Life, on the Line by Grant Achatz (book club reads .txt) 📕

at Jean-Louis at the Watergate Hotel. Thomas mentioned to Mark and me that the meals he had there were among the best of his life.

Being a commis, or prep cook, at the Laundry was not unlike the work at any other restaurant, even a diner. The commis’ responsibilities ranged from rudimentary to advanced, depending on their level of experience. Starting out, I was slow on the uptake. There is a period of acclimation that every cook must go through in a new kitchen, and I was no different.

“This is shit!” Jeffrey yelled as he took the strainer full of poorly cooked green beans and threw them into the sink, beans flying everywhere. “If Thomas saw that, he would fire you right now.”

He was right. Not about Chef firing me on the spot, but that the beans were indeed overcooked. I knew it and wasn’t planning on using them, but I got caught before I could start again. I had lost track of time while kneading pasta dough, and the beans started to discolor. It was my second day there and I had yet to find my legs. A few of the cooks were not afraid to point that out. “They might do it that way in Chicago, but here we do things right. Do it nice, or do it twice.”

Embarrassed, I gathered the beans from the sink, counter, and floor and threw them away. Mark swung around and whispered, “Don’t let ’em get inside your head. Everyone is gunning for everyone right now. They all want that sous title.”

It struck me for the first time that I had never been introduced to the sous chef. It was clear that a few of the guys had seniority and seemed to carry themselves like they were in charge. Chefs like Josh, Jeff, and pastry chef Stephen Durfee had authority but lacked the official title. Unlike most kitchens that had several layers of management to make sure standards are upheld, The French Laundry had chef Keller, and that was it.

The first few weeks were brutally tough. The cooks weren’t interested in helping me out or making friends. They weren’t vicious, they just lived by the standard set by chef Keller and everything else was meaningless and superfluous.

I continued to be trained by Kevin and DJ while most of the other cooks prowled, waiting for me to make a mistake.

DJ and I grew on each other slowly but surely.

We spent weeks of dragging ourselves out of bed at 5:00 A.M. to bang out a long list of menial and petty prep tasks that were passed down to us from the chefs de partie. It felt cruel and a result of their own laziness, but that is the kind of thing you can bond over: common misery.

DJ called me “Spanky,” after the character from The Little Rascals, knowing that I hated it. I teased him constantly about being slow to the point of moving in reverse. He would counter that I was so aggressive that I would crash and burn, turning into an ember by the time I was thirty.

DJ was a purist and a dreamer. He would go mushroom foraging on his days off, have a batch of homebrew beer working in his apartment, and help his local farmer friends harvest or till their fields in exchange for some vegetables. He drove a beat-up VW bus, which summed up his personality pretty well.

One very busy morning we both entered panic mode. The lists left for us were enormous. On top of that it was a Saturday, which meant that we had lunch service to deal with and everything that came with it: extra mise en place to cover the extra service and a whole host of extra cooks in the kitchen taking up space earlier in the day. Every day, once the PM cooks came in, we would end up balancing our cutting boards on stacked-up milk crates. After all, we were just commis, and the chefs de partie needed the prime real estate in the kitchen.

DJ was watching me bounce off the counters and I heard him chuckle from the other side of the kitchen. “Spanky, you’re going to kill yourself. When you move that fast, quality suffers.”

In the French Laundry kitchen those were fighting words. To insinuate that another cook was compromising the quality of the food was the ultimate insult. As busy as I was, I took the time to stop and walk up to DJ and look him in the eye. “No chance, Gerber. I am on fire today. Untouchable!”

I dumped a batch of olives that I’d recently pitted into the Robot Coupe and just as I was about to fire it DJ put his hand on the lid and said, “I will bet you, Spanky. I’ll bet you that there’s a pit in there.”

“No chance,” I replied with supreme confidence. “I’ll bet you anything you want.”

“Okay. Here’s the deal. When you turn that on I guarantee we will hear a pit hitting the blade. When we do, you have to fish it out and put it in your wallet. That pit has to stay there until I ask to see it. If at any time you cannot produce the pit when I ask, you owe me ten dollars. And it keeps going on and on.”

“And if there is no pit?” I asked.

“I’ll give you ten dollars right now.”

“Deal!”

I cranked the lid closed and hit the green button. We both froze, listening carefully. The blades whipped around for about thirty seconds, breaking down the olives into a black paste. All seemed fine. But then it freed a single pit from its jacket of flesh.

Ting. Ting. Ting.

DJ reached over and pushed the red stop button with a huge smile on his face.

I emptied the contents of the bowl onto a sheet of parchment and searched for the culprit. I found it, washed it off, and pulled out my wallet. I held the pit up in the air