even braised until tender, just poached grey with a few slices of onion—
accompanied by leftover pellets of gluey steam-table rice or two-day-old
pasta. There might be some inattentively chopped fried peppers and
onions if you were lucky. The Big Event was when one of the cooks was
allowed to thaw out a few boxes of freezer-burned sweet sausages,
lovingly referred to by the cooks as pingas. This was everybody's
favorite meal, and the excitement and enthusiasm with which my
comrades-in-arms scarfed these things down was truly tragic to watch.
Compared to Raft Day, however, the pingas were indeed a luxury. The
Room prep area always had three gigantic steam kettles filled with a
dark, all-purpose stock, simmering endlessly under a "raft" of ground
beef, meat scraps, chicken bones, turkey carcasses, the trimmings of
vegetables, carrot peelings and egg shells. When stuck for gruel, the
cooks would actually skim this floating compost off the surface, toss it
with a little tomato sauce and dead pasta and serve it to the inexplicably
grateful staff.
It was but one of many food crimes I witnessed and took part in during
my time at the Rainbow Room. During service, châteaubriands—big
hunks of beef tenderloin for two—if ordered well done, were routinely
thrown into the deep-fryer until crispy, then tossed into an oven to
incinerate further until pick up. Everything was seared off in advance.
When the expeditor called for the order, one simply heated the plate—
vegetable, garnish and all—under a salamander, drizzled a little sauce
over the item and sent it out to the unsuspecting rubes. Any magic I'd
imagined about a big-time fancy New York kitchen was replaced by a
grim pride in creative expediency and the technical satisfaction of being
fast enough to keep up, getting away with trickery, deception and
disguise. "An ounce of sauce covers a multitude of sins," as we used to
say.
I didn't care what atrocities we were inflicting on a credulous public,
lulled into docility by our spectacular view, our swank appointments, big
band and high prices. I was putting up serious numbers, and holding my