Anthony Bourdain

A GOOD FRIEND OF mine, about a year into his first chef's job, had a problem with one of his cooks. This particularly rotten bastard had been giving my friend a ride for quite a while: showing up late, not showing up, getting high at work, behaving insolently and fomenting dissent among his co-workers. Convinced that the whole kitchen revolved around his station, his mood swings and his toil, he felt free to become a raving, snarling, angry lunatic - a dangerously loose cannon rolling around on deck, just daring his chef and his co-workers to press the wrong button.

After a no-show and a late arrival and yet another ugly, histrionic incident of insubordination, my friend had no choice but to fire his cocaine-stoked and deranged employee, telling him, in classic style, to 'Clean out your locker and get the fuck out!'

The cook went home, made a few phone calls, and then hanged himself.

It's a measure of what we do for a living that this kind of a thing could happen - and that my friend, on his next visit to my kitchen, was greeted with gestures of mimed strangulation, cooks and waiters holding a hand over their heads, sticking their tongues out and rolling their eyes up, tagging my friend, to his face, as 'serial killer' and remorselessly teasing him.

My friend had worked for me for years, and had, at various times, caused me much grief and frustration. Since becoming a chef in his own right, however, he'd taken to calling me at intervals - to apologize for his past bad acts, telling me that when faced with managerial problems of his own involving personnel, or 'human resource difficulties', he'd seriously regretted all the pain and worry he'd caused me.

Now he knew, you see. He knew what it was like to be a leader of cooks, a wrangler of psychopaths, the captain of his own pirate ship, and he wasn't liking that part of the job very much. Now somebody was dead and there was, inarguably, a causal relationship between the event of the troublesome cook's firing and his death by his own hand.

'The guy was fucked up anyway, it's not your fault,' was the standard conciliatory remark. It was about as sympathetic as any of us could get.

'Guy would have done it sooner or later, man. If not with you, some other chef.'

That didn't quite cut it either.

'The guy had to go,' is what I said, the kind of cold-blooded statement not unusual for me when in chef-mode. 'What? Are you gonna keep the guy on? Let him talk shit to you in front of your crew? Let him show up late, fuck up service . . . because you're afraid he's gonna off himself? Fuck him. We're on a lifeboat, baby. The weak? The dangerous? The infirm? They go over the side.'

Typically, I was overstating the case. I've coddled plenty of dangerously unstable characters over the years; I've kept on plenty of people who I knew in the end would make me look bad and become more trouble than they were worth. I'm not saying I'm Mister Rogers, a softie - okay, maybe I am saying that . . . a little bit. I appreciate people who show up every day and do the best they can, in spite of borderline personalities, substance abuse problems and anti-social tendencies; and I am often inclined to give them every opportunity to change their trajectories, to help them to arrive at a different outcome than the predictable one when they begin visibly to unravel.

But once gone - quit, fired or dead - I move on to the next problem. There always is one.

I care about my crew and their problems.

I go home Saturday night with a sulking cook getting crispy around the edges on my mind? Someone in my kitchen talking about going AWOL, exhibiting symptoms of the dreaded martyr mode? My weekend is ruined. All I'm going to be thinking about for every waking moment is that cook and what I can do to fix the situation. I'll lie there on the bed, staring into space, paying scant attention to the TV, or what my wife is talking about, or the everyday tasks of bill paying, maintaining a home, behaving like a normal person.

I don't know, you see, how a normal person acts. I don't know how to behave outside my kitchen. I don't know the rules. I'm aware of them, sure, but I don't care to observe them anymore because I haven't had to for so many years.

Okay, I can put on a jacket, go out for dinner and a movie, and I can eat with a knife and fork without embarrassing my hosts. But can I really behave? I don't know.

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.

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.

I was really beginning to worry about my head when I finally bumped into Philippe again at the restaurant. Can this still be jet lag, I asked him. The pain seemed to be aspirin-proof. Am I dying?

'Oh, you mean "the helmut"?' he asked, circling his own head with his fingers to indicate the exact location of the pain. He shrugged, 'C'est normal.'

It's never a good thing when a Frenchman says 'C'est normal.'

One could, Philippe had explained before leaving me off at Roppongi Crossing, borrow money to get home from almost any policeman if drunk and unexpectedly short of funds. The idea of not returning the next day to repay the debt was, in typically Japanese thinking, unthinkable.

To those serious ones who know what it is they are entering, who are fully prepared, ready, willing and able, and committed to a career path like, say, Scott Bryan's - who want to be chefs, must be chefs, whatever the personal costs and physical demands - then I have this to say to you:

Welcome to my world!

And consider these suggestions as to your conduct, attitude and preparation for the path you intend to follow.

'We're in a lifeboat . . .' begins one of my standard inspirationals to new sous-chefs. 'We're four days out to sea, with no rescue in sight. There are two Snickers bars and a tiny hunk of salt pork left in our stores, and that fat bastard by the stern is getting crazier with every hour, becoming more and more irrational and demanding, giving that Snickers bar long, lingering looks - even though he's too weak to help with the rowing or the bailing any more. He presents a clear and present danger to the rest of us, what with his leering at the food and his recently acquired conviction that we're plotting against him. What do we do?'

We kick fat boy over the side, I say. Maybe we even carve a nice chunk of rumpsteak off his thigh before letting him go. Is that wrong?

Yah, yah, yah, tough guy. Sure you'd do that. To which I'd say, 'You don't know me very well.' Insurrection? A direct challenge to my authority? Treasonous dereliction of duty? The time will come, my friend, when it's gonna be you going over the side. I will - and I tell my cooks this ahead of time contrive, conspire, manipulate, maneuver and betray in order to get you out of my kitchen, whatever the outcome to you personally. If an unexpected period of unemployment inspires you to leap off a bridge, hang yourself from a tree or chug-a-lug a quart of drain cleaner, that's too bad.

The absolutes first attracted me to this business (along with that food thing). The black and white of it. The knowledge that there are some things you must do - and some things you absolutely must not. What little order there has been in my life is directly related to this belief in clear right and clear wrong: maybe not moral distinctions, but practical ones.

Another cook has to cover for you? Wrong.

Chef spending too much time kissing your boo-boos, stroking your ego, solving your conflicts with co-workers? Wrong.

Talking back to your leader? Wrong.

You will soon become dead to me.

My friend the novice 'killer', feeling truly awful about what happened, said, 'Tony. I'm different than you - 'I have a heart!' I laughed and took that for a compliment - which it kind of was if a backhanded one.

I do have heart, you see. I've got plenty of heart. I'm a fucking sentimental guy - once you get to know me. Show me a hurt puppy, or a long-distance telephone service commercial, or a film retrospective of Ali fights or Lou Gehrig's last speech and I'll weep real tears. I am a bastard when crossed, though, no question. I bully my waiters but at least I comfort myself after ward, when I wonder if maybe I went a little too far - at least I don't bite them on the nose, as one chef I know did. I don't throw plates . . . much. I don't blame others for my mistakes. I am attentive to the weak but willing, if merciless to the strong who are not so eager to please. Though slothful to a fault in my off-hours, I am not lazy at work, and I am fiercely protective of my crew, of my chain of command, of my turf. I have perjured myself on a cook's behalf. I will cut my nose off to spite my face if a favored cook's well-being is at stake - meaning I will quit a job rather than let management, ownership or anybody else toy with any member of my crew. I will walk out of a perfectly good situation if someone insists on squeezing my cooks for unreasonable amounts of extra work at no additional recompense. I'm not bluffing when I threaten to quit over principle. My loyalty, such as it is, is to my restaurant - if that loyalty is not to the detriment of dedicated underlings. The ones who've hung with me, endured what I think should be reasonably endured, have done the right thing.

Everything else is just noise.

Isn't it?