French vs Italian, The Epic Showdown

There's another question I get that I feel deserves a real answer and not a smart ass one like in my earlier post. Do I prefer French or Italian cuisine? That's a tough one. To me it's kind of like the Beatles vs Stones argument. There's no right or wrong answer, can't I like both? If I had to answer I'd give the slight edge to Italian though. I was originally trained in classic French but I jumped the fence into Italian a few years ago. To me it's more soulful. French cooking has very strict rules, If you substitute an ingredient or veer off an established technique everyone will jump in your shit and say it's not a "true" (insert French dish here) no matter how good it is. The Italians are more concerned with making shit taste good than following pre-written, unbreakable rules. Also there is an emphasis on simplicity with Italian cuisine that I like. Taking simple and usually few ingredients and bringing them to their utmost potential. This idea is evident in their ingredients. Take garlic for example. From raw to roasted there is a galaxy of flavors that can be coaxed out of one simple ingredient. It's no wonder why the Italians embraced the tomato when it was brought to Europe while the rest of the continent took at least a hundred years to get hip to it. Raw, sauteed, roasted, dried, cooked down into a sauce, there's no end to the things you can do with that one ingredient. Thank kind of thinking appeals to me. Christ, look at pasta! It all comes from the same dough but I don't think anyone can name every type of pasta there is and it's applications are near limitless. If you amassed a huge pile of exotic ingredients I would be very interested in what the French chef would do with them, but if you took a tomato, a carrot, and a potato and nothing else the Italian chef would stomp his ass. He would probably have fifty dishes or more that rock balls before he ran out of ideas.
Even Italian chefs will privately admit that all western cuisines owe at least a small debt to the French however. They wrote the books and set the standards that all others adhere to, at least some degree. Take mirepoix for example. The French invented it and everyone uses it including the Italians. The same goes for roux. The French's relentless pursuit of perfection of technique is something that everyone interested in food should admire. I also believe in the French notion that if you cram enough butter into something it'll taste good eventually. If the Italians were willing to accept butter as olive oil's equal than there would be no contest in my opinion. It would be Italy all the way. Olive oil is phenomenal but so is butter damn it! Mounting sauces with butter is probably the thing I miss the most since I switched to Italian cooking. Italian chefs use butter but they don't have a love affair with it like the French do.
Both Cuisines are great but it's Italian for me. The fact that I can take semolina, eggs, and water and combine them into a dough with possibilities that I would have to live to be a thousand to exhaust is the clincher for me. Also the fact that I went to Paris years ago and I thought it sucked. The whole city smells like fucking feces and it was the only place in the world (pre 9/11) that I got into fistfights just for being American. The French may be able to cook but they can't take a headbutt worth a fuck let me tell you! They'll talk shit and get in your face and shove you but a forehead to the nose sends those cunts running like little girls! That shit happened to me three times when I was in Paris. OK I'm rambling now, end of post.
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The Voodoo Organist

I just got home from another stellar performance from the one and only Voodoo Organist! If you've never seen or heard him I pity/hate you. The man plays a theremin with his head, IN TUNE!!! All the while playing some trick-ass bass lines with his feet on Moog bass pedals and keeping both hands busy ripping out some fat ass Hammond organ jazz riffs. Fucking bad ass. All of his songs are about whiskey and Satan too! Screamin' Jay Hawkins meets Sun Ra distilled into a skinny, white alcoholic. Rollicking good times. Bad hangover at work tomorrow...

Q&A With Your Favorite Angry Chef

I get a lot of questions, both e-mails and from the people that know me. I'm pretty sure these are questions that all chefs get and we usually give some bullshit answer that maintains the illusions you people have that keep us in business. Enough of that shit, it's honesty time...

"What is your favorite thing to cook?"
Whatever costs me the least and allows me to charge you the most, that's what. Seriously, I don't give a shit. It's all the same to me. If people were willing to pay for dogshit and toenail flambe that would probably be my favorite.

"What is your favorite thing to eat?"
Ass! How do you like that? I already know what kind of answer people are looking for when they ask that, they're expecting me to tell them about some lovely, high end dish that they can order next time to make themselves feel important. Honestly, chefs and cooks have pretty mundane eating habits. Usually I'll grab a good looking saute pan out of the bus tub and wipe it clean with a piece of bread. That's dinner for me. You would be amazed to see the home kitchens of most professional cooks. Top Ramen and Mac and Cheese is about all you'll find usually. If you can find the kitchen at all under the pile of empty to-go boxes, porn, and rusty razor blades. Since I moved in with my girlfriend a couple years ago I've managed to build up a pretty respectable home kitchen, but I'd guess about 75% of the pros don't cook much outside of work. We order pizza just as much as the next guy.

"Is cooking fun?"
Professional cooking is about as fun as a razor wire and Tabasco colonoscopy. It's fucking hard work people. We're not back there prancing around having the time of our lives, we're busting ass. I honestly love it, but it ain't fun.

"If you could open any type of restaurant, what would it be?"
A titty bar that serves hot dogs and slingshots. That would be fun as hell! I'd need a pretty good fucking lawyer to pull that one off I think. In reality I don't have a preference. What I would open depends on the location. I've been in the business for a very long time, I don't fantasize about shit like that.

"which do you prefer, Hell's Kitchen or Top Chef?"
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Fuck You and Your Needs

There's nothing like a perfectly timed special order to inspire me and spur my imagination. Just tonight I realized that a good pair of tongs would make an excellent branding iron when held atop the flames for a while then applied to some dumb fucker's forehead. Hey, I can dream can't I? Most people who special order are deluded cunts* who have convinced themselves that they're special and cannot be expected to order and eat the same slop as the rest of the herd. Fuck them. There's a whole other breed of special orderer however. Beside the fact that orderer isn't a word I'm forced to accommodate people with dietary needs, allergies, and religious concerns. Let's start with the concerned dieters. I'm a fucking chef not a dietitian, I have no fucking clue how many calories are in the dish, sorry. Ditto for fat grams or those ungodly "carbs". If you are on a diet you have no business whatsoever eating in an Italian restaurant. (Oh shit, I guess the cat's outta the bag, I cook Italian food.) Fuck you and your diet. I'm so glad that Atkins shit has died off. When that stupid shit was in style my life was an even bigger hell than usual. You wanna talk about special requests? Holy fucking shit! When the brainless zombies known as the dining public got all fired up on that stupid fucking Atkins diet fad I was inundated with requests like Pizza with no crust and Sandwiches with no bread! Insanity. If you're counting calories then stay the fuck at home, that shit is not my job. When it comes to people with food allergies I honestly feel sorry for them. I love food in all it's forms and I can't imagine having to avoid certain foods because I might get sick. What pisses me off is the ones who wear their allergies like a badge of honor or something. Go eat at a fucking hospital cafeteria and leave me the fuck out of it. I already have to eat those shitty pretzels on the plane on account of you allergy fuckers so please don't fuck with me any more. Some people lie about it. I had a customer tell me he was allergic to salt! What the fuck is that shit? If you were allergic to salt you wouldn't have survived conception you lying fuck! If you don't want me to add salt to your food that's fine but please don't assume I'm fucking stupid and hit me with a bullshit lie like that. When It comes to the religious fuckers I honestly get a kick out of 'em. I'm a red blooded atheist myself and the fact that people are willing to pass up on things like pork, lobster, and blow jobs just because their imaginary friend threatened them is funny and baffling to me. I have a mischievous streak in me, believe it or not, and when some holy motherfucker says I have to leave out an ingredient because it's against their religion I get excited! Do you really want to give someone like me the power to send you to hell? That's an opportunity I can't resist! I absolutely love the notion that you could wake up in the afterlife, condemned to eternal damnation, even after following all the rules your whole life just because some asshole like me plopped a hambone into your sauce while it was cooking. There's gotta be at least a hundred religious retards out there who will rot for all eternity thanks to me and my deft use of bacon. If your god tells you you can't eat shellfish and pork then your god must not like you very much. I say ditch His bullshit and let the pros like me rock your world with some mind blowing, tasty shit! It's real simple fuckers! When you enter a restaurant, look at the menu. If you can't or won't eat what's on it then DON'T EAT THERE.
The Chef Hates You.

*My girlfriend just chewed me out for not using the word 'cunt' once in the history of this blog, so there you go.

The New 'Waiting' Sucks

The highly anticipated sequel to the smash hit "Waiting" is a steaming pile of shit. What a fucking let down. The original is pure genius but "Still Waiting..." blows dog. It seems like they just threw it together one afternoon. Not funny and no insights into restaurant life. It's just a lame, direct to dvd comedy that happens to take place in a restaurant. The cooks in the movie are douchebag pussies and the servers are hollow jerkoffs who recite their "clever" lines like they just want to hurry up, get off set, and head the fuck home. The original did so well they rushed some piece of shit to market to capitalize on it. What a rip off. I'm glad I only rented it. I will admit the Adam Carolla cameo was pretty funny but it wasn't worth the price of the rental. I'm so pissed off I'm mad at the first movie now. They both take place in a stupid "family" restaurant that I wouldn't work in for a million dollars. I can't watch it without getting irritated now. Thanks you greedy assholes.
The chef hates you.

Everyone Sucks

Fuck 'em all! Jesus titty fucking Christ! I haven't posted in a while because things were going sort of OK. I actually haven't been raging pissed for a couple weeks. Until tonight. Holy jumping sheep shit tonight sucked gangrenous donkey balls. Oh where to begin? First of all, we have this regular that comes in every day. He's kinda crazy and he orders the most disgusting special requests you can imagine. I always let it slide because he was drafted and sent to 'Nam when he was a teenager. I figure that's as good excuse as any to be crazy. Tonight he topped himself though. He ordered a caprese topped with hot meatballs with honey drizzled on top with a side of Caesar dressing. Fucking sick! Then I get word that he wants to see me. When I got to the bar he informed me that it tasted bad. No fucking shit! I would rather catch syphilis from licking the ass of a Venezuelan albino transsexual midget amputee that hasn't bathed since the Nixon administration than eat that sick shit! You asked for it like that you asshole, don't cry to me because it tastes bad! It was downhill from there. I had a perfectly cooked pasta dish get sent back. Nothing pisses off a cook like having perfectly cooked food returned. When I asked what was wrong I was informed the the crab in the dish was "tight and spicy"! What the fuck does that mean? Tight and Spicy? Of course the server couldn't explain it. "That's what she said." So fucking what? I need to know what that means! People who go out to eat on Sundays are douchebags through and though. It's usually a bunch of uptight christian assholes, fresh from church, who look down on us heathens for daring to work on the sabbath. Assholes. When the rush was well over with and I had a drink in me to help me face the daunting task of cleaning up my disaster of a kitchen, the unspeakable happened. There is a small university near the restaurant. I think you are required to be a spoiled rich, wannabe hippy fuckwad to meet the criteria for enrollment in that fucking place. We get a lot of those jerkoffs who come in to spend mommy and daddy's money. Well, two of the fuckers decided to come in TEN MINUTES BEFORE CLOSING!!!! Fucking Bullshit! And you'll never guess what. The fuckers ordered steak. I had shut the grill off about 20 minutes before they showed up and the thing was stone cold. I pulled the grill off and set it on the burners to warm it up, which was hard to do while shaking with anger, then I marked the steaks and fucking nuked 'em! Yup, you heard me. 20 year veteran in the business and I served microwaved steaks! If you think that's unprofessional consider this: People who enter a restaurant to eat, let alone eat steak, 10 minutes before closing are my sworn enemies and are lucky I'm as professional as I am. If I wasn't, I would have jerked the fuck off all over those microwaved steaks and it wouldn't be anything less than those fuckers deserved! What really sucks is I had to wait for those assholes to leave before I could lock up and go home. I posted up at the bar and did some damage to the boss's pour cost waiting for those twats to finish up and get the fuck out. On their way out they actually told me the steaks were great. Fucking tools. You douchbag rich kids wouldn't know a good steak if it leaped off the plate and sucked your junk. I do take some small consolation knowing those fuckers ate rubbery, atomic beef and actually liked it. Fuckheads.
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