The author (far right) and Jay Poblador (left) pose while Chef Paul and some members of the kitchen crew ham it up for the camera.

My day consisted of fashioning yet more brioches until I got it down to a science. “Ball your palm and vigorously turn counter-clockwise” was Nancy’s instruction. I was making progress and was quite proud of myself. Now, since the hotel relied on The Café at Country (the formal restaurant’s less-swanky counterpart downstairs) and the pastry department for room service, we had to work double-time. My next job was to “expertly” crack 200 eggs (sans the occasional shells) and rind 100 lemons for lemon pound cakes to be baked, followed by loading several muffin trays into hot ovens. I even assisted in making croissants, a tedious process involving several sheets of dough pressed through a machine and slathered with copious, artery-clogging amounts of butter between its multiple layers. Working in a pastry kitchen is one thing, working in the hot kitchen is another. Although I was performing at a respectable pace, nothing—not my many dinners and certainly not the many cooking shows watched—could prepare me for the next couple of days.

A few days before the Thanksgiving holidays, I swung by Country and enjoyed a sumptuous meal of Tartare of Beef, Sauteed Shrimps with rosemary, lemon confit, and garlic brulee, topped off with some Sticky Toffee Pudding down at the Café. Jay was a gracious host and toured me around the kitchen. He introduced me to Doug Psaltis, the Executive Chef, and to John Iconomou, his sous chef whom I would be directly reporting to. Jay warned me that day: “Doug is a very cool guy, although he tends to get pretty intense. So if you don’t screw up, there shouldn’t be a problem.” That caveat stuck with me for days. I didn’t let it bother me at first, but unlike my first day at pastry, my first day at the hot kitchen was filled with harrowing uncertainty.

PLAT PRINCIPAL

I reported to John at 1:20 P.M., 10 minutes early and eager to make a good first impression. As I surveyed the work area, I noticed that everyone was already there. Faces worn and hardened by countless hours in professional kitchens. Each lined with its own war story to tell of how bruising a single night’s service at a top-tier restaurant can be . . . and all I had was a short culinary course to my name. A few months before my New York sojourn, I took it upon myself to refine my kitchen skills at ISCAHM, one of the foremost culinary campuses in Manila. I needed to feel how it was working in a real kitchen with a real chef (Norbert Gandler) screaming into your ear. This, I wrongly imagined, would serve as ample preparation for cooking in the real world: where every single meal counted and where the chef’s very reputation nestled precariously on the blade between the success or failure of the previous night’s outcome. I nervously stepped into the kitchen and asked what task I should start with.

The kitchen is ablaze with the fury of an irate chef maniacally excoriating his crew of line cooks slaving over hot stoves and boiling cauldrons of beef and veal stock. The tickets pile up. Sweat pours and nerves fray.

Anthony (a former dishwasher turned line cook) instructed me to pick up some marjoram, which should be properly labeled in the walk-in chiller’s herb shelf downstairs. I bragged that I knew my herbs simply by appearance and smell, and proceeded to prove to him that this rookie had an extensive catalog of ingredients lodged in his memory. I walked into the chiller and grabbed one bunch . . . no, two bunches for good measure and made my way up the winding maze of stockrooms and stairwells back to my station. As I handed Anthony the herbs, a quizzical look met my gaze. “Uh, you mentioned that you knew your herbs, right? Well, this isn’t marjoram.” I was flushed with embarrassment at the realization of my limitations. “And don’t ever walk around with your ingredients not placed in a container. Doug’s gonna flip!” Already, I felt a drowning sensation, like I was in over my head. And I had yet to chop up my first ingredient.

I was placed in mise en place or the prepping station, a very basic yet essential section every cook starts off in. I was handed a bunch of flat-leaf parsley to chop finely. I set my large wooden chopping board on the marble counter facing the dining room and proceeded to do my thing when out of nowhere, a dignified, gray-haired gentleman appeared before me. He extended his hand and with a warm, confident voice said: “Hi! I’m Geoffrey.” To which I replied, “Yes, I know who you are, Mr. Zakarian.” And just like that, the knot in my stomach loosened. I appreciated the simple yet all-important gesture of the top executive going out of his way to welcome the new guy. It filled me with a sense of importance—that everyone was an integral component of the kitchen as a whole. Not long after, the looming figure of Jay, decked in a dark suit and muttering menacingly between clenched teeth, rudely interrupted my celebrity-chef daze. “Pare, galingan mo yan, ha!” he said. That vote of confidence was all I needed at this point. There was no one to wipe my nose, no instructor mandated to assist a lost culinary student. I was left to my own devices. Service was in four hours.

I consider my knife skills decent at best. I invested in a Wusthof 7” Silverpoint to practice my chopping and slicing technique. As I continued to chop away at my herbs, a cook to the left of my station looked over my shoulder and remarked: “Dude, don’t bruise the parsley.” Another would later exclaim: “We need it finer than that, man. That just won’t do.” Frustration began to mount. Isn’t this good enough? It looks okay to me. But in the world of high-pressure cooking and world-class standards, “okay” simply won’t cut it.

The pace became more frenetic as the hours went by. A typical service starts at 6 P.M., and there were a few hours left to go. Time whizzes by when you’re meeting a dinner schedule. I spent many an agonizing moment in my own kitchen praying for time to freeze or a valid reason to delay dinner—in most cases, there isn’t. The staff needed all the help it could get, anyone capable of taking on extra work. So when it was clear that my task was almost done, I was abruptly yanked out of my spot.

A frazzled cook needed help in his area. He handed me a plate of Piquillo peppers to finely dice. When I slid my finished product over to his side, his face quickly reddened as he began to spasmodically shake his head. “No, no. Not like that. It should be more evenly diced, man. What the heck is this?” Now, I can take passing comments about my bruised herbs or even that my olfactory sense needs fine-tuning . . . but when some arrogant culinary school apple-polisher tries to take a swipe at the quality of my diced Piquillos, then we’ve got a problem. As he walked away, he kept muttering within earshot, and I grew more agitated. I gripped the handle of my 10” chef’s knife tightly, constricting blood flow in my hand, slowly cocked my head in his direction, and said to him: “Okay, man. I’ll do it again. No need to lose it.” This Zen master calm is necessary in this kind of situation. With the stress of an impending service building up, the last thing you need is a dispute. After all, there were standards to be met, and all personal issues aside, he was just doing his job.

Feeling like my heart was scooped out with a soup ladle at the thought of this impossible task, I had to regroup and feign calm as I proceeded to break down the herbs with savant-like focus.

“Never hold the table down, always look busy,” advised Sam, a burly cook I shared my station with. “Here,” he then said, dropping four huge bunches of yet more parsley down in front of me, “You can do this in six minutes.” “Yeah, right” I thought, “maybe more like sixty minutes!” If I did this kind of work day in and day out for five years, then no sweat. But I think someone missed the memo that a “recreational cook” would be sent in to trail, not some vicious prepping machine. Feeling like my heart was scooped out with a soup ladle at the thought of this impossible task, I had to regroup and feign calm as I proceeded to break down the herbs with savant-like focus. From the corner of my eye, I spied Geoffrey huddled with his team of chefs. Distracted but wanting to look unperturbed, I failed to notice my thumb slide from underneath my hand as I feverishly chopped. The sharp blade of my chef’s knife just stopping as it made the slightest contact with my skin. I heaved a sigh of relief at my near-911 incident. A lobbed fingertip was the last souvenir I wanted to take home from this tour of duty.

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