The NYTimes review

It's official: Three stars.

The gray lady's new reviewer, Sam Sifton, has granted Marea three stars in today's paper. Two of the dishes I prepare were mentioned: the lobster salad and the ricci with lardo. We actually were given copies of the review late last night in the kitchen, which prompted a BBQ party in the crudo bar after service (some dawdling diners had to put up with we rapscallion cooks invading their civilized personal space).

So what does three stars mean? It means the cooks are proud of their work, but have a bit of a chip on their collective shoulder regarding not getting four stars. However, getting four stars might have driven some business away, whereas three stars means we'll probably be swamped with reservations for a while.

More importantly, those three stars make some of the harder days working at the restaurant all worthwhile. And the timing couldn't have been better: this week I officially end my externship and receive my first paycheck. I, like Marea, am now a somewhat legit part of the culinary world.

Living the vida malsana

You know, this is a bad life, right?”

These were the words of encouragement given to me by a fellow cook at the restaurant this week following a particularly hectic service. I was initially puzzled—I mean, we get to work in an exciting atmosphere, occasionally sample great food—but I caught on quickly to what he meant.

Cooks live miserable lives and are distracted from their misery only through the grace of alcohol, drugs, sex or other vices. I learn this every night when, after service and during the laborious clean-up, I dream only of one thing: a frosty Budweiser from the family walk-in fridge (we always keep several cases on hand). Marie Antoinette should have told the masses to drink Bud instead of eating cake. Believe me, it calms your anger.

The unhealthiness doesn’t end at post-service substance abuse. The job itself is unhealthy. You work long hours on your feet, sometimes lugging back-breaking amounts of food up and down stairs, with little nourishment and sometimes less fresh water. Dehydration is a necessity for a good night’s work, it seems; if my piss isn’t a bright yellow when I stumble home, I know I’ve had too much time to drink water during service.

If you work the grill station, you’re likely to have burned-out forearms that look as though they are inflicted with some kind of skin disease. If you work prep, sharp knives are your best and worst enemies (mine happens to be the French mandolin, however). If you work the fry station, you could get splattering oil on you at any time. Pasta seems a relatively safe haven (maybe I should reconsider my previous comments), but I’m sure they have their own hazards.

Hell, even getting ice for the oyster station this week proved a hazard for me. The hinge on the ice machine apparently had broken earlier in the day, and when I opened it the door crashed back down against the bridge of my nose.

But despite that my hands now look like an old leper’s, despite that I see my wife maybe one night a week, despite that I usually eat a sandwich or leftovers at 1 a.m. for dinner, despite that I find myself licking my lips when I pass a liquor store, I’m still enamored with the profession. For now, anyway.

Keeping the home fires burning

“Do you still cook at home, or do you get sick of it?”

I hear this frequently when I tell people I’m now working at a restaurant about 70 hours a week. I guess it’s like the old saw about the ice cream clerk despising ice cream because he’s around it all the time. For the record, I’d never, ever get sick of ice cream.

And I’m not sick of cooking at home. Granted, I have less time to do it, but it’s still incredibly satisfying to whip up a new meal for wifey and have her critique it. Or to put together a three-course menu for some friends or family.

Last weekend I had the inlaws over for their first meal at my Jersey City table. I think it was pretty good. They’re Italian, so I kept with the Roman theme. For cocktails I made homemade bellinis, courtesy of the Venicians, and served that age-old antipasto of thinly sliced cucumber, cantoloupe balls and prosciutto with a little fresh basil oil.

Then I moved onto a grilled calamari salad with haricot verts (okay, I’ll cut the bullshit; green beans), asparagus strips, fried capers and a white balsamic citronette.

Next came an attempt to reconstruct an item from the restaurant’s menu: an acorn squash soup. I steeped a lobster in boiling water to cook the meat, and sautéed the shells briefly to begin a lobster stock. The stock cooked for a few hours on low heat ‘till it was crazy flavorful. Then I strained it and added to a puree of acorn squash and a little cream. The golden delicious liquid was then poured over sautéed porcini mushrooms, acorn squash cubes, and thinly sliced lobster tail to make the soup.

The entrée was pretty simple: sautéed lemon sole with green-onion-and-ginger oil, and an eggplant coulis. Then store-bought Italian butter cookies (got lazy, as I often do, when it comes to dessert).

By the end of the meal, I realized I had killed about half of one of my now-precious days off cooking, but it was worth it. Unlike some chefs out there, I’m not one of these guys who thinks about food and cooking all the time, but I do like to think about it outside of work. As a cook, you don’t really have to bring work home with you, but it’s nice to practice in your lair and keep the home fires burning.

On tilt

In poker, even the best players sometimes experience what is known as “going on tilt,” becoming frustrated by previous bad beats or stupid bets. What follows is more stupid bets, poor plays, and inevitable downward spiral of anger. A good way to avoid going “on tilt” is to remain detached and unemotional by each hand.

The same could be said about working the line in a kitchen. During my first full week of working the garde manger line at Marea, pulling 14-hour shifts, I went on tilt. Wednesday we had a particularly busy lunch crowd—Mario Battali decided to stroll in with several friends, a party of 12 that ordered a tasting menu, etc. We also expected a large dinner crowd, so our prep list was hefty.

All the pressure, including having Chef Michael White watching as we prepped oysters for Battali’s party, flustered me and caused my downward spiral of mistakes.

Within the space of an hour I managed to:
-- Cut my ring finger on the mandolin during prep.
-- Screw up shucking about 10 oysters, forcing me to throw all of them out in front of a disappointed chef.
-- Forget to add all the components to the lobster salad, forcing it to come back for a replate.
-- Drop an “on the fly” mackerel tart (i.e., an order that needed to be done right away). -- Drop the replacement mackerel tart, causing the other line cooks to relegate me to slicing garlic for a sauce the grill station needed.
-- Slice open my index finger mincing said garlic.
-- Spill mignonette near the oyster station.

In retrospect, I’m glad this happened. It helped me to realize that to work the line I need to remain calm, even when the world ends. After that day’s dinner service I apologized to my fellow GM line cook, and he told me that “everybody screws up here at least once a day. It happens.”

The next day one of our sous chefs dropped a whole batch of pork jus on our station right before lunch service. He screwed up. It happened. He cleaned up the mess and got back to work. People noticed and commented on the screw-up, but twenty minutes later nobody could have cared less.

And so it begins...

I am not yet a chef, but I am now officially a cook. As a graduate of culinary school, I consider myself ready to be a professional cook. And I am indeed “working” at a restaurant as such, though for no money. Until the cash arrives, the cook title is unofficial, but I can still throw my new titular heft around.

My graduation—a grand buffet in which every student in our class of 15 had to prepare one or two appetizers or desserts—was a blast. Most of the dishes were very good, and I think I held up nicely with my peers. I put together an “Italian-style” ceviche of grilled octopus. It included the regular additives of lemon and lime juice, but also included grape tomatoes, finely diced fennel (and fennel fronds for garnish), garlic zest, red onion, Italian sweet pepper, blood orange puree and oregano.

I’m a huge fan of ceviches, both because they’re easy and usually delicious, and I think this one went over well. I was denied my original intention to use baby octopus and garnish with lemon balm. Oh well.

The second dish was a beef cheek ravioli with a spicy marinara dipping sauce. While the ceviche took very little time to produce, this was a long-term dish. I had to start the beef cheek braise the day before (braising in demi-glace, orange zest, mirepoix, nutmeg, tomato paste and garlic). On the second day I strained the liquid (saving a bit for my dipping sauce), pureed the meet with some ricotta, parsley, more orange zest, balsamic vinegar and basil oil. The mixture resembled cooked brains, all gray and gushy, but they were all goodness and flavor.

I then rolled my own pasta for the ravioli. And therein lay my main problem, one that always seems to plague me: I underestimated how much dough I needed. So I had to rush to pump out some additional dough as the clock ticked away, chewing my fingernails as I waited for the dough to rest in the fridge.

Theoretically I could have gone ahead with my original plan, to bread and fry the ravioli, but I deep-sixed that and simply froze and boiled the pasta. The result worked fairly well, though my pasta was a tad too thick for some refined tastes, and the presentation was a little awkward. Basically I jammed one ravioli each in a small dipping cup, and then drizzled a little dipping sauce on top. Again, it was tasty but strange to eat at a standing cocktail party.

At the end of the night, which is another way to say the end of eating and beginning of drinking, we got our chefs hats (mine broke when they tried to put it on my giant melon head), a copy of Larousse Gastromique, and a pat on the back.

And so I go into the world of cooking for real. School’s out, time to get working. Time to get cooking. Time to make money doing so.