hurried down to Chelsea.
Le Madri was, and remains, in my opinion, the very best of Pino's many
restaurants, a place designed around Pino's love for "Mama cooking",
meaning the Tuscan home cooking of his youth, as prepared at home by
mothers and grandmothers—coupled with the sort of cold-blooded
professional efficiency for which he is justifiably notorious. The chef,
Gianni Scappin, was a likeable, light-complected Italian who wore his
jacket buttoned all the way up, with a bone or ivory clasp around a very
proper little kerchief. He met with me in his downstairs office,
predisposed to like me, I think, by the excellent job that Rob was still
doing as his steward and purchaser. What Gianni wanted sounded
reasonable: show up six shifts a week, create some lunch specials, make
soup, do a little prep, keep an eye on the Ecuadorians, help out on the
line as needed—maybe expedite a bit—and one night a week, work the
sauté station. The money was good, and Gianni impressed me. The
kicker was his casual question, near the end of our interview, if I was
interested in becoming the executive chef at Coco Pazzo Teatro,
scheduled to open in a few weeks. "I don't want it," he said. "I'm too
busy."
Thus began my crash course in all things Tuscan.
A few hours earlier, I'd been lying dazed and hopeless in my unmade
bed, wondering whether to take another nap or call out for pizza. Now I
was the sous-chef at one of the best Italian restaurants in New York, with
an inside track—I was assured—to become the executive chef at Pino
Luongo's latest celeb-friendly restaurant in the ultra-cool, Philippe
Starck-designed, Schrager-owned hotel. It was a dazzling development.
And I was dazzled. Remember, I was not a fan of Italian food. But when
I arrived that first day at Le Madri, saw that the walk-ins were absolutely
empty, saw how tomato sauce, chicken stock, pasta, bread—in short,
everything—was made fresh (the tomato sauce from fresh, seeded,