I lurched away from the table after a few hours feeling like Elvis in Vegas - fat, drugged, and completely out of it.
There has ling been a happy symbiotic relationship between kitchen and bar. Simply put, the kitchen wants booze, and the bartender wants food.
To want to own a restaurant can be a strange and terrible affliction. What causes such a destructive urge in so many otherwise sensible people? Why would anyone who has worked hard, saved money, often...
Garlic is divine. Few food items can taste so many distinct ways, handled correctly. Misuse of garlic is a crime. Old garlic, burnt garlic, garlic cut too long ago and garlic that has been tragically...
Practicing your craft in expert fashion is noble, honorable, and satisfying. And I'll generally take a stand-up mercenary who takes pride in his professionalism over an artist any day.
The life of the cook was a life of adventure, looting, pillaging and rock-and-rolling through life with a carefree disregard for all conventional morality. It looked pretty damn good to me on the othe...
Only desperation can account for what the Chinese do in the name of 'medicine.' That's something you might remind your New Age friends who've gone gaga over 'holistic medicine' and 'alternative Chines...
Too lazy to peel fresh? You don't deserve to eat garlic.
They're professionals at this in Russia, so no matter how many Jell-O shots or Jager shooters you might have downed at college mixers, no matter how good a drinker you might think you are, don't forge...
Good food and good eating are about risk. Every once in a while an oyster, for instance, will make you sick to your stomach. Does this mean you should stop eating oysters? No way.
Garlic is divine. Few food items can taste so many distinct ways, handled correctly. Misuse of garlic is a crime. Old garlic, burnt garlic, garlic cut too long ago, garlic that has been tragically sma...
As an art form, cooktalk is, like haiku or kabuki, defined by established rules, with a rigid, traditional framework in which one may operate.
Look at your waiter's face. He knows. It's another reason to be polite to your waiter: he could save your life with a raised eyebrow or a sigh.
Who's cooking your food anyway? What strange beasts lurk behind the kitchen doors? You see the chef: he's the guy without the hat, with the clipboard under his arm, maybe his name stitched in Tuscan b...
Food is everything we are. It's an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It's inseparable from those from the g...
It was once said that this is the land of the free. There is, I believe, a statue out there in the harbor, with something written on it about Give me your hungry...your oppressed...give me pretty much...
This book is about street-level cooking and its practitioners. Line cooks are the heroes.
Frightened people become angry people—as history teaches us again and again.
Having a sous-chef with excellent cooking skills and a criminal mind is one of God's great gifts.
I'll be right here. Until they drag me off the line. I'm not going anywhere. I hope. It's been an adventure. We took some casualties over the years. Things got broken. Things got lost. But I wouldn't...