Sous Chef. Michael Gibney J.
approach to competition helped him more than just a bit. A native misanthropy made it easy for him to stop caring about the throats he had to cut on the way to the top. Since then, he’s never looked back, helming several of his own places ranging from dives in Williamsburg to posh spots uptown. He’s traveled the country consulting on everything from restaurant openings to commercial mustard production.
With such a pedigree, it’s easy to wonder why he’s here now, at this midsize restaurant in the West Village that’s lucky to clear a couple million a year, when he could be making well into six figures in an easygoing position in corporate consulting or as a television personality. Here he works seventy-five-hour weeks, brings in about eighty grand, and deals every day with the incessant budgetary constraints, the half-baked floor staff, and the nettlesome hipster critics common to any midrange star-rated restaurant. For your average forward-looking cooks and chefs, these are simply the conditions of development, burrs under the saddle to be shed with growth in the industry. We fantasize about what great space and equipment and freedom we’ll have in our future fine-dining restaurants. We grin and bear the daily struggle with the conviction that there is something better a few years down the road. But Bryan, whose foot-long résumé shames all of ours, grapples with the difficulties still. And he seems to do so by choice.
You could say that he does so because a place of this size allows him to realize a vision—a luxury that the big paycheck of a larger operation might not afford him. In a corporate restaurant, the food he’d make wouldn’t be his, it’d be the company’s. To even get a dish on the menu at such a place requires an elaborate process of hoop jumping. Tastings with the director of food and beverage, with the corporate chef, with the national director of restaurants—it’s bureaucracy at its messiest. By the time a new dish arrives on the menu, it’s lost all traces of spontaneity and freshness. It’s gone stale. So you could say that Bryan is here because he has a special vision of how food is supposed to be made and he likes getting to do it that way every day.
You could also say that he does it because he is a chef of the kitchen, a chef who cooks, too. That is to say, he’s here because he wants to be here, in the flames, in the heat, on the line. He is captivated by the act of cooking, by the warmth that comes off the stove, by the sweat that comes with a full day of work. He likes having his hands on everything, his fingers in all the pies. And he knows that here, unlike the corporate kitchen (where the majority of one’s days are spent in the office analyzing invoices and managing food cost), here he actually gets to cook things.
Or perhaps you could say it’s something else. He is getting old in chef years, after all; perhaps he’s burning out. Perhaps it’s his only option. This happens sometimes in restaurants: a decade goes by and business dwindles. Ten years in this industry is like two dozen in another. The food one makes might still be great (a chef’s instincts stay with him always), but after so many years, customers inevitably grow tired of his fare. They want what’s cutting-edge, not the dusty old names of decades past. And with each passing year, staying ahead of the curve becomes harder and harder. So the chef gives the restaurant up, jumps ship. But what awaits him? His cook’s pittance is nothing to retire on; he has to keep working. All he knows is cooking, so he stays in the business. But since his name no longer attracts the avant-garde food enthusiasts, he does his cooking at a lower volume in smaller places—trattorias, bistros, ateliers—where he can engage the act of cooking and explore his curiosities without the same level of pressure intrinsic to high-budget establishments. He retires out of fine dining proper and into the small, privately owned house.
With Bryan, it’s hard to say which of these conditions apply. He’s still full of piss and vinegar over cooking; you can tell that he loves the process. And he certainly doesn’t lack energy in the kitchen, or creative ebullience. But the gray hairs nested around his ponytail, his ruddy skin, the distant look in his eyes when he slaps you up and says “See you in the morning”—these tell a different story. Like most people in his position, he’s difficult to read.
Whatever the case may be, he’s here now and he is Chef. And when he’s in the kitchen and the whites are on, it is embarrassing to think of addressing him any other way. There is no “Bryan” in the kitchen—no “Bry,” no “man” nor “dude” nor “buddy”—only Chef. He is the lodestar, the person everyone looks up to. He commands respect and exudes authority. His coats are crisp and clean, his pants are pressed, his hair is tied back neatly. He has more experience than anyone else in the kitchen; he knows more about food than anyone else in the kitchen; he can cook better than anyone else in the kitchen. He is the best butcher; he is the best baker. He’s the sheriff, the chief, the maestro. He choreographs. He directs. He makes the difficult look easy. His finesse is ubiquitous.
And then, what would any great leader be without his second in command? In a chef’s case, this is his sous chef. The sous chef (from the French meaning “under chef”) is the lieutenant, the executor of Chef’s wishes. He is at Chef’s side seventy hours a week or more, for good or for bad, a perpetual Mark Antony to Chef’s Julius Caesar. Out of this devotion grows a lasting bond. A chef always looks out for his sous chef; a sous is always “under” his chef’s wing—guided, nurtured, cared for, long after the stoves are turned off and the aprons are hung up. While other cooks are apprenticed to the kitchen, the sous is apprenticed directly to Chef. He is not there to learn how to cook properly or how to organize a restaurant—he is expected to have these skills already. Instead, the sous works with Chef on developing leadership, moxie, brio—the subtler elements of the craft. He’s not just learning how to be a cook, he’s learning how to become a chef. And at this point in his career he is one rung away from that achievement.
The position can be difficult. It requires a peculiar disposition that is foreign to most. Not only does it entail a uniquely large amount of physical labor—twelve to fifteen hours per day, six or seven days per week—but also it engenders a certain kind of ambivalence. That limbo between cook and chef, where the taste of clout is tempered yet by the burden of compliance, is no easy place to dwell, especially for the veteran sous. The gratitude and pride intrinsic to the appointment are not without some tinge of bitterness; the excitement of power is not without a trace of fear. To wit, you want to be Chef. You want your name on the menu. You’re tired of doing all the work and getting none of the recognition. Yet deep down you wonder if you’re really ready to assume all the responsibility that comes with authority, to take all the blame that goes along with credit. It’s a charge replete with dualities, and at the end of the day you’re left straddling the fulcrum, made to decide for yourself whether the student in you has what it takes to become the master.
In our kitchen, as in many others like it, there are two sous chefs: you and Stefan. To those unfamiliar with it, a setup like this might seem dangerous. Having a pair of lieutenants could be fertile earth for competition—who outranks whom, for example, who is the real right-hand man. But you know there is no room for rivalry in this part of the kitchen. The two of you represent the upper echelon and you must work in concert with each other, and with Chef as well, to form a unified corps of governance. Your cohesion as a group is crucial to the fluid operation of the restaurant. Dissension among you will undoubtedly lead to ruin: recipes get garbled, techniques and attitudes begin to vary among the cooks, consistency diminishes, and ultimately the restaurant goes bust. So you do well as members of the sous chef team to reserve your competitive zeal for the outside world.
Fortunately, each of you serves a distinct function for Chef. Like knives in a tool kit, he’s selected you individually based on certain character traits that satisfy specific needs of his. You each help complete the kitchen’s picture with specialized contributions.
At the most basic level, you are the opener and Stefan is the closer. You come in earlier; Stefan stays later. What this means is that Chef trusts you to arrive on time in the morning and get everything set for dinner service. He expects you to handle the detail-oriented matters of purchasing and receiving, inventory and organization. He expects you to turn the kitchen’s lights on. Because of you, he can wake up in the morning without worrying that some emergency requires his presence at the restaurant. He knows that you are here and so he can take his time getting in because, it’s assumed, you have everything under control.
He also has you opening because he knows your