Kitchen Confidential

  Our sakes were refilled, the chef openly smiling now. These crazy gaijin wanted it all, baby! The best course yet arrived: a quickly grilled, halved fish head. The chef watched us, curious, I imagine, to see how we'd deal with this new development.

  It was unbelievable: every crevice, every scrap of this sweet, delicate dorade or Chilean pompano (I didn't know from lookingat the partly charred face, and by now didn't much care) had responded differently to the heat of the grill. From the fully cooked remnant of body behind the head to the crispy skin and cartilage, the tender, translucently rare cheeks, it was a mosaic of distinct flavors and textures. And the eye! Oh, yeah! We dug out the orbs, slurped down the gelatinous matter behind it, deep in the socket, we gnawed the eyeball down to a hard white core. When we were done with this collage of good stuff, when we'd fully picked over every tiny flake and scrap, there was nothing left but teeth and a few bones. Were we finished? No way!

  More sashimi, more sushi, some tiger shrimp, what looked like herring - so fresh it crunched. I didn't care what they put in front of me any more, I trusted the smiling chef and his crew, I was going along for the full ride. More frozen sake . . . more food. The last few customers got up and lurched to the door like us, red-faced and perspiring from the booze. We continued. There had to be something we hadn't tried yet! I was beginning to think that some of the cooks were calling their homes by now, telling their families get in here and get a load of these gaijins!! They're eating everything in the store!

  After course twenty or so, the chef slit, brushed, dabbed and formed the final course: a piece of raw sea eel. Earthenware cups of green tea were delivered. Finally, we were done.

  We left to the usual bows and screams of 'Arigato gozaima-shiTAAA!!!' and picked our way carefully, very carefully, up the stairs, back to the physical world.

  I left Philippe at Les Halles, had a couple of cocktails at an empty faux-Irish pub and staggered back to my apartment. I had to get up early for the fish market.

  Tsukiji, Tokyo's central fish market, puts New York's Fulton Street to shame. It's bigger, better, and unlike its counterpart in Manhattan a destination worth visiting if only to gape.

  I arrived by taxi at four-thirty in the morning. The colors of the market alone seemed to burn my retinas. The variety, the strangeness, the sheer volume of seafood available at Tsukiji amounted to a colossal Terrordome of mind-boggling dimensions. The simple awareness that the seafood-crazy Japanese were raking, dredging, netting and hooking that much stuff out of the sea each day gave me pause.

  A Himalayan-sized mountain of discarded styrofoam fish boxes announced my arrival, as well as a surrounding rabbit warren of shops, breakfast joints and merchants servicing the market. The market itself was enclosed, stretching seemingly into infinity under a hangar-type roof, and I will tell you that my life as a chef will never be the same again after spending the morning - and subsequent mornings - there. Scallops in snowshoe-sized black shells lay atop crushed ice, fish, still flopping, twitching and struggling in pans of water, spitting at me as I walked down the first of many narrow corridors between the vendors' stands. Things were different here in that the Japanese market, workers had no compunction about looking you in the eye, even nudging you out of the way. They were busy, space was limited, and moving product around, in between sellers, buyers, dangerously careening forklifts, gawking tourists and about a million tons of seafood was tough. The scene was riotous: eels, pinned to boards by a spike through the head, were filleted alive, workers cut loins of tuna off the bone in two-man teams, lopping off perfect hunks with truly terrifying-looking swords and saws which, mishandled, could easily have halved their partners. Periwinkles, cockles, encyclopedic selections of roes - salted, pickled, cured and fresh - were everywhere, fish still bent from rigor mortis, porgy, sardines, swordfish, abalone, spiny lobsters, giant lobsters, blowfish, bonito, bluefin, yellowfin. Tuna was sold like gems - displayed in light-boxes and illuminated from below, little labels indicating grade and price. Tuna was king. There was fresh, dried, cut, number one, number two, vendors who specialized in the less lovely bits. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of gigantic bluefin and bonito, blast-frozen on faraway factory ships. Frost-covered 200-300-pounders were stacked everywhere, like stone figures on Easter Island, a single slice taken from near the tail so quality could be examined. They were laid out in rows, built up into heaps, sawed into redwood-like sections, still frozen, hauled about on forklifts. There were sea urchins, egg sacs, fish from all over the world. Giant squid as long as an arm and baby squid the size of a thumbnail shared space with whitebait, smelts, what looked like worms, slugs, snails, crabs, mussels, shrimp and everything else that grew, swam, skittered, clawed, crawled, snaked or clung near the ocean floor.

  Unlike the low-tide reek of Fulton, Tsukiji smelled hardly at all. What scent it had was not of fish, but of seawater and the cigarettes of the fishmongers, I had never seen, or even imagined, many of the creatures I saw.

  Hungry, I pushed into a nearby stall, the Japanese version of Rosie's diner: a place packed with rubber-booted market worker seating breakfast. The signs were entirely in Japanese, with no helpful pictures, but a friendly fishmonger took charge. What arrived was, of course, flawless. Here I was in the Tokyo version of a greasy spoon, surrounded by a mob of tough-looking bastards in dripping boots and the requisite New York-style rude waitress, and the food was on a par with the best of my hometown: fresh, clean, beautifully, if simply, presented. Soon, I was wolfing down sushi, miso soup, a tail section of braised fish in sauce, and an impressive array of pickles. Beats two eggs over.

  I loaded up with cockles and squid for the restaurant, bought some knives for my sous-chef back in New York and, head aching, stopped off at Akasuka Temple where the ailing apparently waft incense smoke over their afflicted parts. The smoke did nothing for my head. I bought aspirin - which incongruously came with free candy and pamphlets advertising patent medicines- and took a taxi to Kappabashi, Tokyo's Bowery.

  It was the perfect metaphor for Tokyo: ringing up some wine glasses, cocktail shakers, tablecloth clips and cake molds, the clerk at the restaurant supply store added up my bill on an abacus - but computed the tax on a calculator.

  I was really beginning to worry about my head when I finally bumped into Philippe again at the restaurant. Can this still be jet lag, I asked him. The pain seemed to be aspirin-proof. Am I dying?

  'Oh, you mean "the helmut"?' he asked, circling his own head with his fingers to indicate the exact location of the pain. He shrugged, 'C'est normal.'

  It's never a good thing when a Frenchman says 'C'est normal.'

  I knew he'd been up early too; I'd heard him knocking around his room as I left for the fish market. Here it was, seven at night, as usual I was starting to fade, my English degenerating into monosyllables, experiencing hot flashes, sweats, and chills. I asked Philippe, hopefully, if he'd had a nap since the morning. He looked so damn fresh, crisp and debonair in a smartly cut suit, positively rosy-cheeked, and in the middle of some Byzantine accounting and scheduling problem which would have caused me difficulty when my faculties were at their peak.

  'Oh, no,' he said, cheerfully. 'When I am in Tokyo I don't sleep much. I just take my vitamins and go.'

  The following night was my last in Tokyo. Philippe took me out to a shabu-shabu joint in Shibuya, Tokyo's Times Square. It was Friday night and all the painstakingly observed customs and practices of the workday went out the window. The streets were packed with herds of insanely drunk businessmen and teenagers. In Tokyo, it's apparently okay, even de rigueur, to go out with the boss and the boys from the office and get completely, stuttering, out-of-control drunk. In such circumstances, after a night of drinking and karaoke, it's okay to vomit on your boss's shoes, take a swing at him, call him an asshole. He'll probably throw you over his shoulders and carry you home. Everybody was drunk. Everywhere, lovely young women brushed the hair out of their violently heaving boyfriends' faces as they leaned on all-fours into t
he gutters. Suit-and-tied salary-men projectile vomited, lurched, sang, caroused and staggered like bumper cars down the humanity-clogged streets. Mobs of people surged in never-ending waves toward Shibuya station to meet friends and lovers by the statue of a dog. The dog, it was explained to me, had continued to show up every day at the station, long after its master had died. That kind of dedication impresses the Japanese and a statue was erected in the pooch's honor; it's one of the most popular meeting places in the city. Nearby the narrow, neon-lit streets swam with, more nightclubs, bars, restaurants, screaming, building-high video screens whose exhortations made my molars shake like tuning forks.

  We found a shabu-shabu joint, a crowded tatami room where there were no other Westerners, and managed to contort our limbs under and around the low table. A big wok filled with broth was heated up for us, and a uniformed attendant arrived with an Everest-high heap of meat, vegetables, seafood and noodles. We kicked off the meal with hot sake, heated with grilled fish bones. The fish oil that collected on the top was ignited before drinking, and the flavor was heavily aromatic, with fumes that seemed to penetrate brain tissue immediately. Item by item, according to cooking time, the food was added to the oil - like a giant fondue. When everything had been deposited into the wok, we were left to our own devices, save frequent refills of chilled sake.

  I did not want to leave. I had only begun to eat. There were a million restaurants, bars, temples, back alleys, nightclubs, neighborhoods and markets to explore. Fully feeling the effects of the sake, I was seriously considering burning my passport, trading my jeans and leather jacket for a dirty seersucker suit and disappearing into the exotic East. This . . . this was excitement, romance, adventure - and there was so much more of it, too much more of it for even another month, another year, another decade to adequately contain my investigations. I knew I could live here now. I'd learned a few things, not much, but enough to negotiate traffic, feed myself, get drunk, get around town. I pictured myself as a character like Greene's Scobie in Africa, or the narrator of The Quiet American in Saigon, even Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, my head swimming with all sorts of romantically squalid notions. At two o'clock in the morning, the streets still swarming with young Japanese in American sports cars, girls sitting on the back of convertibles, gangsters and whores emerging from nightclubs, moving on to the next place, shirtless gaijins howling at the moon from upstairs whorehouses, I staggered down dark back streets, hit some more bars and, finding myself incongruously hungry again, and wanting to soak up some of the sea of alcohol in my stomach, committed the ultimate in Tokyo faux pas - I ate a McDonald's hamburger while I walked. The trains shut down at eleven-thirty, and most of Tokyo, it seemed, preferred to stay out all night to taking a taxi. One could, Philippe had explained before leaving me off at Roppongi Crossing, borrow money to get home from almost any policeman if drunk and unexpectedly short of funds. The idea of not returning the next day to repay the debt was, in typically Japanese thinking, unthinkable.

  I walked, unsteadily, for hours, stopped off for a final drink, managed, somehow, to get back to my apartment and call Nancy.

  She'd laid on some fresh bialys from Columbia Bagels, and some Krispy Kreme donuts for my return. I began packing.

  SO YOU WANT TO BE A CHEF?

  A COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS

  FOR CULINARY STUDENTS, LINE cooks looking to move up in the world, newcomers to the business - and the otherwise unemployables who make up so much of our workforce - I have a few nuggets of advice, the boiled-down wisdom of twenty-five years of doing right and doing wrong in the restaurant industry.

  For the growing number of people who are considering becoming a professional chef as a second career I have some advice, too. In fact, let's dispose of you first:

  So you want to be a chef? You really, really, really want to be a chef? If you've been working in another line of business, have been accustomed to working eight-to-nine-hour days, weekends and evenings off, holidays with the family, regular sex with your significant other; if you are used to being treated with some modicum of dignity, spoken to and interacted with as a human being, seen as an equal - a sensitive, multidimensional entity with hopes, dreams, aspirations and opinions, the sort of qualities you'd expect of most working persons - then maybe you should reconsider what you'll be facing when you graduate from whatever six-month course put this nonsense in your head to start with.

  I wasn't kidding when I said earlier that, at least in the beginning, you have no rights, are not entitled to an opinion or a personality, and can fully expect to be treated as cattle only less useful. Believe it. I wish I had a dollar for every well-meaning career changer who attended a six-month course and showed up to be an extern in my kitchen. More often than not, one look at what they would really be spending their first few months doing, one look at what their schedule would be, and they ran away in terror.

  To those serious ones who know what it is they are entering, who are fully prepared, ready, willing and able, and committed to a career path like, say, Scott Bryan's - who want to be chefs, must be chefs, whatever the personal costs and physical demands - then I have this to say to you:

  Welcome to my world!

  And consider these suggestions as to your conduct, attitude and preparation for the path you intend to follow.

  1. Be fully committed. Don't be a fence-sitter or a waffler. If you're going to be a chef some day, be sure about it, single-minded in your determination to achieve victory at all costs. If you think you might find yourself standing in a cellar prep kitchen one day, after tourneeing 200 potatoes, wondering if you made the right move, or some busy night on a grill station, find yourself doubting the wisdom of your chosen path, then you will be a liability to yourself and others. You are, for all intents and purposes, entering the military. Ready yourself to follow orders, give orders when necessary, and live with the outcome of those orders without complaint. Be ready to lead, follow, or get out of the way.

  2. Learn Spanish! I can't stress this enough. Much of the workforce in the industry you are about to enter is Spanish-speaking. The very backbone of the industry, whether you like it or not, is inexpensive Mexican, Dominican, Salvadorian and Ecuadorian labor - most of whom could cook you under the table without breaking a sweat. If you can't communicate, develop relationships, understand instructions and pass them along, then you are at a tremendous disadvantage.

  Should you become a leader, Spanish is absolutely essential. Also, learn as much as you can about the distinct cultures, histories and geographies of Mexico, El Salvador, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic. A cook from Puebla is different in background from a cook from Mexico City. Someone who fled El Salvador to get away from the Mano Blanco is not likely to get along with the right-wing Cuban working next to him. These are your co-workers, your friends, the people you will be counting on, leaning on for much of your career, and they in turn will be looking to you to hold up your end. Show them some respect by bothering to know them. Learn their language. Eat their food. It will be personally rewarding and professionally invaluable.

  3. Don't steal. In fact, don't do anything that you couldn't take a polygraph test over. If you're a chef who drinks too many freebies at the bar, takes home the occasional steak for the wife, or smokes Hawaiian bud in the off hours, be fully prepared to admit this unapologetically to any and all. Presumably, your idiosyncrasies will - on balance - make you no less a chef to your employers and employees. If you're a sneak and a liar, however, it will follow you forever. This is a small business; everybody knows everybody else. You will do yourself immeasurable harm.

  Don't ever take kickbacks or bribes from a purveyor. They'll end up owning you, and you will have sold off your best assets as a chef - your honesty, reliability and integrity - in a business where these are frequently rare and valuable qualities.

  Temptation, of course, is everywhere. When you're a hungry, underpaid line cook, those filet mignons you're searing off by the dozens look mighty good. Pilfer one and you're bent.
Ask for one, for chrissakes! You'll probably get one. If they won't let you have one, you're probably working in the wrong place.

  Faking petty cash vouchers, stealing food, colluding with a purveyor or a co-worker is extraordinarily easy. Avoid it. Really.

  I was bent for the first half of my career, meaning, I pilfered food, turned in the occasional inflated petty cash slip, nicked beer for the kitchen. It didn't feel good. Slinking home at the end of the night, knowing that you're a thief, whatever your excuse ('My boss is a thief . . . 'I need the money' . . . 'They'll never notice') feels lousy. And it can come back to bite you later in your career.

  Recently, I agreed to meet with the representative from a major seafood wholesaler. I met him at the empty bar of my restaurant, during the slow time between lunch and dinner, and told him that I'd done business with his company at another restaurant. I was inclined to like the company. The products and services had, in my experience so far, been first rate, and what he needed to do to get my business was simply provide the same or better-quality fish as my other purveyors - and do so at a lower price. I meant it, too. I am absolutely tone-deaf to criminal solicitation. It bores me. And for all my misbehavior over the years, I have never - and I mean never - taken money or a thing of value from a purveyor in return for my master's business.

  'Junior' (that was his name), from X Seafood, seemed puzzled by my apparent obtuseness that day. Thick-necked, crew-cutted, but oh-so-friendly, 'Junior' seemed to think that maybe we were talking about sex, when in fact all the while we were discussing the internal combustion engine. There were long silences as his gentle, cheerful probings and expressions of non-specific good will were left dangling in the air. After a while of this - me wanting only to know how much he was charging for Norwegian salmon today, and resisting his unspoken entreaties suddenly to muse aloud about how, maybe, it would be nice if I could afford a hot tub for my apartment - he gave up in frustration and left.