KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Garland pull-out broiler, a few more burners, and finally a brick hearth for charcoal grilling, all of t ...

dishwasher, that concealed the stacked trash and cans of edible waste the restaurant sold to a pig farm ...

mainly as cat-food, or to canneries, and to a few enterprising Japanese who were thought to "confuse things" ...

each night, than almost anyone else in town. It was fairly sophisticated stuff for the time: whole legs ...

would ask casually, Four-fifty? Five?" "Six, I think," Dimitri, the Mario pasta man, would reply—a man who w ...

slightly tough local clam. Once each summer, Howard and friends—mostly artists, local fishermen, writers and ...

suddenly to spy thousands of tiny baitfish breaking the surface, rushing frantically toward shore. He knew ...

and crab-shacks in Key West. After Labor Day, I got my chance to move up for the last few weeks before the ...

on every available horizontal surface, banging on veal cutlets for scallopine with heavy steel mallets. ...

stockpiling of favorite pans, ice, extra pots of boiling water, back-up supplies of everything. They were ...

shocked and transferred in huge batches into steaming colanders, falling everywhere, the floor soon ankle-deep ...

moved it over to the cutting board, and set it down in front of me. He never flinched. The other cooks ch ...

myself to gaining entry to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. My Vassar friends—those ...

and sheer. I was older than most of my fellow students, many of whom were away from home for the ...

instructors given me a pat-down before class they might have learned my secret: two glassine envelopes o ...

They'd let us practice our knife work on whole legs of beef, my novice butcher class-mates and I absolutel ...

teaching us the fundamentals of both Chinese and Japanese cooking. The Chinese portion of the class was terr ...

advance. Here, classic French food was served à la carte, finished and served off gueridons by amusingly ...

toilette each morning! You are deezgusting! A shoe-maker! You have destroyed my life! . . . You will ...

the right things, "Oui, Chef! Non, Chef!" at all the right moments, and showing the right respect, but he ...