Ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more

In a previous life, on my computer screen at work, I printed out and hung the words, capitalized and bold, "Maggie's Farm," as a reminder to myself not to get emotionally caught up in the myriad BS situations that seemed to emanate from the facts and personalities of the job. That not only was the job just a stepping stone to a roof and a meal, but one that made it clear that short of those ends, I owed it nothing.

I am now two months in to my stage (internship) at The Four Seasons George V, the pride and joy of The Four Seasons company, with a five star rating, world class accommodations, including the premier spa in the world, and finally, Le Cinq, a two Michelin starred restaurant that has appeared on a number of publications' Top 50 and Top 100 lists. It was awarded a third star the year after its opening, which was subsequently taken away when the executive chef changed to Eric Briffard in 2008. Obviously, for the name alone, I am ecstatic to have the opportunity to work there directly out of culinary school. On top of that, my stage is paid and two months longer than most of my classmates.

The brigade is 82 chefs, cooks, and apprentices, divided between the four services of Le Cinq, the Bar and Gallery, Room Service, Pastry, and Banquet. It is a huge brigade, doing as many as 600 covers a day (not including Banquet). Each service is further broken down into stations. For Room and the Bar, this includes a cold sandwich station (my first assisignment), salads, and the line. For Le Cinq, there is Garde Manger, fish prep, meat prep, Hot Fish, Entremets, Sauce, and a miscellaneous cook who fires everything a la minute that doesn't fall in to those categories (in the case of our current menu, responsible for the firing off of a smoked gavage'd duck breast, lamb leg, and guinea fowl.

The stagiaire program puts each intern through all services and all stations (with the exception of Pastry, unless specifically requested). So far my rotation has been through Room and Bar, with the line being reserved solely for the chefs de partie (station chiefs) and select commis who have proven their mettle and Garde Manger, whose responsibility description is ethereal but best described as cold kitchen. The duties of the garde manger are all cold dishes and pre-prepared foods like charcuterie, but it also manages the deep fry station. In the coming weeks I will be rotating through entremets, which deals mostly with soups, and next the fish prep which does all the butchering of sea food and handling the related garnishes and decorative elements, as well as pre-cooking of any shellfish and crustaceans used as garnish (mainly lobster and crab, but also stocks of langoustine or lobster).

On to the menu. In keeping with the prestige of the locale (rooms range from $1100-$20,000 a night, last night there were two Maseratis and 4 Porsches out front, and the CEO of the largest bank in Europe dined with us), the real strength of plates is their presentation. Down to the simplest salad, a mesclun mixture with truffle vinaigrette is transformed from something quite ordinary into a stunning gravity defying masterpiece by slowly building handful upon handful into a foot tall salad. Each guest is served as a matter of course the amuse bouche, currently a trio plate of port glazed cantaloupe, gently cooked sous-vide to burst the cell-walls and release the sweet juice while compressing the melon round into a toothy morsel of flavor, seared octopus escabeche, and verrine of melon gaspacho with bell pepper mousse - peeled peppers hyper-cooked to a confit and then blended and gelled for storage in a siphon until called.

Currently the chef has a fascination with playing on tomatoes, so part of the tasting menu consists of a handcrafted crystal verrine, 9 inches tall, with layers of granny smith, heirloom tomato, and grapefruit gelees, tangy tomato sorbet (beefheart tomato), whipped cream tinged with horseradish, and topped with petals of borage flower accompanied by a tomato and crab millefeuille- again, heirloom, guacamole, purple japanese tomato, crab and sherry vinegar filling, and another square of heirloom. Immediately following this is a tomato carpaccio of paper thin slices of black, purple, yellow and watermelon cherry tomatoes and cumquats, drizzled with olive oil and set off with slivers of raw fresh almonds. Finally, we do a deep-fried plum tomato filled with burata, lemon confit, pine nuts and kalamata olive, peeled with the skin still intact so that when the tomato is drenched in tempura and hits the oil the skin folds up into beautiful wisps. Tuna also figures prominently, with a tuna tartare topped with caviar and garnished with granny smith gelee and wasabi-pea cream.

I can't say that I enjoy everything we cook- but the vast majority of what I've seen is delicious. But again, the most impressive thing for me is the presentation. Plating, both conceptually and technically, is not something I am good at. There's not much choice though when the Chef's voice is booming over the loudspeaker, much like God's does in those cheesy Church history videos from my youth.

Socially, the atmosphere is something best experienced rather than described. Between hiding from the yells, insults, and incredulous "Qu'est-ce que tu fait!?!?!?!" thrown from the sous chefs, chefs de parties, and commis, standard conversation revolves around calling into question each other's sexuality, competence (either in the kitchen or in bed, it doesn't really matter), anatomy, heritage, and assessing the physical traits of any and all women. Other times, though, we do veer into more educational banter: language lessons, namely, how to translate specific physiological occurrences and/or anomalies, sex acts (most probably illegal somewhere), and discussing world politics. And that pretty much sums up everything we talk about.

Speaking of women, there are several in the traditionally male dominated kitchen. Beware of them if you ever have to work in a kitchen. They've had to do things twice as hard, twice as good, with twice the criticism, on top of that having everyone trying to get in their pants. They will not take shit from anybody, unless that person is several places higher in the kitchen hierarchy. And they will give it worse than they get. That is all. Same too for racial minorities.

So, at last, what I actually do all day. My hours vary depending on the service and station, and how many commis I am assigned to. But generally, it goes like this. Pick herbs. Chop radishes. Chop radishes finer. Go get something from the walk-in downstairs. Go bug another station for some item. Look at the floor and humbly mumble, while being entirely clear, about what you need. Run away. Chop something else. Put some stuff in sous-vide bags. Sous-vide them. Sign and date them. Set up for service. Do service (speed walking is required at all times, running is strictly not allowed). Clean up. Leave.

So what does Bobby D.'s great song have to do with life as a stagiaire, prelude to life as a cuisinier? Well, for one, as I left work three nights ago, after serving 56 people their appetizers and acting as runner for my station for ten hours under constant screaming by my Chef de cuisine, with two new burns on my fore arm and a skin flap from the oddest of finger wounds (a bloodless finger cut through a newly formed callous), sore, tired, and hungry, with three more days to go before a day off, I was energized and excited about doing it all again the next day. The day after that, three things confirmed that I had made the right decision to do this: 1) A big dick-head of a chef de partie told me over staff dinner that I was a great little stagiaire, 2) Two of my commis did something, I watched them thinking "this is really not the best way of doing this, guys," and a Chef came over to scream at them for it, and told them to do it exactly how I thought it should be done, and 3), someone asked me if I wanted to get high after work. Now, this last one may be a little shocking, and of course I declined, 'cause I haven't done that stuff for a long time, but it meant that I'd been accepted into that pirate crew of people you all know as cooks.