on every available horizontal surface, banging on veal cutlets for
scallopine with heavy steel mallets. The testosterone level was high,
very high. These guys were the A-Team, and they knew it. Everybody
knew it. The floor staff, the managers, even Mario seemed to walk on
eggs around them, as if one of them would suddenly lunge through the
bars of their cage and take a jagged bite. I alone was too stupid to see
how over my head I was among these magnificent cooking machines. I'd
served a few hundred meals, at a relaxed pace, in a not very busy joint, in
the off-season. These guys drilled out four, five, six hundred fast-paced,
high-end meals a night!
It was Friday, an hour before service, when I was introduced to Tyrone
the broiler man, whom I'd be trailing. Looking back, I can't remember
Tyrone as being anything less than 8 feet tall, 400 pounds of carved
obsidian, with a shaved head, a prominent silver-capped front tooth, and
the ubiquitous fist-sized gold hoop earring. While his true dimensions
were probably considerably more modest, you get the picture: he was
big, black, hugely muscled, his size 56 chef's coat stretched across his
back like a drumhead. He was a gargantua, a black Viking, Conan the
Barbarian, John Wayne and the Golem all rolled into one. But
unintimidated as only the ignorant can be, I started shooting my stupid
mouth off right away, regaling my new chums with highly exaggerated
versions of my adventures at the old Dreadnaught—what bad boys we
had been. I blathered on about New York, trying to portray myself as
some street-smart, experienced, even slightly dangerous professional
gun-for-hire of the cooking biz.
They were, to be charitable to myself, not impressed. Not that this
deterred me in the slightest from yapping on and on. I ignored all the
signs. All of them: the rolling eyes, the tight smiles. I plunged on,
oblivious to what was happening in the kitchen right around me; the
monstrous amounts of food being loaded into low-boys and reach-ins for
mise-en-place. I missed the determined sharpening of knives, the careful
arranging and folding of side towels in kitty-cornered stacks, the