October 2006 to January 2007, Los Angeles, California

By Yuko Kitazawa

I knew I wanted the job when the first thing I saw my potential boss do was dip gobs of marshmallow cream in bright pink, beet-stained coconut flakes. An eager candidate, I jumped into the white sticky mess and rubbed my palms together, forming golf-ball-sized confections sweet enough to make Willy Wonka jealous.

“I feel like a kid playing in a sandbox!” I beamed. He nodded and said, “Yes, a lot of what we do here is kids’ play.”

So when the popular Hollywood restaurant called to offer me the Assistant Pastry Chef position, I was thrilled. Not only was my boss, Albert, clearly talented and humorous, but he impressed me as an all-around nice guy. If you believe the common media portrayal of chefs as melodramatic, tantrum-throwing egomaniacs, you’re not far off. In my five years working as a culinary professional, I have seen worse than Hell’s Kitchen. But here was Albert, who was in turns an affable, wisecracking Jewish uncle, and an inspiring and patient teacher.

I had the perfect job with the perfect boss! Can this really all be mine?

Two blissful weeks passed. On the night before Halloween, a motherly voice shook me from this indulgent yet very real dream.

“He’s very crazy, your boss. Be careful, mi japonesa,” whispered Anita, the feisty Latina salad cook, as she popped into the pastry area to retrieve a bowl of all-purpose flour. “Huh? Why? He’s really cool.” Without a reply, she shot a narrow-eyed glance at Albert and hurried back to her station to mix blini batter, leaving me a little anxious.

The dining room buzzed that night and the kitchen was a circus. After Albert excused himself - he starts early in the morning, and has a marriage to save, after all - I plated the 50th dessert at midnight, scrubbed the station clean, and went home.

11a.m. next morning, I staggered out of bed to find a new message on my mobile phone. I dialed. “Yuko, where is my spoon?” a deep, indignant male voice blasted my ear. “I can’t find my spoon. Call back immediately.” A sharp inhale of breath, then an abrupt hang-up. He may just as well have learned that his wife had been kidnapped.

My stomach fluttered. Oh no, the spoon. He had instructed me three times to wash it myself and place it in a particular container, not to send it to the dishwasher. Last night, swamped knee-deep in tiramisu and chocolate mousse cake, I had absentmindedly tossed his spoon into a murky plastic tub filled with dirty utensils from the dining room.

Oh. No.

Every serious chef regards his knives as some of his most prized possessions. Albert extends such extreme care toward his spoon. “It is no ordinary spoon,” he reminded me on Day One. It’s the only spoon in this kitchen designed to create a perfect quinelle. A quinelle refers to a long, tapered football shape fashioned out of food using a spoon, a cylindrical container (the curved inner surface is key), and multiple flicks of the wrist. We use Albert’s spoon to make the kind of pretty ice cream quinelles you see in Gourmet Magazine.

Albert protects his spoon like a mother protects her newborn baby. He found it in an antique shop during an East Coast vacation. Unlike many of our tools, it can’t be replaced with a trip to Sur La Table. Initially, I regarded his babying of the spoon with curious admiration. But that was before I witnessed a different side of him.

After apologizing profusely to his answering machine, I returned to work with a bad taste in my mouth. Albert did not greet me with his usual gregarious, “Hey, how are ya?” The other cooks avoided him like dogs that instinctively avoid their master in a pesky mood. As it was immediately clear that he did not want to talk to anyone, I decided to shift my thoughts toward work.

The spoon was recovered the next day, naturally. All 17 employees knew about Albert’s Spoon, and kept an eye out for it. Since this incident, whenever Albert was to be absent from work for more than three days, the spoon accompanied him. On such an occasion I resorted to using The Imposter, a similarly shaped but cheaper and lighter version of the worshipped utensil.

Albert was his easy-going self again, high-fiving the waiters and cracking jokes.

Mid-December. The cold air outside came in through the vent, and without the advantage of working over open flames that the line cooks have, the two of us endured numb fingertips and clattering teeth. Seeing me crouched by the convection oven with the door ajar, a waiter kindly delivered me a cappuccino, its snowy white cap almost falling off the ceramic cup. As my upper lip touched the hot liquid, an order rang in. I set down the cup and tossed two caramel-filled crepes in a buttered pan, while Albert splashed red and yellow sauces across a white plate like Jackson Pollock on a sugar-high.

Company policy allows us to have coffee or soda during service, as long as it is contained in a plastic cup and placed away from the work surface on a raised shelf, and for good reason. When Albert turned around and reached for an off-set spatula, the sleeve of his oversized chef’s coat caught the cup’s handle, causing coffee to pour all over the counter, soak through a stack of unfilled crepes, and drip to the floor.

Two seconds of unbearable silence, then it hit like a storm.

“Where the fuck is your head? How many times did I tell you to keep the fucking cups out of my sight?” Inches away from my face, my boss frothed at the mouth. I let the torrent of angry words pass over my head like clouds in the sky, and calmly slid the sautéed crepes onto the decorated plate. “Get your head and ass screwed together!” was the final blow, and this affected me. My eyes welled up. I excused myself to the restroom. I did not want him to see just how much I felt demoralized by his outbursts.

The third episode occurred on a donut night, or as the management prefers to call it, “doughnut shoppe.” Every Wednesday, we offer an alternative menu of fried-to-order donuts with such offbeat fillings as red bean paste and rosemary marshmallow. He did not like the way I glazed a particular plate of donuts. He shouted. I walked out. I cried in my car for 30 minutes, before making a sheepish reappearance. With a sullen look on his face, he apologized. He asked if I wanted to quit. I said, “No, not yet.”

January arrived, along with a new dessert of caramelized quince and apples atop puff pastry. Albert learned from his mother that the condition of his 90-year old grandfather, who lived in Florida and was fighting cancer, was quickly worsening.

One night while waiting for what seemed like hours for our first order, Albert told me a story. When he was 7 years old, weekends were often spent at his grandfather’s coastal home, sleeping over and getting up at dawn to go fishing on a boat. On one of these carefree occasions, young Albert was unhappy. The ocean was rough, and not a single fish was caught. He asked his grandfather, “Why do we have to have bad days?” Grandfather replied, “So tomorrow can be better.”

He passed away a month later. Albert flew to Florida to attend his funeral. It would be four days before he returned. I got to work early. At 6 o’ clock, it was time to set up for service. I needed a spoon. The Imposter will do, I thought. But when I reached for it, nestled among assorted ordinary spoons and spatulas, there it was. The Spoon. Maybe he had simply forgotten to take it, because he had so much on his mind.

I wanted to believe otherwise.

When he returned the next Wednesday, it was donut night as usual. We expressed our sympathies, and I worked hard to ease the weight off his shoulder, physically if not emotionally. He was rather energetic and jubilant, but perhaps he did not want to be reminded of his sadness.

“What an idiot,” I said to myself, and braced for a torrent of profanities. I had just over-torched Albert’s famous vanilla brulee donut. Thin smoke arose from the blackened surface. Albert discovered what had happened.

He looked at me. Then, as though prompted by a divine voice, he closed his eyes and placed a hand on his temple. “Life is short. Life is short.” I heard him mutter under his breath. He went on to garnish his plate with chocolate sauce.

Albert’s grandfather was right. We all have bad days, so tomorrow can be better.

Yuko Kitazawa lives and works in Los Angeles. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and The Culinary Institute of America in New York.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Friday, February 9th, 2007 | Email This Post

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