Kitchen Confidential (28 page)

As for me, I drink beer and vodka when I eat at Veritas, preferring to spend my lucre on what I know to be good-namely the food. I know that's a lot like going to Egypt and not bothering to look at the pyramids, but hey, I'm just an old-time cookie with a chip on his shoulder and a heart full of envy.

Problem is, Scott's an old-time cookie, too. After the kitchen closed (at ten forty-five they were talking about getting the last orders in!), I took him up to the Siberia Bar, down the subway steps, through the platform-level bar and into the downstairs annex. I was hoping to get him drunk, find something to dislike about the miserable bastard who's so much better than me. Maybe I could get him sloshed, he'd start venting, make injudicious comments about some of those culinary heroes he'd worked for in the past.

I mentioned I'd eaten at Le Bernardin recently, the full-bore chef tasting. An eyebrow went up. 'Oh yeah? What did you have?' When I told him, he looked happy, like I get when describing my first oyster.

'You have the mackerel tartare, dude?' he asked. 'Yeah,' I said, hesitating. 'It was good. . really good.' 'Yeah,' said Scott. 'It is good, isn't it? What else did you have?'

I told him, the two of us talking about menus like some people talk about the Miracle Mets or the Koufax-era Dodgers.

'Who's making food these days that interests you,' I asked. 'Oh, let's see. . Tom. Tom Collicchio at Gramercy Tavern. Tom makes really good food . and Rocco di Spirito at Union Pacific is doing interesting stuff. '

'Have you seen this foam guy's shit?' I asked, talking about Ferran Adria's restaurant of the minute, El Bulli, in Spain.

'That foam guy is bogus,' he smirked, 'I ate there, dude-and it's like. shock value. I had seawater sorbet!' That was about as much bad-mouthing as I could get out of him. I wanted to know what he likes to eat, 'You know, after hours, you're half in the bag and you get hungry. What do you want to eat?'

'Beef bourguignon, he said right away. I've found common ground. Red wine, beef, some button mushrooms and a few pearled onions, bouquet garni, maybe some broad noodles or a simple boiled potato or two to go with it. A crust of bread to soak up the sauce. Maybe I'm not wrong about everything.

All cooks are sentimental fools. And in the end, maybe it is all about the food.

IF THERE WAS ANY justice in this world, I would have been a dead man at least two times over.

By this, I mean simply that many times in my life the statistical probabilities of a fatal outcome have been overwhelming-thanks to my sins of excess and poor judgment and my inability to say no to anything that sounded as if it might have been fun. By all rights I should have been, at various times: shot to death, stabbed to death, imprisoned for a significant period of time, or at very least, victimized by a casaba-sized tumor.

I often use the hypothetical out-of-control ice-cream truck. What would happen if you were walking across the street and were suddenly hit by a careening Mister Softee truck? As you lie there, in your last few moments of consciousness, what kind of final regrets flash through your mind? 'I should have had a last cigarette!' might be one. Or, 'I should have dropped acid with everybody else back in '74!' Maybe: 'I should have done that hostess after all!' Something along the lines of: 'I should have had more fun in my life! I should have relaxed a little more, enjoyed myself a little more That was never my problem. When they're yanking a fender out of my chest cavity, I will decidedly not be regretting missed opportunities for a good time. My regrets will be more along the lines of a sad list of people hurt, people let down, assets wasted and advantages squandered.

I'm still here. And I'm surprised by that. Every day.

So in the spring of 1999, I really and truly thought that I had had all my great adventures, that the entertainment and excitement segment of the program was long over. Been there and done that was more than an assumption for me, it was a defensive stance, and one that kept me-and keeps me-from repeating the stupid mistakes of the past. Sure, there were things to learn. I learn things all the time. But I'm talking about eye-opening, revelatory, perspective-altering life experiences: the exotic, the frightening, the totally new. I wasn't about to sample any new experimental hallucinogens at age forty-three. I wasn't going to submerge myself in some new criminal sub-culture, steeping myself in the customs and practices of professional gamblers, heroin seekers or sexual adventurers-though at one time it would have greatly appealed to me. I didn't think I'd be shipping out on a great big clipper ship (as Lou Reed puts it), wandering the back streets of Peshawar or sampling live monkey brain in the Golden Triangle. My personal journey, I thought, was pretty much over. I was comfortably ensconsed in secure digs, with a wife who still-remarkably-found me to be amusing on occasion. I had a job I loved, in a successful restaurant .

and I was alive, for chrissakes! I was still around! Though the game had long since gone into overtime, I still had a few moves left in me, and I was content to play them out where I'd started-New York City, the place I believed, heart and soul, to be the center of the world.

So it came as a surprise when one of the two partners at Les HaIles, Philippe LaJaunie-a man I'd barely conversed with up to that time-approached me one spring afternoon and said, 'Chef, we'd like you to go to Tokyo. Make the food look and taste like it does in New York. '

Now, Brasserie Les HaIles is a much-loved New York institution, serving authentic French workingman's fare to hordes of diners each night. I'm an American, whatever my lineage, so it threw me off-guard to be asked if I'd care to go halfway around the world to consult and advise a French chef-in Japan-on the fine points of cassoulet, navarin d'agneau, frisee aux lardons and boudin noir at Les HaIles Tokyo.

But my masters, Philippe (a Frenchman) and Jose de Meireilles (a Portuguese francophile), seemed convinced enough of my mystical connection to the food they clearly adore to pack me on to a plane and send me jetting off to Tokyo for a week. It was a daunting and unusual assignment and I was going alone-my wife would not be joining me.

My biggest concern was the flight: fourteen hours in the air, and no smoking(!) I scored some Valium before leaving for the airport, thinking maybe I could knock myself out and sleep through the ordeal. Unfortunately, as my Israeli-navigated town car swung into the Kennedy Airport environs, I couldn't find the damn pills. I tore frantically through my pockets and carry-on luggage, near tears, cursing myself, my wife, God and everybody else who might be responsible for this hideous situation.

I checked my knives through, not wanting to carry them on, and was soon dug in, at 11 A.M., at the bar by the departure gate: last stop for degenerate smokers. My companions were a very unhappy-looking bunch of Asia veterans. Like me, they were chain-smoking and drinking beer with grim, determined expressions on their faces. A Chinese gentleman next to me, apropos of nothing, shook his head, blew smoke out of his nose and said, 'Sleeping pill. Only thing to do is sleep. Fourteen hour to Narita. Long time.' This did not improve my mood. Another bar customer, an MP headed to South Korea to pick up a prisoner, slammed back another draft and described the horror of business class to the other side of the world. He too shook his head, lips pursed, resigned to his fate. A red-faced Aussie with a five-hour layover waiting for him on the Tokyo end, advised me to have another beer-at least. 'Or three, mate. Nothing to do but bloody sleep.' Yeah, right, I thought. Got any Demerol?

As a back-up, I had acquired a few nicotine patches. I rolled up my left sleeve and slapped one directly over a vein, hoping for the best as they sounded final boarding.

The flight was endless. The in-flight movie was a slight improvement over looking out the window: a Japanese film about, as best as I could gather, fly-fishing. Guys standing around in waders, philosophizing about carp in a language I couldn't understand, had a pleasantly somnolent effect and I managed, with the help of many more beers, to pass out for a few hours.

I should point out, by the way, that I know nothing about Japan. Oh, sure, I've seen The Seven Samurai and Rashomon and Yojimbo and the Kurosawa policiers, and Sonny Chiba and Gidrah versus Mecha-Godzilla for that matter, but I was in every significant way ignorant of all things Japanese. I knew only enough about Japanese culture and history to know that I knew nothing. I spoke not a word of Japanese. I had, with only a week's warning before my trip, not even acquired a guidebook or a street map for the city of Tokyo. But I did like sushi and sashimi.

The city of Tokyo is an amazing sprawl-something out of William Gibson or Philip Dick-seeming to go on forever. The bus from the airport wound over bridges, down through tunnels, up fly-overs that wrapped around the upper floors of apartment and office buildings. I passed canals, industrial parks, factories, residential areas, business districts, carp ponds, austere temples, indoor ski slopes, rooftop driving ranges. As I got closer to my destination, it was getting dark, with giant, screaming video screens advertising beverages and cellphones and recording artists, garish signs in English and Japanese, lines of cars, crowds of people-row after row after row of them, surging through intersections in orderly fashion. This was not America or anyplace remotely like it. Things on the other side of the world were very, very different.

The bus unloaded at a hotel in Roppongi district, and a helpful dispatcher in a uniform hailed me a cab. The rear passenger door swung open for me, operated by the driver by lever, and I slid on to a clean, white slip-covered back seat. Dispatcher and driver examined the Les HaIles business card with address, debating route and destination. When the matter was decided, the door swung closed and we were off. The driver wore white gloves.

Roppongi district is international in character-like an Asian Georgetown-and Les HaIles Tokyo, located in the shadow of the Eiffel-like Tokyo Tower, and across the street from a pachinko parlor, looked much like its older brother in New York, though spanking new and impeccably, surgically clean. Les HaIles New York is loved for its smoke-stained walls, creaky chairs, weathered wooden bar-the fact that it resembles what it is: a familiar, worn, old-school brasserie of the Parisian model. Les HaIles Tokyo, on the other hand, though accurate to the model down to the tiniest design detail, was shiny and undamaged, and apparently kept that way.

It was a warm night when I arrived, and the French doors to the cafe were opened. Philippe saw me from the bar. He'd arrived a day earlier. He came out to greet me.

'Welcome to Tokyo, Chef,' he said. I had been provided with an apartment nearby, and Philippe helped load my luggage on the handlebars of two borrowed bicycles for the short trip over. My first close-up look at Tokyo was from the seat of a rickety three-gear as I pedaled furiously to keep up with Philippe. He took off at a good pace down Roppongi's very crowded streets. You're supposed to ride on the sidewalks, I later learned, though I don't know how that's even possible. Traffic runs the wrong way over there, so heading straight into it, I picked and wove my way between cars and vans, dodging pedestrians, trying to keep my 50-pound duffel bag on the handlebars and not get dragged backwards off the seat by the other bag hanging around my neck. Roppongi Crossing, though by no means Tokyo's largest or busiest intersection, is where thousands of teenagers meet before heading off to the bars and clubs. The streets were unbelievably dense with pedestrians, people hanging around, flashing neon, flapping banners, more screaming signs, pimpy-Iooking young men in suits and patent leather shoes, surrounded by dye-blonde Asian women in thigh-high boots and micro-mini skirts. Philippe took a hard turn and we were heading down a hill, through twisting, narrow and decidedly quieter streets. Things became stranger and even more unfamiliar, the smell of something good to eat issuing from every building we passed.

The organization kept a few apartments in a kind of residential hotel. It looked like a hotel, felt like a hotel, but had no visible employees. Comfortable, spacious by my imagined Tokyo standards, and equipped with cable TV, phone, fax, kitchenette and ingeniously designed bathroom, I was soon unpacked and agreeably installed, my mysterious French boss staying next door.

'I'm sure you want to shower, maybe rest for a while,' said Philippe, before heading back to Les HaIles. 'Can you find your way to the restaurant?' I was pretty sure I could.

After a long shower in the short, deep apartment bathtub, I managed to find my way back to Les HaIles, where I was shown around and introduced. Frederic Mardel was the chef, from Aquitaine by way of Bora-Bora. His chefs de partie, Hiroyoshi Baba of Japan, Delma Sumeda Elpitiya of Sri Lanka and Mo Ko Ko of Myanmar were gracious in the extreme. Fortunately, the common language in the kitchen was French, which I found, to my surprise, that I could still speak and understand. I had been worried about this moment; I'd been apprehensive about invading another chef's kitchen. We tend to get our backs up with the arrival of interlopers, and though it may have been nice to be held up as some sort of benchmark for the Les HaIles organization, I knew how I'd have felt if the chef from say, the Washington or Miami branch came swanning into my kitchen, wanting to show me how the big boys do it. Frederic was a friendly and gracious host, however, and like the rest of the crew, had never been to New York. I was a curiosity, as strange to them as they were to me.

The kitchen was small and spotless, with dangerously low range hoods for a 6-foot-4 guy like me. A grate-covered canal ran around the floor beneath each station, with a current of constantly flowing water washing away any detritus that might fall from cutting boards. Containers were all space-saving square in shape, and the counters were low to the ground. I put on my whites, unwrapped my knives and hung around the kitchen for a while, watching food go out, taking it all in, making small talk with the crew, aware of a persistent throbbing behind my eyes, an unpleasant constriction around my temples, a feeling that I was somehow not getting enough oxygen.

Beat from the flight, I only stayed a few hours that night, until at 10 P.M. Tokyo time, my brain thoroughly poached with jet lag, I slunk back to the apartment to collapse.

I woke up at 5 A.M., hungry, put on a pullover, long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans, black elk-skin cowboy boots that had seen better days, and a suit-cut leather jacket that Steven had picked up used for me at a flea market. I was ready for adventure.

Breakfast. At first, I didn't have the nerve. I wandered Roppongi's early-morning streets, tortured by the delicious smells emanating from the many businessmen's noodle shops, intimidated by the crowds. Japanese salarymen sat cheek-to-jowl, happily slurping down bowls of soba. I didn't want to stare. I didn't want to offend. I was acutely aware of how freakish and un-Japanese I looked, with my height, in my boots and leather jacket. The prospect of pushing aside the banner to one of these places, sliding back the door and stepping inside, then squeezing on to a stool at a packed counter and trying to figure out how and what to order was a little frightening. One couldn't enter a place, change one's mind and then creep away. The prospect of being the center of attention at this tender hour, with the capillaries in my brain shriveled from all the beers on the flight, and the jet lag even worse than it had been the day before-I just couldn't handle it. I wandered the streets, gaping, my stomach growling, looking for somewhere, anywhere to sit down and have coffee, something to eat.

God help me, I settled for Starbucks. At least, I saw from the street, they allowed smoking. It was drizzling outside by now, and I was grateful for the refuge, if ashamed of myself. I sipped coffee (when I ordered it, the counter help repeated the order to one another at ear-splitting volume: 'Trippa latte! Hai! One trippa latte!'

I sat by the window, head pounding, smoking and sipping, summoning the courage for another pass at a soba joint. There was no way, I told myself, that I was gonna eat my first Tokyo meal in Starbucks! Pinned under the wheels of that hypothetical Mister Softee truck, I would have something to regret. Muttering to myself, I charged out of Starbucks, found the narrowest, most uninviting-looking street, pushed aside the banner of the first soba shop I encountered, slid back the door and plopped myself down on a stool. When greeted, I simply pointed a thumb at the guy next to me and said, 'Dozo. I'll have what he's having.' Things worked out well. I was soon slurping happily away at a big, steaming bowl of noodles, pork, rice and pickles. This method of ordering would become my modus operandi over the following days and nights. I can tell you that I felt a lot better about myself after my breakfast. I spent a few hours at the restaurant before hailing a cab for Chiyoda-ku district. I had an engagement.