Taillevent

It is strange sitting down to write a blog you have been planning for two months. On the other side of sleep deprivation and exhaustion and heat stroke the perfectly formed phrases that so wonderfully encapsulated the experience of 16 hour days in one of Paris' most famous restaurants really don't seem to do it justice. Two exchanges I had while at Taillevent come pretty close, however.

The first, uttered by a very sleepy, very slurry, very orange haired young Cordon Blue stagiaire from Colombia named Daniel, about a week into his time working Entremets: "I feel like a pirate. We sleep. We work. We fight. We drink." It was clear by fight he meant the seeming chaos of service.

The second, said around a Marlboro red during our half hour lunch break by fish gut encrusted Jullian, a Holland-born, Italian-raised former death metalist who listens to jazz now to relax and only half-jokingly extols the virtues of genocide as a form of population control in a dying world: "We work ourselves into the ground, burning the hell out of ourselves, we get two or three hours of sleep a night. We're miserable during the week. We can't wait for Saturdays to sleep and Sundays to party. And by Sunday afternoon, we can't wait for Monday morning so we can be exhausted and burn ourselves again. Thinking about it, that's pretty fucked up."

While there is definitely a pathology that goes hand in hand with the production of haute cuisine, it is a fun and rewarding pathology, and in many ways a much more personally genuine pathology than any you'll come across in any office job I've worked. Between the pressure to get it perfect every time, the amount of work, the constant threat of injury to body or ego, not much room is left for disingenuously polite confrontations that contribute to the stereotypical passive-aggression of the office. From the second you close the front door in the morning, the only thing on your mind is getting the next task accomplished the best, the fastest and the most efficiently as possible, from getting to work to peeling 30 pounds of shallots and onions to straining 300 pounds of stock and jus base to cleaning the carbon and grease grime off the stainless steel above the stove. In order to do so, a tunnel vision develops at the expense of common courtesy. For instance, on the metro, crowded as it is, and without the magical word of "Chaud" to part your path, sometimes you rely on body checking to achieve your goal. Just sayin'.

Standard day: On the way to work, exit Metro George V on Champs Elysse, turn onto Rue Washington (singing this song), avoiding the early bird tourists and various workers taking a coffee in the middle of the side walk before their shift, all the while getting one last dose of music to get the heart rate up for what's to come. The first 20 minutes of the day is bringing in and arranging the day's deliveries of veg and fish. Next, the day's mise en place, usually peeling veg for aromatics for the various sauces. I was lucky to be placed on sauce, the station I am most interested in working on in my career, responsible for meat, sauce, and stock. After the garnishes, my tasks varied greatly. Alex, my Chef de Partie, usually sent me over to Grant, our Sous Chef, to help with meat prep, ranging from the simple tying of meat for service:

 Whole beef filet

 Tied up

Venison Gigot

To the more interesting baby partridge:

 15 Christmas' worth

 Flaming the boid.

Detritus: wings, head, and damaged feet. At this point, I should mention that a pastime of one of my buds at the resto, an anomaly in herself for being a girl in a French kitchen, Isa, is placing the birds' heads on her fingers and making marionettes out of them. Particularly around the squeamish plethora of teenage technical school stagiaires that come through the restaurant for month-long tours. She was unwilling to have photographic evidence of goofing off at work, however.

As I will go in to detail later, all things culinary can be talked about in sexual innuendo. As such, some kinky-ass boids, all bound and tied up.

The traditional meat fabrication of feet-on birds: getting in the last word.

Flippin' the bird.

Filleting chickens. Legs for staff food, breasts for a plat du jour: in this case, a presse of chicken, foie gras, and artichokes.

Rolling foie gras en torchon

Taillevent is known for its traditional haute French gastronomy, and as such, the art of forcemeats is heavily practiced. As the stagiaire, grinding and mixing by hand the medley of fat, meat, offal, and seasonings usually fell to me. However, Alex took the responsibility as his own on picture day:

The magical meat fridge. Hanging ducks, veal rack, untrimmed beef mignons. And what are those furry friends down there at the bottom?

I see paws!

Wild hare are huge. These guys weighed six kilos apiece (that's 13 pounds....)

Now, when I say traditional, that means quite a few things. None of the food is old; Taillevent stays with the times. But it does have one dish that is about as old-school as you can get. Lievre à la Royale is a dish that takes a week to prepare. They do a ballotine of hare, filled with hare forcemeat around a core of foie gras ringed with a mosaic of truffle and barding fat.

Taking his p.j.s off.

My chef de partie, Alex, an England raised Versaillean was a treasure trove of kitchen knowledge and clearly one of the leaders in the kitchen. He and Grant, a native of England and somewhat of a novelty being head of a French kitchen, were remarkable teachers to whom I am indebted. A lot of the things I learned at LCB and passed off as antiquated and unlikely to ever show up professionally, actually showed up: cockscombs, for example. Again, no pic, but I will let all you in on a little secret: blanch them to skin them; don't try to salt rub them. It's much faster and much cleaner.

The atmosphere of the kitchen, between the internally imposed and externally applied stresses, is quite jovial. As alluded to (and as can be expected with 15 men in their early 20's), all things culinary can be referenced in sexual innuendo. With complete exposure to American porn at this point in our history, most of the guys, even when using innuendo, use english words. Anything involving putting one's hand in anything, such as a bowl of farce or emptying a bird of its entrails, is ingloriously called fist-fucking. Trussing birds? Making it your bitch, or some reference to "EhsEhm." Adding liquid, especially a creamy liquid, to anything? You get the idea. Not doing your job, doing it poorly, or taking too long to do it? Il se branler! (He's jerking himself!).

Spending so much time together, particularly such stressful time, develops a camaraderie that, quite honestly, borders on homoerotic. An inexplicable phenomenon in the kitchen is the finger-butt wiggle. Yeah. You read that right. It's not uncommon to be focussed on your veg chopping, or what have you, and suddenly, you feel the stealthy beginnings of the loving ordeal. You feel the creeping tip of a co-workers fingers gently worming their way into your butt crack. No one can explain it, or the attraction to getting that personal with someone you do not intend to bed, but there you have it, the finger-butt wiggle. It is done with fraternity and respect, but unfortunately, they happen so fast I couldn't get an action shot, so I had to retain some volunteers. Well, one volunteer, at least:

Nicknames were also a big deal. If you were lucky (or unlucky, depending) to get one, that was your lot in the kitchen. That was your name. From Fish's chef de partie, Dangereuse (Dangerous) to Entremet's Marteau (Sledgehammer), alternatively know as Rocco, (after this guy), due to a few performances in some Japanese school-girl videos in his earlier days, most were said with gentle ribbing. Others, however, were not so lucky. Dumbfuck, a Portugese guy who lasted two and half weeks, got the name from Grant on his second day, and honestly I can't remember his real name. I had two: Big Balls (never really got a good explanation of that one) and Passe Partout, after a character known for his (ahem) diminutive stature on a long-running and beloved French reality show, Fort Boyard.

Where the magic happens:

 The piano, all cleaned and ready to go for next shift.

Keeping out of the shit.

During service, I was one of the lucky stagiares who got to come forward and take part in it; most stayed behind and worked on the mise en place for the next service. I didn't fire any food, but kept the station clean, ran food to the passe and dirty dishes to the washers, helped with plating and generally tried to make myself useful while staying out of the way of the cooks. Towards the end, if we were getting in to the shit, with a million things going in all different directions, I could step in and turn and baste the meat that was being fired.

Of the 16 hours of each day, at least 4 were spent cleaning. Twice a day, the entire space, prep areas and hallways and walls were washed down. If you are in Paris and want to know for sure your food is being prepped in a sanitary place, go to Taillevent.

Proctology jokes are transnational, apparently.

Friday night tradition: clear out all leftovers that won't keep, take ten minutes, and relax with 2 star food (foie gras, jamon iberico, and quince coulis) before going our separate ways for the weekend. 

Finally, after two months, recent legislation has made it impractical and too expensive for the restaurant to sponsor me for a work visa, so with well-wishes and incredibly fond memories, I had to take my leave. Chef Soliveres (second from left) was apologetic and sweetly told me that if my situation changed, to give him a call ASAP. If it does, I most certainly will.

Grant, Chef, Alex, myself, and the kitchen's second Sous Chef, Koni.

And, a relic from the very beginning of my time there, A "Smoking in the park," shot the first weekend of my stage: