eggbeater

Michael Lydon on 'Memories of the 1960's'

Most of my life, and even still, various people stop me in my day to day to ask, 'aren't you Michael and/or  Susan Lydon's daughter?' Apparently I have my mother's impossible-to-miss voice and I've always known I look exactly like my father. My name also gives me away; it name appears in some of their books, and one never knows where a book is going to land and who is going to read it.

Having two well-known parents has been an interesting journey. I appreciate it more now than I did when I was younger. I feel so proud to have them as part of me, to be their succession.

Some of you may remember watching & hearing my father whistle in January 2008, here he is again, in an interview about the '60's. And if this is too much of a tiny taste for you and you want to know more, feel free to peruse his website...

What does being held accountable mean? What does commitment mean?

One of the questions I ask in interviews is, "If your last chef could say what one of your strengths and one of your weaknesses was, what would they say?" I find that this question startles a lot of people, which I find odd.

Having always been my own worst critic, my worst enemy, I have gottent to know my weaknesses well over the years. Call them character defects, call them personality, call them "places from which to grow," call them what you want. We love and despise certain characteristics we posess. We hope to change some of them, some traits we water and grow in our personal garden, hoping they take root and flourish and bear delicious ripe fruit. We hope some of the fruit we bear will seed and spread amongst our friends and lovers.

However it is we think of the things we don't like in ourselves, it is my belief that it takes a certain quantity of maturity to recognize them, recognize ourselves, dreadful and good alike.

The hubris it takes to say one is the best is the very same to say we are the very worst. Narcissism takes all the air in the room so that no one else may breathe. The prisoner is everyone.

*

There's a terrible irony in becoming a Chef. When you're a cook the idea is that you show up every day and do the tasks at hand, no matter what. When you're a cook your hours are mostly laid out for you. You agree on a wage and work your ass off. You listen to your chef and eventually, hopefully, come to revere and respect them, taking their orders without question, without retort, without attitude.

Cooking, being a craft, and both being verbs, means that we cooks judge each other, harshly mostly, by what we see. It doesn't matter if you worked 20 hours a day at your last post-- if you're working at this one 14 hours a day that's all that matters. Your resume is a useless fucking piece of paper when you take out your knives.

Respect from your charges, your peers, your support staff, the FOH management/ownership doesn't come easily. You have to earn it. You have to beg for it. You have to mean it. Every day, every minute. Not just when it suits you. Not just when you're in a good mood. Not just when you're getting laid regularly. 

When you're a cook you begin to learn to navigate. I can't stress this word enough. N A V I G A T E. Them there's some treacherous waters out there. word. Things are not as they appear. People are not as they say they are. I've worked in kitchens where people were mean on purpose or fucked up your mis en place up when you turned your head. Competiton can be fierce. Cooks have to know why the fuck you were hired/promoted/brought in and they'll test you at every turn.

The irony? The irony is that it's exactly the same when you're the Chef. Nothing changes. Except that you're in charge of all those pirates you used to be. Not only do you have to Navigate other Chefs, you have to steer the coup ship through hungry alligators.

The irony is that...

    when you were a cook sweating your balls off every night {yes I am speaking about female cooks here too} wondering why your Chef remained calm and seemingly cool on the other side of the pass, expediting

    and you thought they had it easy-- they just strolled in and

    1. called tickets 2. did the ordering 3. went to the market 4. wrote the schedule 5. talked on the phone to purveyors 6. figured out the labor costs and 7. bla 8. bla 9. bla

    and you wondered what the fuck do they do all day.

...when you become The Chef, it's impossible to explain to the cooks on the line, what the fuck it is you do all day and night to make it look easy. All you can think is this-- if these kids stick around long enough they'll see. The joke's on everyone.

*

A number of people have come to me in recent months because they want to learn how to bake. They are asking for work, they are asking to stage, they are showing interest in working with me. Some of them are established savory cooks, some of them have never seen the inside of a professional kitchen before. A few have gone to culinary school, many have not.

While I can appreciate the bravery it takes to reach out and ask for a chance, I fear most people do not understand the commitment.

Whether you are working for free, or not, the commitment is the same. Here are some helpful pieces of advice I can assure you other chefs, professional chefs, will appreciate you knowing before you set out to seek such a relationship/situation/experience:

Do not, not for one minute, think you are doing that chef a favor. You're not. An extra person is just that. Extra people need MORE energy than day to day workers.
Do not, not for one second, think that because you are "extra" that you can fuck-off on your promise to that chef for the committed time.
Know this: that to get a trail, to be placed on a schedule, to schedule a working interview, to make a commitment to a chef IS TO MAKE A PROMISE.
A hand-shake is a binding contract.
Your name could be smeared if you burn a bridge. Especially if you burn it before you cross it.
The chef is not your friend. Write all emails formally, as you would a real typed letter. Address chef formally and sign your full name. In EVERY exchange. Do not speak to chef in email with ridiculous texting language like LOL.
Show up to said trail/stage days on time. If you're on time you're late, the saying goes.
Sending a thank you note after trailing, even if you despised the kitchen. It's good form.
Chefs: always thank the chefs who referred a trail to you. If you send a trail to a chef friend/colleague and you don't hear how it went, follow up and ask. People, all people, like to feel placed, not parachuted in.
FOLLOW-UP.
DO NOT WAIT FOR the golden egg to get hand delivered to you.
A trail is a stage is a try-out. No one makes any promises, usually, before this day takes place.
If you arrange for a regular stage {ie more than one day} be very clear, from the onset, to yourself and to the chef, what hours you CAN and CAN NOT work. Write it down and hand it over. If, for any reason at all, you can not keep your promise/commitment, tell said chef ASAP.
If you are written onto a schedule whose hours you agreed to ahead of time and you do not arrive at said agreed time/date it is grounds for dismissal and name smearing.
Mean what you say and say what you mean. Chefs are not psychics. Needs unspoken can never get met.
IT IS NOT THE JOB OF THE CHEF TO CHASE A STAGE. IT IS THE JOB OF A STAGE TO CHASE THE CHEFS' TIME.
Chefs despise email. Most of us can't open attachments. CHEFS DO NOT WORK IN OFFICES IN FRONT OF COMPUTERS. If email is the only way you know how to get in touch with someone this is not the field for you.
If you want to work in a professional kitchen but you have little to no experience, read this.
{I have someone in my kitchen in a top position who read the instructions on this blog and she is one of a number of cooks who have worked with me without ANY previous experience/culinary school degree. YES, it can happen. But you must have persistence! Patience! Humility! Willingness! Open mind & heartedness!}
Know what the word ACCOUNTABLE means.
Know that Chefs are human, just like you. Chefs have feelings. They struggle with the people they work with, for. Sometimes they jump through a lot of hoops to say yes to a stage or a trail and when you fuck it off it makes it impossible for the next person who may want the same thing as what you said you did.
Yes, Chefs have constraints too.

If I had a dime for every savory cook who said, "I really want to spend time with you-- I need to round out my cooking knowledge-- I have a big hole where pastry is concerned-- I like your department so much, can I spend a few days with you?-- my savory chef gives me no direction & I'm jealous of your cooks--" and on and on.

The thing is this: When you enter into a contract, and agreement, with a chef, you make a promise. BOTH OF YOU MAKE A PROMISE. TO THE OTHER. yeah? Get it?

The thing is this: working for someone is an exchange. Know what reciprocity means? You Both Need Each Other. I take, you take. I give, you give. ad infinitum.

To make the relationship work, one of you can't be absent. One of you disrespects the other when the promise is not made good on. It's like being stood up. Professionally. It's like double booking.It's fucked-up. Don't do it.

I tell people who want to work for free the same thing as what I tell people I hire. Make a commitment. To yourself, to me, to the establishment, to the department. IT'S ALL ONE IN THE SAME. Get it? Making a commitment, even if it's a silent one to yourself, is a commitment worth keeping. The hardest time you'll have with homesickness could be the 364th day but if you don't give a place a year you haven't given yourself a chance to stick it out.

I may sound old-fashioned when I say all this but manners go a long way these days. People, especially old school chefs with more than a few ounces of professionalism, take notice.

If none of this makes sense or matters to you, my guess is that you've worked for few chefs who've held you accountable for your actions/in-actions.

That's too bad-- the chefs who have forced me to keep my word have taught me the meaning of it.

remembered.

Four years ago tomorrow I woke up to terrible news. An airplane had crashed into the twin towers. It looked completely unfeasible and I left my girlfriend's house confused. When I got home I watched the news over and over like the day the Space Shuttle exploded but I still could not figure it out.

The next day I went to work knowing that I would not be able to reach my family living in lower Manhattan for some time to come. Having lived in London during the 1989 Northern California earthquake I knew that NY would shut down all outside lines to make room for emergency communication.

In 1996 I worked with Martin Howard and Waldy Malouf at The Hudson River Club in the twin towers. I knew that geography well. My education having been NYC public schools, many school trips were made to the roof and up the jet powered elevators of the those too high buildings often.

In the late afternoon of September 12 vague terrible information crept up into my numb consciousness. Heather Ho was the pastry chef of Windows On The World. Was this right? I asked Elizabeth (Falkner. I was working at Citizen Cake at the time.) She wasn't sure.

About ten days later my uncle called me to say that my father and stepmother were ok. I called and asked my dad to please walk over to Gramercy Tavern to speak with Claudia Fleming. I worked with Heather at GT and I knew that having just returned to NY Claudia might know where she was working.

A few days later my father called the internal phone line at CC crying. At the end of September I received in the mail the NY Times page showing the names and photos of those missing and dead. A bright photograph of Heather and a little bit about her graced the page.

When my mother read the news she called me and through tears said, "That could have been you. You and she shared such a similar trajectory."

Heather Ho was a piece of work. She was loud and spoke her thoughts without a care for how they might land. She knew that to be in this business you had to have shark's skin and if she offended she looked at the hurt person and said things like, "O come on!" Once at the bar across the street she told me that she was cooking just because. Because she didn't know what else to do. But she had a touch. She got pesky recipes to work that no one else could. And she couldn't explain what she had done! She moved like lighting. Whipped runners, captains, floor managers and back waiters into submission. And then she would slap them on the back in the sweaty defeated red locker rooms like we were all just in basic training together and wasn't it fun?

I will never forget my first week at Gramercy. Heather and Gina De Palma, (now the pastry chef at Babbo), flanked me as I leaned down into the i.c. drawers, learning how to quenelle by fire, screaming "FASTER! FASTER!" One night when I was training with Heather alone we had over 20 tickets on our board that were modified with a red "NOW" and after spinning like the Tasmanian Devil she looked dead at me and said, Where are we?!!!" Defeated, I replied pathetically, "I don't know." And then she kicked into overdrive and showed me how it was done.

We kept in touch and I ate her desserts at every restaurant she went. I ate her perfect lemon ice box cake a dozen times and was the happiest person alive the day Food & Wine printed her banana caramel bread pudding. Having grown up in Hawaii she had a sweet American palate. In her personality she carried a secret pocket of fierce quiet conviction and gave me supportive but unapologetic well chosen words when they were absolutely necessary.

When I learned that her death was definite I had trouble mourning her. I could see her and hear what she would have said. Sappy she wasn't. Nor would she stand for such ridiculousness.

In early October I traveled to NYC for a pre-planned Lydon family reunion. I did something else. I called Gina and Claudia and I told them what I had not the time to say to Heather. I thanked them for helping to shape who I was striving to be as a pastry chef. I thanked them for pushing me so hard (that kitchen was loud and brutal at times) and told them that GT had been a real turning point in my career. We told Heather stories and remembered her in the way that she would have been happy to have been a part of. We talked shit and we told it like it was.