KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

upgraded; steakhouses were notoriously lax in their specials and seafood offerings. There was plenty about this ...

résumés in front of them. A bushy-browed maître d' ushered me to a bar, where I recognized immediately tha ...

hand through mousse-stiffened hair and strode confidently to the interview table. Firm handshakes all around, ...

had all the answers. No matter what they threw at me, I was ready. "What kind of hours would you expec ...

goddamn right I could do the job! I could train a schnauzer to knock out a few hundred broiled steaks ...

me?" This was tough one. The man had seemed strictly business the whole time so far. What kind of a ...

The fact was, though, I'd never heard of this guy before walking in the door. Not a thing. Sure, he got ...

reasonable question for the owner of a very successful steak-house. He'd asked me "WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABO ...

How did I, a chef with limited Italian experience in my background, a guy who up to now had sneered at Italian fo ...

hurried down to Chelsea. Le Madri was, and remains, in my opinion, the very best of Pino's many restau ...

peeled tomatoes), I was stunned. Meat, fish and produce deliveries arrived and the cooks would fall on them ...

way to make a truly excellent and occasionally wondrous product. Homey, peasant dishes like Tuscan bread ...

We met at Le Madri and went over my résumé—thankfully without too much scrutiny. Pino is one of those ...

An announcement was made in the New York Times. I was introduced to the company publicist, asked to provide a ...

at Le Madri, had taken one look at my chef de cuisine, shaken his head and warned, "Watch out for dees guy ...

knuckleheads over the years. Here was a guy who only a few years earlier had been a busboy, speaking on ...

course, that many of these cooks wouldn't work out, that we'd actually need more like forty ...

the inner sanctum, for a private and serious discussion with the ultimate leader. I stood up, puzzled, and lef ...

I was thinking in Pino's dimly lit private office was that my Great Opportunity was slipping away fast—and ...

was already on the verge of cracking under the pressure. "They don't respect me," he complained of the Ecuado ...