CHEZ PANISSE: THE GERTRUDE STEIN DINNER
Chefs have a reputation for bad behavior in part because they have to play so hard to counteract the daily pileup of tension and fatigue, and that play didn’t mean yoga. For many of us, it was about how many oysters and great wines we could fit into a few hours and still get some rest before the work began again. The dilemma in my few hours off was how to recharge my batteries instead of depleting them further. The mental onslaught was never-ending, even in sleep since restaurant operation nightmares are famous in the industry. And drugs were easier to organize than sex, unless it was casual, which usually meant with one another. Who else would put up with us?
Temporary oblivion was what we sought. On my one day off and before a four o’clock lunch with my sous-chef Willy.
I would head off to the Japanese baths for a long soak. In later years, when I was a bit more flush and certainly more famous, I would be invited out, sometimes by San Francisco’s elite restaurateurs. But in those early and not so well funded days, it was either Trader Vic’s in Oakland for its tandoor oven-cooked food and expert bartenders, or Vanessi’s in San Francisco for tomato and anchovy salad, tortellini in cream, a great filet mignon cooked on charcoal, and zabaglione for dessert. We ate like pythons coming out of a long sleep. As cooks we had not really eaten during the week, just tasted and picked. After sixteen hours of shopping and cooking, I couldn’t look at food for at least two hours. That meant if we ate at all, dinner would start at one in the morning, and that I’d have only four hours’ sleep before heading back to Chinatown to sniff the bloody gills of fish for freshness and hold down my rising gorge.
It’s no surprise then that one night I wandered into the dining room, empty except for Alice and some staff sitting around a bottle of old Burgundy, most likely Le Corton from Doudet-Naudin since the son and heir was “working” for us as in getting away from his arranged fiancée-and burst into tears. All my strength and discipline were gone. The months of 90-hour weeks in a relentless attempt to make it all work with so few hands had done me in. “I am out of here,” I told the astonished group. “See you in a week.” I added, “And, Alice, you will just have to do the menus.” She did, and took over the kitchen for a week.
While I was away Willy wrote me a welcome back plan.