At eight-thirty, my butcher, Hubert, arrives, looking as if he’s woken up under a bridge. Then I write up the specials so that Camélia can enter them into the computer and set the prices. (Some of their names have been changed.)īefore noon, I cut and pepper pavées and filets skin and slice calf’s liver caramelize apples blanch baby carrots make garlic confit produce a livornaise sauce for the tuna and start a currant sauce for the pheasant and assemble the navarin. Omar, who works the cold station for appetizers and salads, and has a thick barbed-wire tattoo on one upper arm, is the next to arrive, and he’s followed by the rest of the day team: Segundo, the prep centurion Ramòn, the dishwasher Janine, the pastry chef and Camélia, the general manager. Carlos loves any soup he can jack with Ricard or Pernod, and today’s soupe de poisson with rouille is one of his favorites. He asks if I’ve got any red-snapper bones on the way. He has a pierced eyebrow and a body by Michelangelo, and he considers himself a master soupmaker. While I take cheese, garnishes, mussels, and sauces out of the reach-in at my sauté station, I’m listening to the Dead Boys playing “Sonic Reducer.”Ĭarlos, my daytime grill man, comes in. I push back the plastic curtains to the refrigerated boucherie-a cool room where the butchers do their cutting-and take the assistant butcher’s boom box from the worktable. Taking a ring of keys from my desk, I open the locks on the drygoods-storage room, the walk-in refrigerator, the reach-in coolers, the pastry box, and the freezers. I find my knife kit, stuff a thick stack of hand towels into it, and clip a pen into my jacket-sidewise, so it doesn’t fall out when I bend over. I go down into the cellar to my office, and change into chef’s jacket, apron, and kitchen clogs, which are the preferred footwear for chefs because they “breathe” well and give good back support. I can par-roast it ahead of time, so that all my sous-chef will have to do is take it off the bone and sling it into the oven to finish, then heat up the sauce and the garnishes before serving. But I’ve got a leg of venison and twelve pheasants coming in. Les Halles features classic French bistro food, and at any one time the sauté station has to be ready to turn out moules à la marinière, boudin noir with caramelized apples, filet au poivre, steak au poivre, steak tartare, calf’s liver persillé, cassoulet Toulousain, magret de moulard with quince and sauce miel, the ridiculously popular mignon of pork, pieds de cochon, and a navarin of lamb that comes with baby carrots, pearl onions, niçoise olives, garlic confit, tomato concassée, fava beans, and chopped fresh herbs. The tuna will be taking up most of the grill’s time, so the meat will have to be prepared at the sauté station. For the appetizer special, I’m thinking cockles steamed with chorizo, leeks, tomatoes, and white wine-a one-pan wonder. My overworked grill man can heat the already cooked spuds and the blanched asparagus on a sizzle platter the tuna will get a quick walk across the grill and all he’ll have to do is heat up the sauce at the last minute. Nor is any kind of fish with an exotic name.Ĭlimbing into a taxi on Broadway, I decide that the fish special will be grilled tuna livornaise with roasted potatoes and grilled asparagus. For the weekenders, a saddle of wild hare stuffed with foie gras is not a good special. The people who will be coming tonight and tomorrow night to Les Halles, a restaurant on Park Avenue South where I work as the chef, aren’t like the people who come during the week. The grill station will be too busy for elaborate presentations, so I need things that are quick, simple, and easily plated. While I brush my teeth, and take my first aspirins of the day, I’m thinking about weekend specials. On Friday morning, I wake up at five-fifty-five.
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