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.