Wife of the Chef - Hardcover

Febbroriello, Courtney

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0609611062 ISBN 13: 9780609611067

Publisher: Clarkson Potter, 2003

Synopsis

Wife of the Chef is at once a no-holds-barred memoir of restaurant life and a revealing look at married life. For Courtney Febbroriello, the two are intertwined. She and her husband own an American bistro in Connecticut. He's the chef, so naturally he gets all the credit. She has the role of keeping things running, but she's the wife, so she remains anonymous or invisible or both.

Febbroriello comes front and center here, detailing the everyday challenges she faces—taking over dish-washing duty, bailing waiters out of jail, untangling the immigration laws, cajoling lazy suppliers, handling unreasonable customers, and a host of other emergency duties. She pokes fun at people who take food and wine—and the chef—too seriously, with witty comments on everything from "chef envy" to the much-ballyhooed James Beard Awards.

Spiced with a healthy spoonful of feminism and enriched with a cup of humor, Wife of the Chef is the tastiest "dish" of the season.

About this title

About the Author

COURTNEY FEBBRORIELLO and her husband, Christopher Prosperi, opened Metro Bis in Simsbury, Connecticut, in 1998. This is her first book.

From the Inside Flap

f the Chef</b> is at once a no-holds-barred memoir of restaurant life and a revealing look at married life. For Courtney Febbroriello, the two are intertwined. She and her husband own an American bistro in Connecticut. He's the chef, so naturally he gets all the credit. She has the role of keeping things running, but she's the wife, so she remains anonymous or invisible or both.<br><br>Febbroriello comes front and center here, detailing the everyday challenges she faces—taking over dish-washing duty, bailing waiters out of jail, untangling the immigration laws, cajoling lazy suppliers, handling unreasonable customers, and a host of other emergency duties. She pokes fun at people who take food and wine—and the chef—too seriously, with witty comments on everything from "chef envy" to the much-ballyhooed James Beard Awards.<br><br>Spiced with a healthy spoonful of feminism and enriched with a cup of humor, <b>Wife of the Chef</b> is the tastiest "

Reviews

In this window into the life of a chef's wife, Febbroriello challenges the stereotype of such women as pampered-she doesn't like exotic foods, is a vegetarian, subsists on potatoes and yogurt gulped down on the run. Febbroriello tires of hearing how wonderful it must be to be the wife of cook Christopher Prosperi of Metro Bis in Simsbury, Conn., and complains of condescending businessmen who assume they need to talk to her husband when she herself is part owner. She details the manic organizational demands of owning a restaurant, customer complaints, crowded lunches, a husband to whom every surface is a napkin; she even dishes out raunchy kitchen jokes. After her experience as Fry-O-Lator girl in a restaurant that allowed workers to pick up food that had fallen on a floor frequented by cockroaches, Febbroriello vowed never to eat out again-that is, until she became enamored of her husband-to-be and his passion for all things food. With chapter titles like "Combat Skills" and "The Rules of the Jungle," the book makes one wonder why anyone would want to be in this business. There is only passing mention of the rewarding customers and quirky regulars, and with only one recipe, there is more evidence of passion for bookkeeping than there is passion for food. However, those who have suffered the indignities and long hours of the restaurant business will appreciate her no-nonsense descriptions of the fierce competition for the best ingredients, wines and employees; the politics of reviewing; the financial woes; and the customers who can't make up their minds.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Lunch

Assembling the Troops

Today I am only half awake when I feel Chris kiss my cheek. "I love you," he whispers. Then he takes five steps into the living room, picks up the phone, and speaks in his usual megaphone voice. "HELLO, IS CHAD THERE? CHAD, I FORGOT TO ORDER FISH LAST NIGHT. IS IT TOO LATE? GOOD. I NEED A MEDIUM SALMON AND A BOX OF 21 / 25s. AND SEND ME FIFTEEN POUNDS OF WHATEVER YOU HAVE THAT'S GOOD. THANKS, MAN. I'LL TALK TO YOU LATER TODAY." Then he clomps down the stairs in his navy blue rubber clogs and slams the front door. Fully awake, I open my eyes just enough to read the red digital clock. Seven thirty-one. The time glows even after I squeeze my eyes shut and roll over to the cool side of the pillow. As I quickly drift back to sleep, I know that it won't be for long. I vaguely remember a work-related nightmare that I have been fighting all night. Something about a line of people at the door and no chairs anywhere in the restaurant to seat them. At 7:54 I roll back toward the clock. I'm pretty sure that I went to bed at two, and I'm positive that I need to go to the bathroom. I slowly push my legs off the side of the warm bed, sit up, and eventually end up on the couch with a glass of orange juice, flipping between Headline News, the Travel Channel, the Weather Channel, and, of course, the Food Network. When I am finally awake enough to function, I jump in the shower, pull an outfit off of the floor, and head for the car.

As I walk across the front yard, I am accosted by my next-door neighbor. She has a concern about the maintenance of the building we share. I don't spend much time at home, and I can't be bothered with shoveling, raking, mowing, and garbage removal. (The landlord finally gave us our own garbage pail so that we would be responsible for taking it to the street rather than allowing it to overflow in the backyard.) As my neighbor prattles on about one such issue (I'm not really listening), I attempt, politely, to get into my car. Then she stops midsentence and asks, "Don't you own your own business? With your boyfriend?"

"My husband."

"Then you must understand what I'm talking about. I own my own hairdressing business."

I manage a sympathetic smile until she says, "Oh, but I'm sure it's easier for you because you own it with your husband."

I get in my car and drive away.

The ride to Metro Bis is just under twenty minutes. I constantly flip between radio stations, trying to find music. Chris likes to listen to the news in his car, but his stereo has been broken for six months. I don't know why I bother to change the channels; I'm not really listening, anyway. I'm thinking about the two caterings that are going out of Metro Express, the tomato ginger salad dressing that needs to be repacked because it separated, the twenty-seven dinner reservations, and the new guy who needs to fill out paperwork today. When I pull into the parking lot, I have a good idea of what I'm going to do first. By the time I get from the bar to the office, my plans have evaporated.

I always start the workday by entering the front door of the restaurant. This is the first place customers see when entering; it's where they get their first impression. As I fly through the door, I straighten the menus and replenish the business cards on the display table to the left. I pull the paperwork from yesterday's sales. I check the reservations for tonight. We're up to thirty-four people and lunch hasn't even started. I answer the phone and take a reservation for Saturday. Jerry, our manager, greets me, smiling with a hearty and sarcastic "Good morning, Sunshine!" He asks when I'm going to put out the next Metro Mail and tells me that he has been bugging Chris all morning to finish the Mondavi wine dinner menu. As usual, Chris has been attached to the phone since nine a.m. I've been thinking about implanting a phone in his head. Before I can answer Jerry, the phone rings again. It's the produce company trying to get an order from Chris. I already know where he is, though I haven't seen him yet. I can hear him "chatting" at the top of his lungs not more than sixty feet from me, on the other phone in the back of the dining room. As I'm walking toward the kitchen, I tell Jerry that I will have a Metro Mail done by dinner tonight. I stop by table eight and glance at Chris. He's always smiling, so I can't tell if he's happy to see me or just having a good conversation. I quickly realize he's just gossiping, which is part of his morning routine. There is a whole network of underground restaurant information transmitted daily by salesmen with the dirt on job openings and sales figures. I tell Chris that the produce company is on line two. While he switches lines, I poke through the paperwork on table eight. All of our staff jokingly call the two-top closest to the kitchen Chris's desk. I kicked him out of the restaurant's real office. After the first three months of sharing it with him, he left a dirty crème brûlée dish underneath a stack of papers on the desk. I cleaned the ants, the dish, his papers, and Chris out of the office the next day. He eventually settled on table eight. It was originally a table for four until Jerry decided he couldn't stand the mess either and took half of the "desk" away. Today there are a couple of phone messages for me and a fax for an upcoming March of Dimes event. I add them to the receipts from yesterday, roll my eyes at Chris, and head for the kitchen. He waves as I walk away, looking as though he'll be on the phone for at least another twenty minutes.

Everyone in the kitchen looks pretty busy, but it's very quiet. The caffeine won't really kick in until the middle of lunch. The dishwasher already has a pile of dishes in the pot sink from the early-morning prep work that Chris must have done before he got on the phone. Instead of doing the dishes, he's busy dumping out the Fry-O-Lator oil into a five-gallon bucket. We do it in the morning when the oil is cool. Chris once had a line cook who emptied the hot oil into a plastic bucket at the end of the night. As the pail melted, an ocean of oil was released over the kitchen, floating rafts of French fries and extra-crispy calamari. It was funny to everyone except the line cook, who spent the next two hours cleaning it up. Today the dishwasher still needs to degrease the Fry-O-Lator bay, refill it with fresh oil, and put the old oil in the grease Dumpster. (Cosmetic companies make lipstick and other products that I would never use from the recycled oil.) The lunch chef is setting up his station. Chris is still on the phone. I grab the invoices off the back bulletin board and head out the door.

Metro Bis is located in an old shopping center. We rent four spaces: the restaurant, office, storage, and Metro Express, the takeout store. In order to get to the office, I walk out the kitchen door, down a flight of stairs, past

the Dumpster, and back into the building. It's nice to get the chance to go outside unless it's raining. I finally reach the office by ten-thirty and toss my pile of papers on the desk. I sit down, pick up the phone, and call Chris in the kitchen. He always seems to get off the phone right after I leave the kitchen.

"What's the soup for Express?" I ask.

"Curried carrot and potato leek and Cheddar. Do we have anything on the fourteenth?"

I roll my chair to the right and look up at the three months of calendar pages on the wall.

"Not yet," I reply.

"Good. I just booked my cooking class that day. The grocery store called. They need a delivery today."

"What do they need?"

"I think they wanted ten Caesar, ten balsamics, and four tomato gingers, but I'm not positive."

"Check and let me know. Is there anything else?"

"Did you hear about Ryan yet? He got a ticket last night in New York. He was hanging out the window of a car after a Yankee game waving an Orioles T-shirt. What an idiot! Anyway, I'll be right down to do specials."

"Okay. Wait. What were those soups again?"

"Curried carrot potato-"

"Leek and Cheddar. Thanks. Bye."

I call Express next.

"Do you have everything on the special sheet from yesterday?" I ask.

"Yes."

"Did the kitchen send you anything new?"

"Yeah, I got meat loaf, but I'm out of lasagne. Oh, and I need aprons and decaf."

"All right. I'll be down in a minute."

I quickly make changes to the Express specials, start printing them, then listen to the phone messages on the answering machine. Reservations for next Tuesday and a question about catering. I scribble down the numbers and grab the special sheets from the printer, the aprons from the laundry bin, and the coffee from the cabinet. I keep the laundry in the office because the chefs would use fifty towels per person per day if I let them. At thirty cents each they can really add up. Coffee beans are also in the office because they tend to wander off when not locked up.

I walk left out of the office, down the hallway, back out of the building, and across the courtyard, where we have an outside dining area for Metro Express. I have a vague memory of what I was planning on doing today, but I can't quite remember what it was. I can't believe that Ryan didn't get shot in New York last night. I pick up a napkin, throw it away, and check to see if the tables are clean under the table mats before going downstairs into Express.

"The courtyard looks good. I've got your specials, coffee, and aprons," I say as I lay them on top of the deli case. "Do you need anything else?"

"I still need my soup, and there's water on the floor by the phone."

"Where's it coming from?"

"I don't know."

"Did you check the sump pump?"

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarkson Potter
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0609611062
• ISBN 13: 9780609611067
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288