(gentle music)
Welcome to my world.
(fast paced music)
Two escargot pate freeze.
Two green salads.
Lamb chop, steak fries.
Shouldn't you be
doing something?
Two smoked filet
and a pepper steak.
Come on, make the dessert.
Chocolate tart please.
As a cook, tastes and
smells are my memories.
Now I'm in search of new ones.
So I'm leaving New York
City and hope to have
a few epiphanies
around the world.
And I'm willing to go to
some lengths to do that.
I am looking for extremes
of emotion and experience.
I'll try anything.
I'll risk everything.
I have nothin' to lose.
There are 8,000,000
people in New York City.
Every day, they have to eat
and someone has
to cook for them.
My name is Tony Bordain.
I've been in the restaurant
business for 28 years.
About 20 of those as a chef.
I started as a dishwasher.
I've been a line
cook, a prep drone,
a good cook, a bad cook, a
good person and a bad person.
I'm a changed person from
the way I used to be.
And every morning,
starting at eight AM,
I'm the executive chef
at Les Halles Brasserie
in New York City.
In New York, the
chances of success in a
restaurant business, well, the
odds are stacked against you.
My personal logo, spanky
new chef's whites.
You know, this is
the big leagues.
These are my babies right here.
I have suspicions.
I saw a suckling pig being
tied up the other day.
Suspect I'll need this.
It's a very capricious,
very fickle,
very fast-moving public,
very sophisticated.
They demand not only
the best, but different.
Awe, isn't he cute?
What drives you to do
this every single day?
You love it.
See how many things you
can make at the same time.
Over here, I'm working the
beef for the braised over beef.
Over here, we have
tomato concasse working.
Over there, sauce poivre
reducing and in here,
our little friend, the
boned out baby pig.
Maybe you recognize him
from such films as Babe,
Pig In The City and
Babe, The Revenge.
Cooks have traditionally
been slaves from
Roman times up until
the mid-1800's.
So far, I have found
that all line cooks share
the same sense of being
outsiders, degraded,
beaten down, under-appreciated.
Many of us have a
messy, dysfunctional,
chaotic lives outside
of the kitchen,
but inside the kitchen,
we have the only order,
the only structure in our lives.
What time were you
supposed to be here today?
Uh, 10:30.
10:30, what time is it now?
10:45.
Do you own a watch?
Should I buy you a watch?
That's okay.
Apparently you have
some problem telling time.
I think the removal
of at least a digit
just to show that you
recognize your transgressions.
Okay, maybe I'm
busting Opie's chops,
but when I was 17, I was
sliding down the same
slippery slope of insolence.
The way I've lived my life,
I am on bonus round now.
I ran outta points
a long time ago.
I'd probably be scooping
mashed potatoes in Attica
right now if it wasn't for my
first summer in Provincetown.
Recently, I went back and
confronted my shady past.
Yeah baby, summer 1974.
Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Salt air, sea
breeze, promises of.
New England clam chowder.
Squid stew, Maine
lobsters, local scallops.
It's all that good New
England seashore stuff.
I stumbled into town a
penny-less 17 year old
without a clue what
to do with my life.
That's how my long and
checkered career began
right there.
Getting a job washing
dishes to pay the rent,
I was quickly impressed
by the line cook.
I wanted to drink as much
free liquor as they got.
I wanted to do as many
waitresses as they did.
I wanted to be able to
steal whole sirloin strips
and load up my freezer
with frozen shrimp
just like they did.
Ya know, it was exactly what
you look for as a teenager.
Walk into a bar with a posse
of smelly cooks around you
and have the room
hushed slightly.
We were a tough five.
You could knock out 300
meals, stand in a hot kitchen,
crank out fried fish
and steamed lobsters.
The hordes of hungry tourists
and it was a ready-made
excuse to behave badly in
every other part of your life.
I thought boy, if this is
the life that chefs lead,
that looks pretty good to me.
My first big break came
from working the line
at Ciro and Sal's
Italian Restaurant.
Ciro and Sal's serves all your
favorite Italian standards
from fettuccine
alfredo to ossobuco.
With the added plus of their
New England seashore location,
they also serve a wide
variety of fresh fish
and seafood dishes, all cooked
in the Italian way, of course.
Nevertheless, I have my
own personal favorite.
A la marsala with
an aviary sauce.
Veal marsala.
Marsala is a velvety
meat sauce which gets its
robust flavor from the
Italian wine of the same name.
Old school veal dish, ya know,
seen it in a million
Italian restaurants.
Why did I order it?
Because I thought it was
very cool when I came here.
They used to do this,
they'd saute the veal
in one pan.
Then they'd de-glaze the pan,
but they would have
three, sometimes three,
sometimes four empty pans
set on burners down the stove
pre-heated super hot, so
the quick reduced the sauce.
They would go,
then quickly pour
it from pan to pan.
Hissing and splattering
as it would move
from one pan to the other.
Cooking down ultra quick.
It was a very flashy move.
It impressed the hell outta me.
As a drug-adled 17 year
old, I could barely
crack an egg.
I came over here
and worked besides a
huge grill man who's
really good at his job
and now, here's the thing.
I believe that he is
now the chef here.
I'm afraid I'm gonna go in
the kitchen, he's gonna,
"Ah, you little screw-up."
I got my ass kicked in
this kitchen so badly.
Now let's re-enact this.
The year was 1974, '75 right?
Presumably, I'm supposed
to be helping out.
And everybody's screaming.
I don't even understand
the names of these dishes.
What's la noche, what's marsala?
(laughter)
Ossobuco, what is that?
I don't know.
I remember just standing
here, just doing this thing,
you know, like...
(laughter)
And of course, you're
making all the right moves.
You pretty much took
care of the friar layer.
That little bit of the oven.
You're being way too nice.
I was so useless,
I was so useless.
I didn't say you
did a great job.
I said you took
care of it (laughs).
Now, as I remember it,
I burned myself, right?
And I asked you for burn cream.
Oh my God.
Suddenly, the noisiest
kitchen in the world became
the silentist
kitchen in the world.
And now look at you,
the bigtime chef, huh?
Well in a lot of ways,
I owe it all to you.
If I hadn't been so
utterly humiliated by my
uselessness that night, I
mean, I could have ended up,
ya know, stickin'
up liquor stores.
I mean, ya know, you put me
on the straight and narrow.
If things go sour for me
with all this TV nonsense,
I'll be lookin' for
my fry job back.
[Chef] Come on back.
Now, what would I have
become had I not become a cook?
I'm sure tragedy
would've ensued.
In fact, if there's any part
of me that's good and decent
and organized and exhibits
the qualities that
generally parents approve of,
strangely enough, I
learned all of those
things in the
restaurant business.
At around noon at Les Halles,
we always get a lunch rush.
Okay guys, we have a
steak with the mussel.
In a restaurant kitchen,
the day has a distinct rhythm.
The major periods are the
lunch and dinner rushes.
Within each rush, there
are smaller divisions of
fast and slow as the
dining room turns over.
The adrenaline generate,
I mean, apparently,
joggers get some sort of a
kick, like after they jog
every day, they
get hooked on it.
It's much the same way.
You get hooked on
generating a few bursts
of adrenaline like
this every single day.
Wannabes beware.
This is no walk in the park.
You better be at a
high pitch for this.
I lose my (beep) for one minute,
these guys wait next to 30
minutes to get their food.
No matter how good a job,
ya know, we do today,
we're gonna have to
do it again tomorrow
and the next day
and the next day
and forever.
One of the things that keeps
me from crashing and burning
is a firm foundation
in the basics.
I am classically trained in
the sense that I went to,
I went to the best cooking
school in the country
and was trained by a
profession of very old school
French, Austrian, Swiss,
Italian and German chefs.
The world has changed a
lot since those times.
The school I went to
has changed a lot.
It's a whole different
world up there.
Everything is good,
all caught up.
Recently, I was invited
back to my alma mater
to visit with
students and staff.
(marching band music)
C-I-A, The Culinary
Institute of America.
This is the Harvard and West
Point of cooking schools
all rolled into one.
Located on it's own facility
in upstate New York,
this is a self-contained
compound that offers
a disciplined and exhaustive
education in the culinary arts
as well as the
restaurant business.
My first stop is to visit
the actual classroom
where I did many of
my kitchen exercises.
How you doing, chef?
Nice to meet you, how are you?
I was in this kitchen
in 1975, I think.
Can we have a quick lineup
please, ladies and gentlemen?
So every morning,
I start up classes
where this is the lineup.
I greet every one of
them individually,
shake their hands, give
them the inspection,
make sure their
shoes are shined,
make sure their hat's on
straight, the whole nine yards,
get them geared up for
their professional day
and perhaps the
class would like to
say a few words to
our guest chef here,
Mr. Anthony Bordain.
[Students] Morning Chef Bordain.
Welcome to CIA.
This guy is definitely
a food drill sergeant.
He doesn't phase me.
We had guys like him
back when I attended CIA.
What surprises me
are the students.
These aren't the farm
boys, bed wetters,
flunk outs and criminal miscreants
that attended CIA in '75.
These students mean business.
So I decide to lighten
things up a bit.
I'll confess something.
I used to cheat in this class.
I remember I used to
have six and a half hours
to come up with a, ya
know, a strong stock.
They should have given
me a full pat down.
I was smuggling little packets
of a miner's chicken base.
(laughter)
Maybe an x-ray machine
will be in place tomorrow.
Pleasure meetin' ya.
- Enjoy your stay.
- Thank you.
Thank you very much guys.
I decide to drop into
a class down the hall
where they're actually
learning how to make stocks.
Chef, I'd like to get
you started maybe with
a jacket and a hat.
I can do that.
As usual here.
Alright, got my
coffee filter on,
first time in 23
years, don't quote me.
To most people who
even know what it is,
stock may seem like a pretty
simple or boring thing
to focus on in cooking
school like this.
But on the contrary, stock
is the fundamental ingredient
in a significant majority of
soups, sauces and recipes.
Now what stocks are coming
outta this class today again?
Alright, we make
chicken stock every day.
We make a ground
veal stock every day.
We make a white beef
stock every day.
[Anthony] Stock is made by
gently simmering the bones
and meat of animals or
fish along with vegetables,
spices, and occasionally wine.
The first day, we mock about,
but this class focuses
on these stocks
and the importance of them.
If you don't have a good
stock, you're not gonna have
a good finished product, you're
not gonna have a good rice.
Like a bad stock will
ruin your finished product.
You know, you've killed the
thing in it's crib already.
You know, you see a lot of
stock crimes out in the world.
Unpeeled carrots,
unpeeled onions,
letting stocks get
bitter, overboiling them.
There are a lot of things
that can go wrong with stock.
How many hours is that?
Six hours.
So the veal stock
cooks six hours.
Alright, good, any
of the ovens on yet?
Oh no, get those ovens on.
You know, it's easy especially
when you're talkin' about
stocks and basics, it's
easy to start veering slowly
off the course.
What separates great
chefs from decent chefs
are guys who never
waver, ya know,
and are basically making
stocks the right way
their whole life continuously
and relentlessly.
Chef, thank you so much.
Thank you.
While some things
never seem to change,
won't miss the hat,
the future of culinary
school definitely has.
Ya know, when I told my parents,
"Mom, Dad, I wanna be a
chef and I wanna go to"
"cooking school, I wanna go to."
"The Culinary
Institute of America."
I mean, they were about
as happy about that
as if I'd announced at
the dinner table, ya know,
"Mom, Dad, I wanna
be an arsonist."
Now, wealthy parents are
cheerfully sending their kids off
to culinary school
and bragging about it.
It's an honorable profession.
That is, at least until
I get my hands on em
when they graduate.
Hey, maybe I should
go and see the dean
about a teaching position.
(woodwind music)
As Les Halles kicks
into the evening shift,
I'm replaced at the
saute station and switch
over to expediting.
What does an expediter do?
He makes sure that the food
comes up at the same time
and gets out to the right
table at the right time.
You got a calamari working?
You're the best.
Come on Elvis, move, I
wanna smell hair burn.
Being a chef is an
all right brain.
In fact, a large part of
the job is managerial.
Alright, throw out the olives.
I want all new ones.
Only a few hours
left in the day,
but the dinner rush is
always the toughest part.
(foreign language)
Endive salad, green
salad, followed by
two lamb chop, veal
paillard, anglais,
two smoke filet, green
salad followed by filet.
Oh see, this is ugly.
Usually, it's about this
time that I start fantasizing
about going postal
on my dining room.
Look at this stew.
No butter.
No butter!
No butter, but they
want extra bearnaise.
I mean, that's a, what
the (beep) is the matter
with these stuttering (beep).
No butter, what the hell
do you think bearnaise is?
Bearnaise is like
egg yolks and butter.
The one thing that always keeps
me from going over the edge
is my fear and
reverence for one man.
The man who taught me
everything I know about
managing a kitchen.
He's the man I like
to call Bigfoot.
Every now and again, I like
to touch base with the master
in order to keep myself
properly aligned.
Bigfoot is a legend
in the lower Manhattan
restaurant business.
This whole neighborhood
is Bigfoot territory.
He really then ran three
places that I know of
all within a few
block area of here.
The man has, shall
we say, a reputation.
He's the godfather.
He rules his establishments
with an iron fist.
Haven't worked for
the man in 10 years,
but that guy's still
screwin' with my head.
That's the kind of
management I like and admire.
Bigfoot always had
an uncanny ability
at being aware of the
most intimate details
of everything happening
in his restaurant.
Time to see my longtime
mentor, my original mentor,
the man I refer to as Bigfoot.
I think you should
call me Mr. Bigfoot.
Or Mr. Foot.
Any time anyone in the
biz needs to self-reflect,
they always value
Bigfoot's council.
Your eminence.
Do sit down.
[Anthony] When did I
walk in the door first
into your restaurant?
Maybe we met in '76, seven?
Generations of
bartenders, cooks,
waiters, bus boys, managers
have gone through your
various operations.
What were my strengths and
weaknesses as a line cook
(laughs) for you?
In all honesty, the people
that succeeded the most
in any of my organizations, I
think you would characterize
as real smart guys.
I was looking
for an answer like,
"Your soups were
really good, Tony."
[Bigfoot] Your soups
were not so good.
Memory served.
You were fun to have
around all the time.
So I wouldn't be the go-to
guy if you were looking for,
ya know, some
spectacular new, ya know,
to break new ground in cuisine,
I probably wouldn't
be the guy you'd call.
That thought'd
never cross my mind.
(laughter)
You happen to have
one really staggeringly
talented cook under
your roof for a while
who helped me a
lot in later years.
He certainly could put
the food on the plate.
He didn't have a clue
about the management,
which was, as you know,
as much a part of the
chef's job as the food is.
I can't look back and say to
you that it was your soups
or anything like that.
I can't remember
back that far but,
the thing that springs to
mind first and foremost
was the fact that you
always took care of it.
You have to be able to
depend upon your people.
[Anthony] Like all wise
mentors, Bigfoot always knows
how to level criticism
constructively.
He always seemed to know
just what you were thinking.
I wonder if all those
stories were true.
[Bigfoot] I can't disclose that.
Okay, this is getting creepy.
I'm gettin' outta here.
Hey, thanks very
much for your time.
It's always good to see
you when you're back around,
ya know, stop in and say hello.
Always, see ya.
Special fish, fillet.
One thing I definitely
learned from Bigfoot
is that management skills
in the kitchen are key.
It's ironic when you consider
how screwed up I used to be.
Oh yeah, the ability
to cook, that would be
a good thing also.
But I would say it comes after.
I mean, the other qualities
are more important
and this is something
that most people miss.
Of course, a good
chef also knows
when to give a little slack,
especially to himself.
I'm committing a
felony, hey, don't look.
After 14 hours at Les Halles,
my day is winding down.
The dinner rush is at
it's final death rows.
Everything is good?
Taste is fine?
Super!
Good.
After this, no
problem, nothing right?
At the end of the day, when
your energy starts to fail,
it's less about the individual
than the group comradery
that pulls you down
that final stretch.
Listen, it's really,
really important to me
that you have a good night
because I care about you.
Finally, my shift
comes to an end.
The Earth has completed
two-thirds of a revolution,
but do I wanna go home?
Not on your life.
Maybe a couple cocktails,
talk with some other chefs.
Compadres!
Thank you very much!
Okay, I see you.
Most of the time, I just grab
a few beers with the crew,
but once or twice a week, well,
I wanna go where
everybody knows my name.
Bellevue Bar.
[Man] Hey!
How are ya?
The owner of Bellevue Bar
is my really good friend,
Tracy Westmoreland.
This is the back room, the
sort of secret back room
of Bellevue Bar.
You always get a good crowd of
people who are in the industry
and they always know
they can drop by
one of Tracy's places late
at night and get treated
really, really well and
behave really, really badly.
(laughter)
You never know who'll show up,
but tonight's cast of
characters includes.
Junie Parent, owner of Nobu,
Philippe Basel,
chef at Park Bistro
and Scott Bryan, chef at Barato.
What we all seem to
wanna do after work
is hang out with other people
in the restaurant business
who just did what we
did and talk shop.
Ya know, you need to
hang around with people
of your own kind
and commiserate.
I'm being (beep)
by the department of
environmental protection.
What did you do?
Violation, $1750.
We could hear the
music on the street.
And meanwhile, if you come
up Ninth Avenue right now,
they're burning tar.
Ya know, I wake up to
drilling, 8:00 in the morning.
I'm playing music and they
can hear it on the street.
$1750 fine.
In 1975, '75, when I
was at Formerly Joe's
working with Bigfoot,
somebody called up the EPA
and claimed that they'd seen
Andy's employees dumping
fryer layer grease
into the sewer grate
outside the street, which
of course, we hadn't done.
We all have the same hours,
we all suffered a varied
degrees from the same forces.
After work, we wanna
hang out, get drunk,
eat generally raw fish or
ya know, humble soul food
type stuff.
Thousand dollars worth of
toro sushi man, right here.
Man, you did well.
What do you got here?
Foie gras.
Oh excellent.
We take real pleasure in
each other's misfortune
without holding it
against each other.
I mean, we just,
that's the way it is.
There's a grim pride in
cranking out a lot of food,
especially when
you're 44 years old.
To do an evening of 250 dinners
and keep up with the kids,
there's nothin' like that.
Then I'm on top of the world.
I mean, enormously powerful
evocative meeting with food.
I don't ever get tired of it.
Hmm, I wonder what I'll
serve for tomorrow's special.
(fast paced electronic music)
