around the kitchen like some spastic breakdancer, taping over his
sensitive nipples with Band-Aids (to avoid chafe, he insists), powdering
his balls on the line with cornstarch, and showing anyone who's
interested his latest cold sore, the boil on his ass, an incipient zit. He
truly loves the technical aspects of cooking, works fast, clean, and makes
pretty plates. He likes to step into other stations when other cooks get in
the weeds, chiding them in his horrible Spanish. He loves dishwashing
when not busy on his station, finds no task too low or too demeaning to
take an interest and help. He's a remarkably thoughtful guy—mention
you like gummy bears and Steven will show up the next day with a bag.
If he stops off at a burger stand for a mayo and mustard and ketchup-
slathered grease-burger for breakfast, he'll bring a couple extra so
everyone can have some. Alone among cooks I've met, he actually
enjoys cooking for the floor staff, insisting on making them food that's
actually edible. He jokes around with the waiters, managers, flirts with
any woman, no matter her age, rank, background, and amazingly, they
seem to like it. Mexican cooks I worked with for a year without hearing
them peep a single word in English or Spanish were chattering happily
away with Steven after only a few hours of meeting him. "Chuletita
loca", they call him, "crazy little pork chop".
He has a tattoo of a cartoon cat wearing a chef's toque on his crotch, and
he's all too ready to drop his pants should you express interest in seeing
it. In hot months, he works in sandals, no socks, the cuffs of his checks
rolled up like clam-diggers (a daring fashion statement in a kitchen,
where a dropped knife or spilled duck fat can be a career ender). He
wears, with defiantly prole-pride, a dishwasher's snap-front short-sleeve
shirt, shunning the traditional chef's jacket. He refuses to wear an apron.
He eats his meals smashed together in bite-sized chunks—meat, starch
and vegetable mixed into an ugly but apparently edible slurry—and he's
always trying out new flavor combinations. Middle of the rush, Steven is
holding down his end brilliantly and, somehow, making little potato
crisp and caviar snackies for the other cooks to try. There's always