How did I, a chef with limited Italian experience in my background, a
guy who up to now had sneered at Italian food, had even written a book
about a young Italian American chef who'd wanted nothing more than to
get away from the red sauce and garlic and Parmesan cheese of his
childhood and cook French, and was willing, ultimately, to betray his
own family rather than cook fried calamari—how did I end up as the
opening chef of Pino Luongo's newest, high-profile Tuscan venture?
I don't really know.
I was enjoying a period of unemployment after the moribund One Fifth
had finally succumbed—lying around my dusty apartment, watching
daytime TV, interrupting my pleasurable torpor occasionally to fax out
the occasional résumé or two—when my old crony, Rob Ruiz, another
Bigfoot protégé, called me.
"Tony! It's Elvis! [Bigfoot always called him Elvis] What are you doing?
I'm at Le Madri . . . They need a sous-chef? You should get down here
right away!"
"It's Italian," I said.
"Doesn't matter. Just get down here. Meet the chef! He wants to meet
you. Believe me—you'll like it!"
Now, I like Rob. He's a dyed-in-the-wool, bone-deep, old-school
sonofabitch—a guy who knows what's going on in every restaurant in
New York, who can call up just about any purveyor in New York and get
them to supply his restaurant with free stuff, cheaper stuff, better stuff,
and fast. He's a prodigious drinker, a funny guy, and generally he knows
a good thing when he sees it. We have a lot of history between us, all of
it good. I said, "Why not?" My schedule, after all, was pretty loose—if
you didn't count Rockford Files reruns at five and Simpsons at seven. I
managed to find some clean clothes, make myself look presentable, and