Sous Chef: 24 Hours on the Line (3 page)

This is the life
, you think.

Afterward, you smoke another cigarette out on the loading dock and ready yourself for the day.

T
IME TO GET CHANGED
. Y
OU RIFFLE THROUGH THE OFFICE
closet until you find a freshly pressed coat with your name on it.

Good whites are designed to be comfortable for the long haul—the hot, extended blast. Your coat, fashioned of high-thread-count cotton, buttons up around you like a bespoke suit. Unlike the standard issue line cooks’ poly-blend, the material for the chef’s coat is gentle on the skin, with vents in the armpits to let in air when it gets hot. Your black chef pants, in contrast to the conventional, ever-inflexible “checks,” are woven of lightweight, flame-retardant fabric meant to keep your bottom safe when hot grease splashes and fires flare. They slide on like pajamas. Your shoes, handmade Båstad clogs, conform to your feet like well-worn slippers. They’re ergonomically designed to reduce joint and back pressure, with wooden soles lined with a special rubber that’s engineered to withstand chemical erosion and to defy slippery floors. When properly dressed, you’re clad in custom-fitted, heat-resistant armor that’s light as a feather and comfortable as underwear.

Also in the closet is your knife kit. This kit represents everything you are as a cook and as a chef. Not only does it contain all the tools you need to perform the job, but its contents also demonstrate your level of dedication to the career. Certain items define the most basic kit: a ten- or twelve-inch chef knife, a paring knife, a boning knife. Other additions, though, might indicate to your colleagues that you take your involvement in the industry a little more seriously: fine spoons, a Y peeler, a two-step wine key, cake testers, forceps, scissors, miniature whisks, fish tweezers, fish turners, rubber spatulas, small offset spatulas, a Microplane, a timer, a probe, a ravioli cutter, a wooden spoon.… While these items are typically available for general use in most kitchens, having your own set shows other cooks that you are familiar with advanced techniques and that you know what you need in order to employ them. Also, having such a kit at your disposal means that you are ready to cook properly no matter what the circumstances.

Most important, though, your knives themselves tell how much the job of cooking means to you. A dull knife damages food. We are here to enhance food. Extremely sharp knives are essential for this purpose.

No one makes knives better than the Japanese. Every Japanese knife is perfectly balanced to perform a specific function, a specific cut. Its precision in this respect is unrivaled. Its sharpness, too, is unmatched. The metallurgy is most refined, a coalition of hardness and durability. No sophisticated kit lacks Japanese blades.

You take a moment in the office to examine yours, reflecting on your level of dedication. You know these knives as you know your own body. Their warm Pakkawood
handles have shrunk and swelled to fit your hands; each blade welcomes your grip the way a familiar pillow welcomes the head at day’s end. You could cut blind with any of them. Their individual features, their nuances, are so entrenched in your muscle memory that even as they sit on the table, you can imagine how each one feels when you hold it.

The nine-inch Yo-Deba is bulky in the hand. She is top-heavy—a bone cutter, built to cleave heads and split joints. Beside her is the seven-inch Garasuki, a triangle of thick metal, meant to lop apart backs and shanks. She’s heavy, too, but more wieldy, with a weight that’s balanced at the hilt. Her shape tapers sharply from a hefty heel to a nimble nose, delivering her load downward to the tip. Honesuki, Garasuki’s miniature sister, sits beside her, similar in shape but lighter and more agile, for dainty work among tendons and ligaments. Even more ladylike is the Petty. Her slim six inches slither precision slits deftly through the littlest crevices. She works tender interiors, snipping viscera from connective tissue. Next to Petty is Gyutou—“Excalibur,” as you like to call her. She is the workhorse of the pack, trotting her ten inches out whenever heaps of
mise en place
need working through. And at the far end, finest of all, is the slender Sujihiki. At eleven inches she’s the longest of the bunch, but despite her size, she’s the most refined. She’s not built for the brute work of the other blades—she’s made to slice smoothly. A one-sided edge optimizes her performance. While her outward lip traces lines in flesh with surgical exactitude, the convex shape of her inward face attenuates surface tension, releasing the meat. Cuts go slack at her touch; fish bows beside her.

Here they lie before you, not reflecting light but absorbing it. They don’t shine like the commercial novelties on television. No, they are professionals—hand-folded virgin carbon steel. A bloomy patina colors each of them, nearly obscuring the signature of their maker. To some people, this gives the kit the tatty look of disuse. For you, it does the opposite. You see care and commitment in their dusky finish. You see a decade of daily work: a farm’s worth of produce cut, whole schools of fish filleted, entire flocks of lamb broken, thousands of hungry mouths fed. You see their maker’s hand in crafting them so well that they would last you this long. And you see a lifetime more in them, so long as you remain committed to keeping them clean and rust-free and razor-sharp.

Stefan, the closing sous chef, is due in shortly, and Bryan, the executive chef, won’t be too far behind him. You’ve been here almost an hour; the real work must begin. Espresso jolts you into action.

You start by greeting anybody who might be in the kitchen. There aren’t many people in at this hour—an
A.M.
prep cook, a baker maybe, a dishwasher or two—but you must see them and shake their hands. It’s an opportunity to confirm that anybody who is supposed to be in is in, and that everybody is working on something constructive. It’s also an opportunity to let them know that you are here, in case they get the idea to mess around. Moreover, it’s a signal of respect. A handshake in the morning is an important mutual acknowledgment of the fact that outside our work, we are all human beings, not just cooks or chefs or dishwashers.

“
Dimelo
, baby,” you say to Kiko, the senior dishwasher.

“¿Que onda, güero?”
he says, turning from the slop sink to greet you. His hands are perpetually wet; he extends one out for the shake.

“Where’s Don Rojas?” you ask. “He’s here?”

“Sí, papito, ahi atrás.”

“Bravo,”
you say.
“¿Todo bien contigo?”

“Sí, güey. Siempre.”

You make your way to the back prep area—the production kitchen—to greet Rogelio, the
A.M.
prep cook. He’s loading split veal shins into a fifty-gallon cauldron. His forearms are thick and rippled from decades on the steam kettles and tilt skillets. You shake his hand and leave him to his work.

After the greetings, it’s time to do the rounds. First is a walk-through of the line.

The line is the nexus of the kitchen—the main stage, where thrills reside. It’s where the cooking gets done, where mise en place is transformed into meals, moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day. The three-hundred-square-foot section of the kitchen where half a dozen cooks and chefs work long into the night, straying seldom but moving much.

Our line—generously sized and uncommonly well appointed for a downtown New York restaurant with ninety seats—is set up in the traditional fashion, with Escoffier’s brigade system in mind. The hot side is T-shaped, with a made-to-measure Bonnet stove as its centerpiece. This five-by-fifteen-foot gas range of Herculean capabilities is the island suite around which the cooks run their various stations. At the far corners of the range are a grill and a
plancha
, for meat and fish roasting; in the center are a row of steel-grid burners, a pasta cooker, and a fryolator; at the near end are a pair of cast-iron flat-tops. Above the stovetop is an open-flame salamander and some pan shelving; below is a fleet of gas ovens and hot cupboards.

Perpendicular to this apparatus and forming the horizontal line of our T is the pass—
le passage
. The pass is composed very simply of a flat, sturdy stainless-steel table, above which hangs a set of telescoping heat lamps and below which rests an assortment of clean china. It’s called the pass because this is where the cooks pass their food to Chef for plating, and where Chef passes the food to the back waiters for serving. Nothing comes or goes in the kitchen without a stop at le passage.

Flanking our T on either side is a row of lowboy refrigerators, one a mirror image of the other. The lowboys hold the cooks’ cold mise en place throughout service. They also act as work surfaces, upon which the cooks do their cutting and seasoning and arranging of ingredients. Above the lowboys are welded shelves that hold the sections’ printers and ticket racks, along with some side materials—C-folds, gloves, bar mops, etcetera. Below the lowboys lie the black carpet runners, which keep the cooks from slipping as the tile floors get slick with this or that refuse throughout the night.

Our cold side is set up to the right of the T, beyond the fish station’s lowboy. The cold side is home to
garde manger
and pastry. It’s composed of a roll-in freezer, two lowboys, and a connecting table that combine to form a narrow U shape inside which two people can work comfortably. Since most of the food emanating from this section is cold,
the emphasis here is on refrigeration. There is not much in the way of heat, not even a gas feed. The two stations are rigged up sparingly with two induction burners, a circulator, and an electric tabletop convection oven, nothing more.

These two areas, the hot and cold sides of the line, are central to the restaurant, both spatially and ideologically. The entire operation revolves around them. Without a kitchen there is no restaurant; without a strong line there is no kitchen. Therefore, it is essential to maintain cleanliness and order in these areas.

When they arrive in the morning, Rogelio and Kiko perform an opening routine. They turn on all the equipment: ovens, fryers, flat-tops, and hoods. They deliver health code supplies to every section: sanitizer buckets, latex gloves, fancy caps, and probes. They re-up the stations with all the basics: pepper mills and saltshakers, as well as ninth pans for mise en place and squeeze bottles for fats and acids. In your walk-through, you double-check this work. You also double-check the work of the cooks from the night before, their scrupulousness with the closing procedures. You make sure that any mise en place left over in their lowboys from last night has been consolidated, properly labeled, and neatly organized. You make sure that their ovens and fridges have been thoroughly cleaned. You make sure that the prep lists they’ve written for themselves are clear and comprehensive. Then you check the equipment. You make sure that all the fridges are holding a temperature below 40°F, to prevent bacterial development. You make sure that all the pilot lights are lit and that the burners are running clear. You make sure that all the hand sinks are stocked with soap and C-folds, that they’re streaming
both hot and cold water, and that their drain screens are free of debris. Finally, you make sure that all the hinges, handles, knobs, gaskets, and spouts are gunk-free, that everything, every corner, every tabletop, every surface, looks shipshape, like new, next to godliness. These are the conditions we need in order to cook well.

After the line, it’s time to hit the storage fridges—the walk-in boxes. The watchwords here are the same as on the line—cleanliness and order—but each walk-in also requires its own specific attention.

You start with the fish box. A briny waft of sea air strikes you as you enter. This is good. If another aroma hits you—of chemicals, say, or rot—you know something is wrong, perhaps expensively so. Fish is the most delicate of all foodstuffs in the kitchen. It has the shortest shelf life, the highest price tag, and the weakest constitution. The flesh is easily damaged, and exposure to temperature fluctuations can denature its physical properties. It easily takes on an unattractive “fishy” smell. It becomes mealy. It develops slime. Not only do these transformations happen quickly, but they can also be of great detriment to the cooking process. The minutest degradation of quality impacts the ability of a given piece of fish to undergo the administration of heat. It loses its capacity to retain moisture; it fails to take a sear; it crumples, falls limp, goes floppy. This can harm the business significantly. There is an expectation among discerning diners that fish be cooked to perfection. In their minds, it is a chance for the chef to exhibit his skill, or lack thereof. People know that cooking beautiful fish at home
presents a marked degree of difficulty. It breaks apart; it dries out; it’s flavorless. It sticks, even to nonstick pans. When people go to a restaurant, they expect to see a better performance. The fact is, fish is always difficult, even for professionals. To be
chef poissonnier
in a good restaurant requires extensive experience and mastery of technique. It is one of the most honorable positions on the line, and for good reason. To complicate the exercise by allowing the protein to deteriorate through negligent storage can be ruinous.