KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

(perfect absorption), feuille de brik for pastry, Provence honey for the duck sauce, white anchovies in ...

fills up and the customers stacked up at the bar start screaming for their tables, who's going to win the World ...

suppressed frustration, nervous energy, caffeine and alcohol. The night garde-manger man, Angel, who looks li ...

white copy for grill, yellow copy for sauté, pink copy for me, coffee orders for the busboys. My right h ...

cooking everything stone-rare, slicing and then coloring the slices under the salamander—something I hate to se ...

tomorrow, the soaking tarbais beans which have to be blanched, the salt- rubbed duck legs which will ha ...

have to call Steven. I'm still buzzed with adrenaline when I finally push through the last waiting custome ...

of clandestine services, a Bilko-esque character who, in addition to the usual sous-chef responsibilities ...

when I returned, I found a down-on-his luck Jimmy Sears in Bigfoot's kitchen. Bigfoot had been eating ...

Blue Room, which sat another eighty. It was a pretty swank place, what they used to call a "rug-joint" ...

by the Supper Club, little things like ordering, scheduling, rotating food and organizing menus were afterth ...

was getting paid, security would give him a cut of whatever drugs they impounded at the door, and the tec ...

sheets; sit-down meals for 300 would lead directly into four buffets and a cocktail reception for 700— ...

person who, when he says he's going to do a thing, does it. This, more than anything else, is ...

repair appliances, pick locks, jury-rig electrical power where there was none before, unclog a grease trap ...

roast beef on buffet one!" when none was needed, or creating national emergencies that would cause sec ...

I don't really know what happened to the Supper Club. The general manager, with whom I had a good ...

knocking off at Le Bernardin, who could keep it together, show up on time, keep their mouth shut, a ...

let things slide . . ." One Five tanked. The "entertainment" didn't help. We featured musical attractions so p ...

around the kitchen like some spastic breakdancer, taping over his sensitive nipples with Band-Aids (to avoi ...