Names of characters have been changed to protect their identity

Anyone who has spent a considerable amount of time with me knows about my trademark insecure flurries of "What if?" and "Did I do something wrong?" and "Will it hurt?". I am my own life's worst and most unfair critic, especially when it comes to cooking. Many pink and orange sunsets ago, in the Nostrand Avenue Boarding House for Spunky Girls and Self-Deprecating Faggotry (NABHSGSDF for short), long before I had burns on my hands and face and arms, I was the house chef. Armed with the bounty of bizarre misshapen root vegetables and spices from the West Indian markets, I would spend hours nearly every day concocting things for dinners upon dinners, and then stand in the kitchen with a plate and a cooking utensil, eat two bites, frown, and then ask everyone in turn "is it gross? does it taste okay? is there enough asafoetida in it because", and so forth. But I digress.
My progress as a cook was always overshadowed by the question "What is it that i'm doing so right?". Every kitchen I have worked in, I have moved up and earned trust with quickness. And now, at Bread Bar, I have been moved to the saute station in two weeks, in spite of the restaurants usual flow of three months of the prep/"float" station. I trained a mere day and a half, followed by an additional two painful days of working with my wonderful Chef-de-Cuisine Ty (a man that you should want to work for and a man whom you would instantly trust and want to do anything for), and then prompty threw myself at a week of 200+ covers a day. Sure it was terrifying, but I made it out of each night barely breathing but alive. I knew I was making it through, but getting a complement or even some encouragement from Tabla is like pulling teeth, and in spite of a hushed "good job" from my sous-chef at the end of service, I had no idea how I was doing. Until Bill.
Bill showed up to his first day of work looking very small and awkward and uncomfortable. A fresh recruit from "the best culinary school in the country" with his monogrammed Misono knife and top-of-the-line chrome plated vegetable peeler, he looked like Gordon Ramsey's wet dream: a small and insecure boy just begging to throw cold proteins into a cold pan and pour salt straight from the shaker. I questioned my cohort Carrie about "the new kids" and she said "I put a disclaimer on him", cracked a brief and forced smile, and went angrily back to rolling her Kadi balls. A feeling of dread crept over me, not unlike the tingling sensation accompanied by vivid phantasms and other paranormal activity.
That feeling of dread has been with me since. Every day it's the same thing. Did you grab your ceviche salmon from the fish walk-in? No. Sorry. Did you take all of the cilantro that was left for you? No. Sorry. Are there more potatoes? No. Sorry. And so forth. Anyone who has held a demading job this century has dealt with the idiot of this caliber. The kind of person whose incompetence exceeds pitiful territory and delves into deserves to be kicked territory. I mean, you couldn't even feel bad to help this kid if you tried. His mistakes aren't so bad as his unwielding dishonesty and fear of getting into trouble. He clearly has no idea how terrible he is doing, and has no comprehension that two nine pans of cilantro don't chiffonade themselves, and that once Brad and Eric and Wayne and the gang from Credit Suisse have sucked down a gallon of tamarind margaritas apiece, they are going to want lamb sandwiches NOW and there is no time to run upstairs for scallions. Or apple cider. Or potatoes, apples, chili peppers, or daikon radish. There is no time to stand still and stare blankly at me while I scream "Lamb sandwich coming to your cutting board NOW". This child just does not belong in a kitchen.
And apparantly, this is more suprising to me than to anyone else. Oh sure, they have all said, there is a constant parade of imbeciles with Food Network dreamss that walk through that kitchen and leave with broken dreams, broken hearts, and $40k in useless debt from cooking school.
This is what it took for me to realize just how much ass I have the potential to kick. It's not there just yet, but since 2000 I have had my hands in the muck of that which is kitchen life, and I have learned that an assortment of sharpies and spoons and thermometers sticking out of one's sleeve does not a good chef make. It's the heart and soul and love you put into your time spent cooking that is or is not going to get you to that special place.
Finally, it's paying the fuck off.

Good luck, Bill.
May you cut, burn, slice, dice, and brunoise yourself into oblivion and do so quick. The boats are leaving, and you don't want to get left behind, and no you can't borrow the teeth from my mandolin.

ever.again.

love
jp

the beginning for me

Three and a half weeks ago, I walked into a new job at Tabla, Danny Meyer and Chef Floyd Cardoz's fabulous walk into Indian territory. As far as I know, it is in a class all its own. It appears wonderful and a place-to-be-seen in the eyes of the restaurant scenesters and the press alike. I didn't expect that it would be as shiny and tasty on the inside as it is on the outside. Thankfully I have been proven wrong.
For starters, it is busy. All. The. Time. I walk in at 2:45 and it's busy. I get my toold together and go back to the Bread Bar, and it is still busy. Now that I have a third of the food we make under my belt, I have to stop what I'm doing and help my quit little firecracker of a line cook friend Emily plate this and that. I then go back upstairs, pack up everything I need as fast as I possibly can, send it down on the elevator (with a jog to the office for a key). I/"We" unpack everything, put it aside, and cut and refill and reheat and assemble like crazy until our sous chef (whose patience and precision and willingness to help and make everything perfect I cannot even calculate into how much I have learned from him) comes down, and givesw a stern lookover at everything. Nothing is ever perfect the first time at Tabla, so the next hour is spent correcting mistakes.
Then, folks, I promptly bend over and let the afflent folks of En Why See give my ass a stern kicking. And I kick back as best I can. Today I learned a boatload of "pointers" from my Chef-De-Cuisine, which I absorbed as best I could between Beef-Frys, Lamb Sandwiches (4 of which were fired and plated and then thrown out, remade, and sent out in a period of 20 minutes), Chickpeas, Kalonji's, and other gibberish.
I am terrified of fucking up the rice tomorrow, running out of Kadi Sauce again with no one to help me, screwing up the Lamb Sandwiches, and just about everything else. But I will swallow my anxiety, jump in, and send out every damn plate with complete perfection.
So if you want to get ahold of me, try me there.

Love, Johnny