side of the beef tenderloin. I peeled 75 pounds of shrimp at a clip, seared
Wellingtons, made chicken liver mousse (our version of foie gras), and
in the course of my labors as general dogsbody, got to know the far
recesses and dark corners of the vast Room facilities.
I also got to know the heavy hitters: the silent butcher and his assistant,
the mercurial baby-faced chef pâtissier, the doomed-looking night
saucier. And most memorably, Juan, the sixtyish day broiler man, a
fierce, trash-talking Basque who, I swear, I saw one time sewing up a
very bad knife wound on his hand—right on the line—with a sewing
needle and thread, muttering all the while, as he pushed through the flaps
of skin with the point, "I am a tough (skronk!) . . . mother fucker
(skronk!). I am a tough son of beetchl (skronk!). I am tough . . . mother
(skronk!) . . . fucker!" Juan was also famous for allegedly following up a
bad finger wound with a self-inflicted amputation. After catching a
finger in an oven door, he had consulted the union benefit list for amount
given for victims of "partial amputation", and decided to cash in by
lopping off the dangling portion. Whether this story was true or not
mattered little to me; it was entirely believable after getting to know
Juan. He may have been over sixty, but he lifted stockpots without help,
wielded the largest knife I'd ever seen, and generally kicked more ass
more quickly than any of the younger cooks.
There was a procession of Swiss, Austrian and American sous-chefs,
none of whom lasted for more than a few weeks. They were quickly
discouraged by our veteran crew from even attempting to impose order
or quality control or change of any kind. The lifers like Juan and Luis
would tell these eager young neophytes to go fuck themselves right to
their faces; the intractable underlings who looked to them as role models
would simply feign agreement and then do what they'd always done
anyway. Short of murder, you really couldn't be fired. One beefy German
sous-chef, after taking more than his share of lip from a lowly commis
named Mosquito, had the poor judgment to grab him by the throat, lift
him off the floor and shake him. The ensuing storm brought in the