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Published in Great Britain in 2014 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
First published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York
Copyright © Michael Gibney, Jr. 2014
The moral right of the author has been asserted
This digital edition first published by Canongate Books in 2014
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 9781782112532
eISBN 9781782112556
Book design by Susan Turner
For my family
Fyodor Pavlovich, when he heard about this new quality in Smerdyakov, immediately decided that he should be a cook, and sent him to Moscow for training. He spent a few years in training, and came back much changed in appearance. He suddenly became somehow remarkably old, with wrinkles even quite disproportionate to his age, turned sallow, and began to look like a eunuch.
—FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY, The Brothers Karamazov
CONTENTS
KITCHEN FLOOR PLAN
KITCHEN CHAIN OF COMMAND
PREFACE
MORNING
ROUNDS
FINESSE JOBS
THE TEAM
PLATS DU JOUR
GETTING THERE
BREAK
SERVICE
MESSAGE
CLOSE
BAR
HOME
MORNING
SELECTED KITCHEN TERMINOLOGY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
1. Walk-in Freezer 2. Locker Room 3. Chef Office 4. Exit to Loading Dock 5. Curing and Ripening Rooms 6. Pastry Department 7. Walk-in Boxes 8. Dry Storage 9. Meat Roast 10. Fish Roast 11. Cold Side 12. Prep Area 13. Entremetier 14. The Pass 15. Coffee Station 16. Production Storage 17. Dish Area 18. Entrance 19. Exit to Dining Room
ON A WARM AFTERNOON IN THE SPRING OF 2011, I FOUND myself on a shady corner of Forty-Third Street, just off Times Square, smoking one last cigarette before returning to the twentieth floor of the Condé Nast building to complete the second half of my day clipping magazine articles for The New Yorker’s editorial library—a temporary gig I’d taken between kitchen jobs. I was about to chuck the butt into the gutter when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a figure whose large silhouette seemed familiar enough to warrant a second look.
He was a tall man—at least six foot three—with a nest of unattended curls atop his head that made him appear even taller. He stood with his back to me, a navy-blue pin-striped suit hanging loosely over his broad shoulders. He puffed at a cigarette and chatted on his phone, making lively gestures with his free hand while a nimbus of smoke collected in the air around him.
Even though I couldn’t see his face, there was something about his posture that I recognized immediately. He was poised, yet oddly stooped at the same time. His movements were quick and fitful, yet marked by a certain calculated, meditative finesse, which could be detected even in something as simple as the way he flicked the ash from his cigarette.
And then my eyes fell on his shoes and it hit me: checker-print slip-on tennies—with a suit, no less. I knew this man: Chef Marco Pierre White.
I lit up another smoke and waited for him to finish his phone conversation so I could say hello.
Of course, I didn’t actually know the man; I only knew of him. I had read his books and I had seen the hoary BBC clips of him preparing noisette d’agneau avec cervelle de veau en crépinette for Albert Roux while a young Gordon Ramsay traipsed around in the
