Generation Chef (11 page)

The first night Jonah was gone, Jacques Torres came into the restaurant with an editor from
Bon Appétit
. Torres, the French chocolatier who for years had been the pastry chef at Le Cirque, now ran his own stores
as well as a Brooklyn factory. He was a welcome guest, predisposed to enjoy himself and happy to acknowledge that he had. At the end of a meal in the dining room he walked over to the kitchen with candy and cookies he'd brought for the staff.

He wanted to meet the chef.

Jenni explained, apologetically, that the chef was in California about to get married.

Then who is the sous?

Jenni said that she was. Chad and Chris might outrank her in terms of experience and pay, but Jonah had told everyone that she was in charge.

“Then if the chef is gone, you are the chef,” said Torres, who instructed her to come out of the kitchen for a photograph, and to stand in the middle of the group, which was where the chef belonged.

•   •   •

Jenni had wanted to be
a chef since she was a kid in the kitchen, like Jonah, although she had a different dream: a little place in Northern California, near her folks, or a food truck, which appealed to her because it represented less risk and more freedom. She could have a life and a family and a food truck. She would have gone straight to culinary school if not for her father's concerns about the instability of her chosen career, which translated into an attractive offer: He'd send her to college, and if she still wanted to go to culinary school when she was done, she would have had four more years to save money for it. A bachelor's degree in business sounded like an asset, so she agreed, and once she graduated she enrolled in the two-year associate degree program at CIA's Napa Valley campus.

She chose New York for her externship, a six-month stint in a professional kitchen, because it would be her one chance to work in what was still the restaurant capital of the United States, the big leagues, and she
figured she'd learn more in that competitive environment than she would anywhere else. Six intense months, and she'd return to CIA to finish up her classwork.

Jenni trailed at Maialino and at one other restaurant, and both of them offered her an externship, Maialino at $7.25 an hour and the second place at $11. Her trail at Maialino had both scared her and inspired her, so she said yes to less pay, because the point of an externship was to learn, and $3.75 an hour was hardly the difference between being broke and being rich. When she was done, Nick Anderer offered her a job as a line cook at the $11 hourly rate she would have made as an extern at the other restaurant. One by one, Jonah and the other sous chefs sat her down and said the same thing: You went to CIA to get the job of your dreams. This is the job of your dreams. You could quit Maialino to go back to school to spend another $30,000 to graduate and work someplace that's not as great as this, a year from now, or you could stay put.

She had an eye for the strategic bet, even if it bore no resemblance to what she had told herself she was about to do, as though having a plan freed her up to think about something that wasn't part of it, to consider surprise from a safe vantage point. Jenni had never intended to work in New York City and had always planned to return to school, but this was too much of an opportunity to pass up. She told her skeptical parents, “If you'll pay the next $30,000, okay, but if not, I'm not paying another $30,000 to get the same kind of job I have now. I have my foot in the door at just the kind of place I'd be headed to.” The second-year curriculum at CIA required stints working front of house, which she'd done in high school and college, and banquet class, pastry, and European cuisine, which had little to do with her long-term goals. She could learn more about Italian cuisine at a real job and get paid for the privilege.

Jenni flew out to California, sold her car, packed some of her furniture, flew back to New York, found an apartment, and went to work two
weeks later on the garde-manger station plating cold salads and appetizers, with the promise of a move onto the hot line when Nick decided she was ready. Within months she was on the morning hot line, and then morning contorno, cooking side dishes for breakfast and lunch, and finally the evening shift on the flat-top.

The promotions were heady stuff, and they fed her natural impatience. When Jonah announced that he was leaving Maialino to open a place of his own, she told him to keep her in mind. She let him know every time she moved to a new job, and when she got to a tapas bar he said he was glad she was learning about Spanish food, which was somewhere between a vague expression of interest and a job offer. She knew she was a long shot for anything more than a line-cook position with Jonah, but she also assumed that he couldn't pay enough or promise enough stability to lure one of his sous chef peers into the kitchen.

Jenni had so far worked at three restaurants that were part of established empires, owned respectively by Danny Meyer, by chef-owner Andrew Carmellini, and by chef Mario Batali and his partner, Joe Bastianich, because she was committed to building her résumé by working for what she called “known” chefs at high-profile places. “I thought I was moving back to California,” was her reasoning, “and I wanted names they would recognize.” But a promotion to sous chef in a big operation could be tough, with so many line cooks clamoring for each post. The smart move might be to move to a smaller place, to “a mom-and-pop, basically,” to add sous chef to her résumé.

Jenni was a bit apprehensive about the added responsibilities—ordering, scheduling shifts, being in charge on Jonah's nights off, and helping him with hiring and training until she was ready to take over those tasks herself. She worried about the undoubtedly expanded hours—but then, she always worried about something, by her own admission. She said yes when Jonah offered her the sous chef job at a
starting salary of $38,000, not huge by the standards of the big places she'd worked at but acceptable because it meant that she was done being a line cook.

She tabled any notion of having her own brick-and-mortar restaurant or food truck, although she was careful to tell Jonah that this was a one-year commitment, in case going home proved too strong a lure. At the same time, she couldn't help but wonder what new options she might have if Huertas was a success. Sous chef to executive sous to chef de cuisine; she could run the Huertas kitchen when Jonah and Nate opened a second place. Her food truck dream might even end up a shared project. In any case, she'd be part of the story they told when they looked back: Jonah, a passionate young chef, had bet on himself and traded a safe ascent for a start-up; Nate and Luke had created a business model that enabled them to expand; Jenni had taken a chance on them and been the reliable presence who helped the company grow. She might not have the resources to invest her own money, as Nate and Luke had, but she could see equity for herself down the line, a reward for being essential. It all made sense.

Jonah had been Jenni's “go-to guy” at Maialino, the one who would always listen if she had a problem or a complaint. Now he'd hired her for a job she wasn't quite qualified for. She intended to repay that trust by being the best sous chef he could have wanted, erasing the memory of the friends he couldn't afford.

•   •   •

Jonah was on the flight
to California when a man who might be
New York
magazine's Adam Platt walked into Huertas, alone, and took a seat at the bar. The longtime critic had abandoned his anonymity the previous December with a cover photograph and article in the magazine's annual “Where to Eat” issue, writing, “I would like readers to know what restaurateurs around town have known for years. Adam
Platt is a tall, top-heavy, round-faced gentleman who often dresses for dinner in the same dark, boxy, sauce-stained coat he bought off the rack at Rochester Big & Tall thirteen years ago.”

The man at the bar wasn't wearing a jacket, but he fit the rest of the description, and he looked like the man in the cover photograph. Or maybe he didn't; in the midst of a collective anxiety spike, none of the staff trusted their senses. It was absolutely Adam Platt, unless, of course, it wasn't, a possibility they couldn't afford to consider. They had to operate on the assumption that one of the city's major critics was about to order some of the passed pintxos and might even try one of the raciones. Whatever he did, they could not acknowledge that they knew who he was, or even thought they did, because those were the rules of the game. They had to pretend that he was about to get the same level of attention they would shower on an out-of-town tourist whose opinion mattered to no one. Another man walked in and joined him; no clue there.

Among established restaurants that had already been reviewed, there might be gracious acknowledgment of a powerful guest—whether it was overt, an extra course that appeared unbidden, or covert, an obsessive attention to that guest's experience. For first-timers, obvious moves were out of the question. Nate could not walk up to the man at the bar to say how glad he was to welcome the first critic of any significance, nor could the bartender comp him a drink, lest they offend him or scare him off.

It was an odd bit of etiquette: They could and would treat him like a god, which in their universe he was, as long as they pretended he was nobody special.

None of the principles had ever been in charge when a critic walked in; not Jenni, whose eyes widened at the news, not Luke, who felt the need to text Jonah despite the communications embargo, not Nate, for whom the man at the bar was a lightning rod: Six weeks after Huertas opened, at the dawn of Nate's entrepreneurial life, a man who could
nudge the restaurant toward success or failure was at the bar, and the chef wasn't here.

Nate wasn't worried about anything specific—Jenni knew what she was doing, Chris was there to enforce calm if she got rattled, and it wasn't as though Platt had booked a table for six in the back and was about to dig into the menu del dia cooked by someone other than the chef-owner. He wasn't concerned about the experience; he was overwhelmed by the simple fact of Platt's presence. Huertas had just been plucked from the pack for a shot at one of
New York
magazine's twice-monthly reviews, which could catapult them higher or put a lid on their progress. Either way, it was out of his control, and that was the killer: He couldn't change the menu, ask Jenni to add a dish or tweak a presentation, or alter the drink list. There wasn't any time.

Nate turned the corner in front of the kitchen pass so that he was out of the bar's line of sight and scrabbled his fingers against the tile wall as though he could find something to cling to on that shiny, slick surface. He leaned on the pass with his head down, looking wobbly enough that one of the servers came over to make sure he was okay. Nate shook him off. He didn't know what else they could have done, but what they could do suddenly seemed wildly insufficient. There was a very important loose cannon sitting at the bar—or a man who got great service all over town because of his striking resemblance to the critic. The probable Platt could fall in love with the place and show up in the dining room next week, or just talk about the bar menu, or decide that Huertas wasn't worth a full review, or turn out not to be Platt. They wouldn't know for sure until they saw something in print, or didn't.

•   •   •

Luke was 99 percent sure
that the man at the bar was Adam Platt, which made it his job to ensure that everything ran smoothly—but that was
always his job, so there was no need for anything beyond a degree of added vigilance. He prided himself on his perspective, developed at his fortunate first job at Le Cirque, where he'd had a short stint in the kitchen before he decided he was meant for front of house. Legendary cooks had run that kitchen, Daniel Boulud among them, and for four decades the restaurant survived everything from changing menu trends to the 1993 loss of its fourth star from the
New York Times
, when critic Ruth Reichl compared the dismissive service on an early visit to an exquisite experience on her return, once the staff knew who she was. Luke arrived late in the game, when memories contributed much of the glow, but he'd learned a methodical rhythm there, a level of service that he believed could be translated to inform any new setting, no matter how casual.

He knew that Jonah and Nate were skeptical about some of what seemed important to him, but he insisted that certain practices translated to any restaurant, no matter how downtown the vibe, and he clung to his set of priorities. Nate had already announced that there was no need for a manager to be at the host stand to welcome guests; the hosts they'd hired were able to do the job, and it felt kind of fussy to have Luke up there when he could be putting out small fires during service. Luke stayed put, because the host stand was a guest's first impression of Huertas, and he wanted it to feel important. While he was not about to suggest that an aging bastion of fine dining like Le Cirque was anything to emulate, he liked to think that he was in charge of taking the long view at Huertas. If he increased the volume of cross-country texts now that a critic was at the bar, it wasn't nerves as much as an appropriate desire to keep the chef-owner informed.

Luke figured that a modulated approach was the best way to avoid two common mistakes: the restaurant group that grew too fast, opened multiple outlets before the first one was settled, and went out of business at two out of three outposts before the principles knew what hit
them, and the high-profile group whose cocky attitude translated into endless waits or imperious service, because “people don't like that, they like personal attention.” Once Huertas was a success, bigger companies and investors would show up at the door with new concepts and the money to implement them, and he and Jonah and Nate had to be careful not to let a bad idea turn their heads. Hotel partnerships were big right now because the hotel absorbed some of the costs, but collaborating with a hotel from his old stomping grounds, the Upper East Side, would be foolish no matter how much money someone waved in front of them.