Kitchen Confidential

As this, apparently, wasn’t unprofitable enough, they’d chosen the restaurant business as a way to lose their money more quickly and assuredly. From the get-go, Sammy, Dimitri and I managed to intimidate the partners right out of their own restaurant. At every suggestion from this novice triumvirate, we’d snort with contempt, roll our eyes with wor

a good cook is a craftsman – not an artist. There’s nothing wrong with that: the great cathedrals of Europe were built by craftsmen – though not designed by them. Practicing your craft in expert fashion is noble, honorable and satisfying. And I’ll generally take a stand-up mercenary who takes pride in his professionalism over an artist any day. Whe

The most important and lasting lessons I learned from Bigfoot were about personnel and personnel management – that I have to know everything, that I should never be surprised. He taught me the value of a good, solid and independently reporting intelligence network, providing regular and confirmable reports that can be verified and cross-checked wit

I went for the money. The first chef’s job that came along I grabbed. And the one after that and the one after that. Used to a certain quality of life – as divorcees like to call it, living in the style to which I’d grown accustomed – I was unwilling to take a step back and maybe learn a thing or two.

When a job applicant starts telling me how Pacific Rim-job cuisine turns him on and inspires him, I see trouble coming. Send me another Mexican dishwasher anytime. I can teach him to cook. I can’t teach character. Show up at work on time six months in a row and we’ll talk about red curry paste and lemon grass. Until then, I have four words for you:

The goads, curses, insults and taunts of my wildly profane crew are like poetry to me, beautiful at times, each tiny variation on a classic theme like some Beat era jazz riff: Coltrane doing ‘My Favorite Things’ over and over again, but making it new and different each time. There are, it turns out, a million ways to say ‘suck my dick’. Most of the

A lot of his time was spent figuring out ways to make the restaurant run more efficiently, more smoothly, faster and cheaper.

Bigfoot understood – as I came to understand – that character is far more important than skills or employment history. And he recognized character – good and bad – brilliantly. He understood, and taught me, that a guy who shows up every day on time, never calls in sick, and does what he said he was going to do, is less likely to fuck you in the end

I like to hear different accounts of the same incident from different sources. It adds perspective and reveals, sometimes, what a particular source is leaving out, or skewing to leave a particular impression, making me wonder: Why?