Validated!

Only took about ten years, but you're getting the idea, aren't you?

A long time ago, in a lifetime far, far away someone left me in charge of the kitchen. And one night, in a fit of creative frustration over the evening's seafood special, I dug deep in the ol' tool chest of the gray matter and came up with (in my own mind) a genius idea.

We were heavy on Chilean Sea Bass and needed to move some product. I racked my brain and the brains (arguable) of my line cooks for a great idea to no avail. Time was running out quickly and I needed to turn over the specials to restaurant manager/goombah/resident slapdick, Tony, so we could collectively memorize the line of bullshit that would be floated tableside.

Something like this:

"Tonight's fresh fish presentation is fresh, line-caught Chilean Sea Bass, sauteed perfectly to a crisp crust and moist, flaky interior served over a warm gathering of fresh braised doodads, fresh flash fried dilly-dallies in a warm foamed emulsion of fresh micro whatchamacallits, organic thingamajigs and farm fresh gizwhammies.

And during the zen which is the clusterfuck last hour of prep before restaurant service, my great idea was born. What would the toothless old Palm Beach geezers who frequent our restaurant like to eat more than anything with their crispy fresh line-caught sauteed sea bass?

Braised Belgian endive?

Organic cherve and tomato confit tartlet?

Ragout of white beans, wild chanterelle mushrooms, pearl onions and arugula?

How about a big ol' helping of fresh fucking macaroni and cheese! Jesus, I was a bloody genius.

When I finally turned over the menu to Tony, he read through it slowly, mumbling the prose as I picked over a bag full of chervil for garnish at my station. I kept a quiet eye on him as he got to the bottom of the menu and I saw him seize up in his stance when he read the sea bass creation.

Slowly and with his thick Brooklyn-Italian accent he said, "Fucking macaroni and cheese? You can't serve no fucking macaroni and cheese in dis' here fucking Ritz-Carlton."

"Yes Tony, we will be serving macaroni and cheese," mimicking his accent, "in dis' here fucking Ritz-Carlton."

His face flushed and he stormed away muttering something about finding the executive chef to stop me. Yeah ok, whatever. I didn't say it, but I thought, "you'll probably find him doing rails of shitty cocaine off the boxes of whole canned tomatoes in the back of dry storage."

I knew it was going to grind Tony's gullet to approach the tables of the rich, ultra-rich and walking dead of Palm Beach and give his nightly special spiel, ending it with macaroni and cheese. Ahhh, the sweet justice.

The front of the house/back of the house feud has been going on for as long as restaurants have existed and the battle between us and them was no different. FOH and upper management didn't, wouldn't and couldn't see it our way and although we, the chefs and cooks, were generally treated with kid gloves on most occasions, there were some things, no matter how innocuous we may have viewed them, that were clearly unacceptable in a five-star, five diamond hotel. Macaroni and cheese must have been one of those assaults against the sensibilities of a fine hotel.

Anyway, Tony The Blowhard we called him, was a real dickhead and he adapted the art of back-stabbing to levels unknown to man and alien alike. I had myself convinced that he was connected, so there was no direct threat you could make to cool this guy off, thusly, we crafted and perfected a new art of subversive retaliation within the daily specials menu. Every now and then we would slide in some cockamamie creations just to get his wheels burning and then at the last minute, provide him with the real menu, items that gilded well with the staid luxury of our hotel.

Nils and I used to do the same thing at my restaurant, thinking up the wildest names for our nightly culinary delights. The only difference is we actually used these names on the chalkboard menu.

Examples:

The obvious: There Is No Pot In The Pot Roast

A meat and potatoes spread: Evel Knievel Never Made It

Or for the salad: Ruffage, Just The Way Your Mother Likes It

Or the vague: Dorado GPS, which was Mahi Mahi served with a green pea sauce. And when asked by staff or patron what GPS meant, Nils or I with a deadly serious straight face would reply in slow cadence, "Boop. Boop. Boop."

Now, I know some of you are thinking, what kind of an idiot serves macaroni and cheese in a place with an average check of roughly 70 dollars? Well, here he is right here.

I got to work on my mac 'n cheese while Tony pouted downstairs in search of our fresh in from the Kapalua property, alcohol-fueled and drug-addled executive chef. Jacques? Jean-Michelle? Fuckhead? Can't remember.

So, the base for mac 'n cheese is the classic mother sauce Bechamel to which, once cheese is added, becomes Mornay sauce, which for some reason always makes me think of Rebecca de Mornay. Go figure.

To my Bechamel and in keeping with the Ritz-Carlton standard of making shit really expensive, I added 5 cheeses: creamy Fontina, $300-a-wheel pecorino sardo (not casu marzu, mind you), tangy fromage de chevre, zippy aged "Extra" Appenzeller and a slight smattering of smoked gouda. Cause Gouda is gooda! I also spiked the cheese sauce with some delicious Armagnac, nutmeg, fresh ground black pepper (dead French people are convulsing in their graves on that note) and finished it off with mother nature's greatest flavor enhancer, truffle oil. Add that to some whole-wheat rotini and you've got mac 'n cheese fit for a king. Or someone with no teeth.

Tony never got his wish to rat on me. Jean-Claude was probably passed out somewhere after slamming a bottle of Pernod, so I proceeded with Plan X.

We prepared the proper garnishes for the dish, a subtle, herbed bread crumb topping that would be applied to the mac for the short ride in the salamander, a red and yellow heirloom tomato relish to top the bass and balance the creaminess of the cheese. And the final gaaarneeeesh, an herb salad of micro beet tops, micro red amaranth and micro basil for some color balance and a nice blast of earthiness to go with the tang of the tomato, cream of the cheese and sweetness of the sea bass. Solid gold baby. Five-star comfort food, whether the FOH liked it or not!

About 5:30, we mocked up our daily specials for the waitstaff to try and I swear to God even though I'm not supposed to, that waiter Bart, my main man and Rush Limbaugh's long lost Puerto Rican brother, picked the deep bowl up and licked the cheese sauce out of the bottom.

Tony was nowhere to be found and I assumed he was still hunting our perennially-MIA executive chef Marcel Claude or whatever. Had I seen Tony again before service I would have suggested he check the hedges north of the main entrance to the hotel. That's where they found the executive chef's running buddy, chef de cusine Mike, after a night out with a couple of hotel guests. Passed out in the daisies, 9:30 in the a.m. In his chef whites, no less.

The orders started rolling in around 6:15 with the earlybirds that cohabitate in South Florida. Golden Corral or Ritz-Carlton, doesn't matter, some people need to be in bed by 7:30.

Fire that well done Chateau!! On fire chef!

Has a well-done chateaubriand taken a ride in the deep fryer at a high-end hotel before? Ummm, could be.

I also seem to remember four frozen turkeys doing the quick-fire deep fryer ride under careful instruction from our resident-drunk executive chef.

The first mac 'n cheese order came in a little after 7:00 and that made me feel a little better. You never want to strike out on your specials, it gives you a way to depart from the mundane repetition of the dinner menu and to showcase your creative inventiveness. I was getting worried early on though because I expected the Poly-Grip crowd to go nuts on the easy chew food. I felt a little better after the first order came through and like magic, once the first one went out and the other patrons caught a whiff of the pungent cheese augmented by truffle, the dominoes fell. And rapidly.

We sold 37 sea bass that night. And on a 85 cover night, that's one helluva statement. And at $33.50 a plate, not a bad bottom line either.

Proudly, when the printer would spit out another order, I barked it out as loudly as I could:

ORDER IN: 2 MAC AND CHEESE!!!!

The line: 2 MAC AND CHEESE HEARD!!!

We made it a point to be particularly loud and annoying when Tony would pass through the kitchen. You could feel his disgust with our revel and celebration and we were awash in the happiness of his unhappiness. His shoulders hunched ever more as more orders rolled in and eventually he hunched his way right out of the kitchen to never return for the remainder of the service.

One word: panocha.

So, I shared this story with you to share another story. About an hour ago, I was watching RFD channel on the tube and there is a program called California Country and on today's broadcast they highlighted a goat cheese production farm of which I have an interest in, but shortly thereafter, they featured a chef from the Ritz-Carlton Marina Del Ray property making none other than truffle infused macaroni 'n cheese.

A little behind the curve fellas, a little behind the curve.

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Fun In The Pot Sink. . .

First, a history lesson.

The French are wonderful cooks and chefs, from the country housewife of Normandy to the 3-star Michelin-rated Parisian top chef. However, I know a dirty little secret. The French owe most of what they know to the Italians.

Yes, it's true, but they'd never let you know.

Some many centuries ago, Catherine de Medici married French King Henry II and in the process brought with her a plethora of culinary ideas and techniques by virtue of her Italian servants and cooks. This laid the foundation and groundwork for centuries of culinary refinement, an evolution of cooking and technique beyond scale. The French are owed a great deal, but it was the technique and knowledge of the Italians that started it all.

My first "real" chef was a Frenchman named Phillipe. Phillipe cut his culinary teeth suffering through the apprentice system in France, which is more or less like an extended boot camp that lasts for years. According to Phillipe, during his formative years he spent hours upon hours tournéeing carrots, peeling potatoes for pommes Lyonnaise, frenching racks of lamb, etc. Many days early in his career, much of his prep ended up in the stock pot. "Do it again," demanded the old-line chefs! It's a hard way to learn and the dedication it takes to survive is incalculable.

He was a wonderful man, a compassionate man, a great chef, and I learned more from him than I could ever write in a blog post. I, at some point, became his apprentice while working at a 5-star hotel with a name that sounds a lot like Ditz-Barlton. Yes, I'm trying to protect their image because one day, we defaced Phillipe and the pot sink in the main kitchen all in one fell swoop. The local health department would have had a stroke had they known.

Sssshhhh! This is insider information, so don't tell anyone.

On Phillipe's last day, in great culinary tradition, we hatched a plan to humiliate him by dunking him in something, or dumping something on him or somehow damaging his psyche prior to his departure. This is the food world equivalent of dumping the Gatorade cooler on a winning coach after a football game. This ritual says many things and it is different for each person involved. Some people are showing love, others are saying "goodbye asshole!" and a few are involved solely because it means making a huge mess without repercussion.

For Phillipe's departure, the evil pastry folks downstairs whipped up some colored meringue or Chantilly cream for plastering him and our plan was to corral Phillipe, dust him with flour as we hauled his big, lanky ass to the pot sink and proceeded to defame him with the whipped delights. At some point, an unknown genius decided to prepare a special garbage can brimming with the filthiest foul and filth known to the culinary world for a final, nasty deluge of goodbye for Phillipe.

Poor Phillipe put up a helluva fight as we carted him towards the pot sink, his body draped across five of us and the rest of the kitchen staff in tow. As all plans seem to go, it misfired, and the flour intended for Phillipe ended up coating the face of my buddy Carlos, sending him into a fit of gagging and wheezing as several of us crammed Phillipe down the narrow passageway. Then some fool spastically hurled the garbage can of food jism at all of us, covering most of our team in an indescribable, smelly ooze. Luckily, the majority of the bilge hit the mark of Phillipe as we slammed him into the pot sink, whereupon we unloaded liberal doses of the whipped something-or-other on him.

Many weeks later, when I had the evidence I had captured on film developed, I realized that the garbage wasn't the greatest insult of the exercise, nor was it the slathering of the whipped something we applied. In the mayhem of the moment the statement was lost. I took another long look at the photograph and had a great chuckle as I realized the significance of what I saw. .


Viva La Italia Phillipe!

So, you see, stupid pot sink girls? You ain't got nothing on real chefs. Stick to frying chicken. And bathing your rotund bodies at home.

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Arugula. . .

Recently, I had a visitor here on the blog, someone from outside the close-knit circle of friends, and acquaintances thereof, who pass by for a laugh or a blood pressure increase or for whatever reason there may be. They come here for a tidbit, an oddity, a piece of fat to chew for the day, or simply to see what I'm doing, where I've been, and the latest in a long procession of strange happenings in my life. And for them, their presence, for the ones I know and the great unknowns whom inquire, I am grateful.

But a day or two ago, some poor soul came and left a foul, acid taste in my sazonado brain. This individual came by, directed here by an odd search about Obama and toast, poked about the place for 15 minutes or so and decided, for whatever reason, to leave a comment. I guess my politics don't agree with said person and in America we are afforded our right to speak, so there is nothing wrong with dissension, but let me tell you something pal-o-mine, I KNOW ARUGULA.

For the better part of my life, I've been cooking. I've sliced and diced, minced and winced, twisted and turned, sauteed and tourneed, braised and burned, scorched and scalded, chopped and slopped, and on occasion, put out a good plate or two. I've worked in 5-star, 4-star, 1-star and no-star places. I've washed dishes, scrubbed pots, mopped floors, set tables, mucked out grease traps bare-bodied, chased wild animals out of a restaurant and scrambled to the local grocery store during Friday night service to satisfy a guest.

I've shown up for work drunk, stone-cold sober and in-the-zone, fucked up, inert, focused. I've slammed white liquor during service, weeped in the walk-in, blasted big rails of premium, first-cut cocaine off dinner plates after service, cooked on no sleep, some sleep, worked while bleeding profusely, burnt, delirious, exhausted, 36 days in a row on top of 16 months, 6 days a week with no vacation in a no air-conditioned kitchen 8 degrees above the equator. Yes sir. I know arugula.

I've served the poor through charity, the weak, the important, the self-important, the rich and the ultra-rich. I have competed for last, first and third place in various competitions and I've seen a plethora of friends sink or swim in the same. I've served movie stars, rock stars, heads of state, heiresses, the kind, the mean, the gluttonous, the picky, the insatiable and the downright evil. I don't need to name names because it makes me no more important than the next culinarian.

No matter who I know or what I know, I've stooped. I've made turkey sausage omelets at three in the morning for a very rich businessman who lived in the hotel where I once worked. I've worried over menus for groups of vegetarians even though my rational mind is screaming, "EAT MEAT!" I've cooked double bacon cheeseburgers in the middle of the night for scandalous Jewish people during Passover celebrations in the same hotel. And once, without shame, I served bacon in a salad to a nice Jewish woman during Hanukkah in my own restaurant. Ooops, my mistake.

Yes, I know arugula.

I used my money along with the wealth of my friends to renovate an old beach hotel/restaurant in Central America and gave life, opportunity, and invaluable life-experience to a dozen or so locals. I paid extreme payroll and social taxes similar to what this Obama character desires for our new, "equalized" America and it was a constant struggle for us collectively. Our wealth, and the wealth of our employees, was taxed for a complex, convoluted and archaic social welfare system that was sadly dysfunctional and blatantly outdated. But we marched on. All of us, together.

I was a minority rich, spreading my wealth with the majority poor. A trickle sideways economy at best. For a time, eyed with a glint of curious suspicion.

My employees were my life blood, my life and my dear friends. I taught them all that I could, built them up and broke them down a thousand times over, only to rebuild them better than they were before. I shared what I had in knowledge, in my heart, and in my soul.

They saw me as a strong leader, somtimes weak, ill-humored, happy, sad, and worried, occasionally debilitated, out-of-control, over-controlling and distraught. But as me, a person. An equal. Imperfect and incomplete.

And therefore, because of the respect of my persona and my ability to accept every person an equal, working hard for nothing like the person I was raised and taught to be, they were there. For me. Always.

I left a mark with them. An indelible reminder of the strong-willed entrepreneurship and will for freedom that we Americans have. And what I saw in them, in their hearts and mind, was awe. They didn't understand my drive, obviously perplexed by my marathon hours, but they respected it, no matter how confused they were by my behavior.

The few who lasted in my kitchen, eventually, got it. It hit them hard and cold, they understood. The skill, the blood, the sweat, the weep. Nothing in life is free. If you wanted something in life, set that goal and work hard for it. It's as simple as that and they knew it then. They know it now.

I never asked for help, but they gave it to me. Forcing me out of the kitchen on a busy night with the faith within themselves that they could handle the busiest night of the week. They took a part of me, absorbed it, the distilled experiences of my life, which are still there and lives on within the people I touched. They learned, strived, excelled!

Yes, I know arugula.

I had a friend, my best friend there, his name was Melvin.

Melvin was a man, a caballero in the sense of the cowboy and the gentleman, and Melvin worked for me. Melvin began as our jardinero, but as I stated before in a post about his life, he had the desire and the higher function to strive for more. He wanted it. He eventually began working in the restaurant and within several months, tragically, he was dead. I've told this story before. But, let me remind those who lament their lives and those who have no appreciation for what they have about the last conversation I had with Melvin before his surgery:

Melvin's last regret and concern was of his job and the support of his children.

In the end, it wasn't about him with his hand out, a man facing surgery on his brain, it was about him worried for his family and their well-being, alone.

18 hours later, Mel was gone. And they brought him home in a shag-carpet box.

Age?

Too fucking young. Younger than me.

Kids?

Three and a wife.

A family, gone.

And he was worried about his job. His $1.1o per hour job.

I know arugula. And it ain't you, Mr. Seamus.

It's Melvin.

Yes, I know arugula. It's Melvin, me and everyone else that tried in vain to do the right thing, right down to the bitter end.

Arugula.

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A Pleasure Within A Pleasure. . .

This past weekend I was lucky enough to host an out-of-town accomplice who was irrational enough to take up my last minute offer of a fun-filled weekend of food, casual banter and hurricane. I mean really, who could ask for more? It's not often that she has time off from her executive industrial espionage position with a large, nationally-known health care provider and I think she as well as I needed a break from our collective norms to satisfy simple urges such as dining, laughing and being unique.

Saturday afternoon we dined at Mary Mahoney's, which is a bit of a tradition here on the coast and to be honest, other than the ambiance, there weren't many highlights to speak of. Seems everything came covered in what looked like biscuit gravy (aka groovy gravy), including the bread pudding. And my guest, bless her clandestine little heart, set a trend of being dripped upon by air conditioner vents which would become thematic as the weekend progressed. If you go to the Mary Mahoney's website, we sat at the window table in the first picture you see, frame right.

For our evening dinner I offered that we dine at 32 which is the steak/seafood house that sits atop the 32-story Imperial Palace casino/hotel in Biloxi. The current executive chef there cut his teeth in the Ritz-Carlton franchise, as did I, and had I known that beforehand I would have asked him out for some polite conversation as well as a trade or two of insider Ritz secrets and gossip.

I made reservations for 9:00, late yes, and we were delayed by countless obstacles and intrusions that kept us slightly askew from meeting our hard timetable. We called again to the restaurant informing them of our tardiness and they were more than accommodating.

We made our reservation under the name of Russell Jemson, as it is best to remain anonymous when traveling with my friend, who I shall refer to hereafter as Beatrice. There are many who know her, plenty that want to know her and few that REALLY know her.


Beatrice and Russell Jemson we were. And a fine looking couple we made, dressed to the max in our slacks, skirts, button downs, fancy socks and jewelry. The poor staff of 32 had no idea what was in store and frankly, neither did we. We arrived at 9:30, pensive and our ears popping after the rapid ascent in the elevator.

The dining room at 32 is built around the focal point of a glass and stainless wine storage room of some 5000 bottles outlined in burgundy-stained wood. Even at that late hour, the place was still jumping, roughly at 60 percent capacity, and several big-top tables were dining which added a nice jolt of energy to a rather dark and refined ambiance. There was a somewhat raucous nine-top right next to us with an old geezer who kept commenting on the young girls and their skirts at the Michael Bolton concert and the legs that were "up to here" gesturing around the chin area with his hand as he spoke. Free entertainment from the old folks home. What ambiance!

The maitre'd, whose name I don't recall was very accommodating and polite as we joked about a busy night and the unknowns of the restaurant business. She seated us at a spacious 4-top table, not with a window view of the vista, but hey, it's not always about vertigo. Soon after her departure the back waiter arrived taking away the extra, unnecessary dinner plates, glasses and flatware and offered us an option of tap or bottled water. We chose bottled and they served Acqua Panna.

The front waiter or maybe he was a captain named Tom, arrived to take our drink order and after a perusal of the wine offerings of which there are many, we settled on the 2002 Vine Cliff Merlot. The sommelier came with the bottle commenting that we picked the best Merlot in the house, either a lie or my dumb luck, and he opened the bottle expeditiously, poured a taste that I sampled.


The wine was full of tannins, but also a rich and complex flavor of coffee, berry, ash, charcoal, jujubees, currants, filibusters, galapagos turtles, sand, coriander, bilge water and earth. What the hell do I know?? It was a nice wine, just needed some time to breathe off the weird gases that collect inside. 45 minutes later, it was superb.

We chatted and laughed, gossiped and people watched. The ambiance was simply perfect. The tiny lights of the cityscape sparkled below and we listened intently at the the bellowing of the old pervert at the next table. The wait staff was smart enough to leave us alone for a while as we studied the menu which is beautifully ensconced inside of a brushed aluminum cover.

The selections were fairly typical for a steak/seafood house, yet a couple of items still managed to catch my eye like the Anise and Basil crusted tuna appetizer and the foie gras, but I was in the mood for flesh. I ordered the beef carpaccio. My accompa. . .my accompan. . .the woman with me ordered the lobster bisque. I also ordered the "thirty-two" salad informing the waiter that we were to share and finally, a medium filet mignon for her and a 2 minutes past medium-rare NY strip for me. Sorry, it sounds picky I know, but it's a chef thing.

As in all upscale restaurants the first course is actually a small gift of food from the kitchen known as the "amuse bouche" that translated from French means to amuse or please the mouth. The amuse bouche is usually some small item of food to tease and tantalize the taste buds prior to your meal, it's also a neat way for the chef to welcome you into his restaurant and a good indicator of things to come. If the chef can excite your mouth in one bite, there must be more good flavors on the horizon. Our amuse bouche was a simple preparation of tuna tartare on a crisp wafer of crostini. The tuna was delicately seasoned with ginger and garlic and had crunchy bits of red sweet pepper, onion and a leaf of cilantro as a garnish. Perfectly sublime and the essence of the amuse bouche. My guest, not normally one to partake in the consumption of raw foods was taken away to another world by the tuna. Good job chef!

The appetizers arrived about ten minutes later and this gave us plenty of time to enjoy the freshly baked bread basket that contained sun-dried foccacia, crusty ciabatta rolls, sliced baguettes and a sesame-crusted cracker-style flatbread. Very nicely done.

The appetizers came and the bisque was poured at the table immersing the lobster, brandy and herb garnish in a thick creamy deluge. My carpaccio was plentiful, served with crusty toast points and nice garnishes of sliced cherry tomato, petite cucumber orbs, mustard vinaigrette, fried shallots and what was pure ecstasy for me, beet sprouts. Phe-nom-enal! The bisque was also very well prepared, albeit maybe a little too thick, but hot, flavorful and rich as it should be. No complaints.

We ate and laughed, joked and told stories, shared our food delights, drank our wine and water and enjoyed what had begun as a beautiful evening of fine dining. Beatrice was trooper enough to again eat some raw foods by trying the carpaccio. The beef was just divine, fresh and heavily marbled, the subtle flavor of the meat not overpowered by the garnishes or the sauce. Very well done.

The waitstaff kept a close, but distant eye on us. Never intruding, but keeping glasses of water and wine full and only when it appeared that we were finished with our appetizers, did they approach and ask. The plates were cleared, appropriate flatware replaced and we waited for our next course. And this is where is gets important sports fans.

I asked for the "thirty-two" salad to share. Simply that. When the salad arrived, it had already been split for our convenience onto two separate plates. At this level of dining, this is what is referred to as "guest anticipation." I didn't ask for the salad to be split, I only admitted that we were to share. Good job Tom, damn good job.

The salads were beautifully composed, nested high on very cold plates and quite refreshing after the weight and substance of our appetizers. The "thirty-two" salad consists of mixed baby greens, including arugula, dressed in a simple and slightly sweet champagne vinaigrette served with Maytag blue cheese, candied pecans, grapefruit wedges. The greens were perfectly dressed, garden crisp, fresh and the simplicity of the vinaigrette really let the individual earthy flavors of the greens dominate the palate. Not just sayin' it to say it, but again a perfect accomplishment, plus bonus points for guest anticipation.

Again our plates were cleared, the table de-crumbed, and glasses refilled. As if on cue our entrees arrived. The steaks were plated nicely, centered on the plate with a garnish of steamed, sliced yellow squash and zucchini at the 12 o'clock position a stripe of the thick, house steak sauce along the 6 o'clock position and a drizzle of balsamic reduction and either basil or extra-virgin olive oil at 3 o'clock. They looked thoroughly delectable. I also ordered a side of haricot verts that arrived steaming hot, perfectly cooked and seasoned with coarse salt and olive oil. The only thing I forgot to ask for was a side of Bearnaise sauce. Tom, ever accommodating, returned promptly with a ramekin full of the beautiful, partially coagulated egg sauce known as Bearnaise. A sin within itself is Bearnaise and no fine piece of prime beef should be eaten without it.

The steaks were cooked perfectly. Beatrice's filet to medium and my NY strip to 2 minutes past medium-rare. Just perfect. Perfect. Perfect. I can't say anything more. The meat was soft, again heavily marbled, delicious, seasoned correctly. Again, they nailed it. The bearnaise was outstanding, the green beans perfect, the service exceptional. Can't say enough.

Our bellies were so full from all the great food that we could barely work through half of the steaks, but every bite was juicy, tender and satisfying. Tom approached after he noticed we stalled and jibed us a bit about our full plates, yet we had to decline a further bite.

After our plates were removed I ordered an espresso for a night cap and it arrived piping hot with a garnish of lemon zest and a swizzle stick of coarse brown sugar. The rich and thick espresso was just what I needed and I offered to Beatrice to race her downstairs. She in the elevator and I by stair. I think after that coffee I could have won.

Nights likes this almost, just almost make me long for the days of the white cloth of my chef's jacket and a kitchen to stand master over. Then I remember how pissed off I used to get when some smug bastard and his old lady would roll in late wanting a four-course meal at 10 o'clock at night. Ah, the fresh taste of hate! Nothing like it!

But before I digress too far into the complex world of chefdom, let me just say that our meal was as close to perfect as it could have been. The service, the ambiance, the wine and to food were all five-stars, 12 stars actually. To the staff, front and back, of 32 I say thank you and thank you and thank you for a job very well done. It's been a long time since I had a meal of such quality and service beyond expectation and to some of you long time readers, maybe this explains my disgust when some motorhead at McDonald's can't seem to get the cheese onto my biscuit in the mornings.

The stark and brutal difference between cooking, cooks, chefs and shoemakers.

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Damn Monster. . .

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