Service Included Page 2
The one thing this place had in common with the Brooklyn café was the preponderance of artists on the staff. For this reason, when the maître d’ announced one sleepy Sunday night, after I had been there for about three months, that the cast of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy would be sitting in my section while Chef Thomas Keller sat across the room, trading was easy. It was a simple choice for me; I didn’t own a television and had never seen the show, but I had watched Chef Keller from the garden at the French Laundry. I had also heard a rumor that he might be opening a restaurant in the new Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. If I was going to continue to work in restaurants, as was seeming likely, I wanted to work in the best. Pretty cocky words coming from someone with three restaurants’ worth of experience, I told myself as soon as I had the thought. My résumé wouldn’t get a toenail, let alone a restaurant-issue clog, in the door.
Requesting Chef Keller’s table seemed like a perfect opportunity to introduce myself, but I soon began to doubt whether this was wise.
“Do you know what kind of persimmon the chef is using?” one of the guests called me over to ask. I later found out that this was Jonathan Benno, or J.B., who was to be the chef de cuisine at the new restaurant.
What kind of persimmon?
I made it through that nerve-racking audition of a shift by trying to be invisible and letting the sommelier pour everything, including the water. As soon as I got back to Brooklyn, I looked up persimmon online. Then I went straight to the human-resources page on the French Laundry Web site. I thought about the hours I had spent on that garden bench in Napa, trying to get in off the waiting list. I thought of my friend looking enviously through the windows where he could see the chefs working in a pristine kitchen. And then, for the third time in the past four months, I started tinkering with my résumé.
THE APPARENTLY NUMEROUS KINDS OF PERSIMMONS
According to California Rare Fruit Growers, persimmons grew in China before spreading to Japan and Korea. They were introduced to California in the mid-1800s, where they thrive on the moderate winters and mild summers. The fruit is full of beta-carotene, vitamin C, and potassium. Persimmons can vary in color from yellow-orange to a deep orangered and in shape and size from that of a round tomato to that of a large acorn. Wikipedia maintains that in Korea, the dried fruit is used to make a punch called sujeonggwa and the Chinese use the dried leaves for tea. Every September, residents of Mitchell, Indiana, organize a persimmon festival, including a persimmon pudding contest. The pudding, reminiscent of pumpkin pie, is served with whipped cream. There seems to be some debate about whether persimmons are best picked after a frost, when some believe they have lost their tartness. Both camps, pre-and postfrost pickers, agree that persimmons are better the riper and softer they are. FUYU PER SIMMON (FUYUGAKI)—J.B., who knew perfectly well that he was eating a fuyu, later explained to me that chefs like this variety because even when fully ripe, they are firmer than other persimmons, pack well, and are virtually nonastringent. It is medium-size with four subtle sides.
• food porn •
i HAD A crush on the French Laundry Cookbook for ages, but considered it way out of my league, both in price and in required skill. I stalked it in bookstores, ogling the glossy photographs in dark aisles and secluded corners where the only witnesses to my infatuation were other desperate faux-cook foodies who probably couldn’t roast a chicken to save their lives and had to resort to drooling over centerfolds of gleaming striped bass, glistening gelée, and statuesque towers of perfectly peeled tomatoes. After canapés and soups, I grew impatient and stopped caressing each page. I flipped past pepper confetti, Gewürztraminer jelly, the sculptural soft-shell crab “sandwich,” and the tasting of black truffles in search of the page that made me pant: the photograph of the five-spice lobster on which a piece of foie gras rested with one sweatlike bead of fat hanging, teasing, yearning to fall. Satisfied, I caught my breath, crawled out from my corner, and slipped the book back into place between its unworthy neighbors. Surely it was a $50 example of what Anthony Bourdain calls “food porn.” This is not restaurant cooking for the home chef; this is a secret pleasure for the jealous voyeur.
And this voyeur was about to get more than a peep. Despite the fact that I probably uttered fewer than fifty words to Chef Keller’s table when I had waited on them a few weeks before, I managed to land an interview for Per Se, as his new restaurant was to be called. In Latin, per se means “in and of itself.” The name Per Se was meant to distinguish it from the French Laundry, its West Coast parent. I was thrilled about the interview, but had no idea how to prepare, especially after the persimmon incident. So I bought the book. The bookstore where I found a used copy for $30 wrapped it, appropriately, in a brown paper bag. I held it close on the subway home with a sort of sheepish pride. Once home, I curled up in the corner of my couch, intent to memorize every face, term, and potentially obscure detail that might impress my future bosses. This time, I didn’t allow myself to get distracted by breasts and shanks, as I previously had in bookstores. This time I read every word.
There is no doubt that the French Laundry Cookbook is an impressive work. Chef Keller is as interested in the sources of his ingredients and the evolution of his relationship to food as he is in the actual recipes. Before delving into preparations, he tells a story to whet your reading appetite; how he was inspired to create the dish, the discovery of a certain obscure ingredient, or the story of his first time making it. There is a section devoted to his initial experimentation with hollandaise sauce and another delineating chicken bondage (technically called trussing). We meet Ingrid Bengis, an author and Russian scholar who ships live lobsters from her home in Maine; Keith Martin, the stockbroker who retired in order to raise lambs in Pennsylvania; John Mood, a commercial pilot who still flies despite the demands of his ten thousand palm trees, from which come the hearts of palm found on page seventy.
The book also explains Chef Keller’s philosophy toward cooking, namely his famous law of diminishing returns, in which he reduces the size of his many courses to make room for a variety of flavors and textures. At the French Laundry, he constructs his menu in order to give only enough to “satisfy your appetite and pique your curiosity,” enough to have you beg for “just one more bite.” The other side of this law is the abundance of extravagance. “I want people to know what foie gras is all about,” he writes. “I go overboard with truffles and caviar too, so that people who have perhaps only eaten truffles in stingy quantities can taste them and say ‘Oh, now I understand.’” This philosophy helps explain the packed reservation book, but it is hard to imagine the home cook buying all the truffles, foie gras, and caviar needed to replicate a meal from this book without going broke on one dinner party. I almost did a few weeks later, on one dish alone.
After reading all night, I went to my interview. As the restaurant was still under construction, we met in a conference room on the floor below. I was glad I had done my research. When they asked what I knew about the French Laundry, I recited a few facts about the building, how it had been a saloon and brothel before being converted into a French steam laundry. When they asked what I thought of Chef Keller’s cooking, I spoke about the intellect and playfulness of his food. When they asked if I owned the cookbook, I proudly said that I did. But when a previously silent Frenchman looked across the long boardroom table and asked if I had ever tried to make anything from the book, I paused and admitted that I had not. “Don’t even try the cornets,” he advised. “They break.”
He was speaking of salmon cornets, the first recipe in the cookbook and the first item served to any guest at the French Laundry. The dish is made to look exactly like an ice cream cone. The difference is that the three-inch cone or cornet, named for its horn shape, retains a touch of sweetness, but is definitely savory. Black sesame seeds add a texture to its buttery crunch. The cookbook shows a picture of a waiter, actually the torso and arm of a waiter, holding two tiny cones in a tray. The cornets, tucked in paper napkin
s, point down through dime-sized holes in the tray. A scoop of salmon tartare with flecks of chive rests on each cone, which is filled with a red onion crème fraîche.
After serving the cornet at the French Laundry for years, introducing it at Per Se became especially important to Chef Keller. The idea for the cornet had been conceived in New York. In 1990 Chef Keller reluctantly left the city after his experimental and well-reviewed restaurant, Rakel, closed in the economic downturn of the late 1980s. He had a job lined up at a hotel in L.A., at which he was supposed to debut with a food-and-wine benefit to wow his new clientele. Before he left New York, he met a few friends for a farewell dinner in Chinatown, followed by an ice cream cone at Baskin-Robbins, as was their tradition. When the man behind the counter placed the cone in a little holder, the idea came to him. He would serve ice cream cones at the dinner, with tuna tartare instead of ice cream and a savory tuile instead of the traditional cone. They were a hit in L.A. and at many dinners since (although he now uses salmon instead of tuna); the cornet has become his most famous dish.
A few days after our conversation about cornets, the smirking Frenchman and company offered me a job as a backserver at Per Se. I accepted the position without a clue as to what it would entail. I would have taken the job for the month of training alone. Besides going to culinary school or enrolling in intensive butler training, I could think of no better place to learn about food and service. The option of veering off my current path, toward academia, publishing, or journalism remained, but it was far from tempting. I had begun to take graduate writing workshops one day a week but had yet to find my subject. For now, work and school were two distinct realms. I had no idea where either would lead, so for now I planned to pay careful attention and take notes.
Close to a month after my interview, the restaurant was still under construction. Because of this, orientation took place down the street at the Hudson Hotel. It was an especially snowy January, and before entering the large conference room where our orientation would begin, I waited with a few shivering Californians to check our coats and boots. Quite a number of French Laundry staff, both kitchen and front of the house, had come to help open Per Se. Many stayed in apartments the company had rented on Fifty-seventh Street, a building with which I would become intimately familiar in the coming months.
The general manager, Laura Cunningham, and the wine director, Paul Roberts, were standing by the door and officially introduced themselves. I recognized both from the party I had waited on weeks before. She was tall and slim, with long, dark hair pulled into an elegant and immaculate ponytail. But her most striking feature was a pair of orblike blue eyes whose intense gaze had made me sweat the other night and was now fixing to do the same. She shook my hand and said a quiet hello before Paul broke in.
“It’s the captain who doesn’t speak!” he teased.
The room was a sea of suits, each captain, backserver, runner, and coffee server trying his best to look four-star, each cook wearing a suit and tie, probably the only time he had worn one all year. When I walked into that room, I didn’t look for Chef Keller, nor did I notice that I was underdressed in my wrinkled work pants and cardigan sweater. I saw only the ratio of my painfully single female self to the gaggle of young male chefs. It was encouraging.
I took an empty seat next to a cute blond and batted my eyelashes at him as he cheerfully told me about his recent move to New York and how he planned to open his own place back home in California after a year or so. With his girlfriend. That was exactly what I deserved, and I knew it. Back to business, I faced forward and scanned the room for Chef Keller.
I remember the chef’s first speech to us partly because I was taking notes like a good little overachiever and partly because it might best be titled “The Greatest Hits of Thomas Keller.” I once went to a Willie Nelson concert at a state fair and couldn’t believe my luck when he played the old favorites, one after the other. In fact, literally all of them appeared on my Willie Nelson Super Hits album: “On the Road Again,” “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys,” “Georgia,” “Always on My Mind.” How many times has he played these tunes, I wondered as I sang along between bites of funnel cake. When he wanted us to join in on the chorus, he curled his right hand up as if pretending to shoot and aimed it toward the sky, where it bobbed until he hit a verse and needed it back. I don’t know how Thomas would feel about the comparison, but rumor has it he’s a big Lyle Lovett fan. In any case, he hit all the highlights, those I had read about in the cookbook and in interviews, and it was clear that he was as passionate in that moment as he was the first time he uttered the words. He spoke of his hero, Fernand Point, a Michelin three-star chef who died in 1955 and whom many consider the father of contemporary French cuisine; told the story of learning patience by making hollandaise sauce; explained how killing a rabbit taught him to respect his ingredients; and introduced the law of diminishing returns to those who hadn’t spent, like me, the previous night fondling the cookbook. The law in its simplest form: more is less.
Much ado is made about celebrity chefs and their presence in the kitchen. Clearly, it is impossible for chefs who operate many restaurants to be in their kitchens at all times. But, as I see it, this is not necessarily a deficiency. The chefs are the visionaries and leaders, but they have working under them a team of highly qualified cooks who are, hopefully, as good or better at the day-to-day aspects of running the kitchen. In a few years, these men and women will go on to be the celebrities who are chastised for not being in their kitchens.
Chef Keller planned to spend the first few months training the Per Se staff and overseeing the opening. During this time, the French Laundry would undergo renovations. After he had ensured that Per Se could run smoothly, he would head back to California and reopen the French Laundry. From then on, he would split his time between the two restaurants, while also tending to his newly opened bistro, Bouchon, in Las Vegas. This, as you will see, is not exactly what happened.
It occurred to me at the end of our first day of training that if I were a skeptic, I might find this whole thing a little cultish. There were philosophies, laws, uniforms, elaborate rituals, an unspoken code of honor and integrity, and, most important, a powerful leader. But I am not a skeptic; I drank the Kool-Aid. I sat there, eagerly taking notes in the little book I had bought for that very purpose, feeling proud to be one of the chosen. So I knew practically nothing about wine or fish knives and felt like a fake pronouncing French food terminology (despite my recent visit to France, I still preferred to point and mumble when I ordered croissants). At least I knew we were all starting at the beginning and that we all had the same goal: finesse.
Unfortunately, I could think of few people in my life who would be receptive to this particular gospel. None of my friends or family even understood why I was excited about another job waiting tables, and the only person I knew on the staff was someone I had had the bad luck of working with previously. This guy was a rare case: an actor who loved the restaurant business and was taking a break from performing to devote himself to waiting tables. Unfortunately, you can take the actor out of the performance, but you can’t take the performance out of the actor, and watching this guy explain the menu as if he were Henry V on St. Crispin’s Day sent me fleeing from the dining room on many an occasion. I would prefer to chew on tinfoil. So I was on my own for the evening. I could watch Babette’s Feast again, or I could show the little voice in my head what I was made of—the little voice that kept whispering, “Don’t even try the cornets. They break.”
WHEN I GOT back to Brooklyn, I scanned the list of ingredients: flour, sugar, salt, butter, eggs, black sesame seeds. I checked the flour for worms. Good to go. I didn’t have any black sesame seeds, but that hardly seemed compulsory. My cornets would be unashamed of their nakedness. “Cornets Before the Fall,” I would call them. I also figured I could use regular table salt instead of kosher. How different could salt be?
The recipe calls for a hollow circular stencil, whatever t
hat was. I searched my cabinets for a substitute, settling at last on an old hummus container that was a little warped, but certainly roundish. I did as I was told, awkwardly cutting the plastic of the hummus container into the semblance of a hollow ring. Since I didn’t have a Silpat (the silicone surface used most often in making pastry to eliminate sticking), I spooned my cone batter onto a nonstick baking pan using the homemade hummus mold, which I had to wrestle into submission with increasingly sticky fingers. The first batch burned in half the estimated cooking time. The second batch I made thicker and cooked less, but when I tried to lift them from the pan they bunched up into a wrinkled beige mass. I knew that anyone I might call to commiserate with would want to know exactly why this had occurred as an appealing endeavor for an unskilled, ill-equipped single woman in a fourth-floor walk-up in Brooklyn on a cold winter weeknight. Not exactly a recipe for an impromptu cocktail party. At one time I would have called my ex-friend downstairs, who loved nothing more than aiding a damsel in distress, especially when it meant flexing his culinary might. In despair, I trashed the cornets, dumped the dirty dishes into the sink, and slumped down the block to D.O.C. for wine and cheese, my solution to all of life’s ills. Diego, my favorite waiter in the city, greeted me as always with his big Dick Van Dyke grin and poured me a little “som-a-thing e-special” from the south of Italy. My wine knowledge needed improvement, but for the moment I drowned my sorrows indiscriminately and fantasized about breaking up with the cookbook. It’s not you, it’s me—I’m just not ready for a Silpat and a hollow circular mold right now.