and their anti-social tendencies. My love for chaos, conspiracy and the
dark side of human nature colors the behavior of my charges, most of
whom are already living near the fringes of acceptable conduct.
So, there are different kinds of kitchens than the kinds I run. Not all
kitchens are the press-gang-crewed pressure cookers I'm used to. There
are islands of reason and calm, where the pace is steady, where quality
always takes precedence over the demands of volume, and where it's not
always about dick dick dick.
As we close in on hotel-motel time, let's compare and contrast. Let's take
a look at a three-star chef who runs a very different kind of kitchen than
mine, who makes food at a higher level, has had a nearly unblemished
track record of working with the best in the business, a guy who has
always kept his eye on the ball—which is to say, the food. If I suffer by
comparison, so be it. I think I said earlier that I was going to tell you the
truth. This is part of it.
Scott Bryan, like me, happily refers to himself as a "marginal" character.
When he says "marginal", you can hear his hometown of Brookline,
Massachusetts, in his voice, the same accent you hear in body shops and
Irish bars in "Woostah", "New Bedfahd," "Glahsta," and Framingham.
Scott uses the term "dude" a lot, though, which leads one to believe there
might be surf in Boston. When I dropped by to see him recently, passing
first through his stylishly sparse sixty-five-seat dining room, past his
four sommeliers—count them, four—through a kitchen staffed by
serious-looking young Americans in buttoned-up Bragard jackets with
the Veritas logo stitched on their breasts and chefwear MC Hammer
pants, down a flight of stairs, I found him wrapping a howitzer-sized log
of foie gras in cheesecloth. He was wearing a short-sleeved dishwasher
shirt, snaps done up to the collar, Alice In Chains blaring in the
background. I took inordinate comfort from this, thinking, "I do that!
Maybe we're not so different!" But, of course, we are very different, as
you shall see.