Kitchen Confidential

COFFEE AND A CIGARETTE

THE LIFE OF BRYAN THERE ARE BETTER CHEFS in the world. One comes reluctantly, yet undeniably, to that conclusion early in one's career. There's always some old master or new hotshot who's doing things with food you never would have thought of-if they hadn't done it first. And of course, in the thin air at the peak of the culinary Mount Olympus, where the three- and four-star demi-gods dwell-guys like Eric Ripert, Grey Kunz, Bouley, Palladin, Keller, you know the names, I don't have to tell you-they have the added advantage of not only being geniuses or near-geniuses, but they tend to command crews that are larger, better trained, and more single-minded in their zeal. This didn't just happen, mind you. These guys don't get hundreds of hungry young culinarians banging on their kitchen doors, begging for the privilege of mopping their brows and peeling their shallots just because they have their names stitched on their jackets. Nobody is building million-dollar kitchen facilities around their chef, shelling out for combi-steamers, induction burners, fine china, Jade ranges, crystal snifters and fistfuls of white truffles because the guy can sling steaks faster than the other guy, or because he has a cute accent. Cream rises. Excellence does have its rewards. For every schlockmeister with a catch-phrase and his own line of prepared seasonings who manages to hold American television audiences enthralled, there are scores more who manage to show up at work every day in a real kitchen and produce brilliantly executed, innovatively presented, top-quality food. I am, naturally, pissed off by the former, and hugely impressed by the latter.

But for my money, the guy I know who embodies the culinary ideal? A no-bullshit, no muss, no fuss, old-school ass-kicking cook of the first order? That would have to be Scott Bryan, down the street at Veritas. I'd been hearing about this guy for years-significantly, from other chefs and cooks.

'Scott says this. .' and 'Scott says that. .' and 'Scott doesn't make veal stock; he's roasting chicken bones! Buys fresh killed. . in, like, Chinatown! '

Someone would mention his name in passing, and other chefs would get this curious expression on their faces, like the runner of Satchel Paige's admonition: 'Don't look back-someone might be gaining on you.' They'd look worried, as if, examining their own hearts and souls and abilities, they were aware that not only couldn't they do what Scott does, but they wouldn't.

He was a cult figure, it seemed, among cooks of my acquaintance. Over time, I developed an idea of him as some sort of hair-shirt ascetic, a mad monk, a publicity-shy perfectionist who'd rather do no business at all-die in obscurity-than ever serve a bad meal.

The whole world of cooking is not my world, contrary to what impression I might have given you in the preceding pages. Truth be told, I bring a lot of it with me. Hang out in the Veritas kitchen, take a hard look at Scott Bryan's operation, and you will find that everything I've told you so far is wrong, that all my sweeping generalities, rules of thumb, preconceptions and general principles are utter bullshit.

In my kitchens, I'm in charge, it's always my ship, and the tenor, tone and hierarchy-even the background music-are largely my doing. A chef who plays old Sex Pistols songs while he breaks down chickens for coq au vin is sending a message to his crew, regardless of his adherence to any Escoffier era merit system.

A guy who employs, year after year, a sous-chef like Steven Tempel is clearly not Robuchon-or likely to emulate his successes. It is no coincidence that all my kitchens over time come to resemble one another and are reminiscent of the kitchens I grew up in: noisy, debauched and overloaded with faux testosterone-an effective kitchen, but a family affair, and a dysfunctional one, at that. I coddle my hooligans when I'm not bullying them. I'm visibly charmed by their extra-curricular excesses and their anti-social tendencies. My love for chaos, conspiracy and the dark side of human nature colors the behavior of my charges, most of whom are already living near the fringes of acceptable conduct.

So, there are different kinds of kitchens than the kinds I run. Not all kitchens are the press-gang-crewed pressure cookers I'm used to. There are islands of reason and calm, where the pace is steady, where quality always takes precedence over the demands of volume, and where it's not always about dick dick dick.

As we close in on hotel-motel time, let's compare and contrast. Let's take a look at a three-star chef who runs a very different kind of kitchen than mine, who makes food at a higher level, has had a nearly unblemished track record of working with the best in the business, a guy who has always kept his eye on the ball-which is to say, the food. If I suffer by comparison, so be it. I think I said earlier that I was going to tell you the truth. This is part of it.

Scott Bryan, like me, happily refers to himself as a 'marginal' character. When he says 'marginal', you can hear his hometown of Brookline, Massachusetts, in his voice, the same accent you hear in body shops and Irish bars in 'Woostah',

'New Bedfahd,' 'Glahsta,' and Framingham. Scott uses the term 'dude' a lot, though, which leads one to believe there might be surf in Boston. When I dropped by to see him recently, passing first through his stylishly sparse sixty-five-seat dining room, past his four sommeliers-count them, four-through a kitchen staffed by serious-looking young Americans in buttoned-up Bragard jackets with the Veritas logo stitched on their breasts and chefwear MC Hammer pants, down a flight of stairs, I found him wrapping a howitzer-sized log of foie gras in cheesecloth. He was wearing a short-sleeved dishwasher shirt, snaps done up to the collar, Alice In Chains blaring in the background. I took inordinate comfort from this, thinking, 'I do that! Maybe we're not so different!' But, of course, we are very different, as you shall see.

Scott grew up in what he calls a 'housing development-a project, really', unlike me, who grew up in a leafy green wonderland of brick colonial homes, distant lawn-mowers, backyard croquet games, gurgling goldfish ponds and Cheeveresque cocktail parties. Scott went to Brookline High, a public school where the emphasis seems to have been on technical skills; they had a culinary program and a restaurant open to the public. I went to private school, a tweedy institution where kids wore Brooks Brothers jackets with the school seal and Latin motto (Veritas fortissimo) on the breast pocket. Scott learned early that he might have to actually work for a living, whereas I, a product of the New Frontier and Great Society, honestly believed that the world pretty much owed me a living-all I had to do was wait around in order to live better than my parents. At an age when I was helping to rack up my friends' parents' expensive automobiles and puking up Boone's Farm on Persian carpets, Scott was already working-for Henry Kinison at the Brookline High restaurant. He was doing it for money. Junior year, he took a job in a 'Hungarian Continental' joint, and as a fishmonger at Boston's Legal Seafood. One worked, and that was it. Scott, though still unmoved by the glories of food, found that he preferred cooking to his other imagined career option: electrical engineer or electrician. His early mentor, Kinison, urged him to attend Johnson and Wales' culinary program in Providence, and along the lines of 'Why not?' he went along.

He hated it.

While studying, he began working for Bob Kinkaid at the much-vaunted Harvest restaurant in Cambridge, and if there is a single epiphany in Scott Bryan's life, a single moment when he decided what it was he was going to do for the rest of his life, it was there-when he first tasted Kinkaid's lobster salad with foie gras and truffle vinaigrette. His reaction was immediate. He decided to leave Johnson and W ales.

'I'm not going back,' he said, abandoning culinary school for life in the real world.

He was good. He had to be. Kinkaid clearly knew he was on to something. With Scott barely out of high school, Kinkaid packed him off to France with the one-word instruction: 'Eat!'

Like me, Scott is conflicted on the issue of the French. We like to minimize their importance, make fun of their idiosyncrasies. 'It's a different system over there,' he said, talking about the work habits of the surrender-monkey.

'You start young. For the first ten years of your career, you get your ass kicked. They work you like a dog. So, when you finally get to be a sous-chef, or a chef, your working life is pretty much over. You walk around and point. ' Putting a last twist on his foie gras torpedo, he shrugged. 'Socialism, man. It's not good for cooks.'

But when he sees bad technique, technique that's not French, it's torture. As Scott well knows-and would be the first to admit-as soon as you pick up a chef's knife and approach food, you're already in debt to the French. Talking about one of the lowest points in his career, a kitchen in California, he described going home every night 'ashamed, and a little bit angry', because 'the technique was bad. . it wasn't French!' They may owe us a big one for Omaha Beach, but let's face it, without my stinky ancestors we'd still be eating ham steak with pineapple ring. Scott knows this better than anybody.

Back from France, he rejoined Kinkaid, opening 21 Federal with him on Nantucket. Now here, exactly, is where our career paths divide. Scott had some chops now. He was good on the line. He had a resume, some notable names and recommendations, working experience, exposure to France and French food.

So did I, at that point in my career. I was good! I'd been to France. I had a CIA diploma-at a time when that was a pretty rare and impressive credential. So, what the hell happened? How come I'm not a three-star chef? Why don't I have four sommeliers?

Well, there are lots of reasons, but one reason is that I went for the money. The first chef's job that came along I grabbed. And the one after that and the one after that. Used to a certain quality of life-as divorcees like to call it, living in the style to which I'd grown accustomed-I was unwilling to take a step back and maybe learn a thing or two.

Scott was smarter and more serious. He was more single-minded about what he wanted to do, and how well he wanted to do it. He began a sort of wandering apprenticeship, sensibly designed to build experience over a bank account. He came to New York and went to work for Brendan Walsh.

Brendan Walsh and Arizona 206 are names that seem to pop up in the resumes of almost every '80s-era American chef. John Tesar, Kerry Heffernan, Pat Williams, Jeff Kent, Maurice Rodriguez, Herb Wilson, Donnie Masterton-everyone, it seemed passed through those kitchen doors at some point in their early careers. And for Scott, it was his version of 'the happy time', a period where 'everyone knew what we were doing was important. It was a team of cooks.' From this early petri-dish of culinary talent, Scott moved onwards and upwards, parlaying one once-in-a-lifetime gig into another, racking up a box score of famous chefs and heavyweight talents that would make any ambitious young cookie jerk to attention just at the mention of their names.

The Gotham with Alfred Portale. Back with Kinkaid at 21 Federal in DC. Square One in California. Back to New York with David Bouley. A Hamptons interlude with Jimmy Sears. (Pause for breath here.) Sous-chef for Eric Ripert at Le Bernardin ( !)

As if his career wasn't going swimmingly enough for a guy who only a few years earlier had been considering a life installing light sockets and fuse-boxes, he then opened Lespinasse with Grey Kunz.

And if this isn't rich enough meal for you, to round out his skills and ensure his usefulness as an all-around major league player, he crossed the line from a la carte cuisine to pastry-a nearly unthinkable act-and went to work with the awesome tiberpatissier, Richard Leach, at Mondrian.

See what I mean? I would never have done that.

If I had a well-disposed Eric Ripert and Grey Kunz in my background, I'd be endorsing blenders, committing unnatural acts in the pool near the Vegas outpost of my not-very-good-anymore restaurant chain, and pickling my liver in Louis Treize. At that point in my career, I wouldn't be shutting down the whole gravy train so I could learn pastry! I'd be mugging it up on the Food Network, schmoozing at the Beard Awards dinner, and contemplating a future where I'd never have to get out of my pajamas! Just goes to show you.

Scott hates all that stuff. His partner, Gino Diaferia, says, 'I have to drag him kicking and screaming,' to do a guest shot on Letterman, appear on the Food Network, or do the dog and pony act at Beard House. 'I told him, he could get four stars someday' he says. 'He doesn't want it!' Gino shakes his head and smiles. 'He says he won't play with his food that much.'

Is it all about the food with this guy? I don't know. Scott likes to refer to himself as a cook, and when he says, about another chef, 'He's a good cook,' it's the highest praise he can offer.

Sopping up free martinis at the Veritas bar, I asked Gino whether he thought Scott was in it for the food or for the lifestyle. It gave him pause.

'I don't know.' He seemed clearly troubled by the question. 'I mean, I think he likes the lifestyle. A guy who comes in and hangs around on his day off, you know he's got to like the lifestyle. And he loves going out after work with cooks and chefs for drinks. . you know.' He paused and thought about the question again. 'But.

Gino is another example of 'everything I just told you is wrong'. Here's a guy who was in the home fuel oil business, with zero restaurant experience, who became partners with a couple of guys for a lark at the then vegetarian Chelsea bistro, Luma. When things began to lose their charm, he bought out the partners and began spending all his time at the restaurant, learning the business from the ground up. 'I was supposed to be a silent partner!' Looking around for a chef, a waiter who had worked for fishmongers-to-the-stars, Wild Edibles, told him, Scott Bryan is available.'

'I met with him at a coffee shop. He looked at the menu and said, “No vegetarian. That's gotta go.” I said, “Fine!” Scott said maybe he'd consult.'

'He came in, started working, changing things, months go by. . six months! I look at my wife and she looks at me: “Is he consulting? Is he staying?” I kept asking him: “Scott, can we make a deal?” Finally, one day he says, “Well . I think I will stay.'”

The rest, as they say, is history. Luma got a quick two stars from Ruth Reichl at the New York Times and lots of buzz. Restaurants that change their entire approach midstream never succeed-remember I told you that? Wrong! Restaurants owned by guys in the fuel business don't succeed. I might have said something like that, too. Wrong! Operations that expand into multi-units often dilute the qualities that made them good in the first place. Not this time!

Time passed, Luma did well, and Gino and Scott opened Indigo, on West 10th Street, in a spot so poisonous, so reeking of failure that eight or nine restaurants had come and gone in my memory alone. Remember all that yammer about cancerous locations? Sites so cursed that any and all who seek to follow are doomed? Wrong again, jerk.

Indigo was located only a few blocks away from One Five. I'd been hearing quite enough about Scott Bryan, so when the place opened, I remember trudging over in the middle of a blizzard, sitting at the bar and scarfing up free tastings. I thought it was mind-bogglingly good and I told people so. I dragged my crew over, one by one, to try the mushroom strudel, the Manilla clams. We marvelled at Scott's menu, the perfect my-way-or-the-highway document. All the things that conventional wisdom tells a chef he has to do, all those must-have crowd pleasers that eat up half your menu before you can sneak in the selections you actually love,-they weren't there! There was no soup. No vegetarian plate. No steak! The chicken was not some generic roasted bird with non-threatening seasonings; it was a weird, ballsy, spicy concoction, involving red curry, for chrissakes! And good. The only beef was braised shoulder-a daube provenyale so good that my whole crew at One Five now ran over to Indigo after work. Our two kitchens closed at the same time, so we'd phone ahead to say we were coming over, and start cooking that daube-just put it on the bar, for God's sake! Let it get cold, it's okay! The Indigo seafood selections were admirably unpopular fishes-cod and mackerel-and exciting. This was food for cooks. This was food that we got. Simple, straightforward and absolutely pretense-free. Like Scott. Tucking into that daube of beef, or Scott's sweetbreads, was fun for me and my appreciative crew. What's he doing, we wanted to know, while examining a particular item we hadn't tried yet. How is he dealing with mackerel? Then we'd find out.

Everything on Scott's plates is edible. It's food, first and foremost, to be eaten, not looked at-though his presentations are inspired. Try and imagine the clean, unfussy integrity of Japanese cuisine, with the unrestrained flavors and soul-food heartiness of a well-remembered Grandma's best dish. He was braising economy cuts. He was taking greasy, oily fishes that nobody wanted and making magic. He was presenting it in big bowls in pretty stacks where-if you jammed your fork through all three layers-you got something that combined to actually taste good. He wasn't piling food on top of itself because layer one looked good on top of layer two and three. It tasted good that way. And those big bowls? At Indigo, and at Veritas, when something comes in a big bowl it's because there's gonna be sauce left in the bottom; chances are, you're going to be running a crust of bread around in there and mopping it up when the entree has been eaten. It's why Scott has three stars and I don't.

It's why he probably won't be getting four stars anytime soon. His food is too good-and too much fun to eat. You feel you can put your elbows on the table in a Scott Bryan-Gino Diaferia restaurant and get about the serious business of tasting and smelling and chewing the good stuff.

I asked Scott if he thinks about food after work. When he's lying in bed in the dark, is he thinking about what he's going to run for special tomorrow? He said no. 'I come in, see what's on the market. I wing it,' he replied. I didn't believe him.

'Does Scott think about food? When he's not working?' I asked Gino, out of Scott's hearing. He smiled.

'He thinks about food,' Gino said. 'A lot. '

Scott is thirty-four years old. He's got dark, boyish good looks, with an eccentric nose that looks right on a chef. There are dark blue rings under his eyes and he has the skin pallor of a man who's spent too many hours toiling under fluorescent kitchen lighting. He wears the bemused expression of a guy who knows how bad it can get, who's always looking and waiting for the other shoe to drop. He's not so much a screamer anymore. 'I used to blow up all the time. I still yell, if there's laziness, sloppiness, someone thinks they're getting over.' Pointed sarcasm seems more the preferred tactic these days. And he does not share my pleasure in handling a pirate crew. 'Someone has a problem with another cook in my kitchen? I tell them work it out amongst themselves. I don't have time for that. I say, “Work it out, 'cause if you still have a problem with so-and-so tomorrow? You're gone. Maybe you're both gone.'” He doesn't bully, harangue or excoriate; the occasional caustic comment seems chillingly effective. I hung out in the Veritas kitchen recently, knocked off work at Les HaIles and ran over to see how the other half works. It's a very quiet place. During the middle of the rush on a Friday night, with a full dining room, the pace was positively relaxing-more a seriously focused waltz than the kind of hard-checking mosh-pit slam-dancing I live with. No one was screaming. Nobody was kicking any oven doors closed, putting any English on the plates, or hurling pots into the sink. Scott, expediting, never raised his voice.

'Go on, entrees. Thirty-two,' he said in a near-whisper. That's all it took for five line cooks to swing into action and start converging on plates. 'Pick up,' he said, 'table twelve.'

Three waiters appeared, each expertly wiping, garnishing and finishing a different plate, squeezing drops of chive oil, lobster oil or thirty-year-old balsamic from eye-dropper-sized squeeze bottles. No one was cursing or sweating. The stove-tops, cutting boards, counter space, cook's whites, even the aprons were spotless-at eight-thirty on a Friday night! Each sauce and salad, each item was tasted by the person preparing it, each and every time. Three orders of veal cheek special came up at the same time; they were absolutely identical. At Les HaIles, I go through a lO-pound bag of shallots every day, so it was truly jarring to see Scott Bryan's mise-en-place. The shallots on station were not chopped. They weren't Robot-Couped either. They were brunoised-every tiny little piece uniform, textbook, perfectly squared off and near sub-atomic in dimensions. The chopped chives were the same, not a thread, not a single errant or irregular shred, everyone the size of a cloned single-celled organism.

The whole kitchen smelled of truffles. Two thumb-sized knobs of the wildly expensive fungus sat by the garnish tray, where Scott would shave them onto outgoing orders. Truffle oil was being poured into pans like I use olive oil. Sauces were being mounted with foie gras and Normandy butter. And everything-everything-was being made to order. Risotto? Out of the box and into the pot. From scratch.

A tiny young woman worked at a corner station, and I made the immediate Neanderthal assumption as I first took in the crew: 'Extern, maybe from Peter Kump or French Culinary, having a learning experience dishing out veggies.' I passed right over her as I swept my eyes down the line looking for the heavy hitters. In time I began, peripherally, to become aware of her movements. I looked again, closer this time, and saw that she was plating fish, cooking risotto, emulsifying sauces, taking on three, then four, then five orders at a time-all the while never changing expression or showing any visible signs of frustration or exasperation (as I would have under similar circumstances). No worries, just smooth, practiced motions, moves you see in twenty-year veterans: no pot grabbed without side-towel, no wasted effort, every sauce getting a quick taste, correcting seasonings, coming up on her stuff at the same time as the rest of the order-generally holding down her end like an ass-kicking, name-taking mercenary of the old school, only cleaner and better. Her station and her uniform were absolutely unmarked by spills, stains or any of the expected Friday-night detritus.

'Where did she come from?' I whispered to Scott. Not amazed that a woman could do the job, but that anyone other than a thirty-five-year-old Ecuadorian mercenary could do it so stone-cold. (Remember what I said about Americans versus mis carnales from points south? Wrong again.)

'Oh, her?' said Scott casually. 'Alain Ducasse.' Mentioning God's name as breezily as I'd say, 'the Hilton' or 'Houlihan's'.

If this sobering revelation wasn't painful enough, if I wasn't choking down enough crow, there was some more humble pie to come: a waiter came in with a half-empty bottle of wine, a 1989 Le Chambertin, and handed it to the Dominican dishwasher. At this point, I was ready to answer one of those ads in the paper for 'Learn How To Drive the Big Rigs! " maybe take up mink ranching. Anyway, the grateful dishwasher examined the bottle for sediment, promptly decanted the remains, poured some wine into a stem glass-which he held knowledgeably between two fingers by the stem-and then swirled, examining the ropes with a discerning eye, before taking an airy slurp. I was ready to hit myself hard with the nearest blunt object.

Oh yeah: the food. Luxurious, but austere. Bluefin tuna tartare with pickled cucumbers, lime, chile and lemon grass was formed by hand. Unlike a lot of his peers, Scott doesn't like torturing food into unnatural shapes so it looks like something else.

(Metal rings, remember? You might want to reconsider what I said about them too.) Green and white asparagus were spooned with chanterelles and truffle fondue. Chilled lobster was stacked on fava bean puree and drizzled with Ligurian olive oil. Even the green salads were hand picked, one leaf after the other piled gently on the plate, the garde-manger guy tasting the occasional piece. A filet mignon came up in the window with a medallion of bone marrow looking pretty and pink under a thin veneer of sauce.

And Scott still doesn't make veal stock. There was tete du porc en crepinette, monkfish with white beans, lardons, roasted tomato and picholines, diver scallops with pea shoots, black truffle vinaigrette and truffle/chive/potato puree, Scottish salmon hit the pass-through with chestnut honey-glazed onions, old sherry wine vinegar and chicken jus.

Not a damn thing to sneer at. That I do more meals at Les HaIles in forty-five minutes than Scott does all night was cold comfort. The food was all so dead-bang honest. No bogus wild-weed infusions, cookie-cutter piles of pre-made garnishes, no paper collars used to force food into tumescence. Garnishes, such as they were, were edible; the food looked good without them. And the plates were white, no SB logo, no multicolored spirals, baroque patterns, oddball novelty shapes, football field sizes or ozone layer-puncturing space needles of verticality. The patissier whacked off a hunk of Morbier for a cheese plate-a daring selection, touch that stuff and you'll be sniffing your fingers for a week. Bread was from Amy's, along with a rustic ciabatta.

When orders came in faster, the pace quickened slightly, but nobody ran. Nobody seemed hurried. Scott jumped from station to station as his mood dictated: fish, saute, garde-manger, even pastry. In his absence, waiters wordlessly stepped in and did the expediting and plate finishing, with imperceptible change in product. (Waiters shouldn't touch food. Did I say that? Wrong again.)

Is everybody getting their food on time, I wondered. Everyone was so damned calm and collected in here that maybe it's chaos outside, a herd of pissed-off diners glaring silently at their waiters and wondering where their chow is-waiting for that made-to-order risotto so the rest of the order can come up. I decided to see.

No such luck. Outside, the dining room was as relaxed as the kitchen, nothing but happy faces, lingering over appetizers, sipping wine, expressions those of anticipating first-time lovers who just know they're going to be good together. The bar was packed with monomaniacal wine aficionados, pouring over the 1,400-strong wine list like Talmudic scholars-beakers, glasses, decanters laid out in front of them making them look like well-dressed Dr Frankensteins. They had a lot to ponder. The Veritas list is an imposing volume with a very reasonable range of wines from 18 to 25,000 dollars. I asked the bartender, hopefully, if any of these wine wonks ever got into it over the relative merits of say, Cotes du Rhone vs. Bordeaux, or '95 or '98? 'Anybody ever take a poke at another guy, duke it out over grape varieties? Drunken brawls over topsoil, irrigation, drink now or drink later?'

Nope. All is calm. Pleasure rules.

Listening to the customers talking seriously, really seriously about wine, I find yet another reason why Scott is a three-star chef and I'm not: I know almost nothing about wine.

I am not immune to the charms of wine. I've lived around it, enjoyed it, cooked with it all my life. I am not entirely ignorant on the subject, nor am I dismissive of its importance. I still remember vividly, heading off to the vintner in Bordeaux with my Oncle Gustav, to get our empty bottles refilled with vin ordinaire from those giant casks. I can tell the difference between good wine, bad wine and great wine. I have a pretty good working knowledge of the wine-producing regions of France and Italy. I am vaguely aware that California seems to produce drinkable product these days. But I couldn't tell you grape variety with any more assurance than I could talk about stamp collecting or phrenology. And to be truthful, I've always felt that I've survived enough dangerous obsessions in my life; the knowledgeable appreciation of fine wine has always seemed to me to hold potential for becoming yet another consuming habit-an expensive one. When you know what it's like to squat on a blanket on upper Broadway in the snow, selling off a lifetime's accumulation of rare books, records and comic books for drugs, the idea of spending next week's paycheck on a bottle of red seems like, well, something that I probably shouldn't be doing. So, even though I've been gushing here about Veritas and all things Bryan, I'm really doing the place a disservice. The menu, the business, the whole concept of Veritas is built around the wine-a formidable cellar put together by two of the premium collector/connoisseurs in the universe. It should be pointed out that Scott's food at Veritas is designed to complement that wine. I can only imagine that it does. The fish dishes are unusually hearty, drinkable with red for the most part, I believe (don't trust me on this), and the meat and poultry dishes are constructed and refined to match up nicely with the list. Some of the Asian seasonings and ingredients of Early Bryan have been dispensed with in order best to accomplish that mission.

As for me, I drink beer and vodka when I eat at Veritas, preferring to spend my lucre on what I know to be good-namely the food. I know that's a lot like going to Egypt and not bothering to look at the pyramids, but hey, I'm just an old-time cookie with a chip on his shoulder and a heart full of envy.

Problem is, Scott's an old-time cookie, too. After the kitchen closed (at ten forty-five they were talking about getting the last orders in!), I took him up to the Siberia Bar, down the subway steps, through the platform-level bar and into the downstairs annex. I was hoping to get him drunk, find something to dislike about the miserable bastard who's so much better than me. Maybe I could get him sloshed, he'd start venting, make injudicious comments about some of those culinary heroes he'd worked for in the past.

I mentioned I'd eaten at Le Bernardin recently, the full-bore chef tasting. An eyebrow went up. 'Oh yeah? What did you have?' When I told him, he looked happy, like I get when describing my first oyster.

'You have the mackerel tartare, dude?' he asked. 'Yeah,' I said, hesitating. 'It was good. . really good.' 'Yeah,' said Scott. 'It is good, isn't it? What else did you have?'

I told him, the two of us talking about menus like some people talk about the Miracle Mets or the Koufax-era Dodgers.

'Who's making food these days that interests you,' I asked. 'Oh, let's see. . Tom. Tom Collicchio at Gramercy Tavern. Tom makes really good food . and Rocco di Spirito at Union Pacific is doing interesting stuff. '

'Have you seen this foam guy's shit?' I asked, talking about Ferran Adria's restaurant of the minute, El Bulli, in Spain.

'That foam guy is bogus,' he smirked, 'I ate there, dude-and it's like. shock value. I had seawater sorbet!' That was about as much bad-mouthing as I could get out of him. I wanted to know what he likes to eat, 'You know, after hours, you're half in the bag and you get hungry. What do you want to eat?'

'Beef bourguignon, he said right away. I've found common ground. Red wine, beef, some button mushrooms and a few pearled onions, bouquet garni, maybe some broad noodles or a simple boiled potato or two to go with it. A crust of bread to soak up the sauce. Maybe I'm not wrong about everything.

All cooks are sentimental fools. And in the end, maybe it is all about the food.