Sad Iron Blues

Chapter 1

Steam billows from the giant pot of boiling water, rising up and curling with smoke from the grill until it laps up against the scrubbed stainless steel hood and loops into the whirring vents above our heads. Tickets are stacked up all the way to the end of the counter as we slide into the second half of service. Cooks in their stained white coats bark out table numbers and the amount of time they need for one thing or another. Quick replies and constant chatter crackle back and forth and down the line. Scott snaps his tongs like lobster pinchers, singing and howling familiar lyrics, pulling one song into another as he pulls steaks and chickens and racks of New Zealand Lamb from the fire. He’s been singing off and on since I showed up, mostly songs by Johnny Cash, as he throws meat in and out of the oven, on and off of the long grill. The aroma of charred meat sifts through the dense air and mingles with the rich, thick smell of sautŽed foie gras and browned butter and the hot oil stained air hovering above the deep fat fryers, burbling with French fries. The fryers gurgle like a witches cauldrons’. Fire licks the sautŽ pans sizzling and popping on the long steel range blackened with grease. The cooks move back and forth, in memorized motions, grabbing plates, hot pans, and tongs, wiping down the bar of the range in the battle for cleanliness. I haven’t eaten since yesterday. I’m fresh off of a road trip, my truck is sitting in the parking garage damn near out of gas, and my stomach starts to growl with the familiar pings of hunger even though I breath through my mouth so I can’t smell the food.

I’m setting up plates on the hot appetizer station. A fat cook with pockmarked cheeks, a scraggly goatee and thick wrists is a few feet down, juggling pans in the middle of the line, stuffed between the others like a defensive linebacker in the line of scrimmage. His coat and apron are too small for the bulging gut that bounced around, under the strain of cotton fabric, and it stretched the buttons apart on his coat in a funny way. Right now I only know that he doesn’t like me. Why he doesn’t like me is a mystery but it doesn’t matter. He’s been glaring at me and muttering to the other cooks since I arrived, the corners of his mouth, and plump cheeks were sagging with hatred. He doesn’t want me here, and that’s all that I need to know. It seems like he won’t be happy until he gets a fight.

On my left, one of the cooks keeps an eye on her pasta heating up in square metal sieves while her sauces bubble in small pans, the heavy fragrance of fresh garlic hanging in the air. She has her dark hair tucked up under a green mesh truck driver cap, plating one dish after another, with quick, smooth graceful movements. She tosses the pasta in the sauce, spoons it into a dish, sprinkles parmesan cheese and chopped parsley, then places it in on the shelf, under the heat lamps, where they are quickly pulled by strange hands. Shiny metal covers go over the entrees so they can be stacked easily onto big oval trays and then picked up by the food runners and walked out to hungry guests who wait patiently, sipping iced drinks and clutching their crisp napkins, chatting about the weather and all of the places they’ve been to spend money and take pictures. The dining room is so big that the food would go cold by the time it got to the table if it wasn’t covered.

This place is a tourist trap, but has the kind of class and elegance that can only be built with deep pockets. At places like this, money gets knocked around like golf balls at the driving range. These kinds of restaurants are in all of the major cities and vacation destinations of the world; wherever the wealthy power brokers spend their time, there are watering holes of this kind for them to spend their time. The Viking House has a baby grand piano sitting majestically by the bar, wedged between the front door and the patio. Huge paintings hang like a museum while the heavy velvet drapes and wood paneled walls make the average guest feel like they’re visiting the Governor’s Mansion. Guests are treated like traveling royalty, so by they time the waddle out the door there is nothing left but dreamy satisfaction, and their gooey tip money left in the leather checkbooks that hide the bill.

I was hired yesterday to fill the morning shifts and started work early this morning, but chef Turner needed me to stick around for dinner service. He told me that one of his cooks was out of town, and handed me a menu. Chef said to memorize the hot appetizer plates because that was the station I would be covering tonight; which meant two things: I was good enough, in his eyes, after being scrutinized all morning, to work the dinner shift, and I’ll be getting eight hours of overtime. I’m sucking down the coffee that was given to me a few moments ago, catching a fresh rush of caffeine. I have a mountain of shallots to julienne.

Scott is the lead cook who has been here the longest, but he wears a dishwasher shirt instead of the traditional white coat, and is constantly singing some kind of folk song. I heard the others talk about his band, so I’m guessing that he’s the singer, and uses the kitchen as a place to practice pitch and tone.

I’m getting ready to plate two orders of scallops with the Tuna appetizer. The scallops are in a small pan, milky white pale flesh on the top, the bottom’s not ready to flip; the chef wants it almost charred, almost burnt color on the presentation side. One side of meat always matters more than the other. One side of every piece of fish, bird or mammal has got to have a perfect sear or well proportioned grill marks, so no matter what the customer gets what they paid for; something that will make their mouth water just by looking at it. The underside could look like road kill, as long as the presentation side is clean and crisp and perfect like a goddamned photograph.

I rub the ruby colored Bluefin Tuna flesh with oil, salt and white pepper, then stick it on the grill, searing a diamond pattern on the outside while keeping the meat rare in the middle. Then I wipe the oil from my fingers with a side towel. In a small pan, smoking hot, I sautŽ a two ounce rectangle of scored foie gras. The fat slides around in the pan as it browns, then I flip it to make sure it is caramelized on both sides.

I pluck the cube of Tuna off the grill, and lay it onto a quenelle of roasted pumpkin puree, then gently perch the goose liver on the top, making a tower, they way Chef wanted it done. Then I pour out a little bit of the foie juice from my pan into the grease trap, then slam it back on the flames. I toss in a pinch of chopped tarragon, then add two ladles of red wine demi glace. As soon as the liquid hits the pan it bubbles up and begins to reduce from the heat. When the sauce thickens up, I scoop three spoonfuls and caress the sauce over the tower, like lava streaming from the top of a volcano. That’s it. I glanced at the tickets and counted five more Tuna orders that’ll be going out with the next tables, so I pull five orders of tuna, and five cubes of foie gras out of the drawer and season them on the cutting board. Score the foies, toss on the salt and white pepper. Then I pull the scallops from their pan and the shrimp in the fryer basket, dripping oil, and put them in a little metal bowl with a splash of oil, salt and fresh ground black pepper. The scallops go over corn pudding made from scratch, were drizzled with pancetta vinaigrette; coconut rice, stab the shrimp so they stand up as though they were toy soldiers of the ocean’s reef.

The hostess, a brunette with her hair pulled back into a bun, came up to Paul. She looked at me. A cold stare. She was sizing me up.

“You’re new, right?” she asked, studying my face with lilac green eyes. “My name’s Laura.” We shook hands. Her grip was firm.

“Hi Laura.” I said. “I’m Jay.”

She looked at the clipboard with a cold stare that was pure management material. She ran her pen down along the page and made a check mark of some kind.

“You’re Jay Vespa?” she said with a smirk.

“Vespucci.” I said. “Ves- Pooch- ee.”

“Are you here for the ski season?” she asked. “Where’d you come from?”

“New Orleans. I went down there for the summer.”

“Oh, did you get stuck in the hurricane?”

“Naw.” I said. “Left before it hit. When the mayor called for an evacuation, I packed up and left.”

“We have a full house!” she chirped. “We’re booked and the bar’s full. The fat’s in the fryer!”

“Oh yeah?” Scott cried, and began to sing. “We’re gonna burn, burn, burn, in a ring of fire, in a ring of fire…”

Laura giggled, then slinked out of the kitchen in the spirit of Paul Revere, I thought, she’s just another damned messenger of bad news.

I stabbed the old tickets on the spike, then wiped down my cutting board and rinsed off my knife, and kept moving while Scott cracked into a piercing moan, jumping into another song. Wipe the cutting board, organize the squirt bottles, pans, bowls. Plate the food over and over and over again, the way oilmen hump the derricks on an offshore rig. Wrap the chains, pull the clips, release the lever, in some ways it really is just ball bearing nowadays. It’s like doing the same dance with the same dead woman for a thousand nights without a pinch of sorrow.

“I emma man of conn-stant sor-row.” Scott sang as he shoved the plates out. “Eye-eee seen troub-ble all my da-ys.” I realized that nobody was going to tell this guy to be quiet. He was the lead cook and also a major reason why service was going so smoothly; he was obviously allowed to hoot and holler all he wanted. It was new for me, though. I’ve never worked in a kitchen where talking is allowed, let alone singing. The last restaurants I worked in were silent kitchens for the most part. But Scott provided the kitchen with one spastic burst of uncontrolled energy after another, and that brought the crew together somehow, when other cooks knew the words they would chip in, and this was a priviledge that they knew they had been granted and they loved and relished every moment, like a chain gang hacking weeds on the side of a Southern Highway, knowing that at any moment the privilege of singing will be taken away.

“I bid fair-well to ole Ken-nnn- tuckie.” Scott crooned. “The place where I was born an’ rai-ie-sed.”

Several cooks joined in for the chorus.

“The place whey’re heeee- eeeeee was bo-ornnnnn and rai-eeeeeessed!”

Whistles ring out, a few hoots from the dish pit. I noticed something for the first time. There wasn’t a radio anywhere in the kitchen. The cooks made the radio.

Paul the salad maker kept his mouth shut.

“Yeah!” Scott grunted. “When I get back to kenn-tuckie,”

And so it went. He was trying to keep the morale strong. I wasn’t included in their circle, but could see that the cooks were like a family, plenty of good times to be had on the clock. The constant chatter to get the food out wraps itself around the kitchen, loud mouths trying to survive the only way they know how. By riding out the storm, like the pirates aboard Captain Black Sam Bellamy’s ships a few hundred years ago. Those men who signed on with Black Sam struggled from being driven aground by a wicked storm brought up from the depths, fighting desperately to overcome the thrashing sea so they wouldn’t be cursed to the bottom of Davey Jones locker. All but two of the pirates drowned that night once the wooden ships splintered apart on the shoals, the rest paid their dues to their captain by getting thrashed to death in the sea.

One hundred forty-six men drowned because Captain Sam Bellamy was in love. He sailed all the way up to Cape Cod, then lost control of his ships and sent all but to sailors to their deaths. The survivors said they lost a fortune in treasure; the crew had been raiding merchant vessels for months. Meanwhile, the landlubbers were busy sawing the fingers from the bodies as they washed ashore, taking the jewel studded rings from lifeless hands.

Cooking might not be as dangerous as a life of piracy on the high seas, but there is that same, relentless grind, treading financial water. Cooks have, as a rule, been underpaid and under appreciated throughout history. We’re part of the underclass; those people who fill the jobs that nobody really wants, but are necessary for society to function, and provide the services that people have grown to need. The lower working class. There are tons of jobs like these, and they are always hiring. The kitchens are packed with the same breed of crooked cutthroats who’d trade their souls to the devil for a quick fortune and some free booze. Desperate men strumming the broken strings of their lives with rusty fingernails.

Cooks keep their head down with their eyes on the cutting board, chipping away at the prep sheet, or they end up walking the plank into the shark infested waters of unemployment. We are lost souls clinging to the remains of postmodern honesty and human decency, trying to make it another round without getting whored out to the soul sucking corporate machines and their air conditioned, cubicle lined office space. The front of house workers stay squeaky clean and make easy money while the kitchen workers get dirty for scraps, but we are all in the same boat. Waiters at these nice places get to taste the glamour life for eight hours a day, but when they clock out they’re just like anybody else with a high school education, scraping by the best they can.

Another pan of foies gras is spitting a plume of the perfumes smoke. Scallops are dancing under the strain of being sautŽed; they split open. The present moment hangs on forever as I’m caught in the cycle of repetition. The caffeine is backing off and I’m beginning to swim in the hazy fog of exhaustion. Cooking in a busy kitchen makes me focus in such a way that time slips by and gets stretched out like a rubber band. Driving halfway across the country and being homeless for the last week is catching up with me. My nerves are tattered, whipped like an old skull and bones in the salty wind. I’ve got to pull it together and stop thinking about Ginger, her cool Southern voice falling like droplets of early morning dew across braided thoughts. I will probably never see her again. It’s time to let go of the past and stare straight ahead into the future.

“Hot pan! Comin’ ’round hot!” Mike yelled as he hurled his massive body around the corner like it was third base at the bottom of the ninth, shoving by like I didn’t exist.

“Hot! Hot! Burn you and laugh!” he said, laughing. Our eyes made contact for a split second and that was all it took. His sizzling pan grazed the back of my hand. I put down my knife. For a second I thought my reaction time was too slow, somehow it was my fault. But his eyes told me something else as he blazed past, clutching the pan with white towels. He wanted to burn me. That was clear. I felt the burn light up like a wasp sting, grinding into my nerves. There is no ice or time to run cold water from the faucet, and I won’t quit plating up my food. It would take a seizure to stop me.

Mike was going to see what I’m all about as I reeled in the vortex of bitter rage. I’ve got a sweet tooth for revenge. Although I was slipping deeper into the weeds, I made time to dip my tongs into the fryer. Now the tips were screaming at 350 degrees. The dumb bastard was circling the kitchen like a vulture missing its brain. I knew he would come swooping by for another pass when he returned to his station; the kitchen was too small for him to use another route. He’ll get a taste of his own medicine. When I saw him out of the corner of my eye, so as soon as he came plowing towards me with another pan, I yanked my tongs from the fryer and spun around.

When he barged past I jabbed my tongs into his forearm like a blacksmith’s branding iron. I was too quick for him, too fast on city feet used to dodging through the thick crowds on cold, cracked sidewalks back East, where strangers on the streets stare past your face like you’re dead. He lurched backwards as the tips from my scalding tongs burned into his flesh like molten rock. I relished his pain and couldn’t fight back a victory smirk, because tonight was becoming interesting. Maybe, if I was lucky, I’d get into a fistfight before the night was out.

“Hot!” I say, a moment too late; Mike didn’t have the opportunity to move because I leaped out. “Behind you! Hot apps comin’ through! Burn you and Laugh!”

There we go, I thought, now we’re even. There are some universal rules for cooks that never change. It makes no difference what country you’re in or what languages you speak; every kitchen is the same. Cooks have to pay attention and be respectful of one another, and speak up when someone’s safety is at stake. But every now and then I come across a cook who thinks burning other people is funny.

If Mike wants to play like a tough guy, I thought, then let’s not stop now. We can duel it out after taking ten paces or fight it out like guerrilla soldiers in the swampy jungle. Some guys act tough and others don’t. When skin melts off your arm, it doesn’t matter who you are. It’s like getting whacked across the face with a bull whip by a Swedish Dominatrix wearing a patent leather corset with matching boots, screaming at you in a language that you cannot understand as the handcuffs click around each wrist. Nobody could pretend for a second that they didn’t feel that. It doesn’t matter how big and strong you are; some pain is universal.

Burn for a burn, baby.

“That’s right, you fat bastard,” I say under my breath. “bring it on.”

“What?” Paul asked, overhearing me.

“Never mind.”

Mike was over at the first aid station rubbing cream into his third degree souvenir. What he did to me was chump change in comparison to the infamous tongs in the fryer trick that I learned from my friend Chip Moon from New York. I had no mercy, because I’ve been around the old block one too many times for some farm boy and his cheap gang of kitchen help to back me down. Every cook I’ve ever met who thinks it’s funny to burn someone is a clown fool moron who needs to be put in his place. This was different. This was war. I received my first bloody nose from my dad when I was ten years old. He wouldn’t stop slapping me as he tried to teach me how to box. Boxing is an art that I never learned, but I did acquire a penchant for a streetfight. The next time he comes barging around and tries to take over my three square feet of the world, he’ll think about it. He gave me an attitude the first moment he laid his eyes on me, like I shouldn’t be inhaling the same air.

Last night when I rolled into town, I should have checked into that motel just to catch up on sleep for a couple of days. But I couldn’t wait to hit the pavement this morning and try to get a job. I was down to the wire and ready to hustle up some money before I was stuck. That’s what brought me out of a night’s rest and onto the streets of this familiar little ski resort, sniffing for work like a bear around trash cans. Money was running thin after driving out of a hurricane, and I was in no mood to savor the bitterness of being flat broke, thumbing through an empty wallet.

Yesterday, before getting hired here, I went to a French Bistro and talked with the chef about getting hired, but he didn’t seem to like my resume. I walked through the kitchen and watched the cooks pull a sheet pan out of the oven with two roasted cow heads, steaming, glazed with slick oil. The lifeless eyeballs looked like opaque marbles set into the folds of wrinkled, leathery flesh. Teeth jutted from the ancient mummy flesh. Heavy, twisted, dull tongues hung out of the mouths like thick ropes.

“We roast the heads here, brains and all,” the chef said. “That’s the best way to get a rich sauce full of flavor. I like my sauces strong!”

I gave him an appraising look. He was short and skinny and on the verge of going bald. He was a wimp and I couldn’t remember his name right now if he paid me. Working for a pencil necked geek who wasn’t smart enough to play with computers is the last thing I want to do. But I still tried to weasel in on the job, clinging to the chance that I might immediately lift myself out of unemployment.

“That’s what chef McKinnis would do, back in New York,” I lied, trying to push the conversation somewhere interesting. “yep. He’d order in cow heads. And we always got live chickens, you understand, so we had to butcher them out back, then roast everything but the feet for the chicken sauce. Know all about French cookin’, and all kinds ‘a food, in New York I worked at a Sushi place for a few months, but that one’s not on my resume.”

I paused and looked him in the eyes. He seemed nervous, and only held my gaze for a moment before his eyeballs darted all over the room. I could tell he was fidgeting, looking for something to do. He picked up a stack of sheet trays and put them under the counter.

“You can call him, you know, he’s on my resume as a reference.” I said.

“Well,” the chef said. “I’m not sure if you spent enough time there. I mean, I’m not sure you have enough experience to work with us,” he paused. “But we’ll give you a call if we need you.”

I needed a job, and was ready to say anything to avoid another run of bad luck. Quick talk couldn’t get my foot through the door this time around, and less than two minutes later he nudged me out onto the sunny sidewalk littered with well heeled tourists nursing their spoiled little kids on leashes as they pushed high tech baby strollers in brightly colored, knitted sweaters. I wandered along restaurant row until I reached the Viking House. It looked like a colonial manor that had somehow been torn and uprooted from its Antebellum foundation and was transplanted from its Georgian soil. After a short interview yesterday morning, I managed to get hired without much hassle. Locals over at the diner told me that this was the most expensive place in town, with the biggest reputation in the area. It reminded me of the heavy places back East that were studded with red bricks, covered with the long tendrils of ivy and wrapped with chilly winds and the cold Hudson Valley rain that turns to hail when the Canadian winds funnel down the river from the Arctic Circle.

I’m hypnotized for a moment while watching the orange and white flames dancing out from the range, catching an order of scallops on fire. I pull the pan off, then lift it up and blow out the flambŽ like a giant candle, before it scorches. The food tastes like kerosene if you let it burn like that. Plates are pulled off the shelf that is continuously restocked by the dishwashers, who collect all of the dirty cookware and scurry back to their corner, emerging with armfuls of plates and stacks of stainless steel pots and pans. These guys keep stocking the like as if their life depended on it.

Every dish has its own look and personality. Presentation is everything when the people in the dining room are willing to spend a monthly car payment on a night out to dinner. But no matter how good it looks, their taste buds better sing. That’s why these folks come in and pay the big money. There’s a pizza joint, fast food or a diner on every corner in every city for everyone else. Regular people can’t afford to spend this much on food all of the time.