until it coats a spoon. Strain. Freeze in an ice-cube tray, pop out a cube or two as needed, and you are in business-you can rule the world. And remember, when making a sauce with demi-glace, don't forget to monter au beurre.

Chervil, basil tops, chive sticks, mint tops, etc. What does it take, for chrissakes?! A nice sprig of chervil on top of your chicken breast? A healthy-looking basil top decorating your pasta? A few artfully scattered chive sticks over your fish? A mint top nestled in a dollop of whipped cream, maybe rubbing up against a single raspberry? Come on! Get in the game here! It takes so little to elevate an otherwise ordinary-looking plate. You need zero talent to garnish food. So why not do it? And how about a sprig of fresh herb-thyme or rosemary? You can use the part not needed for garnish to maybe actually flavor your food. That dried sawdust they sell in the cute little cans at the super market? You can throw that, along with the spice rack, right in the garbage. It all tastes like a stable floor. Use fresh! Good food is very often, even most often, simple food. Some of the best cuisine in the world-whole roasted fish, Tuscan-style, for instance-is a matter of three or four ingredients. Just make sure they're good ingredients, fresh ingredients, and then garnish them. How hard is that?

Example: here's a very popular dish I used to serve at a highly regarded two-star joint in New York. I got thirty-two bucks an order for it and could barely keep enough in stock, people liked it so much. Take one fish-a red snapper, striped bass, or dorade-have your fish guy remove gills, guts and scales and wash in cold water. Rub inside and out with kosher salt and crushed black pepper. Jam a clove of garlic, a slice of lemon and a few sprigs of fresh herb-say, rosemary and thyme-into the cavity where the guts used to be. Place on a lightly oiled pan or foil and throw the fish into a very hot oven. Roast till crispy and cooked through. Drizzle a little basil oil over the plate-you know, the stuff you made with your blender and then put in your new squeeze bottle?-sprinkle with chiffonaded parsley, garnish with basil top. . See?

TO WANT TO OWN a restaurant can be a strange and terrible affliction. What causes such a destructive urge in so many otherwise sensible people? Why would anyone who has worked hard, saved money, often been successful in other fields, want to pump their hard-earned cash down a hole that statistically, at least, will almost surely prove dry? Why venture into an industry with enormous fixed expenses (rent, electricity, gas, water, linen, maintenance, insurance, license fees, trash removal, etc.), with a notoriously transient and unstable workforce, and highly perishable inventory of assets? The chances of ever seeing a return on your investment are about one in five. What insidious spongiform bacteria so riddles the brains of men and women that they stand there on the tracks, watching the lights of the oncoming locomotive, knowing full well it will eventually run them over? After all these years in the business, I still don't know.

The easy answer, of course, is ego. The classic example is the retired dentist who was always told he threw a great dinner party. 'You should open a restaurant,' his friends tell him. And our dentist believes them. He wants to get in the business-not to make money, not really, but to swan about the dining room signing dinner checks like Rick in Casablanca. And he'll have plenty of chance to sign dinner checks-when the deadbeat friends who told him what a success he'd be in the restaurant business keep coming by looking for freebies. All these original geniuses will be more than happy to clog up the bar, sucking down free drinks, taking credit for this bold venture-until the place starts running into trouble, at which point they dematerialize, shaking their heads at their foolish dentist who just didn't seem up to the job.

Maybe the dentist is having a mid-life crisis. He figures the Bogie act will help pull the kind of chicks he could never get when he was yanking molars and scraping plaque. You see a lot of this ailment-perfectly reasonable, even shrewd businessmen, hitting their fifties, suddenly writing checks with their cock. And they are not entirely misguided in this; they probably will get laid. The restaurant business does have somewhat relaxed mores about casual sex, and there are a number of amiably round-heeled waitresses, most of them hopelessly untalented aspiring actresses for whom sexual congress with older, less attractive guys is not entirely unfamiliar.

Unsurprisingly, a retired dentist who starts a restaurant for the sex, or to be told he's marvelous, is totally unprepared for the realities of the business. He's completely blindsided when the place doesn't start making money immediately. Under-capitalized, uneducated about the arcane requirements of new grease traps, frequent refrigeration repairs, unforeseen equipment replacement, when business drops, or fails to improve, he panics, starts looking for the quick fix. He thrashes around in an escalating state of agitation, tinkering with concept, menu, various marketing schemes. As the end draws near, these ideas are replaced by more immediately practical ones: close on Sundays.

cut back staff. . shut down lunch. Naturally, as the operation becomes more schizophrenic-one week French, one week Italian-as the poor schmuck tries one thing after another like a rat trying to escape a burning building, the already elusive dining public begins to detect the unmistakable odor of uncertainty, fear and approaching death. And once that distinctive reek begins to waft into the dining room, he may as well layout petri-dishes of anthrax spores as bar snacks, because there is no way the joint is gonna bounce back. It's remarkable how long some of these neophytes hang on after the clouds of doom gather around the place, paying for deliveries COD as if magic will happen-one good weekend, a good review, something will somehow save them.

Like some unseen incubus, this evil cloud of failure can hang over a restaurant long after the operation has gone under, killing any who follow. The cumulative vibe of a history of failed restaurants can infect an address year after year, even in an otherwise bustling neighborhood. You can see it when passersby peer into the front window of the next operator; there's a scowl, a look of suspicion, as if they are afraid of contamination.

Of course there are many, many operators who do well in the restaurant business, who know what they're doing. They know from the get-go what they want, what they are capable of doing well, and exactly how much it's going to cost them at the outset. Most important, they have a fixed idea of how long they're willing to lose money before they pull the plug. Like professional gamblers, a slick restaurateur never changes his betting style. He doesn't bother with magic bullets, changing pricing strategies or menu concepts. With steely resolve, a pro, in the face of adversity, will suck it up and redouble his efforts to make the restaurant what he wanted and planned it to be all along-hoping that the great unwashed will eventually discover it, trust it, learn to love it. These guys know that when you hit the panic button and call in the consultants (read: unemployable chefs, failed restaurateurs who still like to eat for free), or start taking austerity measures like combining waiter/bartender functions on slow lunches-or worst of all, closing early-that they may as well close the doors for good: it's just good money after bad. A smart operator will, when he realizes things haven't worked out, fold up his tent and move on-before he's knocked out of the game for good. One disastrous restaurant venture can drag down an entire string of successful ones, as I have seen many times.

These knuckleheads are even less easy to explain than the novice owner with a hard-on for waitron nookie. Proven operators, guys with two or three or even more thriving restaurants, guys who've already beaten the odds, who have had and still have successful money-making joints, spitting out dough-what makes these guys over-reach? Often, the original flagship operation is a simple, straightforward concept: a bar with decent food, or a simple country Italian restaurant, or a bistro loved for its lack of pretension. But success makes these guys feel invulnerable. They must be geniuses, right? They're making money in the restaurant business! So why not open a 300-seat interactive Tuscan restaurant/take-out/with merchandising outlet in a high-rent district? Or three more restaurants! Maybe the Hamptons! Miami! The Seaport! Two frat-bar saloons with two Chinese cooks and a large-breasted bartender as overheads have been raking in the dough, so why not open up a jazz-club theme restaurant in Times Square? A multistory one with a three-star chef and live music?

The answer is simple. Because it's not what they're good at!

Making money in the bar business? What's wrong with that? You're a lucky man! Stay in the goddamn bar business! Hang on to your money! I can't tell you how many times I've seen cunning, powerful, even wildly successful men fall victim to this kind of delusional power grab, this sudden urge to expand the empire-only to find their personal Stalingrad waiting for them. Some get away with it for a while, and though things aren't exactly rocket-to-the-moon, they aren't going too badly, either: the second place isn't losing money, it looks like it might even make money someday, so why not open two more at the same time? When they finally go to the well once too often, find themselves overextended, have to start ignoring the original operation-the one that made all the money for them in the first place, eventually bleeding it dry-next thing you know, the Russian tanks are rolling through the suburbs, misusing your womenfolk, and Mr Restaurant Genius is holed up in the bunker thinking about eating his gun.

The most dangerous species of owner, however-a true menace to himself and others-is the one who gets into the business for love. Love for the song stylings of George Gershwin (always wanted a place where they could present the cabaret music they adore), love for the regional cuisine of rural Mexico (and it'll be authentic, too! No frozen margaritas!), love of eighteenth-century French antiques (I need a restaurant so people can see them, see what good taste I have!), love for that great Bogie film they have all that memorabilia from. These poor fools are the chum of the restaurant biz, ground up and eaten before most people even know they were around. Other operators feed on these creatures, lying in wait for them to fold so they can take over their leases, buy their equipment, hire away their help. Purveyors see these guys coming, rarely extending more than a week's credit from the outset, or demanding bill-to-bill payment. In fact, if you ever have any question about the viability of your operation, ask your fish purveyor: he probably knows better than you. You may be willing to take it in the neck for a few hundred thousand dollars, but he isn't. He's got it all figured out as soon as he claps eyes on you and your ludicrous restaurant-exactly how much he's willing to get stiffed for when you suddenly throw in the towel. Chances are it's no more than a week's worth of product.

Given these perils. . why? Why would anyone want to do it? Inarguably, a successful restaurant demands that you live on the premises for the first few years, working seventeen-hour days, with total involvement in every aspect of a complicated, cruel and very fickle trade. You must be fluent in not only Spanish but the Kabbala-like intricacies of health codes, tax law, fire department regulations, environmental protection laws, building code, occupational safety and health regs, fair hiring practices, zoning, insurance, the vagaries and back-alley back-scratching of liquor licenses, the netherworld of trash removal, linen, grease disposal. And with every dime you've got tied up in your new place, suddenly the drains in your prep kitchen are backing up with raw sewage, pushing hundreds of gallons of impacted crap into your dining room; your coke-addled chef just called that Asian waitress who's working her way through law school a chink, which ensures your presence in court for the next six months; your bartender is giving away the bar to under-age girls from Wantagh, anyone of whom could then crash Daddy's Buick into a busload of divinity students, putting your liquor license in peril, to say the least; the Ansel System could go off, shutting down your kitchen in the middle of a ten-thousand-dollar night; there's the ongoing struggle with rodents and cockroaches, anyone of which could crawl across the Tina Brown four-top in the middle of the dessert course; you just bought 10,000 dollars-worth of shrimp when the market was low, but the walk-in freezer just went on the fritz and naturally it's a holiday weekend, so good luck getting a service call in time; the dishwasher just walked out after arguing with the busboy, and they need glasses now on table seven; immigration is at the door for a surprise inspection of your kitchen's Green Cards; the produce guy wants a certified check or he's taking back the delivery; you didn't order enough napkins for the weekend-and is that the New York Times reviewer waiting for your hostess to stop flirting and notice her?

I have met and worked for the one perfect animal in the restaurant jungle, a creature perfectly evolved for the requirements of surviving this cruel and unforgiving business, a guy who lives, breathes and actually enjoys solving little problems like the ones above. He is a man who loves the restrictions, the technical minutiae, the puzzling mysteries of the life as things to be conquered, outwitted, subjugated. He rarely invests his own money, but he always makes money for his partners. He never goes anywhere and never does anything except what he's good at, which is running restaurants. He's good. He's so good that to this day, more than ten years after I stopped working for the man, I still wake up every morning at five minutes of six, always before the alarm, and I'm never late to work. Why? Because to disappoint the man-not to live up to his shining example of total involvement would be, even now, treason to my trade. I became a real chef-meaning a person capable of organizing, operating and, most important, leading a kitchen-because of the man. He taught me everything really important I know about the business. He, more than anyone else I encountered in my professional life, transformed me from a bright but druggie fuck-up into a serious, capable and responsible chef. He made me a leader, the combination of good-guy bad-guy the job requires. He's the reason I am never off sick, go to sleep every night running tomorrow's prep lists and menus through my mind. He's also the reason I smoke three packs of cigarettes a day, and know everything there is to know about everyone I work with, why my purveyors cringe when they get my call, and why my wife has to remind me when I get home from work that she's my wife and not an employee. Let's call him Bigfoot.