watching the tube, and half-listening to Nancy, I'm fine-tuning the
specials in my head: grill station will be too busy for any elaborate
presentations or a special with too many pans involved, so I need
something quick, simple and easily plated—and something that will be
popular with the weekend rubes. The people coming to dinner tonight
and Saturday night are different from the ones who eat at my restaurant
during the week, and I have to take this into account. Saddle of wild hare
stuffed with foie gras is not a good weekend special, for instance. Fish
with names unrecognizable to the greater part of the general public won't
sell. The weekend is a time for buzzwords: items like shrimp, lobster, T-
bone, crab-meat, tuna and swordfish. Fortunately, I've got some hamachi
tuna coming in, always a crowd-pleaser.
As I walk up to Broadway and climb into a taxi, I'm thinking grilled tuna
livornaise with roasted potatoes and grilled asparagus for fish special.
My overworked grill man can heat the already cooked-off spuds and the
pre-blanched asparagus on a sizzle-platter during service, the tuna will
get a quick walk across the grill, so all he has to do is heat the sauce to
order. That takes care of fish special. Appetizer special will be cockles
steamed with chorizo, leek, tomato and white wine—a one-pan wonder;
my garde-manger man can plate salads, rillettes, ravioli, confits de
canard while the cockle special steams happily away on a back burner.
Meat special is problematic. I ran the ever-popular T-bone last week—
two weeks in row would threaten the French theme, and I run about a 50
percent food cost on the massive hunks of expensive beef. Tuna is
already coming off the grill, so the meat special has got to go to the
sauté station. My sous-chef, who's working sauté tonight, will already
have an enormous amount of mise-en-place to contend with, struggling
to retrieve all the garnishes and prep from an already crowded low-boy
reach-in—just to keep up with the requirements of the regular menu. At
any one time, he has to expect and be ready for orders for moules
marinières, boudin noir with caramelized apples, navarin of lamb (with
an appalling array of garnishes: baby carrots, pearled onions, niçoise