Two Items

I forgot to mention two items yesterday:

1. There is an American kid in my flat. (There are currently four American stages, including myself, at the restaurant, out of approximately 38 stages total.) He came into the kitchen last night and asked if anyone wanted to take “knife hits” with him. I told him I wasn’t sure what “knife hits” were, but I was sure I didn’t want to take one with him. He asked one of our Spanish roommates if he wanted to join in or did he mind if he started to take “knife hits.” Our Spanish roommate kindly declined and then looked at me and said, “I’m thinking of an expression Americans use.” He thought for a moment and then looked at the American kid and said, “It’s a free country man, you can do whatever you want.”

(In case you were wondering, knife hits are taken by heating up two everyday knives over a stove flame, putting hash between the heated knives, and inhaling the smoke that comes from the "cooked" hash.)

2. I met the man, the myth, the legend yesterday—in other words, the Executive Chef/Owner of the restaurant, which bears his name. (I am tentative to identify the restaurant and therefore his name, as he is known all over the world.) Directly after meeting Sany—previously Sunny, in my last entry, but I’ve since been corrected—she brought me to his private apartment above the restaurant to meet him. I’m not sure why she did this, but in hindsight, I’m glad I wasn’t aware of what we were about to do. Think cold sweats and panic—two responses I've become very familiar with in the past couple of days.

He was eating lunch when we walked in and he pulled a chair out for me to sit next to him. Sany stood off to the side. The whole set-up made me very uncomfortable. For starters, I was meeting a legend—culinary royalty. What really unnerved me for some reason in that moment was why we ALL couldn’t sit at the table TOGETHER.

In any event, when we established that I spoke French, the legend, (as I will refer to him) and I were able to converse. When we established that I worked for Daniel Boulud, or more specifically, at a Daniel Boulud restaurant, his entire face lit up. He went on about what a close friend he was and how he visited in November and how lucky I was to work for him. I agreed, of course. And then he got a phone call and I was literally whisked out of the room by Sany and another woman.

This morning, when he entered the kitchen and greeted everyone, he came over to me, shook my hand and said, “Bonjour!” It made me happy.