Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Two customers at a table are simply a deuce.

I'd like civilians who read this to get a sense, at least, that this life, in spite of everything, can be fun.

offset serrated knife.

the fact that it resembles what it is: a familiar, worn, old-school brasserie of the Parisian model.

I don't eat mussels in restaurants unless I know the chef personally, or have seen, with my own eyes, how they store and hold their mussels for service.

saw, for the first time, how two beloved, funny and popular guys can end up less beloved, not so funny and much less popular after trying to do nothing more than what their friends told them they were good at.

with them or finding them entertaining. This business grows assholes: it's our principal export. I'm an asshole. You should probably be an asshole too.

The cook's spoons with holes or slots are, unsurprisingly, female, and the unslotted ones, male.

excoriate;