The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones

Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life—and travel—leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks—on your body or on your heart—are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt.

Debrouillard is what every plongeur wants to be called. A debrouillard is a man who, even when he is told to do the impossible, will se debrouiller—get it done somehow. —George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

Sixty-five meals a night (at least in my place) means we'll all be out of work—and fast. Two hundred fifty to three hundred meals a night is more like it when you're talking about a successful New York City restaurant and job security for your posse of well-paid culinarians in the same breath.

It's an irritating reality that many places and events defy description. Angkor Wat and Machu Picchu, for instance, seem to demand silence, like a love affair you can never talk about. For a while after, you fumble for words, trying vainly to assemble a private narrative, an explanation, a comfortable way to frame where you've been and what's happe

When I was the executive chef, a few years ago, of a stadium-size nightclub/supper club near Times Square, it often meant six and seven hundred meals a night—a logistical challenge that called for skills closer to those of an air-traffic controller or a military ordnance officer than to those of a classically trained chef.

I've been writing this stuff for much the same reasons behind my frenetic traveling: Because I can. Because there's so little time. Because there's been so much to see and remember. Because I always think for sure the next book or the next show will tank, and I better make some fucking money while I can.