Jeremy talked to Fabrek for a long time on the phone before convincing him to come downtown. He was trying to sell Fabrek, something he hadn’t done before. Sketching plans and envisioning opportunity. “Hey, I’m flattered,” Fabrek said. “But I’m busy, there’s this new project.”
“The Gorilla Grill?” Jeremy said. It didn’t sound terribly promising.
“Guerrilla,” Fabrek said. “As in: Name a spot, any spot, we’ll do the rest. Six people to six hundred. Booze and extras included.”
“So, like, totally illegal,” Jeremy said.
“So, like, yeah,” Fabrek said. But the money was good and they got all kinds of strange gigs. Techno all-nighters. Jungle parties. Yuppie Polynesian lounge nights with whole spit-roasted pigs. The weekend before, Fabrek had been on Gambier Island at a field party for 350 vegan animists.
“How about getting busted?” Jeremy asked.
Fabrek made a dismissive noise into the phone. But he agreed to meet for a coffee.
Now Jeremy was looking out the window of the Rotterdammer Café, half a block down the street from the papered-over windows of Gerriamo’s. Stroking his chin, newly shaven as of that afternoon. It was just nightfall, and the cloud cover had split a seam at the horizon. There was now an orange glow from the west. And this light steadily intensified as darkness descended from the east, blooming upward, refracting, illuminating the clouds from beneath, doming out over the park and the city like the light of a great fire.
Jeremy got to his feet and leaned through the open window of the café. There was a new breeze too. Cold. Salty. It shocked his face and moved his hair.
Fabrek was reclining in the overstuffed couch near the front window. He had a dubious expression as he slowly turned the pages of the menu. A Benny design. Dante loved it. It was a thin cardboard book, the cover divided into four
equal blocks of solid colour—olive, black, silver and blood—complementing the room without repeating any tones. It was bound with a white silk rope, tasselled. Inside were four plain, heavy paper pages, the outside edges microscopically gilded. Two pages of food. Two of wine. It was the most elegant menu Jeremy had ever seen.
Fabrek finished and closed the cover with exaggerated care, slid it onto the table in front of him. “I used to make falafels,” he announced.
“You had a grill.” Jeremy said, sitting opposite his friend.
“You made keftes, chicken kebabs, chicken breast sandwiches.…”
“Only thing I see on here that’s grilled …,” Fabrek said, picking up the menu and running a finger down the inside page. “Whazzit: beet-marinated goose breast?”
“So we grill a goose breast. You went to school somewhere.”
“No,” Fabrek said, mouth bending into a smirk. “I was taught by my baba. She had a Hibachi on the fire escape outside the window of her apartment. She made dinner there every summer night and I don’t think she ever put beet juice on a goose.”
Jeremy put his palms together, elbows on his knees.
“Where do you buy foie gras anyway?” Fabrek asked.
“This gig is real,” Jeremy said. “You could make some money. The opening is going to be special, but if you handle it right it could be a full-time thing. A reputation, a real career. I was thinking of it like a favour.”
“Thanks,” Fabrek said. “But there’s gotta be five dozen apprentices who would jump at this chance.”
“I also need special people,” Jeremy said. “People I know.”
“What’s that mean?”
“People I know,” Jeremy said. “People who might be prepared to try things a little differently. I don’t need fifteen years’ experience or anything, just come ready to train.”
Fabrek leaned into the window and looked up the street at the front of Gerriamo’s. The front awning had been replaced with a longer black one that stretched from the now double doors right out to curbside. On opening night, the tuxedoed valet parkers would stand here on a blood-red runner and make everybody feel like they were attending the Oscars.
Fabrek shook his head. “It’s not me,” he said. “I’m not
inside
a place like that. I’m cooking on a Hibachi on a fire escape somewhere. You understand?”
Jeremy leaned back in his chair, disappointed.
“But I came down tonight,” Fabrek said finally, “because I do know people. Better-suited people. There are these cooking-school kids. They’re off until the spring semester, so they’ll work.”
“What year school?” Jeremy asked.
“You just said they didn’t need to be trained.”
“How untrained?” Jeremy asked.
“Pretty raw,” said Fabrek. “But they roast a decent pig. I know this for a fact.”
They walked together around the corner into Hastings Street, Jeremy’s turn to be dubious. Half a block away he saw them right where Fabrek said they’d be hanging, at the window tables of Juize ’n’ Bluntz. Jeremy had probably walked past them a hundred times. Half a dozen kids in Prada Sport gear and L.A. Eyeworks sunglasses with coloured glass, light blue, khaki, orange, sea-foam green.
Jeremy spotted Henk, whom Fabrek had earlier described. Skinny, with a poofy, natural-red afro. He had a black V-neck shell pulled over an orange T-shirt. He sported a thin gold chain with a tiny eggbeater charm. Timberlands.
“Whassup,” Henk said, passing off a joint to a colleague and flopping out a hand to shake, wrist cocked, fingers splayed downward. He spoke very slowly. The leader.
Fabrek shook.
Henk greeted Jeremy the same way, then back to Fabrek: “You workin’?”
“I’m working,” Fabrek said.
“You got something for us?” He was still talking to Fabrek, but looking curiously at Jeremy.
Jeremy wondered if Henk had picked him as a roast-pig guy or an all-night vegan jungle party kind of guy.
“It’s different,” Fabrek said. “This guy here’s a chef.” Yes, a real executive chef, he explained.
It got their attention. Jeremy was able to observe one of the anomalies of kitchen culture: how working-class kids with born attitude (but who seriously wanted to cook) would sit a bit straighter and even talk nice if they knew they were speaking to an executive chef.
Henk made a very small motion with his hand and his buddy stubbed out the joint. “Are you hiring?” he said. “Chef?”
Fabrek had to go. “Have fun,” he said, shaking with Henk and Jeremy again.
“Take care,” Jeremy said. “Keep in touch.”
“Oh, I’m around,” Fabrek answered. “You take care too.”
Jeremy had a coffee with the crew, then took them 0around the corner to Gerriamo’s. They fell in behind him in a ragged line across the sidewalk and out into the street. They looked like an album cover, all slope-shouldered, sole-scuffing ennui. Henk, Torkil, Angela, Conrad, Rolando and a thick-necked kid with a single black eyebrow visible under the rim of a battered straw hat, who introduced himself by his full name: Joey de Yonker. He was a part-time DJ.
“Joey, OK?” Jeremy said, unlocking the alley door.
The group fell silent behind him. Jeremy turned. “All right,” he said. “Joey de Yonker.”
They went inside. The kids fanned out around the room, looking, touching, the cool perfection of this kitchen with all its brand new top-end gear slowly sinking in.
“Jayzuz,” Rolando said, peering down the gleaming length of the bridge, a long hand to the point of his chin.
Torkil was inspecting the front of the RapidAir, nodding. He looked to be taking mental notes, which Jeremy imagined were instantly memorized.
Angela and Conrad were looking at the Metro shelving full of Bourgeat copper. They were breathing through their mouths, necks craned back. Conrad had to be told to remove his sunglasses indoors. He wore beach slippers and boasted finely chiselled facial architecture. Angela had soft, spoiled but intelligent features framed in blond.
“Whoa,” came a voice from the end of the room. Joey de Yonker was grooving on the dish pit.
Jeremy let them poke around for awhile before calling them together again in a way that brought Quartey to mind. A chefly command issued from the middle of a large kitchen. “All right everyone,” Jeremy called. “Listen up.”
They had fun that first night. They discussed the possibilities. They considered the future.
Jeremy took them up front, and the kids walked gingerly around, looking up at the high walls and the arched ceiling like travellers at the Basilica of St. Peter. Torkil went behind the bar and ran his hands along the wood. Angela, Conrad and Rolando were inspecting a panel of Nygoyen’s. Joey, who Jeremy had just decided had to be called something other than Joey de Yonker but hadn’t thought of what yet, stood adrift in front of the Lukacs.
Henk stood back by Jeremy, arms crossed, nodding. “Nice space,” he said. “Very nice.”
Back in the kitchen, Jeremy walked them through stations. They talked about school. They’d done Basic Skills. They knew measurements and knife work. Product ID. Sanitation and Meat Fab. They’d done vegetables, stocks and some sauces. They knew that you didn’t sear meat to keep in the juices.
“Whut? Naaah,” Angela said when Jeremy suggested it to test them. “It’s for colour and for flavour. For caramelization.”
The group was nodding, looking at him.
“OK,” Jeremy said. “So you knew that.”
They talked about the Guerrilla Grill. Mention of it produced sly smiles and sideways glances. Jeremy sensed how delicious the secret was to them.
He learned that Fabrek had alt.celebrity status in the crowd that knew, which at their school was essentially this crowd. Henk had met Fabrek first, at a Dead concert (this event predated the Fabrek’s Falafels by a few years). He’d been making portobello mushroom-cap burgers on a Weber kettle set up in the back of his Toyota pickup truck. There was a huge line up, over the heads of which Henk saw this crazed, bald Iranian dancing around in the back of his vehicle, bootleg tapes blaring in the background. And then the burger itself … heaven. The mushroom cap was juicy and hot, rich and complexly flavoured. When the crowd thinned, he went back to the truck and struck up a conversation. Fabrek told him how to make the marinade. (He still remembered: olive oil, balsamic vinegar, minced shallots, parsley, garlic, cumin, mustard powder and cayenne.) The underground economy flourished outside Dead gigs, naturally, but Henk was still impressed.
He told Jeremy how it helped him make up his mind about cooking as a career. “I was going that way,” he said. “I just didn’t know there could be such individualism involved, such an element of performance. I thought kitchens had to be, you know, straight ahead. Fabrek was a
show.”
The rest of the group agreed. They talked more about performance, saying something individual with your cooking. When the Guerrilla Grill came along they all jumped at the chance. Fabrek had been openly skeptical when Henk showed up with his list of six names. They were kids, Fabrek said. They hadn’t graduated Basic Skills I.
“This from a guy who never went to school,” Conrad said.
“Anyway,” Henk said, looking over at Conrad. “He did start feeding us a little work.”
They drove the van. They carried gear into the bush. Eventually Fabrek let them set up the fire pit and tend the pig.
“Showtime,” Joey de Yonker said.
They talked about their futures, what they all wanted to do. No surprise to Jeremy by this point that every one of them wanted to start their own place one day. Their own show. In some cases, possibly unrealistic.
Joey de Yonker had a named picked out: The Garage. He thought he wanted to involve a lot of kinetic sculpture. “Metals,” he said. “Blow torches.”
Torkil was the group baker. He was already selling small-scale to friends and family. He shrugged. Humble. “Chai-thyme rye,” Henk said, next to Jeremy. “Stuff rocks.”
Angela’s idea was Grazer, a high-concept tapas Web bar. Satay, tofu spears, samosas and slivers of super-fusion designer pizza. Caviar and quail’s egg was mentioned. The Web part centred on the stand-up tables with shelves for tapas dishes and pop-up, active-matrix, flat screens. Waterproof touch-pad keyboards. The browser favourites file would have links to sites all over the Net, providing background on ingredients. And their own website, naturally.
“Browse the tapas, graze the Web,” Angela said. Conrad and Rolando were looking at her very seriously, admiringly.
“Henk?” Jeremy asked.
Henk was thinking about high-end panini street carts. Brie-onion, tomato-chevre. Squashed flat in a two-sided griddle and eaten out of a waxed-paper sleeve while you strolled. A once-humble idea from the Rue Mouftarde, although what Henk was imagining for Canada was more like a panini revolution. Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Halifax. Big Time. “Nothing wrong with getting smokin’ good food off a street cart,” he said, very slowly.
Jeremy told them as much as he could about how the
following weeks would unfold. He could pay them for the three-week training period. He could pay them for opening night, which was going to be a very large, very splashy affair. “We’ll be running the kitchen a little hot that night,” Jeremy told them. “That’s why I’m bringing you all in. But for some of you it could turn into a full-time thing.”
They had a glass of Tempranillo to end the evening. They swilled the pleasant wine and talked more freely. Jeremy listened and appraised, already slotting them into stations based on skill and personality.
“We’ll bring in a dish pit operator, of course,” Jeremy said.
Joey de Yonker looked vaguely disappointed.
At about eleven, when they were gone, he cleaned up and took a last look around. The glasses had run through the dish pit already and were standing in the dryer. The wine bottle was in the recycling rack. The coolers hummed and the floors shone. The knife rack was a phalanx of sharp points, hanging and ready. In the centre, the ageless Fugami. He thought of how he could have used the Sabatier now. The Fugami was here; it
was
this kitchen. The Sabatier might have balanced feelings in him, events he saw upcoming, the same way it would have balanced in his hand.
He pushed his mind to other things. He locked the back door behind him and stepped outside. It was black in the alley, the cloud cover having recapped the sky. It was colder than before. He blew in his hands and turned uptown, ready to walk home and sleep if he could. Pace otherwise. Stare out the window over the blackness of the park and think.