Eating as I Go: Scenes from America and Abroad

INTERN

209 January–March฀2004 I was in Chef Robert’s office during the first week of classes when Nelson dropped in for a chat. A youthful forty-two, Nelson sported a clean-shaven head and a neat black mustache. The second student to serve as sous chef for the day, Nelson was taking the assignment seriously. The sous chef, a rotating job, plans the day’s menu and supervises the students in the kitchen. His grade depends in part on their performance. He asked Robert about how the steaks for the following day’s lunch should be marinated and what guides the choice of a dry or wet marinade. Unlike most of his classmates, Nelson frames questions—about menus, cooking methods , ingredients, and the art of seasoning—in a manner that invites explanations. He claims Robert’s time just as any serious student would take advantage of a faculty member’s office hours. I can imagine a much younger Nelson, as an art student at Brooklyn College, interrupting a professor’s coffee break with a query about the department’s policy on independent study. Owning a restaurant is a dream Nelson has nurtured ever since quitting his job at Home Depot. “I got tired of thinking about other people’s kitchens,” he tells me. Nelson smiles as he works, and he never stops working. Light on his feet, he is magically there when another student needs a hand with a steaming-hot pot or a garbage can that doesn’t want to fit through the door. If he isn’t prepping or cooking or serving lunch or checking inventory in the freezer, he can be found with a mop in his hands. By midsemester, Nelson ranked among the top three students in the class. When the chef-owner of a French bistro in Tribeca offered a two-week internship to a Food Service Academy student, Jimmy unhesitatingly chose Nelson. “I went in like a blank page,” Nelson tells me at the end of his stint in New York, “without expectations. I’m like Einstein. In order for me to learn, I have to unlearn what I know.” Nelson arrived at the restaurant with a white chef’s jacket, courtesy of Chef Jimmy, and a pair of black pants purchased especially for the assignment. When the restaurant’s owner, Chef Mark, mentioned that black-and-white checkered pants were “more traditional,” Nelson bought himself a pair. “If people give you INTERN COOKING FOR A CHANGE 210 advice and they see you don’t take it,” Nelson says, “they shut down.” During the first week and a half of his internship, without a knife of his own, Nelson struggled to make do. He knew he needed to buy a knife, but what kind and where and at what price? Then Chef Mark offered to take the intern knife shopping at Korin’s on Warren Street. “When you’re on the right path,” Nelson says, “everything opens up.” At the restaurant, Nelson found that most of the dishes were new to him. He prepped for Chef Mark’s special porc savoyard, which had been written up in the NewYorkTimes, and got to make it twice, the second time entirely alone. He kept a notebook in his back pocket, but there was never enough time to write things down. “The batteries aren’t included in this kit,” Nelson says. “So you figure it out. You have to be able to function without instructions.” Back in school after the internship, Nelson continues to work at the restaurant on Sundays and two nights a week—without pay. “It’s free training,” he tells me, grateful for Chef Mark’s kindness and support. A day before graduation Nelson tests positive for cocaine. He was caught once before and had prevailed upon Chef Jimmy to give him a second chance. Now I wonder. The restaurant world is tough on an inexperienced student. And speed in the kitchen is essential. Were the demands of his workplace chipping away at Nelson’s confidence? Was the offer of paid work that Nelson expected not forthcoming? Are his cash reserves running low—desperately low? Chef Jimmy agrees to let Nelson graduate, on the conditions that he attend Narcotics Anonymous sessions regularly and do a month of community service. “I won’t recommend him for a job unless he deals with his disease,” Jimmy tells me. “This guy can go beyond line cook. He can become...