Look at him! Staring into the pot, stroking his goatee with his right hand - his left hand placed on the small of his back. I saw that same pose every morning when we worked in Brooks’ kitchen together. I remember his first review called him the ‘Prince of the Kitchen’, another the ‘Philosopher of the Pot.’ He was always dishing out long-winded diatribes about his food. The lofty language food writers love to quote; ‘deconstructing’ a dish, ‘imbibing’ a flavour, ‘resonating’ with a grower. Hogwash, 'thesaurusocratic' cookery I’d say. But here he is again, in the same pose – this time in Menu Magazine, an unwanted trade mag jammed into my mailbox - twenty years on. The bastard. He was practicing back then, I bet! When we were in school and worked together. I am sure of it! Each morning, as I used to watched him skim the stock pots, just the two of us in the kitchen, I am sure he was thinking about a photographer’s lighting. Where the photographer might stand to capture himself and the pot together. How he ought to hold his own head to regal his goatee and show-off his steely blue eyes. But now he is bald, his goatee is frosted white, and the back of his neck is rippled with fat.
Termites! I remember wishing for ‘Johann William Rain’ to have termites eat his gut, for beetles to nest in his scrotum, parasites to slither from his colon to his esophagus, a family of guinea pigs to teethe at his heart, liver, and lungs - a conspiracy of ravens to rip the flesh from his face. My hate for him was, and is, a deep rich chocolate cake that I have never resisted - not today, not back then. Look at him.
For twenty plus years I’ve had to follow his career, like a sprinter watching his opponent’s butt get further and further away. Reading in print what he once said in the kitchen, to whomever was present. From day one he introduced himself with his full name, Johann William Rain. And spoke of himself in the third person, like a tagline - ‘Johann will Reign today,’ or ‘Rain’s a Comin’’ – as he walked into our first year cooking class (He was only one year ahead of us, but he believed it enough for the self-aggrandizement). Most of the students and teachers saw him as charming, confident, the guy they wanted to meet. I saw it as an act, a mirage, a calculation. One by one I have watched his vocalized taglines appear in print, as if he had whispered them into the ears of food writers and editors. This was no accident; he knew what he was doing.
Today’s trade mag is a perfect example, with its article entitled, “When It Rains It Pours.” Three photos at the top. On the left, as I have already described, Johann William Rain is inspecting his stock pot, stroking his goatee, the other hand on the small of his back. The middle photo is a close-up shot straight on, Johann William Rain is looking at the clear golden broth pouring from the ladle into a pristine oversized bowl. His face is studied, he is thoughtful, mindful, serious. The photo to the right is the soup shot from above. In the porcelain bowl is a clear broth with half a soft-boiled egg, the brilliant yellow facing upward, black shavings of truffles float amongst purple and yellow edible flowers in the shimmering broth, while delicate drops of a sparkling green oil (perhaps basil? No, basil would be too pedestrian for Johann William Rains, must be sorel!). The soup may have tasted like insipid egg-water with dried cardboard truffles, but that didn’t matter. It looked lovely, and I hated him even more.
A few years back I read a biographical article about him in Toronto Life magazine, in which he candidly admitted that he had changed his name from ‘Jason’ to ‘Johann.’ He said—and I quote—“I knew the first day of chef school was the first day of my career. Though ‘Jay’ was a fine enough name for my family to call me, it did not inspire; I wanted to inspire. I chose Johann to inspire, like Bach. A musician who brings the heavens to earth. That is something I have always tried to do. Or, should I say, in my case, if I may jest, pull the heavens from the humble earth, like harvesting a carrot. Hence, I decided to change my name when I entered school. I now think Johann suits me fine. Don’t you?”
Well, maybe not an exact quote. I may have ‘amplified’ his sentiments – something my therapist cautions me against regularly. But ‘Bach’ was mentioned, so was heaven, and his name did change. And as such, I must admit, he was right. The first day of cooking school was the first day of our careers. A point I somehow missed.
But look at the trend-chasing lark. He missed something as well. Can’t believe we trained in the same kitchen, with the same chef. He is cooking by numbers, like a child with a colouring book. All adjectives and adverbs, and expensive ‘choice’ nouns. Cooking with words, he is. In a shameful moment I studied one of his menus online, and the word ‘perfect’ appeared, in some variation, six times. Nothing is perfect in cooking; he knows that. We had the same chef. Briggs never used the word ‘perfection.’ I have banned the word from my own kitchen. Despite the Québecois affinity for the word parfait, I have still managed this feat.
Perfect is sanitized, cleaned up, faultless, therefore lifeless. Grilled to perfection, my ass. Where does the light get in if everything is sealed by perfection? Where does the charred sweet grizzle have its place on your perfect steak? Grace is not found in perfection, as the perfect have no use for it. Just like the righteous, ‘mindful’, healthy joggers who believe they have no need for grace, and therefore don’t dispense it to others. Johann William Rain speaks of poetry in his food while he opens another kitchen filled with sous-vide bags and rushed ‘quick casual service’ food. Flaccid, repeatable, perfect food, with the walls plastered with photos of himself working on a fishing trawler or staring across a wheat field.
God, I wish Luka could have worked with Chef Briggs. I love to tell him stories about how Briggs would inspect our stations before service. Nothing left the kitchen without an inspection. It was a ritual, sacrosanct. Briggs would stick a spoon deep in a container, maybe a salsa or a mayo of some sort, take a full bite, and explain the need for salt, or how the size of the cut tomatoes did not have the right effect in the mouth. Every bite Briggs took had a purpose; it was an investigation, an interrogation. Chomping on a piece of asparagus, a short lecture would come out of his mouth. “Your asparagus stayed in the ice bath too long, the salt washed off and it sucked up the water. Just because the plant is dead doesn’t mean it stops working as a plant. What do plants do?” I could only stare at him, speechless. One minute before service, and I wasn’t sure what kind of answer he wanted; ecological, metaphysical, the raison d’être of a piece of goddam asparagus. He’d continue in a serious firm tone, “They pump water in and up, it’s their mechanics. Right? So, if they stay in the water too long, they do what they do, they pump water inside themselves, and that is not what we want them to do. Right? What do we want them to do?” Deeper he went, the lovely bastard, and only forty-five seconds to service, “We want them to do what we want them to do. To not be waterlogged, and to be tasty; crisp in the mouth, but tender. Now do it again, Atchison.” I could not believe those moments at Brooks, with seconds to service, being told, “do it again.” No choice, you’d scramble to get a pot on. Salt, lid, flame. I’d beg the water to boil as I frantically cut and rapidly (yet delicately) peeled the asparagus. With anxiety crawling up my spine, I’d fetch ice from the server’s area, avoiding the wry smile of Johann (he would make a comment later, he always did). Plunged the asparagus into boiling water, set a three-minute timer, and said a quick prayer to the restaurant gods: “Please let the first few orders be asparagus-salad-less.”
By the end of the first summer at Brooks I finally got a pass. Briggs tasted everything as usual, squirting vinaigrettes on the back of his hand and lapping them up with his tongue, chewing on a marinated carrot, gulping down a chilled cucumber gazpacho – “if you don’t taste it like a client does, then there is no point in tasting it. A tiny taste will tell you nothing,” he would say. Then this one day, after his inspection, he stared at me. He had a slightly relaxed, almost stunned face, as if he was searching for a word. Then he turned and hurried to the next station in Garde Manger. Nothing was wrong. He may have even said ‘good job’ before he left. “The point is, Luka,” I said, as I told him the tale last week, “he did not say anything was right either, nothing was perfect. It was just the way it should be.”
How do you teach the beauty of the imperfectly perfect? To indulge in a wrinkle. That time is a lipid that renders itself, like globes of wax dripping from a flame. Appearing at once as grotesque beads of snot dangling from a Sorcerer’s nose and alluring droplets of frozen water hanging from a waterfall. How do you teach a kid to let himself flow from one perspective of the candle to the next, and back again. To not be repulsed or enamored by either. To let the imperfect and the perfect be at once in the same object, to have them grow within you. How do you explain that comprehending asymmetry feels more like salvation than enlightenment?
Look at me. Look at where I am in time. I’ve had my coffee and I am starting to mop the kitchen floor. Is this where I thought I was headed? No. But I have no one telling me to mop this floor. Is that the trade off? Not sure. The floor does feel nice after I have mopped it, no slippage, clean. And I like to soak the mop in hot-hot soapy water, with a dash of bleach. Lifting the mop head out of the bucket. Feel the heavy wet-weight before casting it onto the floor. Splash. The satisfaction of watching bulbous streams of soapy water aimlessly run across the speckled vinyl floor. I return the mop head to the bucket, and plunge up and down the thick cotton yarn. Like a weightlifter raising a barbell in a quick fluid motion, I heave and splash the mop once again onto the soaking surface. With my two hands holding the handle close to my chest, I gently push the mop through the shallow lake to the middle of the kitchen. Then in a burst of activity, I thrust the mop head straight forward like a shuffleboard player. I thrust and thrust and thrust the mop head all over. The calm runaway streams of hot foamy water slushes into the baseboards, an early morning tempest erupts on the floor. The hot soapy water is pushed under worker tables and fridges, it fills crevices and cracks, it washes away the ten thousand daily steps that relentlessly pound, grind, slide, twist, on the one-hundred-square-foot surface. Lifting foot tracks and small food stains. The soapy water washes away the tension, the failures, the triumphs and bitterness of yesterday’s service. The water turns grey and progress is felt. I lean into the mop and scrub frantically like a curler on ice. My arms are in constant motion as I walk slowly backwards to the bucket.
Once again, I plunge up and down the mop head three or four times before I lift it into the wringer, the mechanical basket hanging inside the bucket. The radio is playing Richard Strauss’ Eine Alpensinfonie, a late romantic’s tone poem filled with mountains, valleys, and denialism. The piece holds a strange place in musical history, being the first recording pressed on a compact disk. An odd fact I picked up along the way that leads me back to Luka. How do I teach him the perfectly imperfect? His world is digital, and digital is perfect; it is exact, or nothing. My world was very analog at eighteen. I lived with the vinyl albums that crackled when played, personalized gems of sound, fingerprints in ones’ record collections. Yet, I am sure I still believed then ‘the perfect’ was a state more worthy than the ‘imperfect.’ Impenetrable youth, I suppose. And I don’t want to confuse him, to teach him to stop at good-enough. To accept faults, to give yourself a break when you think you have striven enough at a task. No, I want him to see that ‘the perfect’ is unnatural, and nature is imperfectly beautiful.
I twist the mop in the wringer, it looks like spaghetti on a fork. I feel my age as I press down on the wringer’s lever, bent at the knees, back held straight, right arm fixed straight, right shoulder muscle firm. Grey water flushes through the wringer’s grid, like a river forced through a narrow gorge. Released and squeezed again. I lift the mop out and cross the kitchen. I head to the invisible line that divides the kitchen’s territory from the dining room. It is where the water has stopped. I am always self-conscious at this step, as if I have an audience. Perhaps it is because I am anticipating the graceful movements I am about to execute, movements otherwise wasted on an empty auditorium. I approach the water’s edge and choose my spot. I drape the mop head just beyond the water’s edge, as if I am about to drag a shoreline into the ocean. I hold the mop like a cello and move my right hand back and forth. I take a step backwards with each stoke, curling at the edge, building a rhythm, culling the water towards myself. Back and forth, back and forth, long strokes, I watch the mop absorb more and more. Then I fold the mop over to its dry side, without breaking the weave, and I perform more strokes. I stop when the mop comes heavy, and start the process again. Plunge, squeeze, weave, dry. Plunge, squeeze, weave, dry.
I used not to be so meditative as I mopped. Savage bones would rattle in my head. Sometimes still do. The things I didn’t say, the people I wished I’d passionately fired before they gleefully quit. Or the clients who should have been kicked out - the compromises they demanded of my food, of my character. And I, hating myself as I acquiesced, in the name of a smooth service. Contorting my self-respect. Arrogant, entitled clients. All these savage bones would rattle as I mopped and they made me clench my teeth. I would press harder with every visage they conjured. Then, over time, my teeth began to crack. A few cracked in the middle of the night as I slept. I would wake to a sharp sensation on my tongue. One tooth cracked as I chewed on a baguette at L’Express. I was eating pate de viola and drinking a robust Mercury. One by one they’d crumble or splinter. I was never so lucky as to have one fall out like a child’s tooth, painlessly played with. They always had to be removed.
Somehow, my dentist’s knee always found its way onto my shoulder, as he tugged and twisted and pried. Fragments of my tooth would drop to his work tray, and I’d hear small metal chimes. The hygienist would wash and suck away the blood, before he’d sigh and say, “There is a small piece remaining. It’s going to take a little more work.” Deeper he would then dig. Grinding the last morsels of my cracked tooth with a series of drill bits. Sweat would begin to bead on my brow. Each new drill bit resonated with a different frequency through my skull to my inner ear; an inescapable sound. Together the dentist, the hygienist, and I prayed the needle of articaine would hold its freezing effect. Then, in a moment of triumph, the dentist would announce that the healthy root had been unearthed. By my seventh extraction, I was demoralized when nuts roamed in my mouth, escaping the few molars I possessed, when I relied on my front teeth to chew meat, when my tongue grew fat as it filled the new void, and a spitty lisp crept into my speech. Molds were taken for a partial denture. A chef with no teeth; ridiculous.
I am sure Johann William Rain does not have thoughts like these when he mops his floors. He probably hasn’t mopped a kitchen floor in years. For Christ’s sake, I am sure he doesn’t see the floors his cooks stand on for weeks at a time. I am better at mopping now than he is, I am sure of that. My therapist tells me not to fixate, to choose a different channel in my head as I mop. She doesn’t have to see her own nemesis in a trade magazine while drinking her morning coffee. Perhaps she does, in a psychiatric journal. I hope so. Termites.
“Life strives and suffers in all the same places.” That was written above the exit door with a sharpie at Brooks’ Restaurant. Every time I think of those words, they mean something different to me. For the longest time I thought it was one of the Zen- or Taoist-sounding sayings Chef Briggs always seemed to produce, effortlessly, when making a point, be it in a fit of rage or a moment of contemplative instructions. Not long before I left Brooks, I learned the motto’s true origin. Chef Briggs had heard it on the radio. A biophysicist said it while describing cell development. Chef Briggs said he thought it was appropriate for a life in the kitchen. Then he cackled his famous mischievous laugh. I miss that laugh.