I had survived another conference, and Dawn and I were getting ready for a great summer. Life was so much better without having to fight with anyone (i.e. my mother). No one screamed at any one else, and everyone was kind and considerate. What a concept! Dawn and I finally started to see how other people lived. On top of that, I had really begun to move up at the Hotel. Three apprentices had quit, so I now had the third highest ranking seniority (of all the apprentices). Plus, it was fun teaching people twice my age how to cook.

One day, Roget got in a couple of hundred fresh whole king salmon. I loved to clean salmon. I was fast and good at it. When I first started my apprenticeship I butchered the shit out of them, so Roget made me clean every salmon in the whole hotel until I got good at it. That was over a year ago, but I had still cleaned a couple of salmon every day since. I was a very proud eighteen-year-old fishmonger. I had broken my arm riding my skateboard, so when I walked by and offered to help Roget clean all of the salmon, he declined. 

“No, No, you will get your cast all smelly. You go up to the Roof and set up your station, but send down both of the new CIA externs.”

CIA meant Culinary Institute of America. We got a couple of these guys in every year. All of them could tell you a lot about cooking food, and some of them actually thought they were chefs, but none of them could cook their way out of a lunch sac. I was always jumping in and bailing their asses out. That was because instead of cooking for the last two years, they sat in classrooms and discussed cooking, opposed to actually doing it. Cooking is every bit as much dexterity and timing, as it is formulation of ingredients and methods of procedure. No, in fact, it’s a hell of a lot more dexterity and timing then it is recipes and methods. Most guys coming out of the CIA were at least twenty-five and thought they were Paul Boucus himself. So I always enjoyed bossing them around.

“Hey, both of you, Chef wants you down stairs right now.” I said, trying to make it sound like they were in trouble.

The first two years of my apprenticeship Roget would always say, “You’re lucky you get to learn from me, because if you had to go to the CIA, your parents would spend twenty thousand dollars, and you still wouldn’t know shit.” I had no idea what the fuck he was talking about. But I had learned that things in the kitchen would go a lot smoother if you just didn’t ask Roget what he was talking about. Then, I didn’t know that the CIA was a culinary school. I had envisioned me trying to become a spy, instead of a chef, and getting into some kind of trouble that would cause my parents to have to spend twenty thousand dollars to get me out of spy jail. It was just all way to confusing, and I had no idea why he kept saying it.

When I met my first extern, a light went on in my head. I thought to myself, “Oh, that’s what in the hell he was trying to tell me all of these years.” There were so many things that Roget taught me about food that I wasn’t able to grasp until I had a lot more time under my belt. Even to this day I will be cooking and I will finally figure something out and it will dawn on me that Roget was trying to explain this to me twenty years ago. I just couldn’t comprehend it yet. The nuances and subtleties of cooking go far beyond what most chefs ever realize.

The externs made it down stairs and started to screw up the salmon, which, in turn, started to piss Roget off.

“A sixteen year old boy with a broken arm can clean salmon better than both of you!”

One of them was stupid enough to try to argue with him so he picked up the phone, called upstairs and told Jimmy, the restaurant chef to send down “The Boy.” Of course, Jimmy tried to make it sound like I was in trouble. Paybacks are a bitch.

Roget never once called me Todd. He would schedule “The Boy.” He would yell at “The Boy,” and tell others how good “The Boy” is starting to become. To this day when he speaks about me to someone else he refers to me as “The Boy.”

“Show these two great chefs from New York how to clean salmon,” Roget ordered as I walked into the kitchen.

I knocked out five fish in less than five minutes, all of them perfect. I felt so cool I could float.

“I told you a sixteen year old boy with a broken arm could clean salmon a lot better then you,” Roget said proudly.

“Chef, Chef, I am not sixteen anymore, I just turned eighteen,” I spouted off. He looked at me like, you know better than to argue with me, if I say you’re still sixteen then you’re still sixteen. So I hurried and tried to recover by adding, “But you sure were right.”

“What? That they don’t teach you a damn thing at the CIA?”

“No, that it was going to make my cast smell.” I went back up stairs and finished setting up my station.

We had a culinary competition in a few days at the Salt Palace. All of the chefs, apprentices and externs could enter to claim a golden platter trophy and bragging rights. There were two categories: one for apprentices and externs, and one for chefs. Roget was really cool about stuff like this, he would buy you anything you wanted to work with, but you had to create it on your own time. I learned a long time ago not to get Roget involved in your project, because he wouldn’t help you at all until you were all done and then he would look at it and tell you that it was totally fucked up. Then, he would just throw it away and tell you to start it again.

I had purchasing buy me a fresh, fifteen-pound Florida Gulf red snapper. I simply poached it in a court bouillon and Choid Froi-ed it (meaning covered it with a white aspic). I had left the head and tail on it and elegantly decorated it without Roget ever seeing it. I raced it over to the Salt Palace. When I came back after judging, there was my snapper with the round golden plate next to it. I had received first place in the apprenticeship category. I was so excited that I went to a pay phone and called Roget. When I told him that I had one first place, he asked me if I was sure and that he would be right down. I hopped on my bike, rode to my mom’s house and told her and my grandma they had to come see. However, when I got back my fish was not only gone, but my golden plate was in front of someone else’s entry. Roget and Max (Roget’s best friend who owns Le Parisienne, a great French restaurant in Salt Lake) were standing there speaking French. I had learned enough French to know what “The Boy” sounded like, and enough that I knew they had something to do with this bullshit. The judges simply walked up to me.

“We’re sorry Todd, but Roget and Max called it to our attention that the fish was not cooked all of the way. So, you’ve been disqualified.” Then Roget walks up and charmingly greets my mom and grandmother.

“Oh, God, that fish was stinking so bad we had to throw it away! Then the judges noticed that you didn’t cook it enough. If you had of showed it to me before you left, you could have fixed it. What in the hell is wrong with you, you know how to cook fish, you do it every night.”

“The longer that I cooked it the more of the beautiful red color it was losing. I know that it didn’t stink because I was just here, and the judges never would have cut into it and noticed that it wasn’t cooked all of the way, if you and Max hadn’t started to poke at it.”

“Maybe your right, but you still don’t deserve to win unless you really deserve to win.” They both walked away and went to get a beer.

I could not believe that my own chef would go so far out of his way to fuck me up! Twenty years later, I realize that Roget’s lesson that day was not about how long to cook fish, but that you should never think that you can get away with something you know is not right. I knew the fish was undercooked, but I chose presentation above a cardinal rule of cooking and it jumped up and bit me in the ass, in front of my family. Another lesson I learned that day is that it is a hell of a lot better to have Roget throw your work away in the kitchen then it is to have him throw it away at the show.