Thanksgiving 1997

New York

Thanks to all the new subscribers and thanks to Dennis Lee for giving me a shoutout. The first time I saw his Twitter handle @fartsandwich I had a pretty good feeling we’d get along. One of the things he mentions in his interview for Substack was his frustration with food media and I wholeheartedly agree. Something I have experienced as a line cook and now as a chef was the idea that my experiences rarely felt the same as those represented in glossy magazines. Of course, I identified with Anthony Bourdain, but there was a definite lack of “realness” in much of what I saw. I started this newsletter because 1. I felt the need to write, and 2. the desire to share some of my experiences from my 30 years in the hospitality industry. This week I thought I’d tell a story about a Thanksgiving I spent alone in New York. It was not much fun, to say the least, but thinking about it now only makes me so unbelievably grateful for the life I have today.

When I got on the F train headed to Manhattan I was already thinking about Thanksgiving, more specifically if I was going to have the day off. The train was already packed, so I tried to make myself smaller and squeeze into a corner. Yes I know it’s not possible to make yourself smaller but it’s a phenomenon we bigger people do to ourselves. We try to make ourselves smaller and try to hide even though we are clearly visible. It’s a thing. Anyway, I was thinking about what I could or would do if I had the day off. There was no way I could fly home to Chicago, I didn’t really have the money for airplane tickets and didn’t really have the desire to travel on Thanksgiving. There were a lot of restaurants that were open in New York on Thanksgiving, maybe I could treat myself to a nice meal. Actually the more I thought about it the more likely a lot of places were already booked solid.

By the time the train rolled into the 23rd street stop, I still had no idea what I was going to do. There was a chance we might have to work anyway so I figured I shouldn’t get my hopes up. We were still a week away and the chef told us he would make a decision before the weekend was over. At the time I had only been in New York a few months and didn’t realize how homesick I was, I just figured New York was a hard place to live. I knew that most chefs travel at some point in their career, to try and learn as much as they can and experience different cultures, etc. Every book or magazine article about a famous chef always included a part about the chef either traveling to Europe or somewhere to learn at the feet of a master. I had the opportunity to travel to Italy but couldn’t swing not getting paid for a year. It was disappointing but the reality was I had to have money coming in to survive, doing a year-long stagiaire in Italy wasn’t in the cards. I had visited New York before and thought it was close enough to going overseas as I was going to get.

When I walked into the kitchen the chef de cuisine and executive were arguing. One of the things that I found so different about working in New York was how the cooks related to each other. These guys knew each other for 14 years, had worked at three other restaurants together, but when they disagreed or got angry they didn’t hold back. I tried to slip by them as they loudly discussed being open on Thanksgiving. The executive chef was trying to decide if the restaurant should open or not, and wanted to take reservations to test the waters. The chef de cuisine thought this was a ridiculous idea.

“It’s fucking Thanksgiving for fuck’s sake. We should close, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“What the fuck is wrong with me? How the fuck do you think you get paid? We need to bring in as much revenue as we can, the partners crawl up my ass when we close for holidays when everybody else is open.”

“Not everybody is open, c’mon dude, people want to be with their families.”

“ You think I’m a heartless prick? I want to be with my family too fucko.”

It when on like this for a while, I headed downstairs to change. Downstairs the army of prep cooks were running around and shouting at each other in Spanish. The ladies were making tamales and empanadas. The butcher had a pile of perfect salmon filets on one side of him and a pile of salmon trim on the other. The big papa prep cook, Oscar, had a huge container of finely diced peppers and onions for sofrito in front of him. The hallway was filled with deliveries, there was produce everywhere, along with cases of chicken, skirt steak, ribeyes, and duck. Next to these the dry goods order was stacked as well, extra virgin olive oil, rice, beans, sugar, flour, yuca four, vinegar, you name it. The steward was trying to put everything away but the deliveries just kept coming and it was obvious he was overwhelmed. Once I changed I offered to give him a hand, besides, I needed some of this stuff to prep my station, plus I was super early. I always came in two or three hours before I was scheduled. I tried coming on time but there was no way to get my station ready by 5 o’clock so I figure coming in early was the only way. I put away all the seafood and meat, which I liked doing, especially since I worked the grill it gave me a good idea of what we had in the house at all times.

When I made it upstairs lunch was still going on so I asked the lunch crew if they needed anything. They said no so I started prepping to make the black rice I used on my station. It was a lot of prep and took a long time to cook so I always did that first. It was a Cuban dish, it was basically white rice and black beans cooked together. You had to finely dice bacon, three kinds of peppers, and onions. I made a lot of rice at a time so you needed a lot of peppers and onions for the sofrito, about 5#. You then rendered the bacon and cooked the sofrito in the bacon fat and some lard. Meanwhile, you had black beans simmering with dried oregano, bay leaf, and garlic. When the sofrito was very soft you added white rice and bacon and stirred the rice to make sure it was coated in bacon fat. By this time hopefully, the black beans are cooked, preferably overcooked, because this makes the bean liquid black. You then pour the black beans into the white rice and stir it well. You need to stir the rice well to incorporate everything and then cover with banana leaves and place in a 350-degree oven. It would take about 45 minutes to an hour to cook. If you did it right it was absolutely delicious. The rice and beans were served with a churrasco style beef filet topped with chimichurri and it was the number one seller. This is an example of why I wanted to work at Patria. There weren’t too many restaurants in Manhattan where something as simple as rice and beans were given so much care and thought. If you are trying to represent Latin America then rice and beans are a staple and should be represented somewhere on your menu. ( Just my opinion).

Anyway once I had my prep well underway and the other cooks had arrived and started prepping the executive chef came into the kitchen and said he wanted to talk to us. They had decided that the dining room would be closed for Thanksgiving, however, they had an off-premise catering gig for the David Letterman show and would need help getting everything together. They said they would like to take volunteers instead of demanding that people work. I volunteered right away, it was going to be a half-day anyway, plus David Letterman! The chef de cuisine told us they were going to have to cook 30 turkeys and he was still trying to figure out how to do that with only four ovens. At this point, everybody started chiming in about how to cook the turkeys and asking if they were actually going to meet Letterman and he told us to shut up and prep for service. Well at least I had something to do for Thanksgiving, I figured it was better than sitting around my apartment all day.

A week later I show up for work very early, about 8 am and there is only Oscar. He asks me if I know anything about cooking turkeys.

“Huh? Why?”

“I think we might have a problem.”

So we went downstairs and he instructed me to look in the oven. Now the night before one of the sous chefs had convinced the chefs to cook the turkeys upside down in roasting pans at a very low temperature overnight. He insisted that by cooking them breast side down they would retain more moisture. He also said he had done it before at another restaurant and it had worked really well. At the time I was on my way out the door and didn’t really pay that much attention to what they were doing, I just wanted to go home. When I walked out the door they were still arguing about it. So Oscar then opens the oven door and removes a roasting pan with two upside-down turkeys in them. I thought they looked pretty good and told him I thought everything looked great, they were golden brown all over, the skin looked crispy and delicious.

He smiled “Try to turn it over.”

“Ok what’s the big deal?”

As I put a pair of tongs inside the bird’s cavity and tried to move it I quickly found it was stuck to the roasting pan.

“Uh oh”

If I forcefully moved the turkeys the skin, which was stuck to the pan would come off and there would be a huge missing gap of skin and possibly meat from the breast. Not the best look for a holiday party for the Letterman show.

“Are all the turkeys upside down?”

“Yes”
”Oh shit.”

“Yes”

I knew the chef was going to lose his mind when he found out all the upside-down turkeys were stuck to their roasting pans. He was probably going to yell or scream and someone and I knew I didn’t want to be around for that show.

“Oscar, just leave the turkeys for now. There’s other prep we can do before the chef gets here right?’

“We have a lot of stuff to do, but this is number 1 on the list. He left a note to call him if there is a problem.”

So Oscar called him, he lived only two blocks from the restaurant. When he asked what the problem was Oscar told him the turkeys were stuck and he just hung up. This was not going to be fun.

When the chef showed up wearing sweat pants, slippers, a Jets jacket, and bedhead I got worried. He walked over to the turkeys and then over to us, then back at the turkeys. He took a spatula and tried to gingerly move the turkey. However, the turkey wasn’t budging and he finally gave up and ripped the turkey from the pan. When he turned it over there was a huge section of skin missing and the turkey looked like someone had taken a bite out of it.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.”

He was not happy. I slowly stepped backward, I didn’t want to be at the receiving end of his anger and frustration. The sous chef whose idea this was, he was probably going to be on the receiving end of a lot of abuse. I felt sorry for him but was only thinking of myself at the moment'.

“Oh well fuck it.”

The chef let out a big sigh and looked at us.

“You know guys I should never have listened to him. That dude smokes his breakfast and lunch.”

I laughed out loud and so did Oscar.

“Fuck, guys do the best you can with these turkeys. I’m going to go home and change, I’ll be back in a few. “

He left us down there although I heard him muttering as he left.

“Fucking dude and his weed. What the fuck?”

Oscar and I did our best to turn over the turkeys without ripping the breast to shreds and actually did manage to get a few over intact. We then hit the prep list hard. Once some of the other cooks got there we helped get all the mise en place into containers fro the travel to midtown. When the chef got back he seemed to be in a better mood and walked around shaking all the cooks hands, thanking them for coming in and helping. He also brought bagels which helped. Once the sous chef got there he took him into his office for awhile. I was waiting for fireworks but it seemed surprisingly quiet. When he walked out of the office thought he was staring at the ground like he had been chatized within an inch of his life. It was hard to not giggle, most of the other cooks found it hilarious as well but we kept quiet.

When it was time to leave the chef told me I could go home and that he didn’t need that many cooks for the party. I was looking forward to seeing Letterman but I was also tired and was looking forward to going home. Riding the subway on Thanksgiving was actually pleasant, I got to sit down all the way to Queens which rarely happened. I was wondering what I was going to do with the rest of my day, however. Once I got home a sense of loneliness crept in and I could feel myself getting sucked into a foul mood. I left and walked down the street near my house and found most of the stores there were open. I stopped in the bodega and got a turkey sandwich, I found it appropriate. Next stop the liquor store and I bought a 40 ounce. When I got home I had definitely settled into a funk. I was feeling sorry for myself and being alone in my apartment eating a turkey sandwich and drinking a 40 ounce was not helping. I had called my mother earlier in the day and the more I thought about being home the sadder I became. I left to get another 40 ounce and decided to sit outside for a while and drink my 40 ounce on the steps outside my apartment. I got pretty buzzed and made a promise to myself to leave New York when I had worked there a year. I was missing Chicago horribly and even though I was learning so much I was not happy.

Thinking on this, maybe I was just a bit immature. On the other hand, I was unhappy and why do something if it makes you miserable. New York was such a great experience for me and I’m glad I went and had the experiences I had. But Chicago will always be my home. Being Thanksgiving I was thinking about this time the other day. Thinking about getting drunk by myself and feeling very alone. I am so thankful for my life today. I have everything I could possibly need. I have a beautiful wife, a wonderful place to live, a refrigerator full of healthy food, clean clothes, life is good. I am going into Thanksgiving in a very different place than that year in New York and I can’t be more thankful for all the things that life has given me. I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving and enjoy time with your loved ones. Thank you for reading this and subscribing.