Martin (Mar-teen)

“Going to Mexico in no problem.” Martin said. “It’s coming back that is the pain my ass.”

Emily walked into the kitchen, she was Martin’s girl du jour, or should I say the hot piece of ass Martin liked to stare at and catcall on that particular day. She had pictures of here new dog that she was posting on the wall of the kitchen and was laughing with the other waitress about how cute her new pug was.

Martin looked at me. “You see that girl. She is my new girlfriend. She is wanting me, I know it. Is ok I wanting her too…. Watch this.” Martin walked up to Emily and smiled. “Let me see that dog. Yes, yes he is very cute. I love dogs.” Martin ran up to me by the stove and whispered. “Ha, I fucking hate dogs! But for her I say, yes I love that stupid fucking dog. I take her to Mexico with me, we have a happy life, she doesn’t know it yet.”

“You know, Martin. I’m half-Spanish.”

Martin’s eyes lit up. He started to laugh. “Ha, you going to Mexico with me?”

“Yeah, let’s go. How about tomorrow we drive together.”

Martin put his hands in his pockets. He stopped and started to think. “No, I go maybe next year.”

“Why next year?”

“I go on my baby’s birthday.”

“You have kids Martin?”

“Yes, I married too.”

“No shit. When’s the last time you saw your wife?”

“Maybe a year ago I see her.” Martin took out his wallet and pulled out a picture. It was a Polaroid that had been folded in half and stuck in the crease of his wallet. The Polaroid showed a picture of a beautiful Spanish woman with long black hair and baby held in the cradle of her arm. “This is my wife.”

“Oh my god Martin she’s beautiful.”

“Thank you my friend.” Martin said.

“When’s the last time you talked to her?”

“I talk every Sunday. I call my family and talk to her, she is living with my parents.”

“Do you ever worry that she’ll cheat on you.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Worry that she’ll cheat on you.”

“I don’t know that word mean.”

“Do you ever think she’ll go out and fuck another guy?”

“No, that is no problem.”

“Martin, I’m sure logically it could happen. You haven’t seen this woman in a year. She could go out any night of the week and be with some guy. You would never know!”

“No, she is staying with my parents.”

“Martin, any night of the week she could out and say she’s going to the store and run out with a guy.”

Martin started to laugh. “No, is ok. She staying with my parents. You are not understanding.”

Even though I was joking, I really did wonder what would keep a women waiting years on end for her husband? How could Martin know for a fact that a girl would actual remain true for years on end with no guarantee that he would ever come back home? Sometimes things really put everything in perspective, saying goodbye to your wife and child for a chance to make ten dollars an hour in foreign land. I couldn’t do it, and I don’t really know anyone who would.

Martin worked as a busboy at the café I was cooking at, he also worked at a French bistro across the street. When I first met Martin he was working a morning shift at the café and then a night shift at the bistro, the man worked double shifts ever day of his life. I once asked Martin what he did for fun. He looked at me and said. “Fun? I have no time for that shit. I am working!”

I had always tip-toed around the fact that Martin was illegal. I never asked him about it. I never asked anyone about it. In fact until Martin talked about his trip to the US, I never asked anyone about how immigrants got to the US. It never really dawned on me how dangerous it was to get here and just how much working in the US could matter to anyone.

Martin finally told me about his trip to the US one day. “The first time I come to US. I only bring a Coca-Cola and a banana. I don’t know how long it take. But it is fucking long. Three days in the desert. I drink the Coca-Cola the first day and I am thirsty later. I am thanking god that people set up camps along the way with water. At the camps I see a dead man with fly buzzing on his face. He is fucking dead in the desert, I guess he was to fat to make the trip.

You have to pay a guy five thousand dollars to show you the way. He could show you the way or say fuck you and steal it all and then you have to save up and pay someone else and the same thing could happen. You could pay three different persons before someone shows you the way. Then when you get to the border you have to have someone pick you up. You pay another person money and they pick a time to pick you up. They say “Meet me at 5:02”. And if you get the border and it say 5:02 on your watch they might not be there, then you are waiting and they are still not there. You never know, there watch could be slow or fast or they stole the money you gave them. Then if they do drive up and you run into the car you never know they could be killing you, you don’t know. It’s scary because if they no show up you have to try and out run the police. If the police catch and drive you back to Mexico you have to pay all over again. Is fucked up.

But I like it here. In Mexico there is work, but it is construction. It’s heavy and you are burning in the sun. Someday I am bringing my wife here, but maybe not for a few years. I make money and send it to her. Every month I send home two thousand dollars. Maybe I go home and am seeing her soon.”

I still love you David Chang

The snow was falling in Kansas City. The apartment I was in could be described as a halfway house of the homeless, a building of broken lights, unsafe floors, questionably plumping, and on the edge of being condemned . I was in living with my cockroach roommates and thumbing through a copy of the Momofuku cookbook by David Chang. I borrowed the book that evening and promised I would have it back in the morning. All through the night I read the autobiographical beginnings of David Chang's eventual domination of the Lower East Side. I looked in owe at pictures of deep fried brussel sprouts, korean fried chicken, and shaved frozen foie gras. I was in love, my life had changed. I read the Momofuku cook as the snow fell outside my window and dreamt that someday and somehow I would be working along side David Chang.

One year later the snow was falling in Connecticut. I had asked to do a stage at Momofuku Noodle Bar and was told to come in for a night. The train ride to New York was about an hour and a half, but seemed like minutes. When I got to 1st Avenue I walked to the Noodle Bar and peeked through the window, the dining room was packed and more customers were lining up on the streets. I walked to David Chang's other Momofuku safe house, Ssam Bar. Again, the place was packed. I walked to the Michelin starred Momfuku Ko; packed. The Chang domination was true, in a two block radius David Chang had three restaurants, all of them filled.

The brilliance of Momofuku is also present in the ambiance. The design is a mix of subtle advertisement and feng shui. In a borough filled with pizzerias, cheap chinese food, and trash bags stacked five feet high, the Momofuku restaurants look clean, inviting, streamline, and brand new; like an oasis in the desert. The restaurants seem to pop out at you while walking down the street and almost pull you in and say, come on in! It's great in here! All the Momofuku restaurants are built with plywood interiors and industrial metal exteriors, no signs; just a logo on the front of the door of an orange peach. Simple, but somehow intensely brilliant.

I walked around the Lower East Side scared, nervous, and about to say fuck it to the stage and run away just to relieve the anxiety. The only thing that kept that me from running was several phone calls to my girlfriend. She kept telling me you only get nervous when you're about to do something special, that it was these moments that made up your life, and she was very right. I took a deep breath and walked into the Noodle Bar with my knives by my side.

When I started at Momofuku I was doing prep in the basement. The walls were lined with pictures of Harold McGee, Wylie Dufresne, and John MacEnroe. I spent the afternoon cutting scallions and pig parts all the time looking over my shoulder to make sure David Chang was nowhere to be seen. I was afraid David would walk in and see me, see me doing something wrong.I was scared that he would throw me out on the street for holding a pair of chopsticks wrong and thereby dishonoring his Momofuku temple. Mostly I was afraid of being star struck, looking David in the eye and saying "I know you from the TV!" Just like I may or may not have done to Al Franken years ago.

I was given a tour of the walk-in. It was filled with pork belly on top of pork belly, 50 pounds of shoulder in the corner, and enough pickled mushrooms to keep a Korean family well fed for four years and more cut scallions than you would need to hold a ticker-tape across Manhattan. Being in the walk-in was like reliving the Momofuku cookbook I had first laid eyes on almost a year ago. To my right were fried chicken pieces, to my left ginger-scallion sauce. I felt like I was inside the cookbook that had given me hope in a cramped Kansas City apartment when, well, almost all hope was lost.

I went upstairs to join the cooks for the family meal (a meal made up of whatever leftovers are sitting around to feed the cooks and wait staff; a concession given for working 12 hour shifts in the restaurant world). Sitting with the cooks eating fried chicken and french toast all I could think of was I hope to fucking god David Chang doesn't walk in. The thought bounced around my brain like a bad migraine starting at the base of my skull and filling the front of my head. I guess I thought I wasn't good enough to be there. Chang would see I was a phony. He would be able to smell it.

Then it happened.

I saw him out the corner of my eye at first, a brief flash. David Chang was in the corner of Noodle Bar. He wore a stocking cap and a puffy winter coat, looking very homeless and very stoned. I could see him smiling and joking with the veterans of the Noodle Bar. I was standing in the middle of the restaurant trying to decide if I would run downstairs or stand there with my half eaten fried chicken in hand. I decided to stand there, I pulled my hat down as far as it it would go covering my eyes and hoping I would go unnoticed. He couldn't stand there to long right? He had other restaurants to go and inspect. He had to leave soon right? Chang walked around the Noodle Bar for a minute and came up to me.

"Do you work here man?" Chang said.

"Well, I am tonight." I said.

"Cool" Chang said, then he sat for a minute with the cooks,took a few bits of fried chicken and then he left. It was like Spartacus had left the Colosseum.

About twenty minutes later I was standing in the open kitchen working the noodle station. The doors opened and people flew in. The people looked like silhouettes momentarily brought to color by the flashes of different cameras. Tourist and locals alike sat down in front of me all waiting for the magic moments of David Chang's infamous ramen.

The orders came in quick and I started to plunge noodles in the blanching water. I was shadowing a guy had worked at the Noodle Bar for about a year. He handed me a pair of chopsticks and told me that was tool I needed to use. I was handicapped for the first hour with those goddamn chopsticks. The guy I was working with had adapted nicely to his wooden tools and could pick up a single noodle with his bamboo with incredible speed and accuracy . About two hours into my shift the guy I was shadowing vanished. He was gone. Real gone. Tickets kept pouring in, I kept making ramen. The sous chef came up to me and said the guy I was working with was going home sick.

"Can you work this station Mike?"

"Sure." I said. Why not? It was only my dream to be here. I had fantasized about this moment since first cracking open the Momofuku cookbook. The night went on, I could hear customers talking infront of me as I dropped a bowl of hot ramen in front of them. Pictures were taken of me, like I was part of the team, and for about six hours, I was.

The night ended and sous chef took me into the basement.

"Good work tonight." She said. "Would you be interested in a job here?"

"I'll have to discuss it with my girlfriend first, but probably." I said.

"Fair enough, Ma Peche is hiring too, do you want me to send your resume?"

"Sure, can I stage at SSam Bar?" I asked

"Well, let me text David tonight and see what we can do." She said. (I can only hope she meant David as in Chang)

It took me a few days to process what had happened. I worked at my dream restaurant for night and they offered me a job. Amazing. It felt like some kind of odd validation. That I hadn't been wasting my life and time in restaurants, that it all mattered all of a sudden.

The job offer from the Noodle Bar was exciting, but over the next few days I thought it over and felt like I had come a little to late to the party, the place was on autopilot. Momofuku Noodle Bar is a great restaurant and experience, but the model was already cut years ago. It was now a ramen factory. The food is great, but Noodle Bar now seems like a greatest hits album, perfect to introduce you to Momofuku, but boring after you've already heard the box set. I wanted it to be part of that rebel experience of cutting edge cuisine served in a plywood box, giving the finger to the fine dining world and becoming what I dreamt about while reading the cookbook. Those days are gone now it seems. Nothing last forever and we both know hearts can change. The dangerous thing about cooking is that once you come up with an idea it's already boring. A new invention is outdated the minute it's dreamt up. It's only a matter of time before some punk doing a stage calls it boring. I still love you David Chang. I will eat at Momofuku for years. I will still open the cookbook and be wowed. I still talk about it, rave about it, and still get angry when you don't get it. Most of all I thank you David, you gave me a dream and let me live it.

I cooked at Momofuku, and no one can ever take that away from me.

I'm a traveler!

I joined Chuck at the bar after I finished closing down for the night. Chuck looked like a middle aged Horatio Sanz and sounded like a bad impression of Harry Caray. "Mike! Want a tequila shot?"
"Sure" I said. I liked drinking with Chuck, it was always an interesting experience.

The Wine Bar was located in a charming spot, right next to a Subway sandwich shop and a pick up bar for people forty plus. The lights of the Wine Bar were off me and Chuck watched the elderly bar scene file down the street. We heard the door open and watched a woman in her late fifties stumbled in wearing a strapless, form fitting, Hawaiian printed dress.

Chuck took about three seconds to pounce on his prey.

"Hey baby, hey baby, how are you." Chuck slurred.
"Is this place open?" the woman said.
"Only for VIP's my dear. Why don't you come sit down by your new friend Chuck?"
"This place is open, right? I don't want to get in any trouble." The woman was about as drunk as I've ever seen a human being.
Chuck had one eye open now and I was pretty sure that he was about to pass out mid pick up line. "Sit down by Chuck and have a drink, beautiful."

The lady whispered in my ear, "I don't have any money."
"I think Chuck's taking care of the drinks tonight." I said.
"Hey Mike! Grab the lady a corona, she looks like a corona type of girl."
I went behind the bar grabbed another round for all of us. The woman sat at the bar and Chuck tried to woo her.
"So, what do you do?" the woman asked.
"I'm a traveler!" Chuck said, "I travel all over, that's what I do."
"A traveler?"
"I'm the district manager for Applebee's." At this point, Chuck was drinking brandy from a snifter about the size of his huge head. "It's a job though, I don't care for the food. I don't care for it, but I get to do what I want in this world."
The woman finished her beer and started to get a worried look in her eyes. "I've got to go, thank you for the drink, I have to go."
Before the woman made it out of the bar Chuck started to scream in his usual way. "That bitch, they all take free drinks and act like bitches! Fuck this place Mike, let's go to the strip club. Come on! Let's get out of this shit hole."
To put it in perspective, it was 2 a.m., the nearest strip club was at least and hour away and we were both hammered. So we did what anyone would have done, Chuck rented a limo and we drove into the darkness on our way to have a little fun.

We talked and laughed down the highway, throwing our empty beer bottles out the window.

We got to the strip club with ten minutes until close and a dream in our heart.

"We only got a few minutes!" I heard Chuck say as he barreled through the strip club and grabbed the first girl he could. "Hey baby, wanna go to the champagne room with us?" Chuck turned to me and said, "Come on Mike, this is gonna be awesome!"

I wish I could say it was. I had a whiskey headache that was starting on in base of my brain, and believe it or not when a drunk, sweaty, Horatio Sanz look-a-like is sitting next to you in the champagne room, it can hinder the lap dance experience just a tad...

At this point, I was weaving in between consciousness anyway. Blurry vision, a pounding headache, a stripper from western Kansas, all while a drunk Horatio was leading the way, it should have been a blast.

We were the only people left in the club, there was nothing but bouncers and strippers counting tips in corner. The party at the strip club was over now and it was time to leave. The last thing I remember was trying to open the front door and puking as I hit the ground.

Somehow, I woke up the next morning. I had no idea how I got home, I didn't even care, all I cared about was getting over the massive hangover. My hands were shaking as I put on my chef's coat and as I walked to my car I hoped that Chuck would stop by the restaurant again.

Aren't you supposed to be in rehab?

"You need to pick me up man"
"Aren't you supposed to be in rehab?" I said.
Josh started to cry into the receiver of the phone. "No man, I ain't going, things are to fucked up right now. "
"Are you drunk?"
"I picked up a bottle of beam on my way to my parents house."
"Alright, I get off at ten, can you wait?"


Josh was at one point the sous chef of the Wine Bar. He was supposed to be the great white hope of the bar's reputation, a culinary school trained bright eyed boy with enough drive to make up for years of declining sales and a down on it's luck fine dining restaurant. He was perfect except for the alcoholism and slight drug problem.

"Culinary school was great, I was too coked up half the time to taste anything, but fuck it." the owner of the wine bar didn't know about the drinking problem right away because "I can hide that shit, I don't have to do a line until I get home man." Josh would tell us.

He was right too, he did hide it pretty well; for about a month. About three weeks into his employment a Honda Accord would pull up to into the parking lot everyday. An alarm would sound on Josh's watch at about three thirty in the afternoon. He would stop his prep and go outside into the Honda. About twenty minutes later Josh would be back inside, sometimes it would be quiet, he would turn on whatever Phish live album he was listening to at the time and go back to cutting tenderloins. Other times, a coked out Josh would scream back into the kitchen like a hurricane of a human being and smash dishes on the floor laughing hysterically.

About two months later the freak outs began. He would be working the saute station in the middle of service taking swigs off the Applejack and cheap sherry on the speed racks. When the board filled up with tickets he could be a drunken well oiled machine, other times he would freak and rip the tickets of the pass and throw them on the floor like confetti. If he burned something during a busy night you would usually have to watch out for screaming hot saute pans being thrown down the line.

I wasn't there for it, but one day Josh was gone. The owner had somehow convinced him to go to rehab. There were little words said about it, one day he was just gone.

"We're going through a lot less tenderloins these days." the owner said.
Josh isn't here I though to myself. He was stealing five a week. Not to mention stealing cases of wine, foie gras, pork shoulders, and he was even known to drink a bottle of sherry every night on the line. Josh was a miniature wrecking crew. A one man band of destruction and chaos, that no one missed.

When he called me he was supposed to have been in rehab for a month. He had been staying with his parents after being kicked out of his apartment.

"I get off at ten, can you wait?"
"No, man, you need you to get me now!" Josh said.
"Sorry, I can't. I'm working the fucking dinner service now." I said.
"Fuck you man, you're an asshole." he hung up the phone, I tried calling him back, but never got him back on the phone, in fact I never heard from him again. I did hear that he tried to get his job back. but then broke a window in the Wine Bar when he was told he could be a line cook, but not the sous chef.

I saw him about a year later in a specialty food store. He was dressed in chef's whites and had a name tag that said he worked for the country club. He had lost about fifty pounds from his already skinny frame, I felt bad for him. We didn't talk, but just sort of stared at each other for a minute, then looked away.

Best Seat in the House

There was a leather couch set up in the corner of the Wine Bar. It was meant to be a symbol of relaxation and luxury. Big spenders would sit on that couch and drink artisan cocktails and celebrate whatever was going on in their lives, a special night out, a special night on the couch. I had been the sous chef for about a year and was in my usual place at the bar with owner and Executive Chef drinking sazeracs at two in the morning with two of the usual barflies surrounding us like bookends. On my left was the military doctor that had to perform two eye surgeries in the morning, on the Chef's right was a professor that had been kicked out of the Wine Bar a week ago for getting a little unruly.

"The best lunch cook I ever had." said the owner. "Was a coke addict that worked for almost nothing." He bought a round of whiskey shots for the group and continued his story. "The sous chef at the time was a real piece of shit too." he laughed. "But, I got a lot of laughs out of him." he pointed to leather couch in the corner. "There was this girl that worked in the kitchen, she was a part time cook I think. Anyway, she wanted to take the night off and sous chef and lunch cook convinced her that the only way they could let her take off, was if she blew them both on that couch. I used to watch the security film of them, she'd go back and forth on them. They were both naked on that couch and she'd just go back and forth, up and down, it was like the perpetual motion bird toy you'd get as a gag gift. It was some funny shit."

The leather couch is still there, for special night out.

The Bird nearly killed me

Jane, a name that will shred my eardrums for the rest of my life.

The Bird as it shall be known, was a "farm-to-table" restaurant I worked for, for a brief period of time. I can't help but wince in pain when I think of it.


"My cousin was Charles Manson"
"Really?" I said.
The waitress said"I like to listen to his music when the restaurant is closed. His music is really good! And it's genius. "
"Are you sure it just doesn't suck?" I was a week into my stay at The Bird. I wasn't in the mood to make friends with anyone. The Bird was sucking the life out of me. I didn't care anymore.
"I used to live in Mexico. I just did it on a whim. You know a lot of people say I should write a book about my life. All the things I've done."
"Your life isn't that interesting." I said. It was almost two o' clock and Jane would be coming into the restaurant at any minute. It would start with a shriek of a voice and then end with a snorting laugh. I was in charge of the kitchen and everyday would have to come up with a special that would use up some of the produce in the basement. Lucky for me, there never was any produce in the basement, there never really was. Jane kept it bare as possible. It was always empty except for a few potatoes and whatever ziplock bags of herbs that Jane would snip from her garden, and for some reason there was always a case of coconut milk.

Jane had bought The Bird ten years prior and under her rule, ten chefs had quit in three years. She was most likely the most unstable person I've ever come across, one minute she would be talking about how she was going to have an article written about her in the New Yorker and the next minute she would tell me stories about how she would call the restaurant while on speaker phone in her therapist office.

I really tried to make The Bird work, I really did. I stuck through some hard times, very hard times. After about three months I came up with a menu, after many hours of Jane screeching at me over details of the food and even more hours of me imaging that I was stabbing a fork in my eye, the menu was done. I had all the local farmers primed and ready to ship out all of there best animals part and vegetables.

But, then it happened. D-day. It was a Friday, and it was raining hard. It wasn't going to be a bad day, the new menu was about to take effect. The beautiful meats and vegetables were on there way. It was going to be a good one alright....I waited until about the time dinner service was set to begin before I started to worry. The food wasn't being delivered, could it be the rain? I called Jane, she told me "I'm feeling uncomfortable the direction you want to go." then she told me that she canceled the orders. No new menu, no meat, no veg. I was totally fucked. On top of everything else, the rain had totally flooded the basement, the prep cooks had taken their shoes off and waded in the water splashing going from task to task, god bless them they never stopped working. I thought that we might be ok through it all, maybe it would be slow, because of the storm that was going on. Wrong, we sold out of food around 7pm. People were being turned away at the door and the crowd in dining room were getting a little grouchy at best. Around 7:30 I kindly asked the dishwasher to "stop being an asshole and get me some clean fucking pans." Now, the punch he gave didn't connect with me, but I did feel the breeze of his knuckles on the side of my face. I knew he was a little grouchy too. It was a perfect shit storm and I was in the middle of it. I did what every other man in my position would do, I clocked out at 10 and went home and cried. At about midnight Jane texted me and asked "How did everything go tonight?" The next day I resigned, I've never heard Jane's voice again. But sometimes when the wind blows and a tree scratches the window, or someone steps on a cat's tail, I get reminded of Jane's screech and the horror of The Bird.