white copy for grill, yellow copy for sauté, pink copy for me, coffee
orders for the busboys. My right hand wipes plates, jams gaufrette
potatoes and rosemary springs into mashed potatoes, moves tickets from
the order to the fire positions, appetizers on order to appetizers out, I'm
yelling full-time now, trying to hold it together, keep an even pace. My
radar screen is filled with incoming bogeys and I'm shooting them down
as fast as I can. One mistake, where a whole table comes back because of
a prematurely fired dupe, or a bad combination of special requests ties
up a station for a few critical seconds, or a whole roasted fish or a côte
du boeuf has been forgotten? The whole line could come grinding to a
dead stop, like someone dropping a wrench into a GM assembly line—
utter meltdown, what every chef fears most. If something like that
happens it could blow the whole pace of the evening, screw up
everybody's heads, and create a deep, dark hole that could be very hard
to climb out of.
"I gotta hot nut for table six!" I yell. There's a rapidly cooling boudin in
the window, waiting for a tuna special to join it.
"Two minutes," says Isidoro.
"Where's that fucking confit?" I hiss at poor Angel, who's struggling
valiantly to make blini for smoked salmon, brown ravioli under the
salamander, lay out pâtés and do five endive salads at once. A hot
escargot explodes in the window, spattering me with boiling garlic butter
and snail guts. "Shit!" I say, dabbing my eye with a side-towel.
"Peenchayy escargots!"
Frank's doing well, very well, keeping up. He did his apprenticeship with
Robuchon, making food somewhat more elegant and delicately arranged
than our Les Halles' humble workingman's fare, so it's a nice surprise
that he's turned out to be such a line stud, cheerfully cranking out simple
brasserie chow with speed and efficiency. He doesn't over-rely on the
salamander, which I like (a lot of his French predecessors insist on