Carrot Caramel

1/2 gallon of organic carrot juice

1/2 cup sugar

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons heavy cream



Place all the carrot juice in a pot on medium heat and reduce. Continuously skim off the foam that will form ontop. Once it reduces to a cup of liquid add the sugar and reduce the heat. Once it becomes very syrupy add the butter and heavy cream and emulsify. Strain and cool.

Cracking More Smiles Than Beers

It’s a metronome the way that spoon grabs a mouthful of bubbling butter, perfumed with rosemary and thyme, crashes with the pan, before it empties its contents onto a piece of unsuspecting protein. It’s rhythmatic, “I believe she’s playing 16’s over there!”


It gives a flow of cogency to what is left of a non-cogent world. The tapping, the melodious tapping; it is not annoying, rather it gives this chaos control in the same sense Los Angeles traffic signals conduct chaos like Mozart. She says nothing as she puts away her spoon into a water-filled quart container, grabs the handle of a tepid, coal pan and twists into a tornado until the small of her back explodes. Another spoon in hand, placing a cheek onto a pile of puree, arranging little polka dots of reminiscent sauces into Pollack-like arrangements on our newest plates – a sprinkle of braised pistachios to finish the dish. A quick nod from the chef to signify approval – the only wage we really require – before she begins the next dish.

Her hands they are road maps of hard work and pain: fingertips cracking under pressure, wrists bulging from carpel tunnel, veins like the Underground, skin caked over from splattered butter and blood, and, my dear, it is only seven o’clock – we are halfway done but we have barely begun.

With a yet-to-be-fading wherewithal she still places those fillets, those surgically manicured herbs, those perfected and refined sauces, those garnishes no one will notice until the real eater comes in and can appreciate the care and how much of herself she has put into every element. She smiles often, carries a pocketful of mistakes and miscues from past restaurants, and never forgets how to make a simile out of a parable.

In the corner I thinly spread a newly conceived sauce turning chocolate into a window pane, this day I did not make too many mistakes. My speed it is finally catching up to my brains and today it showed its resiliency even in the face of too many orders, I am careful to remember how my desserts looked like a schism and how, in fact, I needed to be more patient even if I can never see the goodly sensibilities of being slow – at times.

Cracked four dozen eggs tonight, their yolk and white caking under my fingernails and the bit that fell on the floor earlier slowly turning opaque in the relative heat of the kitchen. I did not have the thought pattern to wipe it up in time, just turned on the afterburners and finished the job that had to be done. In moments like this I wonder if my kin will ever take after me and I realize that I cannot fathom them being anything like me – why would they want to be?

I have too many scars to count and I haven’t seen the crack of 25 yet, too many cuts, too many late nights and early mornings, too many requites with a lobster and a rabbit; too many caffeine suppliers; too many unwise responses when docile would have sufficed; too many wrong decisions; too many head-banging, want-to-punch-puppies nights to cope with; too many times have I lost something precious, something held dear, something I would’ve fought for lost because I did not have the time to see the cracks growing; too many times I have woken up knowing I should never do this thing I’ve called life again, but I do anyways; too many times I have to remind myself what a cognizant relationship looks like, and fella, it does not look like that; too many times do I have to remind myself that…after two decades I have projected the rest of my life on a blackboard and can map out its route because, still, I can look in the mirror and honestly say that I love this.

In the same way I loved her, in the same way I miss them, in the same way I crack more smiles than beers just to keep a handle on life. In the same way that metronomic spoon keeps my chaotic livelihood manageable.

Reminds Me of Lobsters

“That smell reminds me of lobsters.”


“What smell?”



“When you clarify butter, it smells like that drawn butter crap they give you with your lobster.”



“Ok…”



“It reminds me of summer time in New En…”



“I got to cut you off there,” she interrupted. “You’re getting too nostalgic for me.”



“Why can’t I be nostalgic?” he retorted.



“Cuz it’s for pussies, that’s why.”



The conversation was dead in the water moments before he began its consummation. It was a vain attempt at small talk and, really, a summarized dissertation of how he felt. She was always too rough around a rusty shell of a woman, but he didn’t mind – in fact he loved her because of it. He returned to his whisking and she back to her occupational hazard of grabbing something hot with a wet towel. Got to make this right; she yelped in pain, her palm’s bordering on second degree; yolks are heating up, coagulating too rapidly, slow it down; he hands her his dirty, yet dry towel; seasoning’s off, pinch of salt and some acid; she removed the sizzle platter from the oven and the duck breast was better off fit for charcoal than consumption; shit, she’s fucked up again; she whips around and throws the entire thing in the garbage – she’s just not getting the concepts and all he wants to do is help.



She was the third angle on a sideways, culinary love triangle. Or at least to him she was. In all honesty there was no triangle, more like a line with two points; and, more precisely, she was more like a pivot point: she was the point in which all of his thoughts rotated; never allowing him to focus on what he needs to do, right now he needs to finish this sauce, but all he wants to do is grab every last ounce of burn cream for her.



It was that moment, that make-or-break analogy you hear every inspirational sports movie talk about: the girl of his fleeting dreams is sitting there distraught and without a soul to care for her, while you are already four tables behind just because you’ve been ogling her in sideways glances; not to mention that your sauce is about to break ruining the next few tables by pushing them; NOT TO MENTION that doing this would send an otherwise otherworldly calm chef into a mental tirade the likes of which should not be mention.



And you would do it all for her. For even a look back in recognition.



Kill the heat; remove the sauce; grab new duck breast; season it; review old tickets, cringe over new ones; four trout – one no butter, but EXTRA béarnaise, what the fuck..? – two NY strip – one midrare, one well –add on three more raviolis (seven all day), still four ducks barely working; start five pans over high heat…1, 2, 3, 4, 5, oil ‘em all; run, no sprint, to first aid; grab burn cream; don’t forget some ice too…



He plops down the burn cream and ice next to her, returns to his sizzle platters all lined up with open arms hoping grasp something beautiful.



He seasons all of the proteins, cranks the pasta water and tastes for seasoning (it reduced too much, more like the ocean boiling). He resumes seasoning, checks the temperatures of the pans and they too have their arms outstretched, smoke at their sides lapping the metallic overhang above.



TSSSSSSSsst…A sound every cook knows to listen for, when food kisses a pan just right the pan orgasms and you hear that noise. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…



He looks at the clock to see that the second hand tickles the 67th minute – it was foolish of him to do so. There will be many more ticks where that came from and to realize the time this early on was going to make the rest of the night drag on. For this is his only tamable woman: a three hour crunch where hundreds open up their festering jaws, teeth glistening in the fire behind him, just waiting, praying, and hoping he’ll be dinner.



And she’s still not getting it.



The hours roll on, the dinner rush slows, and his patience with a dysfunctional wait staff runs so thin it starts to look more like Kate Moss after a coke binge than the body type he fits. The night comes to a close; it was easier today, but still rougher than others. Why can’t these servers understand we have limited amounts of products? Still they order after we are out, still they make us RUSH, still we are holding back Poseidon with interlocking pinkies, still we fight forwards and hope it will all end shortly.



He buys her a beer at the bar that night neglecting to hold back all his compassion for being subtle; his inhibitions have been caught in the night breeze like a plastic bag – it’s somewhere down the road by now. They talk, they say nothing great or astounding, but at least they are talking. He wants nothing more than to tell her that she is the reason he no longer gets mad; she is the reason his last cigarette was four weeks ago even if the nicotine tastes less brutal than love; that she is the only fathomable thing holding together weakening fibers of his being; and he wants to tell her all of this even though she will never understand his mumbled, discombobulated attempts at romance.



He buys her a few more beers. He’s been waiting too long for this moment to let her lacking wallet detract her from furthering their conversation.



They talked about past lovers and previous attempts at post-work fornication in the walk-in fridge. She was letting herself be vulnerable for the first time in a long time; her rough-‘n’-tough attitude was quickly flying away the more she talked with him. She reminisced about how distraught she was tonight, how absent minded she had been lately due to some…blah blah blah, it was really just a pity party excuse, you don’t need to know what it was, just what it meant to him.



She seemed to talk for hours, and she did. He didn’t mind at all, rather enjoyed looking at the way her hair seemed to never be held back by her ear, or how impressed he was at the very simple fact that her hair was always so clean and so well kept even under the hell-like conditions she (they) dealt with.



She was always more striking than beautiful – green eyes hidden under sinking eye sockets that wore the lack of sleep worse than her personality; her eyebrows at perched at a sharp angle towards the outer ¾ of their length making her always seem rushed or in trouble at work by making her always look surprised; she held all of her weight on the insides of her shoulder blades, she complained about it often (he even offered a message or two, she always accepted), right where the two met and you could always see them stick out ever so slightly no matter what she wore; her hands were as kept as could be expected of a cook – her forearms and the top of her hands were littered with so many scars and calluses that they looked more like a battle field from an army that had just lost – but she was still able to maintain a sense of pride with her palms that felt more like silken tofu than skin.



He was holding them now, her hands, and he was happy.



They walked back to his place, sober enough for him not to feel guilty, drunk enough to poor decision making, and he was happy. She was happy.



The formidable shell of ambivalence, misanthropy, dissidence and an unbridled bitterness was melting the next morning. She was smiling, focused, and ready to part ways with the shell she had shed that night.



That day she seared a duck breast: Tssstt it went. That day she understood what reminded him of lobsters and faraway, past tense dreams; that day that noise reminded her of him and that, above all else, made her nostalgic.

An Egret's Poem

Cradle me tender

I saw footprints in your fingers

watched them crawl

and explode into islands of regret

before another egret could ever perch

on them

fishing for your stars

and finding that you

have already gathered them all

and held them lovingly

in your fingertips.

Never letting them go

never letting them go…

Quieted Memories

Many moons ago

I promised someone that I would learn how to say

“I love you”

in a dozen languages,

in return

she’d learn to love herself.



I got halfway there

and she’s never been further.



I once knew a woman,

seventeen and beautiful

hair streaming in confetti paper

opened up books like camera lenses and mirrors

cried at the moon just before every full one –

just to make sure it knew who was boss,

and

in case you cannot figure it out

it’s her.



That was a while ago

hair now baked into a bun

eyes caked over

and fingers jammed

after pressing too many of her own buttons.

I saw her the other day

still beautiful

still wanting to suck marrow

out of any wayfaring bone

but I feel like she might not have been able

to find one

recently,

or for a while.

Stuck gnawing on finger nails

and the rewind button.



She had to have cracked her mirror by now

I know she has

she has the knuckles to prove it.



When the clock tolls twelve

she flinches,

especially when it was the darker of the two

the one where door’s creaked

open

and bed sheets were jostled

‘til father was happy.

She always filled up his hip flask

she used to joke

until I realized

what that really meant.

Knowing that

those tattoos were permanent

if never physical.



I promised her that one day I’d love her again,

six years later I did

learning my sixth way to say love

as I pressed raisins into wine

and

knew how it felt to press skin into knife.



Six years later

I found that love

between the lips of another truth

and the nape of a once held false.



Spooning cookie dough

onto another prepared memory

just to bake it into submission

serve it to a crowd

and hope that they can still taste

her emptiness

in that recipe.



So

I raise a glass of homemade wine to the sky

and pray that someone will muddle her skin into

something a bit stronger

than mache

and be less menacing

than her tiger tattoo.



She’ll still etch her warrior paint

onto eyelids

crank out more pastries than goddesses

and still bounce her temple

to another chill.

I’ll still etch my ink blots

onto bare chests

crank out more nage than gods

and still bounce my temple

to another chill.



Every now and again

I see her aching

abs split in two

hoping her spleen will eat her liver

hoping her liver will eat her lungs

hoping her lungs will stab her heart

so finally

at least this

will be self-induced

and control

has always been her biggest vice.



I will bob chins into condition

rip skulls like mache

and hope the best for you

remembering the days of opportunity

and vain promises.

This prayer goes to you

my first love

even if you’ll never know of it.

(Untitled No. 1)

When I awoke I counted

the inches of tether the blinds

had left,

wondering if there was

enough slack to try.



And on this day something beautiful

said “goodbye”

to an empty room,

what was left was merely the regret

of filling that room’s void

with a reminiscent phrase.



There was a quieted refrain

when her heels twists so quickly

that she left pinwheels in my pupils

that last to this day.



That day

it wasn’t so long ago,

but long enough

that I’ve forgotten how to catch

rocks in my jowls and store

them properly for winter.



In my hands I crack coffee mugs,

got overzealous and reached

for tea pots

burned myself on the good,

I have the pinwheels to prove it.



I no longer grasp for straw

only spaghetti – I can eat it

when it breaks –

hoping someday we will all dissipate,

call each other in synapses

and pop like rice.



If I have learned anything

in this last cycle

it’s that you’re only as good

as your worst attempt…

even if it was at a taught belt buckle.



Oh, wait, the other thing I learned

is how to drown out

the sounds when foot bones bend then break,

when tendons rip themselves from acids,

my ankles could’ve never supported me,

then again,

no one told me that

my toes would shatter

as I tipped on egg shells

around your carousel.



I’ll see if I can make a splint out of

mugs,

egg shells

and mortared with pinwheels.

Just maybe the thing I ruin

will one day

help me walk to you.

Another Unsure Prose

When those axes fell
the earth looked more human
another questioning look from
another unsure prose.

This day tastes different then the rest,
a comatose for the relentless
a redemption for the jaded.
Pull these cloud covers over my eyelids,
I do not want to see the story book ending.

I saw her trembling that night,
coddling a switch blade
opening up wrist bones like
the books I used to read,
I ran my fingers across each sentence
moving faster than my eyes could
stumbling out of the gates of literacy
I fumbled words and phrases until I realized
I could breathe while I read aloud those syllables.
She fumbled with her heart strings
undid the bow
and showed the world the shredded packaging.

She never looked more beautiful
than that night
as the night wrapped its arms around her,
cloaking her predisposed ideals
cloaking her synapses before
anyone could see them split like amoebas.

Those damn books now drip blood,
the world laps it up
and uses it as nurishment
I tried to, once,
I amended my pretenses
after I saw that I did not have the right blood type
instead I dripped
into another hip flask
and tried not to stare into the sunlight.

When I go
please
bury me under a mountain of silver spokes
and bicycle screams
the same one I fell off of
if that is at all possible.
When I go
take your time to read your eulogies,
do not let your fingers sprint while your eyes jog
let them commingle
and become one.

I forgot that lesson
along time ago.
I'm trying to relearn it now.

Awful Offal

So much of what I have to do in a restaurant kitchen goes above and beyond the necessity of an ordinary kitchen.  This fact often becomes a blanket statement that allows for the run-of-the-mill foodie to disregard something I might make as being above their comprehension or ability. Quite the opposite. 

So much of cooking is utilization of your surroundings, here, in America and the West as a whole, have so much available in our surroundings.  With that said I can make an oven for pizza with a single burner, a pot, and a sheet pan.  Not the best pizza I've ever made (it was compared to Pizza Hut...I died a bit inside), but I made it work.  The idea of utilization is the best aspect of cooking.  Nutrition, experimentation, satiation are all nice aspects of cooking, but they are end results; utilization is the process that one gets to the end result.

The reason I am harping on utilization so much is that I see such a lack of utilization in this country.  We are inundated with the best of the best products to the point that we forget where one gets sense of accomplishment and love and purpose and, of course, utilization.  I am not the best teacher of cooking, but I can show anyone how to prepare a simple dinner that will astound even the most indentured of culinary minds; the catch being an overwhelming choice of simply prepared, prepackaged, pre-butchered, precooked food items.  I think Thomas Keller (proprietor of two of the best restaurants in the world, Per Se and The French Laundry, along with many other great restaurants) put it best when he said:  "It's easy to cook a filet mignon, or to sauté a piece of trout, serve it with browned butter à la meunière, and call yourself a chef. But that's not real cooking. That's heating. Preparing tripe [offal], however, is a transcendental act."


The term offal is a blanket word used to encompass the entirety of parts of animals we, as Westerners, usually throw out.  It goes beyond organs to also take into account cheeks, tongues, brains, feet and tails.

Meat does not come in a Styrofoam container, nicely dressed in plastic wrap, and all dolled up for your eyes to ogle at.  Meat is meat, a fact many Americans have disconnected from and allowed veils to placed between them and the origins of their food products as a whole - not just meat.

Before the advent of commercialization of food, before what I even understand how a kitchen should operate, before any of that the best cooks were peasants.  The rich had the filets, the rib eyes, the chicken breasts, fresh fish, the butter, the cream, the truffles, the game, they had the best of the best, while the peasants were given what was left over:  the feet, the tongues, the organs, the tails; but damned be all if they were not going to make those items delicious.  Those former items take very little time - a quick sear, cook it to appropriate temperatures, and serve it, easy - in doing so they take very little care and love to properly prepare it.  Those latter items take a lot of time to cook, many tricks of the trade, a lot of patience, a lot of love to create them (in case you're wondering how much time and patience Thomas Keller's recipe for beef tongue takes four weeks to cure before cooking it for twenty four hours - that's patience...and yeah, it is definitely worth every second.)

This also takes into account utilization.  Slaves in the South were given the intestines of the pigs after their masters were done with the pork chops.  Now we have chitlins (a good recipe here) one of my favorite things in the world.  Utilization also taps into the Native American principle of using every piece of the animal they killed:  the skin as tepees, bones as utensils and weapons, fur as clothing and so on.  The last piece of information is, for me, the most important as it represents something that resonates with me. I have no problem with vegetarians, but whenever we at the restaurant get someone who is vegetarian its hard to switch gears and try to accommodate (we're just asking for a little heads up that's all!).  Most of the time when I ask as to why a person is a vegetarian they say the same thing:  "We treat animals so poorly here."  Which is wholly true, partly because we throw away so much of the animal so, at the end, we need quantity over quality.  Every cow can only give us one tenderloin for your beloved filet mignon (which, honestly, is my least favorite cut, give me short ribs any day!), there are only two breasts on each chicken, each pig can only give 26 bone-in pork chops that are too small to satisfy any American. 

When a chicken is killed it can weigh anywhere from 6 to 12 pounds or even higher.  Let's pick the round number of 10, a chicken is killed and it weighs 10 pounds.  Remove the head, feathers, and feet; next take out organs and chuck those away as well; separate the breast from the rib cage, separate the legs and thighs as well, and there really is no reason to keep the bones so they'll be garbage too.  What's left?  Two breasts, two thighs, two legs weighing (at most) 5 pounds.  Name any industry that plays middle man from beginning raw product to end product.  Got a name?  Good.  Those in that business would gawp  at the prospect at losing fifty percent of their product just because that's just how things work.  You won't stay in business for long.  (And yes, there are great recipes for every part of those 'garbage' parts of the chicken even the cockscomb)  Not only from a humane perspective but from an economic perspective does using every part of the animal makes more sense.

This whole prose was not just a plea to try and experiment with utilization of an animal, but, also, a plea to cook at home for God's sake.  I do recommend easing yourself into the offal world by finding a bistro in your area (any self respecting bistro will have some form or another of offal on their menu, try tongue or cheek to ease the transition even further), after that become great friends with your local neighborhood butcher (these days they need the friendship more now than ever) and get the freshest organs or tongue you can and give it a go.  A word of warning:  there is one thing that can disgust even the most avid offal eater and that is overcooked livers or kidneys.  With that said I can only cover so many things in a single post so for more information please read over the book The River Cottage Meat Book.  This book is one of the most important culinary books of the last two decades, many of the topics in his book I have touched on, but he will be able to go into great detail and provide AMAZING recipes for you to try at home.  Also, a great chef by the name of Chris Cosentino has a blog devoted wholly to this matter.

Almost every run-of-the-mill restaurant will feature chicken breast, filet mignon, and pork chops on their menu and why shouldn't they? They're all popular and the restaurant can get money from it.  But it is your job (I'm looking at you America) to change what is popular.  Soon, I hope, I can get chicken livers and pigs' trotters on every menu - I know they'll be on mine.

Internships Abounding

Very soon I will be moving from my little niche in Rhode Island to a restaurant in Minneapolis.  I do recommend that you look it up as it is pretty awesome, it's called Piccolo.  Though its website and portions are modest, the quality is anything but.  I'm pretty excited I will keep y'all updated as things progress.

Sweet Carbonara, marscapone-pink peppercorn ice cream, fig-marsala sauce

serves 4

For pasta:
1 basic pasta dough recipe
8 egg yolks
sugar
sealable container
egg wash

For ice cream:
4 ounces milk
4 ounces cream
2 ounces sugar
2 1/4 ounces egg yolk
1 tablespoon pink peppercorn
1/4 cup marscapone

For Sauce:
2 cups marsala
8 dried figs

To finish:
Butter
Strawberries, cut into lardon shapes

Necessary Equipment:
Pasta Roller
Ice Cream Maker

Procedure:
Bring milk, cream, sugar, and pink peppercorns to a boil, shut off the heat, and let it steep for 10 minutes, taste and make sure you get the floral notes of the pink peppercorn.  Strain the mixture into another pot and bring back up to a slight simmer.  Temper in egg yolks and cool immediately.  Strain again to make sure and remove any possible coagulated egg.  Chill and place into ice cream maker and allow it to churn according to manufacturer's guidance. Once churned fold in marscapone cheese and freeze.

Separate the 8 egg yolks and set aside.  Next fill a sealable container with about 1/4 inch of sugar, place egg yolks on top of sugar being careful not to break the yolk. Sprinkle with more sugar and freeze.  Roll pasta out from widest setting, roll it through at least twice on each setting (between 15 and 20 times) adding flour as necessary, until you hit the third thinnest setting.  Place a sugared egg yolk every two inches on the pasta sheet, working quickly brush around the egg yolk with egg wash and cover with additional pasta sheet overhang. Using the back of a round cookie cutter press down around the egg yolk to push out air and seal.  Cut out egg yolk ravioli, place into a container with corn meal and allow for the ravioli to come up to room temperature. 

Take the marsala and figs and bring to a boil in a pot.  Flame the marsala, let the flames subside and reduce slightly before blending.  Strain and reserve mixture. 

To finish melt a few tablespoons of butter in a small container, boil raviolis for only a few moments (no more than a minute) and throw into the butter and reserve in a double boiler atop of the pasta water.  Begin plating and make a line of marsala sauce, top with strawberries and finish with a quenelle of ice cream.  Drain raviolis and place on plate.

It Is Just Food

“It is just food.”


Those words will always echo solemnly in my head. Why, you might ask yourself, will such a simple phrase conjure up ill feeling?

Because it is more than “just food” to say that is to simply denote consumption as a means to gain nutrition; yes that plays a vital role, but that is a foundation to build on, not a period. Food at its base core, is more than just sustenance and a means to relieve the pangs of hunger. Like religion and culture it is a way in which people gather – the focal point for a meeting of persons and people. Though, unlike religion and culture, it excludes no one (except the anorexic).

Food is such a primary term for something that is so utterly magical when it is done correctly. The experience of a dozen or so friends and a pig roast is something that will remain in the catacombs of one’s head forever. Something like Thanksgiving has begun to have something of a negative moniker or air about it in the last few decades, but one needs to separate the anxieties of sufficing the needs and wants of overly ambivalent relatives to the goal at hand: your family, your friends, and all the people you care about are here, eating, and enjoying a good time before returning the drools that is life; that is what food is.

It is an escape. Though not necessarily parallel to drugs or alcohol, food is an act of escapism. In a world of way too much drama, tension, stress, and overall lack of civility we need acts that replicate nostalgia, calm, trying to get to a stasis in life.

It is an escape that is, more or less, healthy – if one ventures carelessly down its path then after years of abuse it will catch up to you. But food has been delineated into fitting a very concise box that has no openings or ways out. Food = a removal of the physical sensation of hunger. Something some people have a hard time dealing with, this, in my estimation, is a feudal attempt at subjugating consumption into something it is not.

Food’s primary goal is for nutritional satiation, but so often that aspect is over looked and ignored. We can see its abuse in every context, but, honestly, to focus too much on this abuse can be directly correlated to why there is a convoluted view on food. Food is food is food, if you try and achieve something from the word food by dubbing a Styrofoam, packing peanut “food” of course people will not be able to deter their prejudices from real food.

There is a lot of distance put between food and the consumer, but that is for another posting. It makes sense, though, because of this distance that people will not put importance on food, on its source, or how it was made – as long as it is in their supermarket at low prices and packaged correctly, few people would be hard pressed to have an issue with food. It is more than that though, when one reconnects with how something as simple as a sausage is made it is a revelation (one I have proudly done on many occasions). Putting together your own pasta dough is beautiful (my favorite recipe just click here). Making bread (BREAD!) for the first time (Jamie Oliver’s focaccia) was so exhilarating, seeing something taken for granted go from a pile of flour to a beautiful, savory, herb studded piece of bread was astounding.

Those moments – seeing a pile of ingredients turn into dinner – were the first memories I have of my family. At age 4 my parents allowed me to make mac’n’cheese, something that most parents would never allow their children to do at that age, I still remember the splash of the noodles into the salted water; the salt crystallization that occurred on the side of the pot; the ever mounting anticipation of something so simply delicious, something so synonymous with Americana, was waiting for me just 6-8 minutes away (depending on sea level); watching, emphatically, as the butter melted and the neon orange powder turned into the slick, unctuous, and cheesy mass that I was anticipating so.

Still, even with the passing of fifteen years, I can reminisce on the smells of a Taiwanese food stand as an onion pancake is divided and packaged for my dinner that night. Food is not a means to a nutritional end, it is much more impactful and important than that. As the continued food revolution moves forward people will be more apt to take care in their food, place more importance on what they do and do not eat, and, finally, realize the way food can unite.

The Alinea Experience

When one enters a career where rankings come into play a competitive nature follows that ideal as well. When you want to be a great doctor you go to the best school and study under the best doctor; when you want to be a great painter you go to the best school and study under the best painter; when you want to be a lawyer you go to the best school and work at the best firm. The distinction is no different in the cooking realm.


I am a clear case of that: go to one of the premier schools and work at the best restaurant in the country; easy way to move up the ladder, quickly. Right?

I must admit that I did not want to go to school, rather go the route of being a stagiaire at many great restaurants, getting little to no pay, until one day having a great enough repertoire to work my way up in a great restaurant then open my own. Why did I think that? Well, that’s how the system is built, that is how it is done, and that is how it will always be done. Well, maybe.

After much convincing from my parents, I decided to go to Johnson & Wales University over the Culinary Institute of America (or the CIA) – the Yale versus Harvard of cooking schools. Johnson & Wales plays the role of Yale in this one: always great, but never the best and, therefore, getting pooped on from our bosses who probably went to the CIA. Many graduates of the CIA went the route of staging in places before becoming a great chef; I too wanted to follow that route – even if a small voice in my head said otherwise.

This last weekend I staged at Alinea, the best restaurant in this country, nay, continent, nay, hemisphere. Before going I had talked to a good friend of mine about his experiences at the French Laundry, the restaurant that was of the same status Alinea is now. He, after four months of being a kitchen bitch, despised it and, with all his talents, is on the ropes as to whether or not he wants to continue cooking. Though him and I approach food differently, we have very parallel ideals about our mentality approaching a kitchen and cooking as a whole. It boils down to, very simply, “Here’s a valium, now relax!”

In the weeks and months prior to going to Alinea I had begun to imagine my life in a kitchen as a rebuttal or a retort to the ways of how a kitchen should look like. Rather than spending countless hours picking herbs, juicing fruit, or dicing onions I would assemble a team of likeminded cooks and open a restaurant: a half dozen or so trustworthy, respectable cooks who could push each other, creatively, without an air of competitiveness. That last word is the word I was probably most worried about when I entered the kitchen of Alinea this last Friday, and, I must say, I hate it when I am right.

Walking around Alinea is an awe inspiring event, it is a near Mecca in the food world: its nearly unfathomable ability to blend into its surroundings in the Lincoln Park district of Chicago does give it an air of mystery and of reverence; both of which would be squashed by the end of my trial there. Upon entering the back of the kitchen I met the chef de cuisine who told me simply, with a slight huff and indignation in his breath, that I needed to go in the basement and there I could “get set up.” I, still, am unsure what he meant by that and, by the occurrences of the following events, I might never truly know what that means.

After getting as “set up” as I could reasonably asses, I climbed the stairs and gingerly opened the door the kitchen that was rivaling Europe’s most elite, aged, and heirloom restaurants. Let me say that I have never felt my hand shake so hard. I was also anticipating something horrible to happen: I would close the door too hard and everyone would stop and stare at me (and yes, that does happen there); or I might turn the corner too quickly and stab someone with my knife that I had to carry because I was not allowed to bring my knife kit upstairs; or I would hit someone who was working furiously, knock them over, and cause a huge ruckus; really none of that happened (especially because I was warned by a friend of the first item). There was no time, though, to appreciate the grandeur of the moment as I was quickly shifted in prep mode as there were chestnuts to peel, and peel I must!

Now I knew that the prep at a place like Alinea would seem unnecessary at times (understatement) or even an abomination of what I love about cooking (still an understatement), but, as my second job pointed out, that even having an understanding that I might have those feelings or sensations did not slow their haste into my thought process. After peeling the chestnuts (that had to be done while still in the boiling water they were cooked in) I was handed a bucket filled with five gallons of coconut meat so that I may juice it. I now ask that you take a few moments to digest that last sentence.

(Pausing)

Good.

First off I could write many more pages on the intricacies of how much that statement delineates the biggest issues I have with the “great” restaurants in the world – mainly for the very simple fact that we are in Chicago, I have lived in Chicago for more than a decade, and I have NEVER seen a coconut tree growing in Chicago – rather I will continue on with the more immediate economic implications of that statement. It is so easy to open up a can of coconut milk (which was essentially what I was making) and save money, time, and way too much wear and tear on my arm (the latter is just for my sake, the two former are for the sake of the restaurant). Yes, fresh coconut milk is incomparable to the can, but the amount of money put forth to deliver said coconut to Chicago is astronomical and, honestly, a frivolous expense that has, and will continue to, undermined whatever is left of the sanctity of this industry.

Again, I do not mind doing something extra to give that certain edge to the food for quality, aesthetics, or flavor, I do not even mind doing many extra things to achieve that, but there is a line somewhere and though I am still trying to find it I know, of a certainty, that it was crossed in this moment.

That was the issues I had with just the food. The way one treats another person is really the clinching moment where I knew that this restaurant was not the one for me.

I knew, again, from the beginning that I, in their eyes, was a partial step up from garbage and whatever I knew, in regards to cooking, was irrelevant at best. That much I knew upon gingerly creeping into that kitchen. Still, that is not, nor will it ever be, an excuse for me to mistreat another human being especially when, at the end of the day, no matter how much you try, someone is still going to poop out what you just made. With that said, a level of detachment has to occur, somewhere. Yes, I am going to put my heart and soul into that food and yes, I will be upset if I or anyone makes a mistake, but STILL it is a digestible and temporary art form. You have to detach yourself and understand that once outside of your physical grasp it is no longer yours to keep, no longer something you can alter, adjust, and edit – it is a past tense attempt at perfection and what you are making right now is all you can offer to the guests.

You move on.

When someone makes a mistake, you move on. When someone is told to vacuum seal squab stock, all twelve gallons of it, and spills about five tablespoons, in my book, that is an accomplishment. In this establishment, one so grounded in perfection that it has lost the love and the wonderment of food, that accomplishment is seen more as a fault. Which is hard to digest for someone who has been noted for taking things too personally in the past.

When conversing with my friends who work or worked in restaurants I made sure they understood the effervescent and resounding air of competitiveness that sickens nearly everyone there. The analogy I made was that it is like becoming a really great high school quarterback (maybe you win state), then you go on and have a very successful college career (maybe you win the National Championship or the Heisman), just to get drafted by the Indiana Colts. Though you are excited and very nervous to be playing for a professional football team you quickly realize that to get the notoriety you, maybe, deserve or want you have to beat out Peyton Manning at his own game. Not to mention, that, for some reason, there are thirty other people all with equal or exceeding credentials to your own stellar ones, who, just so happen to be vying for the same position. The kicker in all of this is that only the top ten quarterbacks on the team get paid, and only three backups get a livable wage. So you kick, and scratch, and claw, and bite until one day you are getting paid very well just to realize that whatever dignity, self respect, and personal morality has turned into indignation and self depravity of the utmost regard. Nothing, like I said earlier, is worth that.

I will always be a proponent of the chase for perfection – I try to live it – but there is a price to pay for it as well. When one gets to the level that Alinea is at you have to make clear and concise sacrifices for what you want. Usually it is a social life, family, friends, and things of that nature. In the realm of consciousness that I follow those things are not things, they are the fabric of life; cooking is a glorified hobby that I can get paid doing. I love it to death, I have lost a lot of good and bad things in my life pursuing a career in this field. But, still, I have my sanctity, I have balance. I want a family and I want a great restaurant, both of those things I know I will get with a lot of hard work and, still, some sacrifice. But I will get them, I just will not go about it the way I have been told I should go about it.